small mooga

Stuart Ross is one of the best lunch dates in town. The Toronto small press publisher, poet, readings host, editor, short story writer, blogger and raconteur loves eggplant and the tiny, independent publishing scene, in that order.

Way over on his very good blog -- bloggamooga -- he's wondering about the Toronto Small Press Book Fair, where it's going and how it might go there, or somewhere better. Stu helped found the TSPBF twenty years ago, and by doing so he donated an incredibly important venue for audience-finding and literature-testing to a generation or two of Toronto writers and publishers. Half the folks I like in Toronto I met at the Fair, and I'll bet there's a lot of Toronto writers who can say the same. So, when Stu speaks about the Fair, we should listen.

In the last few years, kids, work and life in general have taken me far from the Fair, which is a shame for me. That the numbers of the browsing public have dropped by about 90% is a shame for everyone.

Stu's put out a general call to revive the Fair. Visit him over at bloggamooga. Ask him to lunch, and tell him you want to help.

Where have all the poets gone?

My short essay on war poetry is in today's Ottawa Citizen.

Go to this link to read it, if you wish.

Here's an excerpt:

To this day, in fact, when we speak of war poetry, we tend to be speaking about poets from the First World War. They represent a subset of English language literature, and for the most part their work fairly drips with the same wistful sentimentality as In Flanders Fields. Importantly, as well, this sentimentality tends to carry with it the authority of experience. These are poets who followed the old instructional cliché of writing what they knew. When McCrae speaks in the voice of the dead, it is because he is intimate with what war visits on humanity.

Ottawa Citizen

I used to be a citizen of Ottawa... now I just write for them.

Check out page A3 of tomorrow's Ottawa Citizen paper, and you should see a short essay I wrote for them on war poetry -- a Remembrance Day piece, lest we forget.

I have high hopes for the Citizen now that they've brilliantly hired Andrew Potter as news section editor.

versifera, or purple mentality

It's been a while between posts. My apologies. Without the Toro column kicking at me, I've been concentrating on other writing projects, like a book of poems I will soon owe to the good people at the Ontario Arts Council.

There may be wine poems involved in this new collection-- entitled 109 Details and available, if all goes well, next year sometime. In the meantime, go and buy Al Purdy's 1968 collection Wild Grape Wine to witness grape as muse. You'll have to be resourceful to get this book, as it appears to be out of print and I won't sell you my copy. No doubt, most if not all of the collection appears in the Collected Poems, which is still in print.

(photo of Al Purdy, courtesy Harbour Publishing)

For a small taste, a sip as it were, here's a bit from Purdy's The Winemaker’s Beat-Étude:

I am picking wild grapes last year
in a field...

I am satisfied with my own shortcomings letting
myself happen then
I’m surrounded by Cows...


What happens to old Al after the cows surround him while he's picking wild grapes? Go get the book (the poem also appears in Rooms For Rent in the Outer Planets, a later selected edition from Harbour Publishing.

Al Purdy summered for decades on Prince Edward County, in a lovely little town called Ameliasburgh (where he lies buried beneath a book-shaped gravestone). You could say this late great Canadian poet was one of the first serious winemakers in this new wine region.

bye bye TORO

(image courtesy of TORO)

I hardly knew ye.

As you may have heard, TORO magazine announced it is ceasing publication. Ad sales were, apparently, not quite equaling costs, and with free distribution, TORO could count on neither a large subscriber base nor government funding for support.

So, my wine column with TORO will never see the light of day. How sad.

On the other hand, I have a PDF of my first column and will load it here on February 20th, the day it was slated to be distributed. I have to say, it looks beautiful. TORO sure knew how to put a magazine page together. I will also load the text of my second column. And I will continue writing about the fascinating world of wine on this blog, while shopping the column to other publications.

Have a drink for TORO. Until yesterday, every interaction I had with this magazine was very positive and incredibly professional. The editorial staff was top-notch. Canada needs more great magazines, not fewer.

my ignorant youth

This year it will be twenty years since I took my turn in the backpacking brigades, hauling a bloody heavy pack across Europe, sleeping on the occasional train station bench, living for days on a single block of cheese, running out of money and resorting to panhandling in the Gare du Nord in Paris, being removed from a train by armed guards at midnight in Yugoslavia, etc. and anon. There must be millions of similar stories from the legions of North American and Australian youth who invaded Europe back then.

I'm thinking back to that time because I've been trying to remember my introduction to wine. Certainly, I'd had wine before going to Europe as a young man, and I'd even been in Europe before that particular trip, yet if I want to pinpoint an exact time and place when I first pulled a glass back from my mouth, looked at it a second time and thought "Wait a second, what is this stuff?" it is that youthful meander around the continent. Specifically, a long-lost couple of weeks I spent in Provence, visiting my friend Tim who was attending school in Aix.

Tim lived on an upper floor of a fantastic old apartment block. The windows of his flat overlooked a clay tile roof and some busy thoroughfare near a park named for Emile Zola. Each morning, I would roll off my mattress on the floor and wander down to the local bakery for cafe au lait and pain au chocolat, and every late afternoon one of us would stop by the same bakery for a baguette. The baguette was a crucial third of our regular dinner. The other two parts were cheap pasta with cheap tomato sauce, and some incredible local wine. The pasta and bread were pretty much just stomach filler. The wine was the meal. Knowing nothing about wine then, I paid no attention to labels or names. I have no idea which wines I enjoyed twenty years ago, only that they were transformative.

Once, Tim and I decided to splurge, took a table at a local restaurant, ate terrifyingly rare steak and frites and polished off a bottle twice as expensive as anything we'd had to that point. And it was an absurdly delicious experience. Based on what I've tasted since, I'm going to guess our wine was something spectacular from the nearby Rhône wine region, which suggests Syrah, which means my taste in wine has changed a bit, but not my appreciation for quality at a bargain price. Even at twice our normal budget price, that bottle probably cost us under ten dollars.

Later that evening, seated in an outdoor cafe on the wide Cours Mirabeau, listening to nearby fountains, sipping pernod with icewater, and watching some of the most beautiful pedestrians in the world, I vowed to myself that this is how I would always live. A few months later, after working as a dishwasher in London and living on little else but Guinness and cider, I returned to Canada and broke the vow. When I finish writing this, I will drive home to my condo through ice filled streets, and my next outdoor patio lounging is months away. Who lives like that very satisfied young man from twenty years ago -- always? The French do. Lucky bastards.

I return to southern France in my mind as often as I can, though I have never been back in body. Twenty years ago, I walked determinedly past vast vineyards on my way to the beaches of the Côte d'Azur. There were topless girls on those beaches, and no leafy vines were going to keep me away from them. I will still visit the beaches on my next trip, but I'll be stopping at the vineyards first. All of them.

memories of the tar pot

In my late teens, early twenties, I worked summers as an all-purpose roadman in York Region, Ontario. I controlled traffic for road repair crews, installed new road signs, mowed ditch grass, collected trash (and a small fortune in beer bottles), buried dead animals (many, many dead animals), and just generally got a deep arm and neck tan. One of the hardest jobs as roadman was working the tar pot -- crack sealing duty. Stand in 30C afternoon heat beside a boiling cauldron of black road tar sometime and see how long you last. Think what you will about road construction crews and their five-person hole-digging; the tar pot crew earns its pay.

Yet, despite the backbreaking hours carrying the tar pots, and the probable lung damage (working the tar is like smoking two packs a day), I can't pass a roof repair crew or a roadside tar pot without stopping to take a deep and satisfying inhale. There is nothing like the smell of hot tar. Reminds me of my lost youth.

All of that is to say that, clearly, taste and aroma appreciation is a personal thing. James Joyce writes about "feety" cheese. Mmmmmm, feet.

I was thinking of all that after writing my Riesling appreciation yesterday. Kim says 'mop 'n glo', I say 'evergreen.' Then this morning, looking through an old Frugal Oenophile newsletter, I find Richard Best's thoughts on Riesling. A "queen with many moods" he calls this magnificent grape, and then describes its wine like so:

A versatile and good value wine, Riesling can age for up to 30 years, although it is good from 2 years on. Light to medium bodied, it is rarely oaked. The flavour is crisp and clean with fruity, flowery aromas showing apple, honey, lime, peaches, and sometimes slate. Perhaps Riesling's most cherished quality is its propensity to smell like petrol, coal oil or paraffin, especially in well-aged examples.

Coal oil? How does one's nose turn an abrasive smell like coal oil into something as delightful and refreshing as pine?

Why do I stop and sniff boiling tar?