Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Website Update
Monday, August 20, 2012
“Deviance is a Quality I Admire”: An Interview with Gerard Beirne, The Fiddlehead’s Fiction Co-Editor
Over at The Review Review, our fiction co-editor Gerard Beirne chats with Hadley Catalano about his advice for writers, the art of storytelling, and how The Fiddlehead stays fresh and young after all these years, among other topics. Here's an excerpt:
HC: The narrative path is made to be broken. Do you see fictional short stories taking a completely different route, following a completely different structure in the future? And if so, what might that narrative structure look like?
GB: “A completely different structure?" No. The form of storytelling has evolved naturally. We may sometimes shake it up a bit, rearrange its parts, but at the end of the day, to do its job, to convey meaning to other human beings it requires a form that humans are receptive to . . . .
Go read the rest of “Deviance is a Quality I Admire.”
Read more about Gerard’s latest book, Games of Chance, at his blog about it.
 |
| Gerard Beirne |
Over at The Review Review, our fiction co-editor Gerard Beirne chats with Hadley Catalano about his advice for writers, the art of storytelling, and how The Fiddlehead stays fresh and young after all these years, among other topics. Here's an excerpt:
HC: The narrative path is made to be broken. Do you see fictional short stories taking a completely different route, following a completely different structure in the future? And if so, what might that narrative structure look like?
GB: “A completely different structure?" No. The form of storytelling has evolved naturally. We may sometimes shake it up a bit, rearrange its parts, but at the end of the day, to do its job, to convey meaning to other human beings it requires a form that humans are receptive to . . . .
Go read the rest of “Deviance is a Quality I Admire.”
Read more about Gerard’s latest book, Games of Chance, at his blog about it.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
The Fiddlehead Summer Poetry Issue (No. 252) has Arrived
Monday, July 16, 2012
Can a Young Writer Speak?
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| John Keats 1795-1821 |
A few
months ago I had the honour to read a story of mine publicly at an
undergraduate conference. The reading went well and after a hearty St.
Patrick's Day celebration it would have escaped my memory besides a short note
on my CV. However, a friend, and now my co-editor on our zine aptly named "What
Killed Keats," enjoyed the story and encouraged me to show it to our philosophy
professor. My professor promised nothing beyond reading it, so I was surprised
when I got an email a month or two later describing the flaws in the story in a
laborious critique one would expect to see in a negative review. The critique
differed from most feedback in that it was more like in-depth criticism and it
was exclusively and bitingly negative except for one line at the end to
encourage me to continue writing. Jan Zwicky claims in her essay “The Ethics of the Negative Review” that a negative review is a “Squelching of self
and creativity,” but for me my first semblance of a negative review was a grand
inspirational moment, a first milestone to becoming a writer. Someone had taken
my work to be worth criticizing on a higher level than mere feedback and deemed
it to be worth spending the time to criticize. That was a great compliment.
No one
appreciates it when someone decides that they know what is best for them. Gillian
Jerome states that CWILA supports stronger critical awareness of marginalized voices when a young writer's voice has not been heard. From a young
writer's perspective, Zwicky's essay is written in a maternal fashion,
suggesting that she has to save writers from the negative reviewer. She claims
negative reviews have prevented writers from publishing when she says
that poets are sensitive to their environment. She attempts to speak for young
writers when young writers were never included in the conversation. She wants
to protect young writers from negative reviewers like a parent protects
children from a bully, when all I'm saying is that it is more complicated. I
acknowledge that I write from a male point of view on criticism and I don't
want to attack Zwicky; I only take issue with Zwicky attempting to speak for
me.
I have
found that a young writer has to fight hard for any useful criticism, and any
movement against negative criticism is deeply worrying for me. I began writing
at sixteen and I've run a gauntlet of workshops, so I know firsthand that it is
hard to give—and almost impossible to find—good criticism. Praise can be found
easily and in my experience has never helped me improve my writing. I write with Queer characters predominantly,
so in my experience, positive criticism is more often than not patronizing,
while negative criticism shows that someone takes what I have to say seriously.
I look to negative reviews to learn what the reviewer thinks is stale or
overdone and what doesn't work in a piece. Therefore I have the most to lose
under the arguments of Zwicky's essay. I agree that criticism that focuses on
personal attacks and so-called “scorched earth tactics” is not helpful for
anyone, but Zwicky never defines what she means by a negative review and this
makes me anxious.
To be
frank, Zwicky oversimplifies publishing by casting the writer as a hero who has
to persevere amid criticism. I always look back to a workshop I took in high
school with the then UNB writer-in-residence Gerard Beirne. One of my friends
was a talented writer who had a completed novel manuscript and had asked Gerard
for advice. After working with her for several months, he suggested to her that
she should delay publishing when she had been convinced that she had to
publish. His advice to everyone is that it takes a long time to have work
that's worth publishing and that you should never rush into publishing. He has
always used solid examples of writers whose work has progressed and now look
back on their early work with embarrassment, even if it is well-written.
However, other writers thought that she should just publish if she had
something that was worth publishing. Both views were still valid, and although
I personally agree with Gerry, the conflict shows how one view of publishing
cannot know what's best for a young writer.
All I ask
is for established writers to keep in mind that they can't know what's best for
young writers. I appreciate the amazing level of effort and resources put
towards young writers, but I do think there are problems. Technological
advances such as e-publishing have been touted endlessly as a great resource
for young writers, but the negatives are always glossed over. Although some of
the new technology is amazing and has potential, I don't think that the next
generation of young writers is better off. If a young writer publishes
something online, then it will never disappear. Imagine the nightmare for a
writer to become successful only to have their writing from when they were
fifteen emerge. It is infuriating to see articles on e-publishing act as if
they have discovered self-publishing when zines and other non-traditional forms
of media have always existed. Publishing in a zine was never given as an option
or even discussed in any of the writing and publishing workshops I took, but
zines are a valuable resource for young writers. Zines are disposable and
limited; they can be distributed to those interested in writing and can be kept
for yourself, not for the whole world to see. My father still has a few of his
first self-published chapbooks and looks on them fondly. Zines can give young
writers an independent voice to speak for themselves, but it is another matter
if anyone will listen.
Kelly Jarman
Fall 2011/Winter 2012 Fiddlehead Intern
For more information about zines, visit Broken Pencil.
For more information about "What Killed Keats," email the editors.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
cStories: Read Mark Anthony Jarman's story for free!
Thomas Allen Publishers and Cormorant Books have a new ebook singles program called cStories,which will allow readers to purchase individual short stories and instantly download them to their favorite digital devices. As part of the"Get into Our Shorts" promotional launch of cStories, the story "A Nation Plays Chopsticks" by The Fiddlehead's fiction co-editor Mark Anthony Jarman is being serialized and available for free online both at Quill and Quire and the National Post's Afterword blog.There are other free stories available from authors Sarah Selecky, Russell Wangersky, Jessica Westhead, Aaron Bushkowsky, Carol Windley, Charlotte Gill, and Andrew J. Borkowski. Check out the cStories "Get into Our Shorts" promotional website for more information.
Congratulations to Nick Thran
Nick was a poetry co-editor for The Fiddlehead this past year. His most recent publication in The Fiddlehead was in no. 244, the summer 2010 poetry issue.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Taking Leave: Mindful Self-Reproach & the Repudiation of Cultural Gender Expectations in Danielle Deveraux’s “Playthings”
The accolades for “Cardiogram”, the eponymous poem of Danielle Devereaux’s 2011 Baseline Press debut short collection have been many. From "Cardiogram"'s initial publication in The Fiddlehead 244 and subsequent inclusion in The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011, to the attention it has received from reviewers at Salty Ink, Literatured.com, and elsewhere, it’s abundantly clear that this little poem has legs. It’s no accident that the lion’s share of critical praise of the collection has landed at this poem's feet, as it’s poignant, darkly comic, handsomely crafted, and, with apologies to “Mainland Man,” the consensus tour de force of the collection.
That said, much like the forlorn, love-sick heart Devereaux expertly conflates with a hopelessly selfish and perpetually needy pre-schooler within its lines, “Cardiogram” demands so much of our attention that we might well be forgiven for overlooking and failing to celebrate the many other truly memorable poems included in the chapbook. It’s true, of course, that a handful of these have found homes in some of the more eminent Canadian literary journals, and in that respect, managed to find an audience on their own merit, but the one that most interests me as a reviewer, and that, to my knowledge, has generated the least amount of critical interest, is “Playthings,” the longest and quite possibly the most ambitious and demanding poem in the collection.
What we’re struck by first in this difficult, beguiling, and wilfully slippery poem is the cautionary and authoritative tone of the narrative voice:
Spend too much time playing, dreaming your
little-girl dreams with hair clips, fake
lipstick, mirror-mirror, the [b]right pink glitter
wand and bam! Your legs will become so thin,
so long, they’ll barely support the weight
of your new breasts ...
That this disapproving and even patronizing admonition should be followed immediately by “but never mind. Think of the shoes:/open-toed peach stilettos, sweet/little white pumps with pink at the heel and toe” establishes an overriding dichotomous (and perhaps even trichotomous) imperative within the poem that continues to play out (pun intended) for the duration.
Now, it may well be that the latter excerpt is meant to be considered as an extension of the opening reprimand, as the narrator’s offhand remark some four lines later “[s]o what if your mother’s a German/porn doll, you’re better than her,” can certainly be read as an ironic means of furthering the initial condemnation. But what we need to consider is to whom the poem is being addressed. While it can be read as outwardly directed (i.e., a warning to impressionable elementary school-girls), or as an address to the doll itself and all that entails, it should primarily be considered an interior monologue wherein a reckoning takes place between mindful self-reproach and the narrator’s more primal impulses towards the mesmerizing manufactured iconography of perceived female beauty and glamour within our culture.
The ironic tone throughout creates the distance and separation necessary to facilitate believable disdain, but Devereaux appears to intentionally complicate the poem’s chastising directive by indulging in an almost fetishistic labelling celebration of all the accoutrements of the Barbie brand by using precisely the kind of descriptive language developed by predatory marketing executives:
The Peaches and Cream ball gown, the Day-to-Night
Hot-pink business suit and your fave, the prom queen
Pretty in pink, hand over the tiara, dream dress.
If nothing else, this predilection indicates an immersive knowledge of the product line, and one, we gather, that is no longer wanted or welcome. Ultimately, the poem provides a forum in which the reader bears witness to an extrication or exorcism of sorts where the literally impossible glamour and beauty fallacy, like a malignant growth, is excised once and for all from the narrator’s self concept.
Behind all the saccharine descriptive language and tongue-in-cheek surface-level endorsements a righteously angry voice cleverly manages to express the hurt and disappointment of having been cheated, lied to, and manipulated. “You’re gutted,” the speaker remarks in the middle of the poem, and while this statement literally addresses the doll, it’s almost certainly meant to be read as self-reflexive. The stanza continues:
Cinderella and Prince Charming,
Snow White and that other Prince Charming,
Beauty and the Beast, Ken and you – the blonde
hair, the big boobs, the hot pink box – ruined.
And with this the dénouement begins. Having already catalogued the ludicrous presumptions of impossibly glamorous career outfits, Devereaux’s speaker takes aim at the ideal of unattainable female beauty the doll represents, and cleverly utilises the euphemistic “hot pink box” to devastating effect.
As “Playthings” builds towards its startling final image, it’s no accident of chance that “the sweet little white pumps with pink/at the heel and toe” should make a second appearance, only this time, the narrator remarks “about those shoes, they never did fit.” Aside from cleverly extending the argument of the poem and resonating perfectly with its already established imperative, this almost deadpan statement, it seems to me, both enters and furthers a conversation established almost exactly a half century ago by a poet of considerable renown who also recognized the figurative possibilities of constrictive footwear as a means to express the emotional and psychological damage done as a result of paternalistic subjugation.
From the "hoarding of hurt" we encounter in “Conservation Policies” and the “Lady Lazarus”- like the devouring of a “lover’s wedding band” in “Quelle Affair”, to the “tongue [that] may want/to slide along the smooth hard/edge of a belt buckle” in “How to be a Spinster, circa 2010” and its echoes of “[e]very woman adores a Fascist/the boot in the face” from “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath’s influence is palpable throughout Cardiogram. But to suggest that Devereaux’s approach is derivative would be to mistake the matter entirely, as she never steals, and borrows only as a means to complicate, celebrate, and newly assert the spirit of female self-empowerment and wilful resistance that’s so inherent to the poetics of her predecessor.
“Playthings” closes with the “pink corvette,” Barbie’s most longed for accessory, “overturned in a ditch,” the doll itself, “naked from the waist down, still smiling,” and the reader can’t help but marvel in amazement at the genius with which Devereaux delivers her knockout blow. The Plath of “Elektra on Azalea Path” “[s]mall as a doll in [her] dress of innocence” who watches “the ersatz petals drip ... red” beside her father’s grave, the same father who bit her “pretty red heart in two” in “Daddy”, would surely applaud the frank and unrelenting manner in which the oppressive and harmful force in this poem is identified, exposed, and ultimately repudiated. So should we. Quietly irreverent, technically astute, and emotionally fearless, Danielle Devereaux is sure to become and remain a force in Canadian poetry for years to come. I, for one, am very much looking forward to the publication of her long-awaited book-length manuscript in progress. If Cardiogram is any indication, it’s sure to make a splash.
Phillip Crymble
Poetry Co-editor, The Fiddlehead
What we’re struck by first in this difficult, beguiling, and wilfully slippery poem is the cautionary and authoritative tone of the narrative voice:
Spend too much time playing, dreaming your
little-girl dreams with hair clips, fake
lipstick, mirror-mirror, the [b]right pink glitter
wand and bam! Your legs will become so thin,
so long, they’ll barely support the weight
of your new breasts ...
That this disapproving and even patronizing admonition should be followed immediately by “but never mind. Think of the shoes:/open-toed peach stilettos, sweet/little white pumps with pink at the heel and toe” establishes an overriding dichotomous (and perhaps even trichotomous) imperative within the poem that continues to play out (pun intended) for the duration.
Now, it may well be that the latter excerpt is meant to be considered as an extension of the opening reprimand, as the narrator’s offhand remark some four lines later “[s]o what if your mother’s a German/porn doll, you’re better than her,” can certainly be read as an ironic means of furthering the initial condemnation. But what we need to consider is to whom the poem is being addressed. While it can be read as outwardly directed (i.e., a warning to impressionable elementary school-girls), or as an address to the doll itself and all that entails, it should primarily be considered an interior monologue wherein a reckoning takes place between mindful self-reproach and the narrator’s more primal impulses towards the mesmerizing manufactured iconography of perceived female beauty and glamour within our culture.
The ironic tone throughout creates the distance and separation necessary to facilitate believable disdain, but Devereaux appears to intentionally complicate the poem’s chastising directive by indulging in an almost fetishistic labelling celebration of all the accoutrements of the Barbie brand by using precisely the kind of descriptive language developed by predatory marketing executives:
The Peaches and Cream ball gown, the Day-to-Night
Hot-pink business suit and your fave, the prom queen
Pretty in pink, hand over the tiara, dream dress.
If nothing else, this predilection indicates an immersive knowledge of the product line, and one, we gather, that is no longer wanted or welcome. Ultimately, the poem provides a forum in which the reader bears witness to an extrication or exorcism of sorts where the literally impossible glamour and beauty fallacy, like a malignant growth, is excised once and for all from the narrator’s self concept.
Behind all the saccharine descriptive language and tongue-in-cheek surface-level endorsements a righteously angry voice cleverly manages to express the hurt and disappointment of having been cheated, lied to, and manipulated. “You’re gutted,” the speaker remarks in the middle of the poem, and while this statement literally addresses the doll, it’s almost certainly meant to be read as self-reflexive. The stanza continues:
Cinderella and Prince Charming,
Snow White and that other Prince Charming,
Beauty and the Beast, Ken and you – the blonde
hair, the big boobs, the hot pink box – ruined.
And with this the dénouement begins. Having already catalogued the ludicrous presumptions of impossibly glamorous career outfits, Devereaux’s speaker takes aim at the ideal of unattainable female beauty the doll represents, and cleverly utilises the euphemistic “hot pink box” to devastating effect.
As “Playthings” builds towards its startling final image, it’s no accident of chance that “the sweet little white pumps with pink/at the heel and toe” should make a second appearance, only this time, the narrator remarks “about those shoes, they never did fit.” Aside from cleverly extending the argument of the poem and resonating perfectly with its already established imperative, this almost deadpan statement, it seems to me, both enters and furthers a conversation established almost exactly a half century ago by a poet of considerable renown who also recognized the figurative possibilities of constrictive footwear as a means to express the emotional and psychological damage done as a result of paternalistic subjugation.
From the "hoarding of hurt" we encounter in “Conservation Policies” and the “Lady Lazarus”- like the devouring of a “lover’s wedding band” in “Quelle Affair”, to the “tongue [that] may want/to slide along the smooth hard/edge of a belt buckle” in “How to be a Spinster, circa 2010” and its echoes of “[e]very woman adores a Fascist/the boot in the face” from “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath’s influence is palpable throughout Cardiogram. But to suggest that Devereaux’s approach is derivative would be to mistake the matter entirely, as she never steals, and borrows only as a means to complicate, celebrate, and newly assert the spirit of female self-empowerment and wilful resistance that’s so inherent to the poetics of her predecessor.
 |
| Danielle Devereaux |
Phillip Crymble
Poetry Co-editor, The Fiddlehead
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