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Thanks Stephen
Good to be back & catch up with the snaps again, always worth reading,
as usual.
Well, there was this poetry festival in Warsaw that the Canadian
Embassy wangled me an invitation to (partly on the basis of a little
book on Canadian poetry recently published in Poland), & then arranged
for me to visit 4 Canadian Study Centres around Poland. The festival
was, well, mismanaged is a pretty good term, so not much happened
there, except that the one reading by 'english speaking poets' let me
meet Leonard Kress, a poet I had not previously heard of, but a really
neat guy (whose poetry & poetics certainly seemed fully aware of what's
going on in the post New American Poetry tradition; we had some good
talks). He teaches at a college in Ohio, so gets to try to teach Middle
America about Comparative Religion among other things. We got along
well, & had a good time together. Told me that while he can (sometimes)
get his students to comprehend the concept that other religions find
their origins in Story/ stories (myths), when it comes to the Bible
they *know it's all fact, not parables there nosirree. As he also finds
himself, like you, feeling politically very out of place these days, we
had much to talk about.
(One of the interesting things for me was that BBC World could go for a
couple of days without even mentioning the USA; especially as the
earthquake in Pakistan was the Big News Story while I was there; & once
after a few days without any such news, the only mention of the Pres
was a picture of hims introducing the Secretary of Agriculture, who had
offered to cut subsidies in the US if the EU & Japan would too [oh, the
sports did mention the baseball occasionally, but not as often as
cricket]).
At those universities I gave lectures on Canadian SF & F (& literature
in general) & also readings of my own work. And got to remeet or meet
some really neat people. Good fun.
With reference to Joanna's discussion of visiting cathedrals, this time
I wasn't taken to too many, but at the end, in Lublin, was taken to an
old chapel which had looked like a very plain thing in the 19th century
until a worker refurbishing the whitewash found some colour underneath:
turned out that an earlier King from eastern Poland had brought in 3
Eastern Church painters to paint the whole thing. So one professor was
really keen to show me how you could actually see subtle differences
between the 3, while her husband wanted me to see the grafitti at the
back, carved into the walls by what he figured were bored teenagers in
1615 etc (one was a name with that date!).
So I have been busy & am still recovering from the jet lag induced by
the flight back, which with stopovers & my getting up early in Warsaw,
was a full 28 hours.
It's good to be back, though, & rejoined.
Doug
On 19-Oct-05, at 9:23 PM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
> Welcome back, Doug -
> Trip details, more, please - I mean why were you there and why did you
> come
> back and what with, etc. Will Alberta ever be the same?
>
> Stephen V
> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
All day long the heart’s
dark bud unfurls
coils for its quick season
-- How could I forget
you, Heart?
Diana Hartog
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