It’s Always Good to Try New Things

Pamela Mordecai might be about to shock you.Despite the fact that the literary season is slowly winding down for the holidays, some reading series are experimenting with new locations and some are just being born. On November 4^th I attended the Rower’s Pub Reading Series, which moved its monthly booking to Measure in the heart of the Annex. The new location is ideal, with a large stage, ample seating room, and a new tapas menu that ought to attract some hungry readers. On the roster for the evening were Pamela Mordecai, Broken Pencil founder Hal Niedzviecki, Sean Johnston, and Barbara Fradkin.Whether she knows it or not, Pamela Mordecai can certainly work the element of surprise. She’s a very sweet-looking woman who has garnered international praise for her children’s literature. While the title of her new book Subversive Sonnets, published by TSAR, is a clear indication of her rebellious spirit, I was not expecting the first line she read to be: “Shit in my mouth.” As scatological as that opening may seem, her poem “Thomas Thistlewood and Tom” is actually a very provocative and powerful piece about the love between two victims of a notorious slave-owning torturer. The interplay between romance and cruelty, devotion and violence, is imaginative and bold. Mordecai joked that because she’s an “old lady” the sonnet form functions like a crutch that enables her to be creative and adventurous without diving into verse libre. “Reading at Four A.M” also prods at normative definitions of “romance” and “inspiration.” Mordecai praises a pregnant woman who tells her boss to “keep the fucking job” and marches out the restaurant door to find her own route, one that’s devoid of ass-grabbing and epithets. Sean Johnston also aims to re-invigorate literary conventions, and his new novel Listen All You Bullets, published by Gaspereau Press, is a new take on Jack Schaefer’s cowboy classic Shane. It examines violence and the legacy of the cowboy stories that have shaped many masculine ideals. After a renegade cowboy defends some homesteaders and becomes a hero to their young son, the narrator arrives and hopes to be held in such similar high esteem. As you may have guessed, however, being an idol is not so simple. Throughout the novel there are narratological interventions, which Johnston compared to the interruptions in Hemingway’s In Our Time. Switching between the narrator and the young boy’s perspectives, Johnston infuses his novel with stories, anecdotes, and even reflections on writing. Johnston has a talent for creating beautiful images, despite the novel’s concern with violence. His line “Spring reveals a new blank page and a hungry mouth open for air” infused his reading with a delicate sense of self-reflexivity and Listen All you Bullets ought to be quite a dynamic read.On November 6^th I headed to OISE to attend the inaugural meeting of the Wonderful Women Writers Series. Dr. Nora Gold, Writer in Residence at the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education, hosted the evening and began by explaining the importance of CWSE as a unique feminist space. She shared a memory about her grandmother who always found it very important to feed and support our artists. Then, without dampening the mood, she reflected on how female writers have been denigrated throughout history and used Alice Munro and David Gilmour as salient examples of the offended and the offensive, respectively (of course).The first reader of the evening was Maria Meindl and I instantly liked her as soon as she thanked the Mississaugas of the Credit for allowing us to congregate on their land. While she doesn’t usually share her fiction, she read from her trilogy-in-progress entitled The Work, which spans the twentieth-century and examines the various mind-body disciplines that are passed on through generations. Meindl is a Feldenkrais practitioner herself and her reading was truly unique for the ways in which it examined the intersections between the arts and physical well-being.Farzana Doctor, who Jess Taylor interviewed a little while ago for the Town Crier about the Brockton Writers Series, took a note from Meindl and read a poem, something she rarely dares to do. “How to Get Wi-Fi at Jamia Milia in Seventeen Easy Steps” was a very funny piece that was light-hearted but also poignant in its portrayal of senseless bureaucracy. Afterwards she read from Six Metres of Pavement, published by Dundurn. The novel tells the story of Ismail Boxwala who, after having made the worst mistake of his life, manages to find clarity through three different relationships with three women. Doctor appreciates and celebrates diversity and she was a perfect choice for the opening night of the Wonderful Women Writers Series. Her novel’s female leads include two queer women and an immigrant widow. During the Q&A Doctor mentioned that she has been very inspired by Third-Wave Feminism and any young writers interested in questioning gender binaries while maintaining an entertaining, vibrant authorial voice should definitely check out Doctor’s work.The Wonderful Women Writers Series has only just begun but it presents a very important opportunity for feminists to meet together in a safe space and discuss literature. While Toronto has been shaken by a frightfully large number of male “role-models” that have failed to accommodate the plethora of diverse voices in the city, the CWSE should be commended for expanding the discourse around contemporary literature. I encourage you all to attend the next Wonderful Women Writers Series and to show your support for female and feminist authors. What better time than now to try new things? Eleanor Catton and Lynn Coady only slayed the Man Booker and Giller Prizes, after all.