the ends of days

This is not about anything Biblical: it's about sunsets. I posted a few from this summer on facebook. These look so much more amazing on a monitor than on paper. This one is from July; it is the view from our cottage.

"Centaur"

Yikes! I posted my next poem after taking the summer off.

As September approached, I was beginning to wonder if I might face an insurmountable writer's block, but "Centaur" just flowed out easy as sighs.

I originally started blogging in wordcurrents as an antidote to blockage; it seems to have worked so far. I watched Stranger Than Fiction again last night on TV. It is one of my real favourites, partly because three of my favourite movie actors are in it: Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Unlike Emma Thompson's character, a writer who is horribly blocked, I seem able to function (for the present, knock would)

I was moved to write "Centaur" after seeing people--mostly macho guys--roar past the cottage on seadoos, going nowhere as quickly, loudly, and annoyingly as pointlessly possible. Of course I feel the same way about snowmobiles, which are just as unathletic, dangerous and macho and pointless and annoying. Heaven help anyone hapless enough to be swimming away from the dock when one of those "personal watercraft" screams recklessly around the corner of the island at lethally high speed.

Creeeping out of summer

It will be a slow process: first, I have to figure how to turn on my computer; summer has been so wonderfully Luddite--no TV, no Internet, no WordPerfect--just birds, river water lapping, and the patter of grandchildren's feet as the cicadas sang in the island heat . . .

wordcurrents takes some time off

Starting July 1, riverwriter will be working on two significant writing projects for print media, and will not be posting in wordcurrents. This hiatus will probably end in September , although there may occasionally be a post in the interim, in wordcurrents or here, in platinum river. Jean-Marie Morin will be taking over the posting of Duplicate Bridge scores during that time.

So until next time, both blogs are still here for browsing!

Vanity Googling

I just discovered that I am listed in Arc Poetry Magazine's list of Canadian Poets, along with some fifty, including Margaret Atwood, Margaret Avison, bill bissett, Patrick Lane, Dennis Lee, and rob mclennan. Here is a link to the listing: Canadian Poets —awesome. Thank you, wordcurrents! this process is working!

The reason I call this entry "Vanity Googling" is that I notice many people Google their own names to find reviews I do of their work in theatre. So I tried Googling "Doug Hill"+poet, and found the above entry not far from the top of the five hundred and change entries that came up.

About "Katisha of Abyssinia"

I wrote the poem, "Katisha of Abyssinia" based on this situation.

This is Katisha, our new Abby, lying in state on two seat cushions piled atop a wicker table. From time to time, Circe, our elderly hybrid shows up to hiss at her, and establish the order of precedence. Generally, Katisha does not look as startled as this. She is our first cat to lie elbows out like that. Look at those eyes!

Katisha is a birthday present to me (I recently became quite alarmingly milestone-old), from Frances, my dear sister in law, who is a renowned breeder of Abyssinians in Montreal. Fran's site is Etochat. She and her partner, Nicole, have bred Grand Champion Abyssinians with the patient backing of Fran's husband, Richard.

rethinking wordcurrents

When I started wordcurrents, my main motives were two: to get my work out to readers and to motivate myself to write every day. I certainly have become a daily writer, and I do have readers that I never had before. My craft has improved in that I can achieve a result more consistently and more quickly than I could previously (witness "in perpetual schottische"*, which I wrote in about an hour and change for a competition, whereupon it won the competition of the week in WILD Poetry Forum, and later was named competitive poem of the month of May in that forum). These are all good reasons to continue the status quo.

What has happened that is not quite so good is that my long-term writing projects have suffered. This suggests to me that in order to focus my creative juice on the novel and the play and the denser poetry, I should discontinue posting a new poem every day on wordcurrents; however, I find the experience of daily composition to deadline (midnight) and posting rather invigorating. This leaves me with the quandry that I mention in Facebook, when I say I am "rethinking my blog". For various reasons, I really have to decide soon.

* For an MP3 of my reading of this poem, click "in perpetual schottische"