Haven't posted in ages. I'm just winding up my first semester of full-time teaching--holy rollercoaster! It's been a lot of work. All that expectant human presence inside a highly bureaucratic structure has been intense to say the least. I feel like I'm moving things, and making people think. I suppose student evaluations will tell.
There are a lot of smart interesting people out there on the Point-- writers, translators, critics, historians and scientists. And right now, a great deal of interest in and encouragement for interdisciplinarity. I'm excited by that. I'm still getting my sea legs. It feels like I'm always running, and yet the big things move very slowly.
Cool stuff I've participated in in the last bit: The Anniversaries of Change Project, TransCanada 2, the Play Chthonics reading series (come see Lee Maracle and Wayde Compton on December 3!) and a couple of issues of West Coast Line (one, guest-edited by Anne Stone and Amber Dean on the missing women of the Downtown Eastside, and one memorial issue for Nancy Shaw-- the Ham poems are in there if you're at all interested). Last week I went to a meeting at the Michael Smith Laboratories, where they are trying to set up a program to get school kids writing and thinking about science (and "truth" and method). Dave Ng from the Michael Smith Labs is organizing with members of the Creative Writing Department, including Rhea Trebegov, whom I've just met.
I'm diggin' the noon hour talks that occasionally happen at the Chan Centre. Early in the term, heard a very moving talk about surviving torture, and the logic of extraordinary rendition, from Maher Arar. And a couple of days ago heard Alisa Smith and James McKinnon talk about challenges and fruits (so to speak) of the 100-mile diet. It's pretty astonishing what they did, and also what a movement seems to be afoot.
So I'm swimming in the possibilities of this new life. Also pretty darn tired and overwhelmed. And not writing. See you on the next lungful.
