Take your mind off the horrifying prospect of four years under Harper’s leadership with a Conservative majority with books. Lots of books. Perhaps even a few short story collections?

2011 has been declared the Year of the Short Story, and May as Short Story Month.

You know what this means, right? Yup. Another links round up:

• It’s probably best to begin with the YOSS website itself, read its manifesto, and see how you can participate, either as a reader, writer, or general evangelist.
• YOSS was the brainchild of Sarah Selecky, Matthew J. Trafford and Jessica Westhead, and you can read more about their thoughts behind it in “Who’s the YOSS” over on Joyland.
• While you’re there, check out the rest of Joyland. It’s an online journal for short fiction with a focus on several cities in Canada and the US.
• Nathaniel G Moore has written a series of posts on Open Book Toronto about the state of short fiction. Read parts I, II, IIIIV and V here.
• John Barber, writing for The Globe and Mail, believes that the revival of the short story may be central to the future of publishing.
• In the Guardian, Chris Power asks “Is the short story really the novel’s poor relation?” Raymond Carver’s response sums it up well.
• However, Matt Lapata would seem to disagree in this essay for Glimmertrain, and comes at the short story from a different angle – with a view to its real competition.
• Last year the National Post conducted a series of interviews with short story writers in honour of short story month, and they’re archived here.

Chad Pelley, of Book Madam, pledged to read eight short story collections this year, and I’m sure I can top that — I’ve already got half a dozen collections sitting in my to-read pile. Beyond that, I know I want to read more Mavis Gallant, but I’m always open to suggestions.

Who else should I be reading?

April is National Poetry Month in Canada and the United States.⁽¹⁾ Founded by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, they’ve come up with a list of ways to celebrate poetry. For instance, April 14th is Poem in Your Pocket Day, and another suggestion is to read interviews and literary criticism about poets and poetry. To that end, I offer the following:

• Open Book Toronto is running a series, Poets in Profile, with interviews from various poets.
• The CBC‘s Canada Reads has expanded, launching a new version: Canada Reads Poetry. Very exciting.
• In “The New Math of Poetry“, David Alpaugh discusses the meaning of overabundance of poetry available today, and what we might be missing.
• Every year Tightrope Books puts out an anthology of the best Canadian poetry in English. A blog is maintained with posts written by various poets included in the anthology, and it’s excellent.
• On a related note, Michael Lista argues that literary magazines should fold. It generated responses from a number of people, most notably Laurie Fuhr, Michael Lithgow, and Vox Populism.

If you’re in Toronto, also check out Toronto Poetry Vendors, vending machines which issue brief poetry collections for a toonie — such a neat idea.

I have a few poems forthcoming in various journals, and I’ll let you know when and where they’re published once they become available.

Footnotes:

1. The UK celebrates their poets in October. [↩]

Ok, I’ve been linking to a lot of book-related stuff on Twitter, and rather than send a dozen tweets of linkage, why not consolidate the best into a single blog post? Why not, indeed.

Here we go:

• ‘I just adore Dostoevsky…’ Books to impress the babes, Asylum.co.uk – Seriously, people still say “babes”? And they don’t get punched? (Oddly, the list features Crowley, but no Dostoevsky. Go fig.)
• Duke Special and the books that rock, TimesOnline.co.uk – I have no idea who Duke Special is, but the idea of bibliorockers intrigues me.
• Sex Survey of Librarians Reveals 1 in 5 Have Had Sex in the Stacks, Cleavland Leader – I have a friend who’s a genealogical librarian. She recently mentioned that one of her septuagenarian co-workers regularly goes for naps in the afternoon. Naps. Riiight.

While we’re at it, check out this awesome sounding event from Open Book Toronto: Continue reading »