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Three poets walk into a bar

and read to their unsuspecting admirers. Because troubadours gotta trouve. I’m excited for this tour with Jim Johnstone & Klara du Plessis: Montreal QC ~ 7pm on 17 Oct. @ Drawn & Quarterly Halifax NS ~ 7pm on 19 Oct. @ Wilson Common Room, U. of King’s College LaHave NS ~ 4pm on 20 Oct. @ LaHave River Books Kentville NS ~ 7pm on 21 Oct. as part of the Gaspereau Press Wayzgoose Moncton NB ~…

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On the history of reading

Soon I begin teaching a course in the Book and Media Studies Program at Saint Michael’s College in Toronto called The History of Reading: Readers, Readerships, Reception. I am pumped. Here’s the course description – for your reading pleasure. Reading has never been only one thing. Consider some of the ways you read on any given day. You likely scan your social media feeds a number of times. You…

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SIRI Falls Among the Things of the World

Though I don't believe AI will ever be truly I ...

This one is a prospective translation of a Sumerian myth that recounts the journey of the goddess Inanna to the underworld and back. It gives the role of hero to Apple’s voice-activated AI assistant, imagining she has crossed a singularity, become self-aware, & undertaken – her first act of sentience! – to tell how she came to be. Improbable? Consider that SIRI is just IRIS turned back on…

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Undone

A visual poetry project I've gotten back to work on.

My father died in the summer of 2021 after a long decline that saw his mind fall away piece by piece. It was awful to be part of & also tender. His guarded philosopher heart lost some of its armour in those last months, and he was able, as his being came to a close, to say & show more brightly how he loved us, who loved him. I learned walking from my father. One of our weekends with him, I was…

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The articles of Box 15

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Curator as author as curator

Curator as author as curator

While on leave from my program at the University of Toronto, I’m taking a course at the Node Center called the International Curator Program. Enjoying it very much. The first assignment in our first module (Key Moments in the History of Curating): Choose an exhibition from your country (either birth or residence) that you consider expresses the notion of curator-as-author in the spirit of…

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A Mostly Empty Interpretive Wonderland: Reading Robert Grenier's Sentences

A Mostly Empty Interpretive Wonderland: Reading Robert Grenier’s Sentences

Adapted from a talk I gave in January 2021 at the graduate student colloquium of the Book History and Print Culture Colloquium (University of Toronto). The colloquium, held online, was called “The Book Out of Order: Structure, Inversion, Dissent.” Sources Web version of Robert Grenier’s Sentences (Whale Cloth Press). Images of the physical book (Granary Books). Lyn Hejinian, “The Rejection of…

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A thing is the book of itself

A thing is the book of itself

A book offered to the eye alone is reduced to what it has in common with a painting. To meet a book on its own terms, you have to touch it, hold it, turn its pages. And yet the more a book is handled the faster it breaks down. That’s fine for a mass market paperback on your shelves, not so good for for old, fragile, or singular books your museum is tasked with preserving. It’s a general dilemma…

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The gaze is made out of sight

The gaze is made out of sight

A piece I wrote for a class this fall on museums & cultural heritage. We were asked to respond to a performance piece by Deborah de Robertis called Mirror of Origin – her rejoinder to Gustav Corbet’s L’Origine du monde. The Gaze Is Made Out Of Sight Ishtar Vase ca. 2000–1600 BCE. Louvre. I have in mind an exhibition on the history of looking. One object in it would be a terracotta vase with…

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Speaking with things

Last fall, in my Curatorial Practice course, I worked with five other students to propose an exhibition of contemporary installation art by women. We chose works that investigated the domestic sphere in diverse and exciting ways. Inspired by Foucault’s notion of a “heterotopia,” a space where norms are suspended to make new perceptions possible, we called our exhibition Otherspaces. It was a…

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A sampler like in the old days

A sampler like in the old days

This morning, in the mail, from Gaspereau Press, A Plague Year Reader – a sampler of the books they published in 2020. My book of poetry Dumuzi is one, and this collection confirms what I’d long suspected, I’m in fine company. I love when an old form like the sampler is made new again. As I said to a fellow student today across the electron exchanges that bind & part us, I’m at least as…

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Gratitude to the ballot counters In spite of threats & intimidation, & at risk of your health, you just did your jobs. We've removed a moral monster from office & couldn't have without you.

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In the crisis of the seen

In the crisis of the seen

The admissions essay I wrote for the Master of Museum Studies program at the University of Toronto – where I begin my studies, remotely, next week! We were asked to discuss an issue the contemporary museum faces.

John Berger writes of the plasticity of the image:

Now appearances are volatile. Technological innovation has made it easy to separate the apparent from the existent. And this…

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Colonialism, a museum construct

Colonialism, a museum construct

In a couple of weeks I’ll begin a Master’s in Museum Studies at the University of Toronto. Need an outlet for my nervous excitement! So I’m posting a few essays I wrote during the application process.

This is the admissions essay I wrote for the University of Washington’s Museology program. (Everyone I met there was lovely &I wish I could take two programs at once.) We were asked to respond to…

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On resisting compromises

To a student. "We're in four simultaneous crises right now: pandemic, economic downturn, systemic racism, and fascist upsurge. You're out on the street fighting the third. I'm insisting on these standards as resistance to the fourth."

In response to a white student, active in local protests & passionate about that work, exhausted by it, & frightened by white supremacists in the street & SWAT teams on the roofs nearby, asking that, in consideration of the enormous strain students are under, and so that they can focus on what’s important right now, I cancel the final exam for the whole class.

Dear ______,

I appreciate your…

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On a request to cancel final exams in a time of pandemic, racist violence, & erosion of democratic norms

On a request to cancel final exams in a time of pandemic, racist violence, and erosion of democratic norms.

There’s a petition going round, asking instructors at my school to cancel finals for our courses, for Black and POC students in particular, or just for everyone, this quarter.

Here’s what I wrote back to the class as a whole.

My friends,

I’ve received a couple of e-mails asking that, in consideration of the pressures students across the country are under – in particular Black and other POC…

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"20 Lessons from the 20th Century on How to Survive in Trump’s America"

The pandemic is giving Trump cover for a renewed attack on democratic norms, practices, institutions, values. Here, because we need it, is Timothy Snyder's "20 Lessons from the 20th Century on How to Survive in Trump’s America."

We are watching a full blown assault on American democracy.

The coronavirus pandemic, which might have seemed to doom Trump to electoral defeat, is providing cover for a renewed attack on democratic norms, practices, institutions, values. Trump has the aid of lackeys in his Cabinet, enablers in Congress, allies he placed in the courts, racist &brutal police forces, and armed paramilitary groups…