Writing the East Village: A Literary History Cabaret

"I felt like I was seated in the centre of a landscape watching an open train filled with characters travel through time and space around me." 

This is how Calgary author Cheryl Foggo described Writing the East Village, a literary history cabaret I organized last month along with Lisa Murphy-Lamb at Loft 112. A standing-room crowd of readers, writers and East Village residents gathered to explore one of Calgary's oldest and most storied neighbourhoods.

The evening started out with a view of the pristine landscape at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers in 1875, and ended with a song written last year in a collaboration between Kris Demeanor and residents of the Calgary Drop-In Centre. 

In case you missed the cabaret, I've posted a list of the works featured that night – and a couple of photographs of what was a magical evening of story and history.

And thanks to our fabulous guest authors and readers:  Kris Demeanor, Zoey Duncan, Cheryl Foggo, Gina Freeman, Steve Gin, Rosemary Griebel, Jill Hartman, Lisa Murphy-Lamb, Roberta Rees, William Taylor, Aritha van Herk and John Veldhoen. 

(Photo: Blair Carbert)

(Photo: Blair Carbert)

 

Writing the City: in the news!

Thanks to Jennifer Friesen at Metro News for  this fine piece about Writing the City: Calgary through the Eyes of Writers.  

Words. West.

On February 8, 2016, I had the privilege of moderating a Fireside Chat with authors Brian Brennan, Sharon Butala and Ruth Scalp Lock. Here are my introductory remarks. 

Words. West.

I like those two words, and I particularly like the sound of those two words together. Over the past couple of years, I have been thinking a lot about a variation of tonight’s theme: “Words West/Calgary.”

Calgary author, Aritha van Herk says: “A Calgarian is someone surprised to hear herself say the words ‘I’m a Calgarian.’” Some of you may have a different experience, but for me, those words ring true.

I’ve lived most of my life in this city, but I’ve only recently started to think of myself as a Calgarian. My relationship with the city is complicated, and part of that complication has to do with rarely if ever seeing the city imagined in the pages of a book.

A couple of years ago, I decided to do something about it. I started tracking down and reading Calgary stories. I set out to see how writers had captured the city in their novels and short stories, their poems, essays and memoirs. What could those stories tell me about my relationship with this city, and ultimately, what could they tell me about Calgary itself?

I quickly discovered that novelists and poets, essayists and memoir writers have been writing Calgary stories for a long time: all I had to do was go looking.

Last summer, my reading project turned into a weekly blog series called Writing the City: Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers. The blog has turned out to be a wonderful and surprising treasure hunt through Calgary’s 140-year history and across its geography.

Over the past months, the blog has featured: 

• the English poet Rupert Brooke’s 1913 visit to Calgary at the height of one of the city’s first booms
• the British novelist Graham Greene’s short story set in the Calgary suburbs circa 1963
• Lori Hahnel’s novel about coming of age in the city’s punk rock scene in the early 1980s
• Cecelia Frey’s “Ode to Fireworks during Stampede”

And many more.

Let me return to tonight’s theme: Words West.

What happens when we tune in to the stories that come out of the places we live?

Here are a few things I’ve noticed, as I read Calgary stories, and as I read the works of tonight’s panelists about the West.

When I see the West through the words of writers, I see the specific details of this place – a landscape that is richer than its stereotypes, a region more complex than its myths. I feel that wonderful hum of recognition, and at the same time, the challenge of looking beyond my own experience.

My curiosity clicks into gear.

When I accept a writer’s invitation to go back in time, I find out about things I may have forgotten, not paid attention to, or never known. I make connections between the life I am living now in the West and the history that precedes me.

Last, but not least: When I see the West through the words of writers and their stories, I experience a deepening in my own relationship to this place

So: Words. West. Two words – two ideas – that belong together.

A Fireside Chat in Calgary's Marda Loop

A novelist, a nonfiction writer, a First Nations elder and a moderator gather in front of a fireplace and a crowd of eighty readers and writers at the Marda Loop community hall.

The stories begin.

A young Irish civil servant immigrates to the Canadian West in the 1960s looking for “something better someplace else.”

A six-year-old Siksika girl attends residential school on a reserve east of Calgary. She can see her family's house a mile away but she can't go home. 

A woman on a ranch in southwest Saskatchewan puzzles over the meaning of a dream about a coyote.

Chatting fireside with Sharon Butala, Brian Brennan, Ruth Scalp Lock and her co-wrier, Jim Pritchard (Photo: Marda Loop Community Association)

The Irishman is now a nonfiction writer who chronicles the lives of the historical characters in his adopted West. He quotes Alberta author, Robert Kroetsch. “We haven’t got an identity until somebody tells our story. The fiction makes us real.”

The Siksika girl is now an esteemed elder in her community. Under the huge Alberta sky, she and the friend who is helping her write her memoir set out to find the spokes of an ancient medicine wheel in the tinder-dry prairie.

The woman on that prairie ranch is now a writer. In her novel, she creates a fictional pioneer town in southwest Saskatchewan. In the pile of buffalo bones at the edge of the village, the novelist finds ghosts, grieving and responsibility.

Words – specific, inspiring, challenging, complex –  West.

In the next post: my introductory remarks for this fireside chat.