The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary

Nova Scotia Connections: A Day in the Life of Great Village: The Post Office and its Postmaster

2012-02-01T08:07:00.010-04:00

Angus Johnson is the postmaster in the village. He has been sorting and stamping the King’s mail at the old stand for decades. He took over his duties way back in 1889, helping out now and then as a mail carrier. He’s done the delivery down the shore to Five Islands.

You see, the mail still arrives in Great Village from all directions by coach. Mail from Europe reaches Halifax by steamer and is put on the Maritime bound for Montreal. Mail from all points West travels to Nova Scotia by the Canadian Pacific train. These far away letters and packages reach Londonderry Station and are picked up by Albion Kent, who brings them the nearly four miles to the Village. Mr. Kent is one of the most obliging mail carriers in the county. His father, Daniel, did this route for years before him. The brightly painted two-horse wagon is called the “Ferry.” Mr. Kent will always take passengers for a small fee, 254 a head.

Even mail from Truro makes the trip by team. Though soon, people think, automobiles will replace the trusty horses. After all, Dr. T.R. Johnson has already traded his famous Lord Wallace for a Model T. Mr. Kent, too, bought an automobile a few years ago, but he has not yet turned over his run to it. He says his horses are still more trustworthy, especially in winter.

The post office is a busy place, with mail arriving several times a day; the big deliveries being with the 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Halifax bound-trains. Mr. Johnson says that he makes up and opens 22 mails a day. Little wonder, he says, the keys to the mailbags wear out; though he’s had the same keys now for ten years.

Lots of other business is conducted at the post office, money orders being the biggest item. There is also a telegraph service, a telephone and a highly efficient Express Office. All the modern conveniences. Mr. Johnson is also agent for the Nova Scotia Home Underwriters’ Agency. And nearly every week someone stops by to engage his services as an auctioneer. He’s one of the most popular in the area. Mr. Johnson is also a truly civic-minded fellow, active in the Presbyterian church and a long-standing member of the I.O.O.F. He’s always willing to help out with fund-raisers, and finds place in the post office for the notices, posters and fliers announcing the many suppers, concerts, lectures and musicales, which take place not only in the village but all along the shore.

For all the hurry and bustle, it is one of the best kept offices in the Dominion. Now, during war time, mail service is even more important with so many folks waiting for word from the boys training at Aldershot and Valcartier, or those already in England and France. The newspapers also arrive at the office bringing the latest reports on the distant campaigns.

Great Village has had a “way” or post office since the early 1870s. The current building was built in 1903 by Mr. W.E. Adams of Mount Pleasant. It also houses the Savings Bank, though there is talk that the Royal Bank is going to open up a branch here in the Village sometime soon.(1)

The post office is Mr. Johnson’s home away from home. Even his six daughters have regularly helped out, especially Kate; and she’s just as good as her father with all the tasks.

The post office is a gathering place in the village. In the evenings the lads who are not yet old enough to enlist collect here to talk about the day’s events and watch the activity at the Elmonte House across the road. The merchants and farmers stop by after their days’ labours to see what the coaches have brought. Everyone stops to chat with Mr. Johnson, who always has the latest news of the comings and goings. Villagers trust Mr. Johnson to take good care of the precious cargoes entrusted to him, which have journeyed from far and near, bringing news of births, deaths, marriages, and of the war. He is one of the most respected and beloved gentlemen in the community.(2) Though he is 64 years old, Mr. Johnson is hale and hearty, and intends to stay on as postmaster for some years yet, and Villagers are glad about it.(3)

Yesterday was an especially busy day at the post office, because it was the centre for information about the provincial election results. There were even more people around than usual because of the excitement of voting. Several of the lads had motored into Truro late in the afternoon and stayed around the Daily News offices until the polls closed, and came hurrying back around 10:00 p.m. with the news of the Grit victory ─ though the Tories held the day in Colchester.

The excitement of election day over, this morning is still a busy one for Mr. Johnson. The morning’s outgoing mail is heavy with letters and packages for the lads in training and overseas. Mr. Kent is in early to load up the Ferry and be off to Londonderry Station. However, Mr. Johnson is going about his work with more solemnity than is usual for his genial manner. When he opens up the office for business (after the sorting and loading of the Ferry is completed), he looks up at the sound of a wagon coming over the bridge, not unusual in itself. It’s Will Bulmer and his daughters Gertie and Grace. He thinks to himself, “Ah, it’s today she’s going.” As the wagon passes by Mr. Johnson nods quietly to Will. He knows how he would feel if one of his dear daughters was not well. Poor Will and Lizzie. Poor Gertie. He’s known her since she was a wee bairn.

Mr. Johnson wonders how Gertie’s dear little girl will feel, her mother going off like this today. He knows Will and Lizzie are devoted to the child, proud as punch about their bright granddaughter, and will do all they can to comfort her. She is so young that perhaps she doesn’t really understand all that is happening, but with six girls of his own, he well knows how smart little ones really are. Surely, Gertie will get the help she needs and be home soon. Mr. Johnson always smiles when he sees little Elizabeth marching proudly behind the cow when they pass by his house on Scrabble Hill – though that isn’t often because most days he’s at the post office early and leaves late. She is an independent little girl. Mr. Johnson sighs as he watches the wagon trundle off. Every family in the village has trials and troubles these days with the war and so many boys off fighting in the trenches in France, and some of them already never to return. But he knows the hard time Gertie has had since her own Will died five years ago.

When he returns from the Station, Will stops in for the mail and Mr. Johnson chats with him, tries to cheer him up talking about the lively election.

Notes

1. A branch of the Royal Bank opened in Great Village in 1919. The building which housed the bank still stands in the Village, near the Presbyterian church.

2. So beloved was Angus Johnson that in 1930 one of his old friends, Mrs. Peter Hall, composed a poetic tribute to him á la Robert Burns, and in 1933 he was honoured by a large gathering in the Presbyterian church:

God'’ blessing on ye Pastie man,
Ah Angus ye’er a prince o'man
To sort like you─
A bonnier lad I dinna ken.
God bless ye mon.
...
Ah, Angus, Ye’er a lad o’pairts
Master o’ a’ the winsome airts.
Ye’er deeds by a’ ye’er ain desairts
Will live for aye.
The benediction o’ oor hairts
Ye hae the day.

3. Obituary (Truro Daily News) ─ Angus Johnson died July 12, 1935, in Great Village. Born in River John in 1852, he lived for the last 61 years in Great Village. Mr. Johnson was a public-spirited man, keenly interested in the welfare of the community, and for 34 years he was postmaster there. He is survived by his wife, Mary MacLeod, daughter of the late Robert MacLeod, and by four daughters, Miss Florence of Toronto; Mrs. Neil MacLeod of Cochrane, Ont.; Mrs. James E. Dykens of Upper Economy, and Mrs. Donald Patriquin of Great Village; also by four sisters and one brother. He was predeceased by two daughters. The service at the house was conducted by Thomas Lamot, student minister of the Presbyterian Church, assisted by Rev. Mr. Kirker of the United Church. At the grave the service was in charge of the I.O.O.F. lodge, of which Mr. Johnson was a member for over half a century.

View of Great Village. Angus Johnson's post office is tucked among the buildings on the left; Hustler Hill and the road to Londonderry Station on the right.

Nova Scotia Connections: A Day in the Life of Great Village, 21 June 1916: Introduction

2012-01-28T08:44:00.008-04:00

Great Village seen from the top of St. James United Church

Elizabeth Bishop’s memoir “In the Village” is both deeply personal and transcendently universal, an expression of private, intimate experience and an evocation of the joy and pain that resonates for all of us. It stands alone, ultimately, a self-contained world, drawing a moment in time in astonishing, beautiful detail.

As a poet, I am content to leave it be. As a biographer and historian, however, my curiosity gets the better of me and I want to know more about the foundation, the sources, of this masterpiece. After all, Bishop said of it that it was plain facts, that it actually happened, that all she did was compress time a little. I am compelled to dig deeper not to detract from its sublime wholeness, but to link it more fully to its origins, to understand more broadly what the world was like at that moment in time and what caused the events to happen and allowed Bishop to write about them so movingly.

“In the Village” is, in the end, about the child Bishop was in 1916, when the events happened (even if it is the adult remembering that child and re-imagining, re-creating, re-envisioning her).The other person, though, who was central to the experience and who remained a force in Bishop’s life, was her mother. Bishop searched her whole life for the sources about her mother (within herself and in the world) – her mother always remained a part of Bishop’s life.

I have spent a great deal of time thinking about Bishop and her mother and what Great Village was like for them in the mid-1910s. My thinking led me to an idea of re-imagining “A Day in the Life of Great Village” – a day of great significance to both Bishop and her mother: the day Gertrude Bulmer Bishop went to the Nova Scotia Hospital. We do not know the precise day she boarded the train at Londonderry Station (or, perhaps in Truro) and went to Dartmouth, but we know it was late June. I imagine it was 21 June 1916 (the summer solstice), a date probably very close based on evidence found in documents connected to Gertrude’s hospitalization.

Many years ago, having pondered this day for some time, I decided to write a series of vignettes about Great Village, “A Day in the Life” – set on that day – to create a sort of narrative describing the people who lived “in the village,” and the activities that would have been happening in the community. I did nothing with these vignettes, so I have decided to dust them off and post them on the blog. My aim is to post one a week, for the next several months. Slowly, “A Day in the Life of Great Village” will appear and gradually the story of that day will unfold. Stay tuned!

2012-01-23T03:08:00.000-04:00

First Encounter XXXVII: A Poem by Anne Shifrer

2012-01-15T10:41:00.005-04:00

Elizabeth Bishop Scholars Tour Great Village

Bleeding heart, buttercups, and big red-orange poppies
with black, hirsute centers. Sylvia Plath would see them
as hairy tarantulas sizzling on hell flames,
so would Jonathan Edwards. What would you see,

Elizabeth? — something more subtle, the forget-me-nots
tucked in a corner like tiny blue buttons on baby clothes?
wild roses lapping the breeze or the lupins, tangled
in weeds but still standing tall? We all speak your language

so, of course, we say to each other, “lupins like apostles,”
one of your images that startles because you so rarely
permit yourself such grandiloquence. And we all see it,

the strange aptness — yes, lupins line the village roadways,
tall, prophetic silences like the pencil-thin apostles on Chartres,
especially at evening, gathering crystals from the fog.

“Apostles?” You were so much more the stoneworker
Ghiselbrutus – folk-artist donkeys chiseled
in small unexpected places on the cathedral.

Your village is much the same, Elizabeth, it lasted
longer than you hoped, well past your abidance.
But much has softened, the steeple which held
your mother’s scream now has iron curlicues
that look like cartoon-eyes of an owl or the spectacles
of Groucho Marx. It’s no longer sharpened
by irredeemable pain. All of that is dead now.

Our reluctant tour guide, the shy, brilliant fellow
from Britain leads us around quite aimlessly, wondering aloud
what we would like to see. Everything is, as you might expect,
connected only by “and” and “and,” and, just as you said,

nothing coheres. Your animals do not arrive to gather this family
of word-buffs into holiness. But we are, somehow, a family,
an odd dysfunctional one, as we amble along quoting your poems
at salient moments and laughing, as we walk around and around
trying to make our stumbling your whole biography.

Sometimes, I think that each of us is crying somewhere
inside — for you, Elizabeth — for all the ways
in which you couldn’t connect, for all the ways
in which happiness failed you, crying for you,
with you, because look how your world is still here.

Anne Shifrer has taught and written about Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry for more than twenty years. She is currently compiling an anthology of poems about Elizabeth Bishop. If you know of such poems in print or have poems of your own, she would be interested in knowing about them. Contact Anne at Anne.Shifrer@usu.edu. {Ed. Note: we will post more about this anthology project as it evolves – stay tuned!)

Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival Banners for Sale

2012-01-08T13:01:00.007-04:00

During the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival in August 2011, the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia created wonderful banners which were installed along Highway 2 (from Masstown through Great Village to Five Islands). On the banners was painter Joy Laking’s “Starry Night in Great Village” – a vibrant and celebratory evocation of Elizabeth Bishop’s childhood home. The banners weathered the summer and early autumn quite well and the EBSNS has decided to sell them, a little fund-raiser for the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Writing Competition book (containing all the winning entries). For more information, contact EBSNS board member Laurie Gunn at laurieegunn@ns.sympatico.ca . The banners are wonderful souvenirs of the lively and memorable arts festival held in Great Village. You can also order banners from the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia website and pay online.

First Encounter XXXVI -- Moya Pacey visits Great Village

2012-01-05T09:42:00.019-04:00

Elizabeth Bishop crossed borders and hemispheres as I have done to travel to Great Village in Nova Scotia from Australia via Europe and Newfoundland to attend the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Festival and read my short memoir : “My baby brother is born tonight.” It won First prize in the Open Section of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Writing Competition. I can hardly believe I am here in Bishop’s childhood home and tonight, I am alone in the house sitting at the desk reading a manuscript of Bishop’s that Sandra Barry has left with me. The house quietly settles as I listen to a concert from Montreal on the radio. I feel perfectly at home–as if I’ve entered an EB bubble…

The number on the white wooden front door of the Bishop House in Great Village, Nova Scotia is 8740 and there is a capital B wrought into the metal plate fixed to it securely. The house is a surprise. From the road it looks small but inside it opens out and becomes a home not a museum. Bishop’s life and works are everywhere including quirky personal items: a blue coffee pot resting on the old stove, a pair of hickory across-country skis leaning up against the wall of the utility area, a purple drinking glass from Brazil, ornate and heavy, and a red calico fancy shoe bag that Bishop brought from the US across the border into Canada, on one of her frequent visits to her Aunt Grace in Great Village. It contained a piece of raw beef, bleeding blood into the heavy red cloth, for Aunt Grace to cook for their supper.

Art works and photographs crowd the walls including one of Elizabeth aged about four or five-years old smiling out at me. She has a pudding bowl haircut and wears a sailor suit with the tie knotted awkwardly around her neck, but in her Vassar portrait nearby, her smile is less forthcoming and her tie is carefully knotted. Great Village was the centre of Bishop’s childhood universe potent with memories. In her Vassar Year Book she gives Great Village Nova Scotia as her home. “Home made home made aren’t we all” is inscribed on her memorial tablet at St James church.

On my first night, rain falls on the house, but for the rest of my stay it is warm and steamy. I choose to sleep in Bishop’s bedroom, at the front of the house, (how could I not?). It is a child’s room with a single bed pushed up close under the slanting blue wall. Linoleum covers the floor, and there’s a cotton quilt with carefully patched eight-pointed stars all askew like the room itself. Bishop remembered it tilting. Above the bed there’s a small skylight window fixed shut, (once it was kept open by blunt-ended scissors). I catch glimpses of the starry night sky outside and on the night before I leave the Milky Way and the Plough are so close they seem to be in the room with me.

Across the road from the house is “The Esso Station” (now Wilson’s) but no, “dirty dog, quite comfy lying on the wicker sofa,” lies there now. The antique shop next door to the house was once the L.C. Layton Store. Meredith Layton tells me that her family remember going to help Gertrude Bishop on the day she had her final breakdown, after which she was taken to Mount Hope (the Nova Scotia Hospital) in Dartmouth, and Bishop never saw her mother again.

Upstairs from the window of the “Elsie Baker Reading Room,” a blue fish chair waits along with a tin basin, ‘shiny like the moon’ for a writer to sit and look out of the window that frames St James Presbyterian, now United Church, with its distinctive witch’s black hat spire. Here the Festival events are presented during the three days of non-stop activities which include historical tours, author readings and interviews, writing workshops, and concerts, and lots more.

“Speak to everyone you meet,” Bishop’s maternal grandfather instructed her. It is advice the Festival and I take to heart. And it is this generous hospitality and the good manners and huge commitment from the Bishop community that brings Great Village to life for me. That, and the encounters, chance meetings, and the many conversations I have over the days, I spend there. Encounters, such as the one with Bev the Great Village postmistress who introduces me to Stirling Dick a 92 year-old WW2 veteran, who tells me: he’s looking for a wife and doesn’t know who Elizabeth Bishop is or was and asks me, “Why all the fuss?” I meet sisters Jane and Esther at Anne Simpson’s poetry workshop held at a nineteenth-century, elegant, square, yellow house facing the Bay of Fundy. Afterwards, I am invited to share Jane’s birthday picnic with them in the grounds of St James church and I eat Willy Krauch’s smoked salmon for the first time. It’s famous and I am told that Pavarotti asked for it as payment when he sang at the Dalhousie Arts Centre in Halifax. I meet another local, Maxine Ryan, on a buggy ride around the village and she invites me to her home and gives me dinner and I see my first-ever humming bird in her garden. I meet Carmel Cummings, the Irish poet from Kilkenny, who’s staying at the eerily Gothic mansion, The Blaikie House, up the road. Laurie Gunn’s husband speaks so eloquently and movingly on the theme of “Home” at The Old Time Sunday Church Service that I find myself teary (and not alone either) because I’m kept busy dispensing tissues to my companions in the pew with me. Afterwards, at the blueberry tea, Barb and Sandy who seem to be everywhere during the Festival helping out, are beaming in their blueberry hats and their hunt for the elusive “blueberry grunt” recommended to me as “a must have treat” by the ladies from Truro at my table, is hilarious.

When it’s time to leave Great Village, I feel as if I don’t want to cross the iron bridge that “trembles” over the Great Village River where the water runs fast and brown. I am reminded that Bishop didn’t want to either on her way to the post office carrying a brown paper parcel, packed by Gammie with treats for her mother addressed to: “Gertrude Bishop at the Hope Sanatorium in Dartmouth.” But I must return home and leave the EB bubble and all those who were there inside it with me. Sandra Barry, the most generous of hostesses and a wonderful ambassador for the Elizabeth Bishop House and Great Village, Suzie le Blanc whose singing of Bishop’s poems set to music was sublime, Don McKay’s reading of Bishop’s “Sandpiper” at the house, Rosaria who came and spoke quietly to me about poetry on the back porch of the Bishop House are just a few of my many memorable encounters.

As Sandra drives me out of Great Village, I catch a glimpse of Aunt Grace’s house where Bishop caught the bus to New Brunswick – the journey which became after thirty-one years the poem, “The Moose.” She turns the car towards Halifax and leaves Great Village resting on the Bay of Fundy where the “Atlantic drains/rapidly backwards and downwards.” I’ve witnessed its fifty-three feet tides bigger than a four-storey building and its destructive carving through forests, “See those fir trees are not long for this world.” On the beach, Sandra points out a sandpiper looking like a grey stone. Others rise so fast I miss them. I see: “millions of grains… quartz grains, rose and amethyst”– and Sandra finds and gives me two blue stones. As I write, they are sitting on my desk at home in Australia, next to the pen holder complete with “moony Eskimos” stencilled on its surface. These are keepsakes redolent with the memories of my first encounter with the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village, Nova Scotia and with the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Festival but so potent is my first encounter that I do not need these objects to enter once more into that EB bubble. I have only to open Bishop’s poems and prose to cross over and enter: “I recognise the place, I know it…”

{Ed. Note: It was a great pleasure to meet Moya. We could not have had a better winner in the Adult/Open Category of the Writing Competition. She entered into the Arts Festival with gusto and spirit, and became part of the village instantly. We hope she will be able to cross hemispheres and visit us again. Click here to read some of her poems. The Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia will be publishing all the winners of the Writing Competition, so you will be able to read Moya's wonderful memoir story eventually -- we will post a notice when that book is published. It looks like that will happen in 2013.}

Moya and Sandra at the Elizabeth Bishop House, August 2011. Photo by Carmel Cummins

All Good Things Must Come to an End...

2011-12-31T23:39:00.004-04:00

... and so today's "Today in Bishop" is the last one of the centenary year and, for the time being, the last one. My thanks first of all to my co-hosts, Sandra Barry and Suzie LeBlanc, who have headed the effort of so many, many people throughout Nova Scotia to make EB100 such an enormous success, and then to you, our faithful readers, for all your interest, encouragement, and support.

Finally, I am grateful for Elizabeth Bishop and for her work, which has given me so much to ponder for so many years. Here, in parting, is EB's translation of a poem by Octavio Paz. -- JB

January 1

The year's doors open
like those of language,
toward the unknown.
Last night you told me:
tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs,
sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow, we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.

I opened my eyes late.
For a second of a second
I felt what the Aztec felt,
on the crest of the promontory,
lying in wait
for time's uncertain return
through cracks in the horizon.

But no, the year had returned.
It filled all the room
and my look almost touched it.
Time, with no help from us,
had placed
in exactly the same order as yesterday
houses in the empty street,
snow on the houses,
silence on the snow.

You were beside me,
still asleep.
The day had invented you
but you hadn't yet accepted
being invented by the day.
--Nor possibly my being invented, either.
You were in another day.
You were beside me
and I saw you, like the snow,
asleep among appearances.
Time, with no help from us,
invents houses, streets, trees
and sleeping women.

When you open your eyes
we'll walk, once more,
among the hours and their inventions.
We'll walk among appearances
and bear witness to time and its conjugations.
Perhaps we'll open the day's doors.
And then we shall enter the unknown.

Cambridge, Mass.,
1 January 1975

A Christmas Present from Japan

2011-12-31T12:37:00.063-04:00

Christmas Eve brought me in the post a beautiful gift from Elizabeth Bishop's devoted translator into Japanese, Michiru Oguchi: an album of photographs she made during her visit to Nova Scotia for the University of King's College conference "It Must Be Nova Scotia: Negotiating Place in the Writings of Elizabeth Bishop." I'd like to share it now with you.

[To enlarge the pictures, first click on the image; when the slideshow version appears right click on that image and select "view image"; then click on the resulting image to obtain the enlargement. -- JB]

EB100 comes to a close

2011-12-30T09:31:00.024-04:00

As 2011 winds down, it “behooves” us (as Elizabeth Bishop might say) to acknowledge the wonder and delight of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary celebrations held not only in Great Village, Halifax and many other Nova Scotia communities; but also in Worcester, Boston, New York City, Ouro Prêto, and many other far flung places. The tributes to Elizabeth Bishop have spanned art forms and have involved an astonishingly wide range of artists from many disciplines. One of the things this comprehensiveness shows is Elizabeth Bishop’s significance. The degree of lively, imaginative creativity bespeaks an influence which proves Bishop’s life and art are generative forces. Do we not believe that when her bicentenary rolls around, people will still be reading “In the Village” or “The Moose”? Surely, it is not saying too much to suppose it will be the case. Not only have many artists paid tribute to Elizabeth Bishop, the many events that have taken place drew good audiences throughout the year. In Nova Scotia, the extensive media coverage EB100 received has, we feel, brought her name to many more people than had previously been aware of her, and introduced many to her art for the first time.

Elizabeth Bishop Centenary exhibit, Truro Library, Truro, N.S.
Photo courtesy of Linda Shears

Though we have not yet decided just how we are going to proceed with this blog, it will stay active. We have so much backlog of material (video, text, photographs, etc.) to post – but with life being as busy as it is, this work will take time. We hope you will continue to visit the blog as 2012 rolls along, as the years to come will bring more EB activities to announce and feature.

Starry Night in Great Village by Joy Laking

The main reason for this little note is to extend heartfelt thanks to John Barnstead, without whom this blog would not have existed and been as lively and important as it is. John is the heart of this effort – his “Today in Bishop” and “Today’s Video” have been an extremely popular part of the blog. The amount of work it has taken for him to sustain these delightful elements cannot really be described. The EB100 YouTube Channel is also an important feature of this site. I, for one, am immensely grateful to John for his devotion to the blog – because of his dedication and effort, this site is now a must see for anyone interested in Elizabeth Bishop. Thank you, John.

As I mentioned, we will be shifting things a bit as 2012 rolls along, but we will continue to post information and material, which we trust will be both relevant and pleasant. Stay tuned. Happy New Year.

Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival banner in front of St. James United Church, Great Village, Nova Scotia.
Photo by Laurie Gunn

Three White Leopards report on the Tibor de Nagy EB Exhibit

2011-12-22T21:00:00.002-04:00

http://ladyofsilences.blogspot.com/2011/12/elizabeth-bishop-artist-and-curator.html

Our New York Correspondent Writes --

2011-12-08T05:52:00.000-04:00

“Elizabeth Bishop: Objects and Apparitions” is on view at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, 724 Fifth Avenue, from December 8 through January 21. The exhibition will be celebrated with a reading by poets Mark Strand, Tina Chang, Hallie Hobson, and Susan Wheeler at the gallery on December 13 at 6:00 p.m.; for further information visit tibordenagy.com.

"Sandpiper" -- Pink Dog Productions

2011-12-08T05:50:00.001-04:00

CASTING CALL

2011-11-20T04:55:00.003-04:00

Dear Elizabeth Bishop Enthusiasts:

Magpie Productions is casting this Tues Nov. 29th in Halifax and possibly one other date later for a 5-7 year old girl to play the precocious and very aware poet, Elizabeth Bishop, when she's almost 5 years old. I'm sending along a pic in case you might have any leads. We're shooting Jan 14-15 in Great Village for a day and a half. It's a paid gig -- $225.00.

Do you know anyone? Do you know anyone who would know someone? We would be very happy if you could forward contact info of any parent who may have a daughter who might be interested.

We're doing an adaptation of one of Elizabeth Bishop's poems. We're also looking for the girl's mother, Gertrude, (mid-thirties, dark hair). That's a smaller role but also paid.

If you know please forward any information to our producer Walter Forsyth who is arranging the casting sessions.

walterforsyth@gmail.com

my best,

John

John Scott
Associate Professor, Ithaca College
magpieproductions.com
magpieproductions@gmail.com

2011-11-14T10:19:00.002-04:00

Click the poster for further information.

Monday Wonder Question VII: Bishop and Mather?

2011-11-07T07:19:00.004-04:00

The past week or so I have been reading The Oxford Handbook of THE ELEGY, a substantial collection of survey articles edited by Karen Weisman. In it in his essay "The American Puritan Elegy" Jeffrey Hammond quotes from Cotton Mather's "Memoirs of the Life and Worth: Lamentations for the Death, and Loss of the every way admirable Mr. URIAN OAKES" who writes:

Well! Reader! Wipe thine Eyes! & see the Man
( Almost too small a word!) which Cambridge can
Say, I have lost!

This has brought to mind the following passage from Bishop's "Poem":

Our visions coincided - "visions" is
too serious a word - our looks, two looks:
art "copying from life" and life itself,
life and the memory of it so compressed
they've turned into each other. Which is which?

Bishop's poem, too, is a kind of elegy -- but an elegy in anticipation: Mather's Oakes has been felled; Bishop's elms are yet to be dismantled. Both Bishop and Mather place themselves within double lines of succession as elegists. And perhaps it is not a mistake to hear in EB's self-exhortation (Write it!) in another elegiac poem, "One Art", a distant echo of Mather's plea to Harvard (Own it!) in his praise of Oakes.

Bishop's acquaintance with Mather went back as early as her senior year at the Walnut Hill School, when she wrote an essay about him entitled "Assisted by the Holy Author." The occasional undoing of Mather (if not phrase by phrase, then by the occasional polemic rewriting of a significant phrase: "too small" ==> "too serious"; "Own it" ==> "Write it") might seem an amusing pastime to the poet who as a saucy student had written of one of his more exhaustive projects "So the Church History was conceived, written, and published with God assisting (sometimes reluctantly) at every step of the way. And indeed, why should He not? He was figured as a character, as the most important character playing the largest role, on every page of the book; as Mather pointed out to Him discreetly, it was to His advantage to see the Book through the press. If the Lord is going to motivate the events of History, He must somehow lighten the burdens of the Historian. And by recording the latter we can get perhaps as much insight into the ideas of Mather and his God as by studying the CHURCH HISTORY itself."

In Memoriam: Phyllis Sutherland (1926-2011)

2011-11-02T19:18:00.014-03:00

She said that one of her earliest memories (and she was a very little girl, two or three years old) was seeing Elizabeth Bishop doing cartwheels in the driveway at Elmcroft, in Great Village, N.S. The teenage Elizabeth was visiting her beloved aunt, Grace Bulmer Bowers (Phyllis’s mother). Much later, in the 1970s, when Phyllis was a mother herself and living near Tatamagouche, N.S., Elizabeth visited regularly, flying or driving up from Boston. Phyllis’s children have their own early memories of “cousin Elizabeth” – David, for example, remembers Elizabeth bringing him the gift of a “Grateful Dead” album, a rock band he had never heard of – he still has the album.

These stories are the intimate and quotidian memories of family, seemingly incidental, but actually deeply bonding. Phyllis told me these and many other stories during the long friendship we shared. I will be forever grateful to her for this gift of a glimpse into the private realm of her family.

Phyllis would have loved everything about the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary celebrations in Nova Scotia – she would have been at every event, if it had been possible. But it wasn’t possible. Her illness confined her to a nursing home and slowly took away her capacity to engage with now. Above her bed hung the famous portrait of Elizabeth Bishop taken near the house at Samambaia in Brazil, in the mid-1950s. Elizabeth had sent a print of it to Aunt Grace, signed with love. This photograph hung in Phyllis’s home – it was there when I meet Phyllis in 1991.

Phyllis died on 19 October 2011. Elizabeth once wrote that numbers were mysterious. It seems significant to me that her death happened the year Elizabeth would have been 100 if she were alive. It seems significant that it happened in the same month when Bishop herself died (6 October 1979) and ten days before “Sonnet” was published in The New Yorker (29 October 1979 – thanks to John for finding out this small but important fact).

Phyllis’s sons David and Wallace asked me to speak at her service, which took place on 23 October in Tatamagouche (coincidentally, the minister who officiated knew my maternal grandmother, who was also born in 1911). I was deeply honoured to share some of my memories about Phyllis. It is those words I want to share here:

Phyllis and her mother Grace, circa 1940. Courtesy of Acadia University Archives

I met Phyllis – and Miriam – in the fall of 1991. I intended the visit to be brief, simply to introduce myself and tell her about the work I was doing on Elizabeth Bishop. I had no idea that she had already been visited by a number of American Bishop scholars, about whom she had a wide range of opinions. I arrived around 10:00 a.m. She welcomed me warmly. Later I learned this was not only her habitual way of being with all visitors to her home, but also because I was the first Nova Scotian to come asking about cousin Elizabeth. She invited me in and almost immediately began to show me items of the family archive she had in her possession. Six hours later, I was still there – talking, talking, talking, and looking at things.

It was Elizabeth Bishop who brought us together – and the depth of my gratitude to Phyllis for the gift of her memories, knowledge, and perspective about the Bulmers and Bishop is beyond words. But even more than this connection, which became a bond between us (and we certainly had many interesting moments in those early days of the Elizabeth Bishop Society) – even more than this bond, what I am most grateful for is my friendship with Phyllis – and Miriam; knowing them changed my life in lastingly good ways. That first visit turned into hundreds of others stretching for twenty years.

Phyllis immediately began to introduce me to the family – everyone was so welcoming to this stranger who was being nosy about their famous relative. Phyllis also began to take me around to places that were important to the family. Many times over the years, Phyllis, Miriam and I drove around Colchester and Cumberland Counties – Phyllis enjoyed driving – and she told me countless stories. There is no better way to understand the complex truths about life and death than through memories and stories, through sharing memories and stories. In the twenty years since we first met, my friendship with Phyllis has given me some wonderful and cherished stories that I have shared.

One of our first outings took us to Spencer’s Point, near Great Village (where the family had a cottage long ago). It was a November day, a wild wind was pushing the heavy clouds and churning up the Bay. I remember that we stood on top of the cliff looking at the waves and had to shout to be heard. It was beautiful and unsettling to be so exposed to the elements.

I wrote a poem that I titled “Spencer’s Point,” which I dedicated and gave to Phyllis. She said she liked it – and I believed her because she was perfectly capable of saying she didn’t. Being a reader of Bishop’s sometimes enigmatic poems, Phyllis was more than able to grasp my effort to express the beauty and danger of the elemental scene we shared that day. The poem now has become elegiac for me, speaking about the ephemeral nature of the body and the eternal nature of the spirit. I want to conclude by reading it (it is quite short). It has an epigraph that I took from The History of Great Village, a wonderful little book that Phyllis and I talked about many times. The epigraph is from the section about Spencer’s Point.

*****

Spencer’s Point

“White Light visible eleven miles.”

for Phyllis Sutherland

The Bay is red as blood.
Tide swollen with rain and shoved
by a rampant southerly, peculiar
to November, strips the cliffs of flesh.
Centuries have witnessed such feasts.
Huddled on the brink of dissolution
ancient apple trees adhere to the soil
littering shivered grass
with spoiled harvests.
I stand for a moment in the blast
and erode irrevocably,
blinking past my own blistering tears.
Suddenly, remembering bones,
I pull back from this instant
resisting return.
The Light is gone.
Ships that fed the shore
and fed the sea no longer guided by the need
to see, no longer needed.
The farms disappeared as the high tides
washed the earth
into the Bay, widen-
ing the Bay, narrowing the farms.
The keeper is gone.
All that remains is the undertow,
waves seasoning the wounded stone.

Canadian Listeners Please Take Note: 2 p.m. this Sunday, October 30, 2011 --

2011-10-29T10:07:00.004-03:00

Our CBC correspondent writes:

"On CBC Radio 2, October 30th, it's a special eight-hour broadcast marking 75 years of public broadcasting in Canada. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (9:30 to 5:30 in Newfoundland and Labrador) Canada in Concert, with host Bill Richardson, celebrates CBC's remarkable legacy of sharing Canada's greatest classical musicians with listeners from coast to coast. This musical marathon, the result of an intense collaboration between CBC Radio 2 and Radio Canada's Espace musique, offers an eight-hour festival of live performance recorded in eight Canadian centres.

"The programming features internationally renowned Canadian ensembles and soloists. We have singers galore - from Quebec City, Bernard Labadie leads Les Violons du Roy in a concert featuring the outstanding soprano Karina Gauvin; from Toronto, it's the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra some of the countries biggest vocal stars including soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and tenor Ben Heppner; from Halifax, soprano Suzie Leblanc joins the Tempest Baroque Ensemble for a program recalling the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, and from Vancouver, some of the country's best choral ensembles celebrate CBC's 75th with an engaging program focusing on the work of Canadian composers.

"We'll mark the opening of the new Maison symphonique in Montreal with a smashing performance of Beethoven's Symphony no. 9 with Kent Nagano leading the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. From Ottawa, we have an intimate recital with two Canadian classical superstars - violinist James Ehnes and the brilliant 16 year-old pianist Jan Lisiecki. From Winnipeg, it's highlights of the 2011 Winnipeg New Music Festival.

"CBC has nurtured the careers of hundreds of artists across the complete musical spectrum. On Oct. 30th, Canada's biggest classical stars come together to say 'many happy returns.'"

Schedule:

9:00 Vancouver - Vancouver Sings, a choral spectacular

10:00 Quebec City - Karina Gauvin/Les Violons du Roy

11:00 - Banff - Quartets Plus - past winners of the Banff International String Quartet Competition

12:00 Toronto - Prima Donna - Canada's finest singers with the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra

13:00 - James Ehnes, violin, and Jan Lisiecki, piano - Ottawa Chamber Music Festival

14:00 - Halifax - soprano Suzie Leblanc, violinist David Greenberg and the Tempest Baroque Ensemble - A celebration of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary

15:00 - Winnipeg - Highlights from the 2011 Winnipeg New Music Festival

16:00 - Montreal - Beethoven's 9th Symphony from the grand opening of Maison symphonique

Green Notebook Entry: October 29, 2008

2011-10-29T04:20:00.001-03:00

“Only dimly did I hear the pupils’ re-sigh-tations of capital cities and islands and bays,” Harold Cooke, a student at the Great Village School, is reading aloud from “Primer Class” as we slip into a high-backed pew at what is now St. James United Church, caddy corner from Elizabeth Bishop’s childhood home. The front has been painted fairly recently, but the sides are peeling, and perhaps a visit from the steeplejack would not be amiss. Funds are needed, too, for the next panels in the Great Village Pergola Heritage Project, and we are here to help raise them, as part of the “Word in the Village” celebration held the last weekend in September. “I must go into the classroom now and join in the usual morning” – a pause as Harold catches his breath –“ songs.” A paragraph or so later we are descending the steps past the village children’s prize-winning haikus and cinquains about manners, stories of their own first days at school, and a framed photo of one of Uncle – no, Great Uncle George’s paintings. We’re going to the church hall, where a lovely corn-chowder-with-or-without-onion lunch, with biscuits and homemade strawberry jam, will be provided at a small charge for the benefit of the Great Village Community Association.

Afterwards, summoned by the tolling of the recast and rehung church bell, we return to the sanctuary to listen to “In the Village”. The walls of the sanctuary are painted in trompe-l’oeil stone blocks with somewhat disproportionately diminutive keystones over the arches. The central arch bears the motto “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” with the word ‘the’ carefully centered at its apex. It has no keystone. Today Bishop’s portrait as a child has been blown up and placed over the left-hand slotted board that in the old days would have borne two figures: the amount of last week’s collection and that of a year ago. Balancing it on the other side of the arch is the hymn-board: nos. 506 (“Take My Life and Let It Be”) and 544 (“In Gratitude and Humble Trust”).

Sandra Barry, tutelary spirit for matters Bishop in Great Village, begins by reading lines from “One Art”, to prepare us for the unfortunate, unavoidable last-minute absence of CBC Radio One Mainstreet’s Carmen Klassen. There will be six readers, she tells us, and we shall proceed without intermission “right straight through”, as Bishop did the National Geographic of February 1918 (a copy of which, found in a second-hand shop in Evansville, Indiana, and purchased for a song, is kept now in the drawer of the desk in the library of her childhood home, caddy-corner across the road).

The reading begins. At once we are more aware than ever before of the music of Bishop’s prose: “Swiss skies – horizon – rims of eyes” as Anne Simpson reads. The story doesn’t suffer from disruption when the voices change, as we feared it might, -- whether from Lisa Lindo’s beautiful contralto to Alexander MacLeod’s deep baritone, or from Brian Bartlett’s New Brunswick twang to Susan Crowe’s lovely vowels and consonants, so familiar from her songs. A deepening, echoing silence fills the church as Susan reads from her thick edition with its two dangling book marks. The light from the green lamp on the pulpit catches the interlocking rings of her earrings, so that they flash figure-eights as her head moves. Clang. Slp. Tears come to our eyes (I asked afterwards – I wasn’t the only one) when we reach the sentence It sounds like a bell buoy out at sea.

The reading stops. There is silence, and then there is long applause. Later there will be an old-fashioned ham and baked bean supper that has to be moved (on next to no notice) to the Legion Hall because so many more than expected will be there. We make our way down the aisle. At the back there are portraits of all the ministers since Saint James was founded and Presbyterian – an early one is just a blank frame, since no picture could be located, but Dr. Gillespie is there, round-faced, and somehow slightly sanctimonious or sinister without his black straw sailor. “That was good, eh?” says a woman in a lime green jacket with its collar upturned. We head outside.

"into that world inverted / where left is always right"

2011-10-25T05:15:00.002-03:00

http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy/2011/10/25/

REMINDER for our Massachusetts Readers

2011-10-24T04:46:00.002-03:00

Monday, October 24 - Tom Travisano

Editor of Words In Air: The Complete Correspondence

between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

As part of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Thomas Travisano will read at Fitchburg State University (Miller Oval, Miller Hall, Highland Avenue, Fitchburg) on Monday, October 24th. The reading will take place between 3:30 and 4:30 p.m. The author of the first book-length study of Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, he is also the president of the U.S. Elizabeth Bishop Society.

REMINDER for Our Saint Louis Readers

2011-10-23T06:04:00.001-03:00

Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: Reading and Reception Oct 23, 4-6 p.m.

Washington University Libraries and the St. Louis Poetry Center will present a program featuring the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop on Sunday, October 23 from 4 to 6 p.m. in Wilson Hall, Room 214, on Washington University’s Danforth Campus. A reception will follow in the Ginkgo Reading Room in the nearby Olin Library. Joelle Biele, the editor of Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence, published this year, will be joined by Mary Jo Bang, Lorin Cuoco, William Gass, Carl Phillips and Catherine Rankovic in a reading of poems by Elizabeth Bishop and her correspondence with the venerable The New Yorker magazine.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979) is acknowledged as one of America’s greatest poets. She graduated from Vassar College in 1934 and published her first book of poetry, North & South, in 1946. Her other books include A Cold Spring, which won the Pulitzer Prize, Questions of Travel, which was awarded the National Book Award, and Geography III, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Bishop published the vast majority of her poems in the pages of The New Yorker. Her relationship with the magazine went back to 1933 and continued until her death in 1979. During forty years of correspondence hundreds of letters passed between Bishop and her editors. Their correspondence provides an unparalleled look into Bishop’s writing process, the relationship between a poet and her editors, the internal workings of The New Yorker, and the process of publishing a poem.

Reader Bios
Mary Jo Bang is a professor of English at Washington University and the author of six books including Apology for Want and Elegy, which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent book is The Bride of E. Bang is at work on a translation of The Inferno.
Joelle Biele, the editor of Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker, is also the author of White Summer. She’s been a Fulbright scholar and has received awards from the Poetry Society of America and the Maryland State Arts Council.
Lorin Cuoco is a consultant for the St. Louis Poetry Center. She is the editor of six books including The Writer in Politics, Dual Muse: The Writer As Artist, the Artist As Writer and Literary St. Louis: A Guide. She founded the International Writers Center at Washington University with William Gass.
William Gass, the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Washington University, is the author of short stories, novels and essays, which have garnered three National Book Critics Circle Awards. His other awards include the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the first PEN/Nabokov Award and the Truman Capote Award. His books include The Tunnel, Reading Rilke and A Temple of Texts. His latest collection of essays, Life Sentences, will be published in January 2012.
Carl Phillips, a professor of English at Washington University, is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Speak Low and A Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems 1986 – 2006. Other books include a translation of Sophocles’s Philocetes and Coin of the Realm: Essays on Life and the Art of Poetry. His most recent book of poetry is Double Shadow. Among his awards are the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Award, the Kingsley Tuft Poetry Award and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry.
Catherine Rankovic has taught creative writing since 1989 at Washington University, where she received a Master of Fine Arts in writing. A former full-time journalist, she has published four books including most recently Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis. Her poems and essays have appeared in Boulevard, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review and River Styx. She received the Missouri Biennial Award and Academy of American Poets Award.

Washington University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections has been collecting materials for its Modern Literature Collection since 1964 and now represents more than 175 authors including Samuel Beckett, William Gass, James Merrill, Howard Nemerov, Sylvia Plath, May Swenson and Mona Van Duyn. Of special interest for this program is the correspondence between May Swenson and Elizabeth Bishop, made up of more than 250 letters.

Collaborating with the University Libraries is the St. Louis Poetry Center, still thriving at sixty-five and serving those who love and write poetry. The oldest organization of its kind west of the Mississippi River, the center presents the monthly Poetry at the Point at the Focal Point and Observable Readings at the Schlafly Bottleworks, both in Maplewood. The center also holds monthly workshops at the University City Public Library and sponsors contests and outreach programs in schools and prisons. www.stlouispoetrycenter.org.

WHO: Mary Jo Bang, Joelle Biele, Lorin Cuoco, William Gass, Carl Phillips and Catherine Rankovic
WHAT: Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker reading and reception
WHERE: Wilson Hall 214 (program) and Olin Library (reception)
WU campus map at: parking.wustl.edu/parkingmap_2010.pdf
WHEN: 4:00 – 6: 00 p.m., Sunday, October 23, 2011
ADMISSION: Free
SPONSOR: Washington University Libraries (http://library.wustl.edu) and the St. Louis Poetry Center (www.stlouispoetrycenter.org)

"One Art" at ViewPoint Gallery

2011-10-12T08:46:00.002-03:00

This is a video of the discussion amongst the artists who contributed work to the photographic exhibition "One Art" at the ViewPoint Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia on the afternoon of Sunday, September 11, 2011. The moderator is Roxanne Smith.

Filmmaker John D. Scott shares a documentary project

2011-10-02T02:07:00.007-03:00

From the Magpie Productions Proposal for "Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing"

I. The Stories

Genius

This is the story of one of twentieth century's best poets. She won many prizes and honours, including the Pulitzer Prize and two Guggenheims. Since her death in 1979, admiration for Elizabeth Bishop’s keen craftsmanship and unpretentious, accessible, conversational style has broadened and deepened to the point where she is now considered by many to be the very best poet of her generation and one of the most influential poets on modern writers. Central to Elizabeth Bishop’s story was her ability (and her struggle) to express profound, universally held feelings with an interplay of rhythm, story and the distinct, arresting images that made the commonplace seem magical. This is a story of someone who was a genius with words.

The Search for Home

Equally, if not more compelling, is her personal story. Elizabeth Bishop suffered from profound misfortune. Her father died when she was an infant. And then when Elizabeth was five years old her mother went mad and was committed for the remainder of her life to a sanitorium in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Elizabeth spent the pivotal moments of this extremely anguished childhood with her grandparents in Great Village, Nova Scotia. Though a desperate time her life, Elizabeth developed a deep connection to the colourful characters, the oral traditions and the sense of community that she felt in this town. From the people and the rhythms of this place came a resonating affirmation of who she was. And later, her time here worked as a muse to Elizabeth’s unsentimental and playful, poetic voice, giving rise to heightened, and at times magical visions of this place. In fact, much of her greatest work re-imagines scenes from Nova Scotia, including the poems “First Death in Nova Scotia,” “The Moose,” “The Map,” “Cirque D’Hiver,” “Sandpiper” and the short story “In the Village.” Shortly after her mother was committed to the hospital Elizabeth was forced to leave her mother’s hometown in Great Village and went to live with relations in “the Boston States.” This was a very unhappy move and it began a life-long trend in her life of moving from one place to the next. This move set in motion a quest for that same sense of “home” she once felt in that community. This search, and its roots in her time in Great Village, Nova Scotia is the central story element of this documentary.

Mastering the Art of Losing

And what comes of this search? Despite her success as a poet, Bishop’s life was difficult. Enormously sensitive and shy, and troubled by a sense of not belonging, she became an alcoholic who nearly killed herself on a few occasions. She did have good friends but her love relationships tended to end badly – and in one instance suicide. Because of all her anxieties and her exceptionally high standards she was only able to finish one-hundred-and-one poems in four very slim books of poetry. (Her famous poem “The Moose,” for example, took twenty-five years for her to write.) Furthermore, in the latter part of her life she taught poetry composition at Harvard University but she was an uninspiring, awkward teacher who students felt was out of touch, and who other faculty dismissed as an intellectual lightweight. And while her poetry won prizes she was not well-known or well-loved by the public. Her poetry was criticized for being "out-of-date" cold and impersonal. In short, viewed from a distance, her personal and professional life can be interpreted as a series of elaborate failures and losses.

Near the end of her life, at a point where one of her great loves leaves her, Bishop, writes what will become her most-loved poem, "One Art." "One Art" is considered one of the greatest villanelles ever written and re-asserts Bishop as one of the best poets of her generation. But it is more than great writing: the poem also contains great wisdom. It starts by introducing the quixotic phrase “the art of losing" and asserts teasingly that one can easily master it. But of course, how one master’s “losing” is a real question for Bishop, who as we know was orphaned early in life, and, who almost kills herself in the aftermath of the break-up that sparks the poem.

For Bishop, writing the poem becomes a part of the answer. While writing the poem, which went through multiple iterations, she ingeniously adapts her (supposedly) impersonal and cold style, to a style that remains disciplined and beautifully crafted, but also subtly reveals more about her own suffering. She allows herself to be vulnerable despite her own natural reticence and shyness, and in so doing, reveals herself to her readership, but also to herself. It gives her greater perspective on the contradictions of her own life. It helps reveal how her public persona (in her poetry and her presentation of herself) is so controlled, and her private persona is at times desperately reckless and out of control – especially when she is drinking. The act of reconciling these two worlds in her poetry (for the first time) forces her into greater insight into her own denial about her suffering. This in turn, gives her insight into how she might be able to lose with grace. So nearly despite herself, and despite years of denial and suffering she learned at the very end of her life how to cope with great loss. It’s a great triumph. Understanding how to cope with loss is the abiding theme of this documentary. I think it's a story that many of us can relate to.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

--Elizabeth Bishop

II. Story Structure

The Dual Narrative

The main story will begin with Elizabeth’s experiences in Great Village, Nova Scotia starting in 1916 and take us through her transient lifestyle through much of her adulthood. The second narrative (told concurrently) will start in 1971 when she is teaching at Harvard and will end when she dies suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 1979. This structure is appealing because we start with two Elizabeths, one who is five and the other who is sixty and this conceit helps create thematic congruities between the developing awarenesses of both Elizabeths. Also, this structure permits each story to come to a climax at a peak in Bishop’s own emotional turmoil (the suicide of her great love Lota in 1967) and when her other great love Alice Methfessel leaves her in Boston in 1975 and prompts the writing of “One Art.” The movie will build into the climax, her poem “One Art” that she writes in a state of deep existential worry. And then it will conclude with the unexpected grace period of feeling “home” at the end of her life from 1975 until her death in 1979.

The Poems

Each scene will end on a poem whose inspiration comes from the tensions of the time period being described. And thus the poetry will not only be an aesthetically pleasing and rewarding study of genius, it will deepen the emotional content of her life-story. Here are two examples:

III. Style, Approach and Point of View

Poetic License

The beauty of Bishop’s poetry is that it is so loaded with the spirit of the moment, in the fragmentary, in the lush, in the juxtaposition of contrasting images and in the point of view of its subjects. What’s needed to make this come alive is a lyrical visual style to conjure this world into the cinematic. The movie needs to make use of the expressive tools that can come with the cinematic voice including techniques like time exposure, time-lapse photography, play with screen size and aspect ratio, multiple-exposure, slow motion, and play with differing levels of saturation. The result will be both expressive and suggestive as befits the poems themselves. The world of the poetry will have a magical or a heightened point of view that will contrast with the more traditional feel of the narrative segments. The two poems that I have interpreted already “Sandpiper” and “One Art” are not how they will appear in the final production but initial sketches where I am beginning to uncover some of the formal properties of the interpretations that I will employ in the final project.

Eschewing Over-Analysis

While there will be interviews with people who knew Elizabeth Bishop to help tell her story but there will be few if any literary interpretation of the poems by experts. While the visual poetics of the film will be informed by research related to critical interpretations of the work, the meanings of the poems will be inflected by the shots and styles used to express them and the narrative of her life that surrounds the poem. This will work because Bishop’s style is very conversational and accessible which lends itself to this kind of approach. Also, I believe leaving a certain openness and room for interpretation will actually help the poems feel more alive to our audience than would a narrow definitive interpretation provided by an academic or another poet.

Embracing Re-enactment Where Needed

While some of the story can be told using photographs, visual coverage of the sites, and historical footage, the two centering moments in the movie in Great Village, Nova Scotia and Boston will have moments that need to be tastefully re-enacted for them to have the kind of presence that is needed to tell the story.

[John D. Scott is Associate Professor of Documentary Studies and Production, in the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. His 2007 documentary on Nova Scotian poet John Stiles, Scouts are Cancelled, was nationally broadcast dozens of times on the CBC Documentary Channel, and received numerous awards. Learn more about his EB project, and sign up for e-mail updates, at www.magpieproductions.com. John welcomes feedback on all aspects of the project.]

“Home of the Long Tides”: The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Closing Celebrations – Part Three

2011-09-22T08:01:00.029-03:00

The third event for the EB100 finale is “I am in need of music”: A Tribute to Elizabeth Bishop, Sunday, 2 October 2011, 3:00 p.m., St. James United Church, Great Village, N.S.

Featuring:
Suzie LeBlanc – soprano
Jocelyne Fleury – mezzo-soprano
Blue Engine String Quartet
John Plant – pianist
Harry Thurston – poet

An Elizabeth Bishop tribute, with an eclectic programme of new Elizabeth Bishop works, contemporary and classical repertoire presented by some of Nova Scotia’s most accomplished artists – with a multi-media twist!

World premiere performances of two settings of Elizabeth Bishop poems, "Sunday 4 A.M." and "In the Middle of the Road," by Canadian composer John Plant. A Canadian premiere of “I am in Need of Music” by American composer Ben Moore.

World Premier of "Sandpiper" (video) produced by Pink Dog Productions of Halifax, N.S.

Music by Rebecca Clarke, Alasdair MacLean, Fanny Mendelssohn, Astor Piazola, Robert Schumann, Dindy Vaughan and Kurt Weill performed by Suzie LeBlanc, Jocelyne Fleury, John Plant and Blue Engine String Quartet.

Readings of Elizabeth Bishop poems by poet and naturalist Harry Thurston.

Tickets can be purchased online at the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia website, at the Masstown Market and Great Village Antiques, or reserved with Sandra Barry at slbarry@ns.sympatico.ca.

A Gallery of the Artists

Suzie LeBlanc

Jocelyne Fleury

Blue Engine String Quartet

John Plant

Harry Thurston

“Home of the Long Tides”: The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Closing Celebrations – Part Two

2011-09-21T09:11:00.009-03:00

The second event for the EB100 finale is “The Moose” Route: A guided bus tour of the Bay of Fundy. This trip takes place on Saturday 1 October 2011. It leaves from the Great Village School at 10:00 a.m. and returns there around 6:00 p.m.

This tour has been inspired by Elizabeth Bishop’s beloved poem “The Moose,” which describes a bus ride along the Fundy shore, on her way back to Boston. It travels through the heart of Elizabeth Bishop’s childhood home.

Not sure we'll see any moose, but we'll be looking!

This tour covers lots of ground: Elizabeth Bishop and her art, life and the memory of it; geology, geography and landscape; fabulous cuisine; tide and tidal life; sailing ships and history. With the narration, knowledge and insights of our expert guide: poet and naturalist Harry Thurston. Find out more information about Harry in the post below, especially about the publication of his new book: The Atlantic Coast: A Natural History.

Harry Thurston on the Bay

A comfortable deluxe touring coach is being supplied by Perry Rand/The Bus Boys, from Cambridge, N.S. (http://www.thebusboys.com/) in a comfortable deluxe touring coach.

We will be stopping for lunch at Wild Caraway, an exciting new restaurant in Advocate, N.S. (http://wildcaraway.com)

The cost of this tour is $45, which includes lunch. Space is limited and pre-registration is required. For more information and to register, contact Sandra Barry slbarry@ns.sympatico.ca

“Home of the Long Tides”: The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Closing Celebrations -- Part One

2011-09-20T13:55:00.020-03:00

The first event for the EB100 finale, is “Tidal Life”: An Illustrated Talk about the Bay of Fundy, by poet and naturalist Harry Thurston. This event takes place at Alumni Theatre, Cumming Hall, Nova Scotia Agricultural College, Truro, N.S., on Friday, 30 September 2011, at 7:00 p.m. There is no admission fee.

A native of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Harry Thurston is the author of twenty books of poetry and non-fiction. Tidal Life, A Natural History of the Bay of Fundy is in print two decades after it was first published. It was the recipient of the Evelyn Richardson Prize for non-fiction. A Place Between The Tides, A Naturalist’s Reflections on the Salt Marsh, was given the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award for 2005 in the United States. His New and Selected Poems, Animals Of My Own Kind, appeared from Vehicule Press (Montreal) in 2009. His most recent book is just out -- see the description below!! He is currently working on a memoir about trout fishing with his father.

Harry was involved in a recent CBC TV Land & Sea documentary about the Bay of Fundy, which you can see at this link:
http://www.cbc.ca/landandsea/2011/05/bay-of-fundy.html

The Nova Scotia Agricultural College (NSAC) is a specialized university providing technical, undergraduate and graduate education in agriculture and its related disciplines. NSAC’s high quality research and scholarship generates knowledge and solutions for healthy, sustainable societies. Diverse teaching, outreach and international activities help train future leaders for rural industries and communities in Atlantic Canada and around the world.

We are delighted that NSAC is hosting this event, because of its important place in scientific research in Nova Scotia, and its prominent education and economic role in Colchester County.

***
Hot off the press!
The Atlantic Coast: A Natural History
Harry Thurston’s new book, from Greystone Books
(http://www.dmpibooks.com/greystone-books)
in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation.

We are all the more thrilled to have Harry be such a central part of the EB100 closing celebrations with the news of the publication of this new contribution to Canada’s nature and natural history canon.

An authoritative and fascinating exploration of the natural history of the east coast of North America.

The North Atlantic coast of North America—commonly known as the Atlantic Coast—extends from Newfoundland and Labrador through the Maritime Provinces and the Northeastern United States south to Cape Hatteras. This North Atlantic region belongs to the sea. The maritime influence on climate, flora, and fauna is dominant—even far inland. This is where the great northern boreal forests intermingle with the mixed coniferous-hardwood forests farther south and where the cold, iceberg-studded Labrador Current from the Arctic and the warm Gulf Stream of the tropics vie for supremacy.

Filled with stunning photographs, the book includes chapters on the geological origins of this region, the two major forest realms, and the main freshwater and marine ecosystems and also describes the flora and fauna within each of these habitats. Finally, it looks at what has been lost but also what remains of the natural heritage of the region and how that might be conserved in future.
Written by the Atlantic region’s best-known nature writer, The Atlantic Coast draws upon the most up-to-date science on the ecology of the region as well as the author’s lifetime experience as a biologist and naturalist. It is both a personal tribute and an accessible, comprehensive guide to an intriguing ecosystem.

October 2011
ISBN 978-1-55365-446-9
Hardcover
7 1/2" x 10"
336 pages
25 b&w illustrations, 120 colour photographs
Nature / Natural History
$45.00 CAD

*************************

Parts Two and Three of "Home of the Long Tides": The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Closing Celebrations will be posted in this week. Stay tuned! For more information go to the EBSNS website.

Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Celebrations – A few reflections

2011-09-18T21:00:00.008-03:00

As the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary comes to a close (hard to believe the autumnal equinox is almost here!), over the next weeks and months, we will be reflecting on the many celebrations, and gradually putting up material (particularly video) that has been created during the year. John has been our trusty videographer, and has accumulated a lot of footage, which he has already started to post on the blog and on our YouTube channel. An example of this is below – the video of our July reading of “These Fine Mornings” – Joelle Biele’s adaptation of the Elizabeth Bishop/New Yorker correspondence. Joelle herself has posted an audio-only recording of that reading on her website: www.joellebiele.com.

What I want to say about that reading, that event, was that it was great fun for me – and I think my fellow readers (John, Suzie LeBlanc and Harry Thurston) had fun, too. We had virtually no rehearsal (just one quick read through a few days beforehand), so it was a spontaneous effort, more or less – but the letters are incredibly lively and funny, the editorial process they describes so revealing, that it was a real pleasure and privilege to be part of it. I hope you can see how much fun we and the audience are having. To be able to do the reading in the sanctuary of St. James United Church in Great Village, the “high-shouldered and secretive” church that loomed over Bishop’s childhood, was also a privilege.

The biggest EB100 event in Nova Scotia (bigger even than the wonderful symposium in June) was the EB100 Arts Festival in August. John has already started to post some video of it on the YouTube Channel, and there is more to come. All of this takes time, of course – but we have lots of interesting material to share.

The Arts Festival was a roaring success and we will be seeing the impact of it in Nova Scotia for some time to come. Congratulations must go out to Joy Laking and Laurie Gunn and the Arts Festival Committee – all their hard work paid off wonderfully.

While the festival was the biggest event, it was not the last event. We are planning an official finale to the EB100 celebrations, to take place from 30 September to 2 October: “Home of the Long Tides”: The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Closing Celebrations. You can find all the information about this event on the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia website: www.elizabethbishopns.org – and over then next few days, I will be posting information about each of the activities taking place during that weekend. We chose this time because it is near the anniversary of Elizabeth Bishop’s death, 6 October. As we began at the time of her birth, 8 February, we thought it appropriate to culminate our activities in early October.

While “Home of the Long Tides” is the big finale for the EBSNS, it is not the final event of the EB100 year – and we will continue to let you know about events and activities being planned. There will also be legacy projects emerging from EB100, for example, we will be publishing the winners of the Writing Competition, and, again, we will let you know about these projects as they unfold.

Reminder

2011-09-18T06:45:00.004-03:00

Photograph by Laurie Gunn

This afternoon (Sunday, 18 September 2011) at 2:00 p.m. Sandra Barry will present "Contemplating Elizabeth Bishop's 'One Art'" at ViewPoint Gallery, 1272 Barrington Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her talk is part of the photography exhibit One Art: Responses to "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop.

“These Fine Mornings: Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker”

2011-09-14T01:43:00.004-03:00

These Fine Mornings is a one-act play by Joelle Biele, editor of Elizabeth Bishop and the New Yorker: the Complete Correspondence. It tells the story of Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker using excerpts from letters between Bishop and editors Charles Pearce, Katharine White, and Howard Moss. Woven between their correspondence are letters Bishop wrote to friends, internal magazine documents, poems, and questions and answers that appear on proofs. Actors do more than one voice.

The play was first read at the University of Chicago's International House and hosted by the Program in Poetry and Poetics and the Poetry Foundation. Directed by Bernard Sahlins, it featured Linda Kimbrough as Elizabeth Bishop, Bruce Jarchow as the narrator, Suzanne Petri as Katharine White, and Tim Kazurinsky as Charles Pearce and Howard Moss.

These Fine Mornings is being read by contemporary poets at a number of venues as part of the celebration of the centenary of Bishop's birth. Here is a link to an audio recording of the Great Village performance in July:

http://www.joellebiele.com/Images/Nova%20Scotia%20Reading.mp3

And here is a video recording:

Not the Same One, We Presume...

2011-09-09T04:40:00.005-03:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44431492/ns/world_news-weird_news/#.TmnDIezG-Jo.

(Of course, the original story called the inebriated animal an elk...)

CALL FOR PAPERS

2011-09-07T10:44:00.002-03:00

International Conference: DAZZLING DIALECTICS: BRAZIL IN THE EYES OF ELIZABETH BISHOP

International Conference – Congresso Internacional

DAZZLING DIALECTICS: BRAZIL IN THE EYES OF ELIZABETH BISHOP

DESLUMBRANTE DIALÉTICA: O BRASIL NO OLHAR DE ELIZABETH BISHOP

November 9-12, 2011

Ouro Preto/Mariana

Minas Gerais, Brazil

In 2011, the birth centenary of Elizabeth Bishop is celebrated in many countries through recitals, poetry readings, academic meetings and other events. Her life and poetry are particularly related to three countries: the United States, Canada, and Brazil. In Brazil, besides the centenary, there is an additional reason to make this event significant: sixty years of the poet’s arrival in the country, an opportune occasion for re-readings of her work. Such re-readings will enable us to evaluate the poet’s relation with Brazil expressed in her poetry, prose, and vast correspondence.

The International Conference “DAZZLING DIALECTIC: BRAZIL IN THE EYES OF ELIZABETH BISHOP” has the purpose of gathering scholars interested in Elizabeth Bishop’s work. The event, which includes lectures, round-tables, panels, and readings has the intent to discuss the writer’s work, as well as its relevance in Brazil and abroad.

The event will address the following themes related to the author:

Her poetic work and correspondence;
Her work as translator;
Translations of her work;
Historical and biographical issues related to her life and work;
Her interactions with Brazilian, American and Canadian Modernists;
Gender issues: the poet and her contemporaries;
Brazil in her work;
Bishop and other travelers in Brazil.

Submissions:

University professors, scholars and graduate students (MA and doctoral programs) can apply to present papers in panel sessions.
Undergraduate students can apply to present posters.
Deadline for submission and application fee payment: October 9th.

To submit your proposal:

1. Send an abstract of your paper or poster (maximum 200 words), in Portuguese or English, including information about your institutional affiliation, area of interest, address, telephone, and e-mail to congressobishop@gmail.com.

2. Make the deposit at Banco do Brasil, branch 3610-2, account # 51437-3, and send a copy of the receipt by e-mail tocongressobishop@gmail.com. For international participants, payment is due on the first day of the event.

Registration fees:

1. Participation with presentation of papers or posters

Categories	Up to 09/25	Up to 10/09
University Professors and scholars	R$80,00	R$120,00
Graduate Students	R$40,00	R$60,00
Undergraduate Students	R$20,00	R$30,00

2. Participation without presentation of papers or posters

Categories	Up to 09/25	Up to 10/09
University Professors and scholars	R$40,00	R$60,00
Graduate Students	R$20,00	R$30,00
Undergraduate Students	R$10,00	R$10,00

Certificates may only be issued upon payment of registration fee.

Information: congressobishop@gmail.com

http://congressobishop2011.wordpress.com

Organização/Organization committee:

Maria Clara Versiani Galery (UFOP)

Sandra Regina Goulart Almeida (UFMG)

Guiomar de Grammont (UFOP)

Elzira Divina Perpétua (UFOP)

Maria Clara Bonetti Paro (UNESP- Araraquara)

Maria Lúcia Milléo Martins (UFSC)

Regina Przybycien (UFPR/Universidade Jaguielônica de Cracóvia)

Ricardo Sternberg (University of Toronto)

Realização/Promoting institutions:

Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Apoio/Support:

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras: Estudos da Linguagem (UFOP)

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras: Estudos Literários (UFMG)

Our São Paulo Correspondent Writes --

2011-09-06T00:45:00.002-03:00

Um Porto Para Elizabeth Bishop -- A Safe Harbour for Elizabeth Bishop

Em dezembro de 1951, uma poetisa norte-americana genial e deprimida desembarcou de um cargueiro no porto de Santos para uma breve escala turística e viveu no Brasil uma aventura pessoal que durou 15 anos. Esta peça é o encontro entre essa poetisa e o Brasil exuberante e inquieto dos anos 1950 e 1960.

[In December, 1951, a great but discouraged American poet disembarked from a cargo ship at the port of Santos for a brief tourist stopover, and then lived a personal adventure in Brazil that lasted 15 years. This play is about the encounter between the poet and Brazil in the exuberant and troubled years of the 1950s and 1960s.]

Playwright: Marta Góes.
Director: José Possi Neto.
Starring Regina Braga.
October 22-23 (Saturday and Sunday), 8:00 p.m. (No Teatro)
SESC Santo André
Rua Tamarutaca, 302 (Santo André)
Tel: (11) 4469-1200
The play runs for 80 minutes
Box Office prices: from R$ 5,00 to R$ 20,00
(Tickets available on the network INGRESSOSESC beginning September 30 at 2:00 p.m.)

Our Denver Correspondent Writes --

2011-09-06T00:44:00.001-03:00

Two-weekend Lighthouse Writers Intensive Workshop: Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Seeing

No poet has a finer eye than Elizabeth Bishop. The depth and precision of her seeing, and the extraordinary richness of her descriptions, are unsurpassed in American poetry. In this two-weekend reading-as-a-writer course, we’ll study what makes Bishop’s visual perception so remarkable, and we’ll explore ways to bring that level of seeing into our own work. Students will be asked to write one poem in response to Bishop's work and to memorize one Bishop poem. Our text will be the recently released POEMS.

This class is open to writers of all genres.

It will meet on two consecutive weekends:
December 3, 4, 10, and 11, from 1 to 4 PM.

Instructor: John Brehm, MFA
Starts: 12/03/2011
Time(s): 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM

Cost: $285.00 members / $315.00 non-members
Location: Lighthouse Attic - Attic (3rd Floor)
1515 Race Street, Denver, CO 80218

Great Village Welcomes the World at the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival

2011-09-04T08:04:00.014-03:00

From 19 to 21 August 2011, Great Village, N.S., was a bee hive of activity. Hundreds of people flocked to the village to be part of the EB100 Arts Festival. People from the community and along the Fundy Shore, from all over Nova Scotia, from many parts of Canada and throughout the United States, and from the far corners of the world – from Australia to Brazil to Ireland – converged in the village for a big birthday party. Everyone gathered for one reason: to celebrate the life, art and 100th birthday of Elizabeth Bishop. A truly festive atmosphere, helped by the great weather, reigned supreme for three days.

Traffic jams in Great Village during the festival. Photograph by Grant Dickie of Great Village Antiques.

To try to account for all the bustle and fun would take many posts. John has begun to put up some video that he shot during those days – over time, more of it will appear, giving a glimpse of some of what happened. I have wanted to write something ever since the festival ended, but as soon as it was over, I went immediately into planning for the next EB100 events (one of which is already underway: the ViewPoint Gallery “One Art” exhibition, information about which has already been posted). We are planning a big EB100 finale, which will take place from 30 September to 2 October, which is fast approaching! Information about it will be posted very soon.

I do want to reflect a little, though, on those three days in August, when the world arrived at the doorstep of Great Village, gathered because of a curiosity about, keen interest in or utter devotion to Elizabeth Bishop. I want to thank the EBSNS and the Fundy Shore communities for embracing the festival so wholeheartedly. The main organizers of the event, Joy Laking and Laurie Gunn, brought together a phenomenal group of volunteers. They all deserve a standing ovation for their hard work and their lively, warm hospitality. I want to thank all the artists (authors, musicians, actors, painters, film-makers) who participated in a myriad of ways. Their creative energy and their amazing artistry were tremendous tributes to and honourings of Bishop. I want to thank the over 70 English as a second language summer school students from the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro, N.S., who came out to help build cardboard boats and float them in Logan Spencer’s pond. What a parade they made through the village carrying their boats and flags. I want to thank the Great Village Farmers Market for adding that truly “home-made” touch to Saturday.

Building the cardboard boats on the lawn of St. James United Church. Photo by Grant Dickie of Great Village Antiques

Without a doubt, the most popular activity (which is saying a great deal because every event or activity was fully attended) was the horse and wagon rides, up and down Scrabble Hill Road. Gordon Lewis, who represented “Pa” (Bishop’s maternal grandfather William Bulmer, think of the poem “Manners”), and Beth Terry who portrayed Elizabeth Bishop and provided a lively, lovely reminiscence of the village during the rides, deserve our heartfelt gratitude. There was also a delightful “Little Miss Elizabeth Bishop” at home in her grandparents’ house, portrayed by April Sharpe, with her mother Patti as “Gammie,” Bishop’s maternal grandmother. A costumed Dick Akerman offered historic walking tours, giving all who walked with him a deep understanding of the fascinating past of the village. Everyone entered into the spirit of that long ago time, but most of all they warmly welcomed the hundreds of people who rode the wagon, visited the house or wandered the village.

The workshops, author readings, village tours and concerts; the community lunch, supper, tea and receptions; the old-time church service; the wagon, boats, costumes, books, banners, baskets; the paintings and films were the trigger for all sorts of wonderful connections between and among people – everyone who came had one thing in common: Elizabeth Bishop – and she brought about connection with people from near and far. Bishop the world traveler who had an abiding tie with her family, her village and Nova Scotia was the catalyst for all manner of new connections, which will continue for years to come. Great Village was the site of this energized activity for three wonderful days in August 2011.

P.S. It is also important to thank our funders for their support. It was heartening to have funding from three levels of government: Canadian Heritage; the Province of Nova Scotia through Communities, Culture and Heritage, as well as Economic and Rural Development and Tourism; and the Municipality of Colchester, as well as the Colchester Regional Development Agency. Local businesses donated: Masstown Market, Oxford Frozen Foods, Wilson’s Fuel, Lowland Gardens. The Robert Pope Foundation, the Charles and Mary MacLennan Foundation, the Fundy Foundation. Individuals: Joy Laking, Suzie LeBlanc, Randall Sargent, Dick Lemon. If I have forgotten anyone, it is unintnentional. Our gratitude for all support is immense.

Our London Correspondent Writes --

2011-09-03T08:59:00.002-03:00

THE TLS LECTURE

Elizabeth Bishop: dwelling without roots

Tom Paulin
Chaired by Fiona Sampson

Monday, 17 October 2011, 7 p.m.

Since her death in 1979, the reputation of Elizabeth Bishop has grown to the point that she is now regarded as one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century. Her small body of work (she published only 101 poems during her lifetime) is distinguished by its precise description of the physical world, by grief, and by the struggle to find a sense of belonging. During her early childhood her mother was committed to an asylum, and she grew up first with grandparents and then with an aunt – ‘I was always sort of a guest,’ she wrote, ‘and I think I’ve always felt like that.’ In a talk chaired by fellow poet Fiona Sampson, poet, critic and playwright Tom Paulin, who has written extensively on Bishop, marks the centenary of her birth by exploring her genius.

We are grateful to the Royal Literary Fund for sponsoring this lecture.

Venue: Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House.

Fellows and Members: book your seats online or by ringing Hazel on 020 7845 4676. Seats for guests (one per meeting) must also be booked in advance.

A limited number of tickets will be sold on the door, from 6pm, on a first come, first served basis (£8/£5 conc)

Our Texas Correspondent Writes --

2011-09-01T02:33:00.008-03:00

A TRIBUTE TO ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979)

by michele_miller

Please join us on September 22 for this special event to celebrate the 100th birthday of Elizabeth Bishop, U.S. Poet Laureate from 1949 to 1950, and winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book award. Join the English department’s MFA students and faculty as they read selections from Bishop’s work and share what her poetry means to them.

The Wittliff Collections
The Alkek Library, 7th Floor
Texas State University
601 University Drive,
San Marcos, TX 78666
visit web site
call 512-245-2313

ViewPoint Gallery: Unique exhibition has artists respond to Elizabeth Bishop's poem "One Art"

2011-08-30T06:27:00.013-03:00

Photo: The Walker, by Teresa Alexander-Arab

(Halifax, Nova Scotia) - ONE ART at ViewPoint Gallery is a group exhibition of twelve photographers and one contemporary composer. In it, these artists have responded to Elizabeth Bishop's poem "One Art." This exhibition's photographers were selected by an independent jury: Adriana Afford, Robert Barriault, and Anne Simpson.

ONE ART participants are: Teresa Alexander-Arab, Binnie Brennan, Marla Cranston, Heather Francis, Laurie Gunn, Rena Kossatz, Sandy Leim, Irene Miller, John D. Scott, Roxanne Smith, Sandi Wheaton, and Monika Wright.

The composer is Ian Crutchley, who was commissioned by ViewPoint Gallery to create this sound installation. This is the first time ViewPoint Gallery has collaborated with a composer. The artists are local, national, and international, and range from first time exhibitors to artists with considerable exhibition experience. The work in the exhibition is richly contrasting, varied, and all linked together by the poem "One Art."

There will be a series of events accompanying the exhibition. The première of Ian Crutchley's sound installation "How To Lose Things: Lessons From Elizabeth Bishop" will be on Sunday, September 4, at 2 p.m. On Sunday, September 11, at 2 p.m. there will be a panel discussion about the exhibition that includes several of the artists, one of the jurors, Robert Barriault; and Sandra Barry, Bishop Scholar and co-founder of the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia. On Sunday, September 18, at 2 p.m. Sandra Barry will be giving a presentation "Contemplating Elizabeth Bishop's One Art." On Sunday September 25, at 2 p.m. the Gallery will be presenting a reading series of Elizabeth Bishop's poems read by Brian Bartlett, Lorri Glenn Neilsen, Alex Pierce, and Margo Wheaton.

All events will take place at ViewPoint Gallery.

This exhibition is part of the EB100, a year long celebration of the centennial of the birth of Elizabeth Bishop.

ONE ART opens at ViewPoint Gallery (1272 Barrington Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia) on Thursday, September 1, 7-9 p.m. The exhibition continues until October 2. The Gallery's hours are Tuesday - Sunday 12 - 5 p.m., and Thursday - Friday, 5 - 7 p.m.

For online press kit please see: http://viewpointgallery.weebly.com/media.html

For more information contact:
Roxanne Smith (902) 469-9756

ViewPoint Gallery is an artist-run non-profit co-operative, whose members are photographers working together to nurture and promote their artistic passion and the practice of their craft, to exhibit and market their work, and to actively engage in the cultural life of the broader photographic community.

EB100 ARTS FESTIVAL -- Rev. Dan Gunn speaks on "Home"

2011-08-28T08:18:00.006-03:00

[An excerpt from the Old Time Church Service held at St. James United Church, Great Village, Nova Scotia, on Sunday, August 21, 2011. -- JB]

EB100 ARTS FESTIVAL -- Sandra Barry's Reading -- Part 1

2011-08-25T04:22:00.008-03:00

[With this post we begin a video survey of the many events that took place during the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival, held in Great Village, Nova Scotia, August 18-20, 2011 -- JB]

Elizabeth Bishop Festival in Great Village: Fun for All Ages!

2011-08-22T14:29:00.002-03:00

Our Truro correspondent writes:

Great Village's William Austin had a great time participating in Saturday's cardboard boat race on Spencer Pond during the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival in Great Village. [Monique Chiasson - Truro Daily News]

It was obvious something special was happening in Great Village on the weekend.

Cars lined the main streets, people packed St. James United Church to listen to poetry and indulge in community meals, while others flocked to the Elizabeth Bishop house and a unique race took place, to name only a few events.

The weekend-long Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival was in full swing on Saturday.

Perhaps the most enthusiastic group of people was the cardboard boat racers. About 70 participants spent three hours constructing the boats out of only cardboard and duct tape. They then took turns racing the rudimentary boats in nearby Spencer Pond.

"I'd like to see more of this kind of stuff," said nine-year-old Marshall Field of Great Village, who was a participant in the race.

The youngster also took advantage of the festival to learn more about Elizabeth Bishop.

"I know she went to my school," he said, referring to Great Village Elementary school.

For more on this story, see Monday's Truro Daily News.

Our Wolfville Correspondent Writes --

2011-08-16T00:47:00.003-03:00

In celebration of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary, Musique Royale is in Wolfville at the Manning Memorial Chapel, Acadia University, August 23. The 7:30 p.m. performance is part of a weeklong tour of the province with soprano Suzie LeBlanc, violinist David Greenberg and the Tempest Baroque Ensemble, with guest harpsichordist Alex Weimann. Harry Thurston will recite excerpts from the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop during each performance.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) is a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the most acclaimed poets of the 20th century. She spent much of her childhood in Great Village, NS, at the home of her maternal grandparents. Although technically an American - she was born in Worcester, died in Boston and is buried in Worcester - Nova Scotia was the centre of her spiritual and aesthetic universe.

“At the Fishhouses” was inspired by a visit to Lockeport Beach in the late 1940s. A few fish houses are still in existence along the Long Cove Road. Bishop being an acute observer, the poem begins with a detailed description of a fisherman, netting, and his fishing tools. The end of the poem takes us away from the visible, where time and place dissolve and imagination takes over.

The flow of music and words at the concert aims to transport the listener to a new environment through the use of time, melody, harmony and rhythm. Interspersed with recitations by Harry Thurston, the musicians will perform works by Dowland, Purcell, Vivaldi, J.S. Bach, Mozart, plus a Cape Breton and Acadian medley arranged by David Greenberg, and The Silken Water is Weaving and Weaving by Alasdair MacLean.

The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival, August 19 to 21 in Great Village is a gathering of writers, musicians, painters, actors, filmmakers and other artists who will present wonderful readings, workshops, exhibitions and concert performances in celebration of the centenary of Bishop’s birth. The opening concert of Musique Royale’s At the Fishhouses tour is the final event of the arts festival.

Tickets for the Wolfville concert are $20 at the door, students $10. Call 582-3933 or click here for further information.

[from Wendy Elliot's report in the King's County Advertiser and Register, August 13, 2011.]

FIRST ENCOUNTER XXXV: ELIZABETH BISHOP IN SONG

2011-08-12T20:26:00.005-03:00

Rosalee Peppard celebrates the life of poet Elizabeth Bishop (Courtesy Rosalee Peppard and Mayflower Music) www.rosalee.ca

Rosalee writes:

"In November 2009 I was invited to join master storyteller, Claire Miller, at her home for a house concert. Afterward she introduced me to Sandra Barry. We had a delicious chat and when I mentioned that we owned our ancestral home in Great Village, Nova Scotia, she passionately introduced me to Elizabeth Bishop. EB had wafted around my psyche for a couple of years but we hadn’t met. In 2008, I had even arranged a tour of EB House (of which I was previously unaware!), for a couple who had stayed with us and subsequently gifted us with the then new Library of America EB “bible”, which they had worked on.

"In that fateful meeting with Sandra, I learned of EB’s upcoming centenary celebrations which included multimedia expressions of art celebrating EB’s art. Since my work has been to transcribe women’s stories into song, Sandra and I seemed destined to broach the subject as part of the centenary celebration. In an early telephone conversation with Sandra, she said that while her poems had been set to music by many illustrious composers throughout the years and especially for the centenary, to her knowledge, no one had written EB’s life story in song. Her advice: read Elizabeth, not about Elizabeth. The gauntlet had been dropped. So I set to.

"For a year I did EB immersion. I was tossed on the Fundy tides of her dramatic life. My mind was chilled by the depths of her insight and calm wit, and my soul exhaulted by her wealth of our language and its nano-precision. How to paraphrase, to transcribe into poetry and music a literary and lush life such as EB’s? The more I read, the more surprising similarities I found with my own life. My “Peppard People” are from Great Village. Though not as tragic, I had been separated from parents at an early age. I have allergies and like EB anaphylactic to cashews. I am very sensitive; I too have an “artistic temperment”. I have an addictive personality. I Love poetry and literature. I Love music of all kinds. I’m artistic and have a good sense of humour. We met on many common pages of our life books.

"The more I read EB’s poetry, the more I found I became irritated and rather depressed. I felt as if I were riding along the road through her dream world full of shadows of shame and sorrow. The light licks of humour were not enough to awaken my soul of its sadness and sadness for EB. I felt at the bottom of her bottomless glass, thirsting for a reality that had been ever-evaporating. As she wrote to Anne Stevenson, “There is no “split.” Dreams, works of art (some), glimpses of the always-more-successful surrealism of everyday life, unexpected moments of empathy (is it?), catch a peripheral vision of whatever it is one can never really see full-face but that seems enormously important. ... What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration. (In this sense it is always “escape,” don’t you think?)”

"Then I read her prose. I was home. Fascinated. She wrote place and characters from the inside out and insisted I “come in”. I was in my ancestral village, with every one of my senses filled with life. There. Yet there through Elizabeth. She was it and is it. Her song would have to reflect that: that when you go to Great Village, you go to Elizabeth Bishop, and when you read Elizabeth Bishop, you read Great Village.

"I continued and read Elizabeth’s letters. The grounded reality. The solid opinions. The wealth of language and languages. The apologies. The later stark allusions to childhood horrors and hurts. The bitter resignation of connection with her uncle. Then the artistic insights: The love of visual art and many kinds of music, and which ones. A person who filtered life through her acute senses, raw, dramatic earth shaking keeping the most precise, minute, details as microscopic mosaic word tiles with which to express life. And yet, in the flow of her writing, the ever present self-questioning and second guessing. A pervasive sense that there is no ground.

"Then I went back to her poems with her “key” and was enriched. Got the wit. Revelled and marvelled in the imagery. It was if she opened a back stage door and I saw the fragility and the humour of the flimsy, rough supporting 2 x 4’s that were holding the painted Set up on the stage of her and my life. Wow. Elizabeth Bishop’s voice was powerful and absolutely unique. And so, with those seeds, the song began to write itself..."

More about the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival

2011-08-08T18:00:00.012-03:00

Travelers on the seashore route that connects Masstown, Great Village, Bass River, Economy and Five Islands have been admiring the stunning flower baskets and colourful banners on roadside poles, and perhaps wondering “What’s the occasion?”

The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival is a once in a lifetime happening that is raising the level of pride for all the communities of the Cobequid Bay Shore. The Festival, August 19, 20 and 21, features many free events open to everyone (full details at www.elizabethbishopns.org) plus writers’ workshops and three excellent concerts.

Volunteers from all of these communities have been planning together for two years to make this festival happen. Joy Laking, one of the local artists, designed the t-shirts and banners. "For over thirty-five years” says Laking, “I have lived and worked in the area and there has never been an event like this that includes all of the local communities. The banners and the flower baskets represent our pride in our area and our willingness to work together to keep our shore a wonderful, beautiful, vibrant place to call home."

Starry Night in Great Village, Painting by Joy Laking
(This colourful and expressive image is the one presented on the Arts Festival brochure and the banners that line the shore road. It has also been put on T-shirts, which will be for sale at the festival.)

Although most of the concerts and readings are taking place in Great Village, the ancestral home of beloved poet Elizabeth Bishop, there is also a full day of children’s activities in Bass River on Saturday, August 20, organized by the Bass River Heritage Society. A jamboree of Maritime blacksmiths will be on hand, forging metal, and providing the ring of the hammer on the anvil. Karen MacFarlane, the president of the Bass River Heritage Society is delighted to host the blacksmiths as a tribute to Mate Fisher, the Great Village blacksmith who moved to Bass River in Elizabeth Bishop’s day. It was the constant rhythm of the hammer that provided stability in Elizabeth’s fragmented world and it is the sound that underlies her most famous story called “In the Village.”

In Great Village, the festival includes a farmer’s market, readings by well-known authors Don McKay, Michael Crummey, Joan Clark, Anne Simpson, Sheree Fitch, Sandra Barry, and Mary Rose Donnelly) and three evenings of eclectic concerts. On Friday Lenore Zann presents a dramatic reading of a play about Elizabeth Bishop, “Running to Paradise,” with music by Rosalee Peppard. Saturday’s concert features Susan Crowe, Cindy Church and Raylene Rankin and on Sunday there’s a Musique Royale concert, “At the Fishhouses,” with Suzie Leblanc and Tempest Baroque. Throughout the festival there will be horse and wagon rides, guided walks and also Elizabeth Bishop House tours. On Sunday morning there will be an old-fashioned church service and a blueberry tea.

The Board-to-Boat Competition challenges everyone along the shore to participate. Families, young people (8 and up), community groups and Fire Departments, even the Colchester County Council, are invited to build a cardboard boat on site in Great Village and then there will be a walking parade of boats up to Logan Spencer’s pond where the actual racing begins at 5 p.m. on August 20. Prizes for the fastest, the prettiest and the best sinking will be awarded! Registration is $20 at Danny Smith’s Store in Great Village, refunded after participation in this event.

And there’s more: a display of paintings done recently in the area on a special artist’s weekend in June, and a book sale presented by Bookmark, Halifax’s beloved independent bookseller. Information, sales and registration can be found at the Great Village Legion. Elizabeth Bishop would be proud of her village, and happy to greet visitors to explore the wonders of the West Colchester Shore.

News from Truro

2011-08-07T17:56:00.005-03:00

Joy Laking

Joy Laking is interviewed by Monique Chiasson of the Truro Daily News about the upcoming EB100 Arts Festival:

http://www.trurodaily.com/News/Local/2011-08-05/article-2694555/Life-of-literary-icon-to-be-celebrated/1

Radical Readings in Great Village at the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival, 19-21 August 2011

2011-08-03T12:12:00.011-03:00

On August 20 and 21 a half-dozen award-winning and beloved Atlantic authors will read from their latest work, and in a rare departure from tradition they will interview each other instead of being questioned by a neutral host. There could be fireworks! Olga Milosevich of CBC Radio One will be on hand to moderate, and there is no fee for excellent seats in St. James United Church, Great Village, at 1:30 p.m. each afternoon. On Saturday afternoon, 20 August, the readers are Anne Simpson, Don McKay and Michael Crummey; Sunday’s roster, 21 August, includes Sheree Fitch, Joan Clark and Sandra Barry.

Crummey, Clark, Fitch, McKay and Simpson will also offer writing workshops from nine to noon Saturday morning for budding authors of fiction, poetry and children’s books. At a cost of twenty dollars, this is another rare opportunity and the classes are filling up already; for information, interested writers-in-training should swiftly email ebfestival2011@gmail.com listing their top two choices.

Books are only one part of this three-day Elizabeth Bishop Arts Festival, which includes three special concerts (see the links at the top of the page for information about the concerts), feasts and historic tours. On Friday, August 19, there are events for children, a book launch (Mary Rose Donnelly’s new novel, Great Village, published by Cormorant Books) and presentation of the winning stories from a writing competition on the theme of home.

The winner in the open category will be a long way from home: award-winning poet Moya Pacey is coming from Canberra, Australia, to read her story and receive her prize. Moya says, “I have always been drawn to Elizabeth Bishop’s writing—her poetry and prose. Like me, she was a traveller and lived in a different country from her birth place for a long time but the memories of her childhood place stayed with her always—strong and potent. I am very excited about the award and feel honoured that my short memoir piece was chosen. The piece is very close to my heart. When I wrote it, I found I had such a strong recall of the close and closed community of my birth place that I was able to replay the memory of the night fifty years ago that my youngest brother was born. The memory came straight from what Elizabeth Bishop called the ‘memory machine’.”

That memory machine will be in high gear as the people of Great Village welcome folks from near and far to visit Bishop’s childhood home on the occasion of her hundredth birthday.

Check out the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia website for more details.

In the Realms of the Visual --

2011-08-01T06:57:00.003-03:00

http://ilikeyourart.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/graphic-interpretation-of-in-the-waiting-room-by-elizabeth-bishop-draft1/

[A graphic interpretation of "In the Waiting Room," by "LJKA" -- JB].

Our Poughkeepsie Correspondent Writes --

2011-07-31T13:06:00.004-03:00

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY -- A major exhibit and symposium organized by the Vassar College Libraries will mark the centenary of the acclaimed poet Elizabeth Bishop, a 1934 Vassar graduate who earned the Pulitzer Prize and many other major U.S. literary honors before her death in 1979. Central to these upcoming events are the unmatched Elizabeth Bishop Papers housed at the college’s Archives and Special Collections Library, which play a vital research role for scholars, writers, and editors from around the world. Notably, these programs dedicated to Elizabeth Bishop are part of Vassar’s special year-long celebration of the sesquicentennial of its founding.

About the exhibit

“From the Archive: Discovering Elizabeth Bishop”
August 30-December 15
Thompson Memorial Library

Curator Ronald Patkus, the Head of Special Collections at the Vassar College Libraries, asked ten Elizabeth Bishop scholars and editors (Joelle Biele, Lorrie Goldensohn, Saskia Hamilton, Bethany Hicok, Brett Millier, Barbara Page, Alice Quinn, Camille Roman, Lloyd Schwartz, and Thomas Travisano) to select items from Vassar’s Bishop collection that were important to their writing about the poet. For example, Brett Millier (Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It, University of California Press, 1995) selected a composition book that Bishop used in 1934 right after graduating from college; in the book Millier found four pages of writing about the nuances of island life that suggest the origin of several later Bishop poems. Camille Roman (Elizabeth Bishop’s World War II-Cold War View, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) chose for the exhibit an early draft of the poem “12 O’Clock News,” because discovering it at Vassar led Roman to re-read Bishop’s poetry through the frame of war. Alice Quinn picked two drafts of the unfinished story “Homesickness”; earlier, on the invitation of Bishop’s longtime editor Robert Giroux, Quinn edited a volume of Bishop writings that only reside in the Vassar collection (Edgar Allan Poe & The Jukebox: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments By Elizabeth Bishop, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006).

About the symposium

September 24
Taylor Hall

Hartwick College professor Thomas Travisano will moderate a morning discussion “On Editing Bishop,” with panelists Alice Quinn, Lloyd Schwartz, Saskia Hamilton, and Joelle Biele. Barbara Page, Professor Emeritus at Vassar College, will moderate an afternoon discussion “On Teaching Bishop” with panelists Beth Spires, Lorrie Goldensohn, and Jane Shore. The symposium culminates with a keynote address by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, who will also read his new poem dedicated to Vassar’s sesquicentennial and commissioned by the college for the occasion.

About Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop (8 February 1911- 6 October 1979) stands as a major mid-twentieth century American poet, whose influence has been felt among several subsequent generations of poets. Her many prizes included the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, two Guggenheims, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and Brazil's Order of Rio Branco. Bishop's first book of poems, North & South, appeared in 1946; the second, Poems (including North & South and A Cold Spring), in 1955; the third, Questions of Travel, in 1965, and the last, Geography III, in 1976. A one-time Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, Bishop also published several poems in The New Yorker, wrote a number of distinctive short stories, and translated poems and prose in three languages, She wrote a volume in the Life World Library on Brazil, and co-edited An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry.

About the Elizabeth Bishop Papers at the Vassar College Libraries

Originally acquired by Vassar College in 1981 from the poet’s estate, the premiere Elizabeth Bishop repository consists of correspondence, personal papers, working papers, notebooks, diaries, and memorabilia, as well as a substantial amount of material by and about the poet’s friends and colleagues. Among the collection are over 3,500 pages of drafts of poems and prose; over 200 letters from poet Marianne Moore discussing their work and mutual friends; and over 200 letters from poet Robert Lowell discussing their work, Bishop’s influence on his work, as well as such prominent writers as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath, Flannery O'Connor, and Mary McCarthy.

Vassar has steadily expanded its Bishop collection through donations, bequests, and purchases. “These additions have been both significant and sizeable,” writes curator Ronald Patkus for the publication accompanying the Elizabeth Bishop papers exhibit. “As in the original acquisition, they include a variety of materials, but especially correspondence with friends and fellow poets, such as James Merrill, Emmanuel Brasil, and Lloyd Frankenberg. One of the most important additions came in 2002, when the college acquired a collection from the Portinari family in Brazil, which contained among other things Bishop’s baby book; letters to friends from around the time of her partner Lota’s death; two watercolors; and an annotated copy of the book Brazil, edited by Bishop and first published in 1962.”

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential, liberal arts college founded in 1861.

PUBLIC CONTACT: Vassar College Libraries, (845) 437-5760, Office of Campus
Activities, (845) 437-5370

PRESS CONTACT: Jeff Kosmacher, Director of Media Relations & Public Affairs,
(845) 437-7404, jekosmacher@vassar.edu

Our Worcester Correspondent Writes --

2011-07-31T08:17:00.002-03:00

Robert Pinsky and Chares Simic, both former poets laureate of the United States, will give poetry readings at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 13 at The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts, 2 Southbridge St., Worcester.

The readings are part of the Worcester County Poetry Association's “EB100” celebrations to honor the 100th birthday this year of Pulitzer Prize-winning Worcester-born poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79). Pinsky and Simic will choose a number of poems by Bishop to read along with their own works.

The readings are part of a daylong poetry celebration at The Hanover Theatre beginning at noon Aug. 13. The day will include an open mic, tables with books, journals and CDs by local poets and information on the Worcester poetry scene, a public reception and book signings.

All the events are free.

Pinsky was poet laureate from 1997-2000 during which time he founded the “Favorite Poem Project” in which thousands of Americans (of varying backgrounds, all ages, and from every state) shared their favorite poems.

Simic, poet laureate 2007-08, was born in Belgrade and came to this country with his family, living in Chicago. He has been praised for the “stunning and unusual imagery” of his poetry.

A number of EB 100 celebrations have been taking place in Worcester this year to honor Bishop, who more and more is being is being recognized for the quiet and enduring power of her poetry.

-- Richard Duckett, in The Worcester Telegram and Gazette

2011-07-28T07:12:00.002-03:00

ELIZABETH BISHOP CENTENARY ST JAMES UNITED CHURCH GREAT VILLAGE	ARTS FESTIVAL CONCERTS AUGUST 19 - 21, 2011 7:30 PM CURTAIN
Friday, August 19th 7:30 PM	Lenore Zann and Rosalee Peppard
	Lenore Zann will present a dramatic reading from a play about Elizabeth Bishop by playwright Donna Smyth. Truro native Lenore is an award winning actor, writer, and producer with 33 years experience in film, TV, radio and the theatre.
Nova Scotia Singer, songwriter Rosalee Peppard will sing from her own repertoire and a new composition written in honour of this special Elizabeth Bishop Arts Festival event. A special bonus - meet the winners of the "In the Village" writing competition.

Saturday, August 20th, 7:30 PM	Rankin, Church and Crowe
	Delight to the music of three of Canada's foremost female singer songwriters together on this one stage for an oh so very special evening. Each is a distinctive artist. Performing together, they offer more than the sum of those parts.
Friends and colleagues Raylene Rankin, Cindy Church, and Susan Crowe, all award winning recording artists, bring their varied musical signatures to the stage in a mix of elegance and accessibility. Folk, country, jazz, contemporary singer-songwriter make for richly textured harmonies and a welcoming rapport that invites audiences in, and makes them want to stay.

Sunday, August 21st, 7:30 PM	Suzie Leblanc and Musique Royale
	This special program features soprano Suzie LeBlanc, David Greenberg and Tempest Baroque Ensemble, and Antigonish author Harry Thurston. A selection of pieces will be sung and played in between and during the reading of the poem ‘At the Fishhouses’ by Elizabeth Bishop.
Acadienne Suzie Leblanc is an internationally respected soprano who has performed with the best opera and symphonic companies around the world. This summer she collaborates with Musique Royale to bring us a celebration of music and song in theme with the Centenary Year and this wonderful musical weekend of the Elizabeth Bishop Arts Festival. Merci beaucoup Suzie!

Elizabeth Bishop and the New Yorker

2011-07-15T03:42:00.001-03:00

EB100 WRITING WORKSHOPS - AUGUST 20, 2011

2011-07-10T19:23:00.003-03:00

[Double-click the poster to enlarge -- JB]

“These Fine Mornings: Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker”

2011-07-10T16:42:00.002-03:00

“These Fine Mornings: Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker”

(written by Joelle Biele)

A Dramatic Reading of the letters between

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Elizabeth Bishop

and her New Yorker editors

based on Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence (2011) edited by Joelle Biele

Readers: John Barnstead, Sandra Barry, Suzie LeBlanc and Harry Thurston

Thursday, 21 July 2011

St. James United Church, Great Village, N.S., 7:00 p.m.

Free admission. Everyone welcome.

Free will offering fund-raiser for the Colchester Adult Learning Association

An Elizabeth Bishop Centenary event

These Fine Mornings is a one-act play that tells the story of Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker. It uses excerpts from letters between Bishop and editors Charles Pearce, Katharine White, and Howard Moss. Woven between their correspondence are letters Bishop wrote to friends, internal magazine documents, poems, and questions and answers that appear on proofs. Actors do more than one voice. The play was first read at the University of Chicago’s International House and hosted by the Program in Poetry and Poetics and the Poetry Founda-tion. These Fine Mornings is being read by contemporary poets at a number of venues as part of the celebration of the centenary of Bishop’s birth.

*****

Joelle Biele will also be giving a talk about Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, Room 254, Haley Institute Building, 58 River Road, at 1:30 p.m., 21 July 2011, as part of the NSAC Annual Open House.

**********

Joelle Biele is the author of White Summer and the editor of Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence. A Fulbright scholar in Germany and Poland, she has received awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Poetry Society of America. Her essays and fiction appear in American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Black Warrior Review, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, and New England Review. She has taught American literature and creative writing at the University of Maryland, Goucher College, the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and Jagiellonian University, Poland.

http://joellebiele.com

About Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker:

"Meticulously researched and comprehensively edited... Biele is a scrupulous and painstaking editor of the correspondence, tracking drafts and letters through archives far beyond the New York Public Library." —Fiona Green, Times Literary Supplement

"One of the pleasures of Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker...is snooping around in the excellent footnotes and front matter for the wicked comments she made behind the magazine's back... There are those—and, full disclosure, I am among them—for whom this kind of shop talk from an adored poet and her serious editors is uncut catnip." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Bishop’s long and affectionate relationship with the magazine is thoroughly documented in Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence… Poets and New Yorker aficionados will find it irresistible.” —Dana Gioia, The Wall Street Journal

*****************

The Colchester Adult Learning Association is a charitable non-profit community-based organization and relies on funding and support from groups and individuals who share our belief that every adult should have an equal opportunity to an education. At CALA we believe no one should be left behind no matter what your race, age, or literacy level. The MISSION of the Colchester Adult Learning Association is to assist adults who want to develop skills for lifelong learning so they may participate more fully at home, in the workplace and in the community.

For more information contact Sandra Barry at slbarry@ns.sympatico.ca

Opening of Two Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Art Exhibitions

2011-07-07T09:25:00.010-03:00

Great Village and In the Village Opening on July 5th 2011
Exhibitions are open week days until August 17 at McCarthy Hall, Nova Scotia Community College, Arthur St., Truro, and at the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival, August 18, 20, and 21, Great Village Legion
Sponsored by the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia and the Truro Arts Society

Exhibition Coordinator Bruce Gray (right) introduces EBSNS President John Barnstead

On the evening of Tuesday, 5 July, 2011, two art exhibitions opened in Truro. The exhibitions honour the Nova Scotia roots of Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Elizabeth Bishop. The exhibitions are part of a year long Centenary Celebration of her birth and the exhibitions will also be moved to Great Village for the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival August 19, 20 and 21.

Bruce Gray, the Exhibition Coordinator, welcomed the crowd and introduced Sandra Barry, Nova Scotia’s own Elizabeth Bishop scholar. Sandra captivated the audience with stories about Elizabeth Bishop’s own experiences as a visual artist and as an artist with words. Reading from Bishop’s poem, entitled “Poem,” Barry brought the relevance of Bishops writing full circle and the audience was very interested that the words of an author long dead are still shaping our world.

Bishop scholar Sandra Barry addresses the audience at the exhibition opening.

One of the exhibitions, “In the Village,” asked Maritime Artists to listen to the 55 minute reading of Bishops In the Village at www.elizabethbishop.org. Then artists were challenged to create their own visual works that reflected their own lives. Among the works, Truro photographer, Laurie Gunn did a photo collage called “My Golden Childhood” and Halifax artist Taiya Barss did a painting of a childhood door with childlike drawings scratched into the surface. Shapes of people and events were slowly evident upon close inspection. In this exhibition there was a synergistic energy between the works, because they all delved into personal stories.

Truro Arts Society members Margaret Boyle and Beth McDade view Joy Laking's acrylic self-portrait "In the Marsh" and Laurie Gunn's photo-collage "My Golden Childhood."

The second exhibition , Great Village, was visual works that reflect the village and its location on the shore of the Bay of Fundy. Four weeks ago, artists from around the Maritimes were hosted in Great Village for a weekend of paintings. Many of the works started on this weekend were in the exhibition. Halifax Artists, Susan Tooke and Richard Rudinicki and Portaupique artist, Joy Laking and others all did paintings of the red mud that seems to stretch outward to the horizon at “Low Tide.” Several artists actually captured the house in Great Village where Elizabeth Bishop lived. Two interesting watercolours were done by Ruth Peppard who herself was raised in Great Village like Bishop.

The president of the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia, John Barnstead, toured the audience around the exhibitions and spoke on behalf of the Society. He closed the evening with a reading from Bishop’s poem “The Moose.”

FIRST ENCOUNTER XXXIV: "Profundidad de la superficie" -- a poem for Elizabeth Bishop by Yolanda Pantin

2011-06-25T18:21:00.009-03:00

Profundidad de la superficie

Lo que no saben tus amigos
es que en Great Village, Nueva Escocia,
vivió aquella poeta que tanto hemos leído
y a la que hubiésemos querido visitar
en una peregrinación a sus orígenes,

que es como decir, a su mirada,
recién nacida al mundo
cuando el grito de su madre
se escuchó en todo el pueblo,
hasta su confinamiento.

No gaitas gaélicas,
sino una niña huérfana
que leía el National Geographic
en los consultorios médicos.

De manera que en el relato de viaje
que ahora escuchamos
falta un detalle, qué digo,
el phatos de esa geografía

que ofrece al dolor
madera blanda, escribió LoweIl,
y focas moviendo sus cabezas
igual que girasoles.

Pedalear hasta la orilla,
en una de las islas,
quince millas sin descanso,
entre pescaderías,
siguiendo el rastro que supongo
de rudos navegantes, no
te hará dueño de algo.

Ni haber vivido algunos días,
como nosotras lo hicimos
en aquel poblado, compartiendo
una rutina de trabajo.

Pero ambas tenemos un secreto
que el ímpetu de ese nuevo recorrido,
hoteles, carreteras, barcos que acarrean
bicicletas, de Maine a Nueva Escocia,
no nos habrá robado.

Discreción es la palabra, reticencia, tal
resumen la poética de Elizabeth Bishop.

No nos pertenece su experiencia, desde luego,
ni otro itinerario, pero sobre la brillante superficie
de esos paisajes que hemos anhelado, sí,
haber reconocido por ella
la profundidad de su desconcierto.
******
YOLANDA PANTIN (born in Caracas, 1954) studied letters at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. She was associated with the women poets known as "generación78" and was a member of the "Tráfico" group. She was one of the founders of the Editorial Pequeña Venecia and of the Casa de la Poesía, and has won many poetry prizes. In 2004 she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. She is the author of ten books of poetry; her work was collected in Poesía reunida 1981-2002 (Otero ediciones, Caracas, 2004). She has also published children's books.

“In the Village”: The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Writing Competition, 2011, Winners

2011-06-23T07:21:00.010-03:00

On 18 June 2011, at its Annual General Meeting, the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia announced the winners of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Writing Competition. The winners have been notified and have been invited to attend the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival, 19-21 August, at which time they will receive their prizes and read their winning stories. While not all winners will be able to attend, we are excited to say that a number of them will be present, including our First Prize winner in the Adult (Open), who is from Australia. The awards ceremonies and readings for the various categories will take place throughout the day on Friday, 19 August 2011. For those winers who are not able to attend, arrangements will be made for their submission to be read. The Writing Competition committee will be in touch with everyone who submitted and all participants are invited and most welcome to attend the Arts Festival. Our judges had a difficult time choosing the winners and were impressed by the overall calibre of submissions. The Writing Competition Committee and the EBSNS are grateful to everyone who submitted their work for consideration. We had 106 entries, submitted to all categories. For more information about the competition, the winners and the awards ceremonies, contact Laurie Gunn at laurieegunn@ns.sympatico.ca or Sandra Barry at slbarry@ns.sympatico.ca

CONGRATULATIONS!!

Category – Grades 4-6
First place:
Dakota Warren
Neil’s Harbour, Nova Scotia

Second place:
Maria Duynsiveld
Wallace, Nova Scotia

Third place:
Lauren Kruisselbrink
Kentville, Nova Scotia

Honorable mention:
Ryan Spencer
Great Village, Nova Scotia

Category – Grades 7-9
First place:
Elizabeth Schofield
Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia

Honorable mention:
Ryan Atkinson
Centre Burlington, Nova Scotia

Category – Grades 10-12
First place:
Aaron Holland
Bridgetown, Nova Scotia

Second place:
Tiffany Vincent
Cornerbrook, Newfoundland

Third place:
Morgan Illsley
Bridgetown, Nova Scotia

Honorable mention:
Chris Creene
Bridgetown, Nova Scotia

Category – Post-secondary
Honorable mention:
Sarah Giragosian
Albany, New York

Category – Adult
First place:
Moya Pacey
Garran, Australia

Second place:
Mary Jo Anderson
Banff, Alberta

Third place:
Anne Pollett
Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia

Honorable mention:
Mary Verna Feehan
Providence, Rhode Island

2011-06-22T06:47:00.011-03:00

Rose-Coloured Glasses

Offered the choice I ask for you to choose:
you boggle (“Is my tessitura showing?”),
then proffer me the shorter of the two.
An awkward kiss. I never can remember
which cheek one ought to turn or just how many
times one's lips slip – right to left to right?

I lift it to the light. Striations, bubbles,
some stippled streaks of dots and dashes... scratches
left behind by vehement Old-Fashioneds?
Manhattans left behind on fascist liners –
the cheapest way to Europe in the thirties?
A Brocken bow’s adiabatic site?

Where have I seen them? Yes, I know! – the panes
of wavy glass her lace-hung parlour window
opens to the CAUTION sign outside
the house she grew up in, across from where
the Esso station stood once, oily, homely, –
it’s Wilsons Gas Stops now, of course, at night

as noisy as the spot it’s filled was filthy.
The Harleys belch their little mushroom clouds
as kids race up and squeal their tires and giggle
in G# voices, chains and leather jackets.
One young man dismounts, his fresh-lit Marl-
boro cigarette (imported) drips pink light

on handlebars through still-cupped palm and fingers.
The rain commences, making water music
out of sync with kettle hiss and whistle
drawing me from the window to the kitchen.
I take the almanac from where it hangs
fastened by a steam-damp length of white –

– No. That isn’t string. It’s more like twine.
One end is frazzled where a scrap of paper
dangles still: a smudge of inch-worm green
almost occludes the couple words remaining.
“Rented... . Or maybe “Scented... bank”?
But bank of what? Of roses? No. Too trite –

Anyhow, her house (the first of three)
is yet to come. I’m heading there next week
to decompress and maybe to compose
some sort of thank-you note to you, dear Suzie,
not just for bringing me the armadillo
carved from soapstone, or the nifty slight-

ly scratched - but reeking all the more of meaning! -
drinking glass you got in Ouro Preto –
No. Most of all for you. Your глаз. Your глас.
– The Russian ‘glaçes’ can mean both ‘eye’ and ‘voice’. –
Two glasses. One for S. One - MCB.
Three merging ‘looks’. Three plovers taking flight.

6-8-10 February, 11 June 2011

– JB

News from Halifax

2011-06-20T13:23:00.004-03:00

Elizabeth Bishop's photograph graced the front page of the Sunday, June 19, 2011 edition of the Halifax Chronicle Herald, which included a substantial illustrated article about Bishop's connection with Great Village by Lois Legge. The web edition of the newspaper reproduces the article, and also includes three video presentations. These may be found at the following URL:

http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1249257.html

Our New York Correspondent Writes --

2011-06-19T02:57:00.002-03:00

Elizabeth Bishop: A Discussion of Her Life and Legacy

Event Type:	Poetry Reading
Event Date and Time:	July 14, 2011
Venue: (map)	Madison Square Park At the foot of the Farragut Monument; 25th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues New York, NY

For further information contact:

Leslie Shipman
212-685-0261
www.nationalbook.org

The Literary Litter of the Littoral-Minded: Elizabeth Bishop's Ideas of Disorder at Key West

2011-06-16T07:34:00.007-03:00

[Over the next few weeks we will be posting links to video and audio recordings of some of the presentations given at the recent Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Conference at the University of King's College, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Our first speaker is Zachariah Wells of the University of New Brunswick. -- JB]

Zachariah Wells
[photo: John W. MacDonald]

The Literary Litter of the Littoral-Minded:
Elizabeth Bishop's Ideas of Disorder at Key West

Elizabeth Bishop's poem "The Bight" is a work of almost pure description. Embedded in, and protruding through, the sheer surface of Bishop's poem, however, are a number of literary allusions. Those allusions orient the poem and its author in relation to a number of important precursors, including Baudelaire, Hopkins, Herbert, Wordsworth, Whitman, Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens. In each case, Bishop encodes a fraught exchange, establishing affinities and asserting independence. The explicit subject of "The Bight" is the harbour of Key West, but my reading of the poem demonstrates that it is also concerned with "place" as status, as Bishop negotiates her relationship with the literary canon to which she now unequivocally belongs.

This paper is a condensed excerpt taken from a long essay on "The Bight." Another excerpt will be published soon by The Worcester Review.

EBSNS - ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

2011-06-12T14:26:00.003-03:00

Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

18 June 2011, 1:30 p.m.

Great Village Legion, Great Village, N.S.

~ DISSOLVE IN A DAZZLING DIALECTIC!! ~

In this year of celebration of Elizabeth Bishop’s 100th birthday, the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia is marking its 17th year of existence. Since 1994, the EBSNS has been commited to raising awareness of Elizabeth Bishop’s life and work and of her strong connection to Nova Scotia. The EBSNS is centrally involved in many activities and events to mark Bishop’s centenary, so this year’s AGM will be part birthday party and part celebration update.

After a brief business meeting (to which all are welcome), members of the EBSNS and the public are invited to stay and hear all the exciting news and learn more about the wonderful events yet to come:

Official announcement of winners of “In the Village”: The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Writing Competition.

Unveiling of brochure for the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival,

taking place in Great Village on 19-21 August 2011.

Sandra Barry, author of Elizabeth Bishop: Nova Scotia’s “Home-Made Poet” will be present to sign copies of her book.

Talk with some of the artists involved in upcoming EB100 events.

~ A YEAR OF CELEBRATIONS ~

EB100: The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary celebration in Nova Scotia will be a series of events and activities (concerts, lectures, exhibits, readings, kitchen parties, tours, publications, etc.) Because Bishop was born on 8 February 1911 and died on 6 October 1979, events will occur throughout the province and across this time span, but four points during the year — winter, spring, summer and fall — will bring a particular concentration of activity.

In addition to the events in Great Village and Halifax, many artists — writers, musicians, painters, film-makers, photographers, actors, dancers, artisans, etc. — arts groups and universities in Nova Scotia will create events to mark the centenary.

The Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia is Canada’s only society devoted to celebrating the life and art of the poet Elizabeth Bishop. Educating Nova Scotians and the world about her deep and abiding connections to the province is its purpose.

Who to contact?

John Barnstead, President, EBSNS, EB100 committeeEmail: bishopcentenary@gmail.com

Sandra Barry, Secretary, EBSNS, EB100 committeeEmail: slbarry@ns.sympatico.ca

Joy Laking, EBSNS, EB Centenary Arts Festival committee: laking.joy@gmail.com

Where to find out additional information?

Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia:http://www.elizabethbishopns.org

Elizabeth Bishop Centenary blog: http://elizabethbishopcentenary.blogspot.com

Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Events website:http://elizabethbishopcelebration.ca

TODAY'S EVENTS -- "It Must Be Nova Scotia: Negotiating Place in the Writings of Elizabeth Bishop"

2011-06-12T06:25:00.003-03:00

SUNDAY, 12 JUNE 2011

Coffee – 2nd floor A&A Building

9:00—10:30 a.m. Sessions

Geography V
Location: Haliburton Room (A&A Building)
Chair: Jonathan Ellis

• Sandra Barry, “Shipwrecks and Housewrecks: Elizabeth Bishop’s Sable Island Journal”
• Silvia Maria Guerra Anastásio, Federal University of Bahai, “A Haven for Elizabeth Bishop.”
• Corey Clawson, Utah State University, “Poetic Flyways: Birds as Poets and Travelers in thePoetry and Correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and May Swenson”

Ekphrasis, Rhetoric and Autobiograpy
Location: Board Room (A&A Building)
Chair: Deborah Kennedy

• Joshua Steffey, Marquette University, WI, “Elizabeth Bishop Looking: Portraits of the Artist as a Blind Woman”
• Cynthia Messenger, University of Toronto, “The Rhetoric of an American Voice in Bishop’s Letters and Verse”
• Andre Furlani, Concordia University, “‘irrepairable (rhyme)’: Elizabeth Bishop’s Homesickness”

10:30—11:00 a.m. Coffee Break – 2nd floor A&A Building

11:00 a.m.—12:30 p.m.

Finale: Round Table
Location: Alumni Hall
Chair: Alexander MacLeod
Participants: Eleanor Cook, Suzie LeBlanc, Colm Tóibín, Thomas Travisano

**********

2:00-3:30 p.m., boarding at 1:45 p.m.

Halifax Harbour Cruise (http:www.mtcw.ca/FleetMarII.php), together with participants
from the “a past that never has been present”: International Art – Philosophy –
History Conference (www.originary past.ca) aboard the Mar II Departure from Queen’s
Wharf (behind the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic on Lower Water Street). Free of
charge (with cash bar on board)

TODAY'S EVENTS -- "It Must Be Nova Scotia: Negotiating Place in the Writings of Elizabeth Bishop"

2011-06-11T06:52:00.002-03:00

SATURDAY, 11 JUNE 2011

8:00—9:00 a.m. Registration/Coffee – 2nd floor Arts & Admin. Building Kings University.

9:00—10:30 a.m. Session

Space, Orientation and Disorientation
Location: Haliburton Room (A&A Building)
Chair: Louise Burley

• David Jarraway, University of Ottawa, “‘The Play Between the Spaces’: Elizabeth Bishop, Frank Gehry, and The Problematic of ‘Home’”
• Paola Nardi, Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, “Creolized spaces in the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop”
• Ross Leckie, University of New Brunswick, “Disorientation, Blank Spots, and Vertigo in the Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop”

Money and Science
Location: Board Room (A&A Building)
Chair: Cynthia Messenger

• Eric Lindstrom, University of Vermont, “Money, Painting, and ‘Poem’: Elizabeth Bishop’s World Picture”
• Leslie Wooten, Arizona State University, “Elizabeth Bishop: Revisioning Charles Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection”
• Kristen Reed, University College – Virginia Commonwealth University, “Symmetry and
Self: Martin Gardner, Elizabeth Bishop, and ‘The Gentleman of Shalott’”

10:45 a.m. – Loading of bus

11:00 a.m. – Depart for Great Village

12:30 p.m. – Arrive in Great Village

12:30—2:30 p.m. Box lunch pick up – St. James United Church – Touring Great Village and the Elizabeth Bishop House – Tour Guides: Sandra Barry, Jonathan Ellis

2:30—4:00 p.m. Session

Sanctuary, St. James United Church
Chair: Sandra Barry

Literally In the Village
• Brian Bartlett reading “In Bishop’s Village”
• Tomas Travisano, Hartwick College, “Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of Three Nations?”
• Michiru Oguchi, Japan, “The ‘Pitch’ of the Village”
• Susie DeCoste, University of Waterloo, “‘How Late to Have Begun Your Travels!: Maritime Regional Identity in Bishop’s ‘Memories of Uncle Neddy’”

4:15 p.m. – Depart from Great Village

5:45 p.m. – Arrive in Halifax

6:00—7:30 p.m. – Free time

7:30—9:00 p.m.

Marie Claire Blais on Elizabeth Bishop – Alumni Hall

9:00 p.m. – Post talk reception – King’s University Library

TODAY'S EVENTS -- "It Must Be Nova Scotia: Negotiating Place in the Writings of Elizabeth Bishop"

2011-06-10T07:54:00.004-03:00

FRIDAY, 10 JUNE 2011

8:00—9:00 a.m. Registration/Coffee – 2nd floor Arts & Administration Building, Kings University.

9:00—10:30 a.m. Sessions

Key West

Location: Board Room (A&A Building)
Chair: Ross Leckie

• Zachariah Wells, University of New Brunswick, “The Literary Litter of the Littoral-Minded: Elizabeth Bishop’s Ideas of Disorder at Key West”
• Adele Barclay, McGill University, “Subjective Geographies: Questions of Epistemology, Poetry, and Place in Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetry and Letters”
• Marvin Campbell, University of Virginia, “‘Doing More with Key West’: Elizabeth Bishop’s Hemispheric Turn”

Translation

Location: Haliburton Room (A&A Building)
Chair: John Barnstead

• Orlando Jose Hernandez, Hostos Community College-CUNY, “Elizabeth Bishop and Translation: A Geography of Cultural Exchanges”
• Elzbieta Wojcik-Leese, University of Copenhagan, “How Clouds Change Shape in Eighteen Words: ‘Sestina’ and its Two Polish Translations”
• Shao-Pin Luo, Dalhousie University, “The ‘One Art’ of Translation: A Comparative Analysis of Chinese Translations of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One Art’”

10:30—11:00 a.m. Coffee Break – President’s Lodge

11:00a.m.—12:30 p.m. Sessions

Geography IV

Location: Haliburton Room (A&A Building)
Chair: Susie DeCoste

• Linda Anderson, Newcastle University, UK, “Dubious Topography: Space and Time in Bishop’s ‘The End of March’”
• J.R. Carpenter, University College Falmouth, Cornwall, UK, “Writing Coastlines: Estuaries, Islands and Beaches in the Writings of Elizabeth Bishop”
• Kelly C. MacPhail, Université de Montreal, “Geography of the Poem: Elizabeth Bishop’s Form and the Production of Meaning”

Bishop and Others (Herbert, Hopkins, Moore, Auden, Heaney)

Location: Board Room (A&A Building)
Chair: Brian Bartlett

• Jonathan Ellis, University of Sheffield, UK, “Bishop’s England”
• Vidyan Ravinthiran, Balliol College, Oxford, UK, “Auden and Bishop: Another Look at ‘At the Fishhouses’”
• Connor O’Callaghan, Sheffield Hallam University, UK, “Hyphens by Hopkins: The Compounding Influence of Hopkins on Bishop, of Bishop on Heaney”

12:30—1:30 p.m. LUNCH – Prince Hall

1:30—2:30 p.m. Session

Reminiscences of Elizabeth Bishop

Location: Alumni Hall
Alexander MacLeod in conversation with David Staines about Elizabeth Bishop.

2:30—3:00 p.m. Coffee Break – 2nd floor Arts and Admin. Building (outside Board Room)

3:00—4:30 p.m. Sessions

On “Crusoe in England”

Location: Haliburton Room (A&A Building)
Chair: Peter O’Brien

• Sue Goyette reading: “On Hearing Elizabeth Bishop Read Her ‘Crusoe in England’”
• David Wheatley, University of Hull, UK, “‘Now I live here, another island’: Elizabeth Bishop, ‘Crusoe in England’, and the Importance of Elsewhere”
• Sara Meyer, Gordon College of Education, Haifa, Israel, “The ‘Un-Rediscovered, Un-Renamable’ Island—Exile, Placenessess, and the Poetics of Autobiography in Bishop’s ‘Crusoe in England’”

Miniature and Maternal

Location: Haliburton Room (A&A Building)
Chair: Len Diepeveen

• Anne Shifrer, Utah State University, “Home Bodies: The Somatic in Elizabeth Bishop’s May Swenson’s Recollections of Home”
• Anne Koval, Mount Allison University, “The Miniature World of Elizabeth Bishop”

5:30—7:30 p.m. – Official Reception – President’s Lodge (food and wine)

7:30—9:30 p.m.

Colm Tóibín on Elizabeth Bishop.
Location: Alumni Hall

Updated URL for "It Must Be Nova Scotia: Negotiating Place in the Writings of Elizabeth Bishop"

2011-06-05T15:59:00.003-03:00

Here is a link to further information about the two keynote addresses to be delivered at the upcoming EB100 conference at the University of King's College, June 10 through June 12:

http://www.ukings.ca/event/colm-toibin-and-marie-claire-blais-speak-kings

Bishop scholars from all over the world will be gathering this weekend to ponder her work in Nova Scotia, her childhood home. We hope to see you there!

It Must Be Nova Scotia: Negotiating Place in the Writings of Elizabeth Bishop

2011-06-04T07:53:00.020-03:00

If the amazing Elizabeth Bishop tribute concerts happening now during Scotia Festival of Music are not enough Bishop celebration for Nova Scotians, we are about to host a group of Bishop scholars and devoted readers from around the world for "It Must Be Nova Scotia: Negotiating Place In the Writings of Elizabeth Bishop," a symposium taking place from 9-12 June, 2011, at University of King's College in Halifax. Find out more information about the symposium here.

The symposium starts on Thursday evening with a Scotia Festival concert featuring the world premiere of a setting of Bishop's poem "Brazil, January 1st, 1502" by composer and musician Dinuk Wijeratne. There are three days of amazing presentations, conversations, round tables, and two keynote addresses by Irish writer Colm Toibin and Quebec writer Marie Claire Blais.

We are even exporting the whole event to Great Village -- a session will take place in St. James Church in Great Village, N.S., on Saturday, 11 June 2011, from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m.

At this mid-way point in the celebrations of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary, Halifax is the place to be!

Scotia Festival of Music & Elizabeth Bishop

2011-05-28T08:25:00.009-03:00

On 30 May 2011, Scotia Festival of Music, one of Nova Scotia’s premiere annual music events, opens in Halifax, N.S. It runs until 12 June.

EB100 is thrilled that as part of the festival’s impressive two-week-long programme, there are five special concerts in honour of and in tribute to Elizabeth Bishop, part of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary celebrations.

To learn more about Scotia Festival of Music, go to its website: http://www.scotiafestival.ns.ca/

For tickets: call Scotia Festival of Music: 902-429-9467 or 1-800-528-9883 or online at the url above

Special Bishop concerts:

1 June 2011
Suzie LeBlanc recital – with harpischordist Alexander Weimann
7:00 p.m. St. George’s Round Church, 2222 Brunswick St.
http://www.scotiafestival.ns.ca/2011/programs-2011/recital-1?ee_id=280

3 June 2011
“At the Fishhouses” recital – with Tempest Baroque Ensemble and Suzie LeBlanc and RH Thomson
7:00 p.m., St. George’s Round Church, 2222 Brunswick St.
http://www.scotiafestival.ns.ca/2011/programs-2011/recital-1?ee_id=280

5 June 2011
Alexander Weimann recital
2:00 p.m., The Music Room, 6181 Lady Hammond Rd.
http://www.scotiafestival.ns.ca/2011/programs-2011/recital-3-elmar-oliveira-and-john-novacek?ee_id=284

7 June 2011
Highlight Concert – with Super Nova String Quartet and Blue Engine String Quartet
(includes performance of setting of Bishop’s “Sandpiper” by John Plant)
7:00 p.m., Sir James Dunn Theatre, Dalhousie Arts Centre
http://www.scotiafestival.ns.ca/2011/programs-2011/highlight-concert-4?ee_id=287

9 June 2011
Highlight Concert – with a WORLD PREMIERE performance of a setting of Bishop’s “Brazil, January 1st, 1502,” by Dinuk Wijeratne (setting for piano, oboe, bass, percussion, voice and Capoeira dancers!!)
7:00 p.m., Sir James Dunn Theatre, Dalhousie Arts Centre
http://www.scotiafestival.ns.ca/2011/programs-2011/highlight-concert-6?ee_id=289

Music and Medicine -- and Elizabeth Bishop

2011-05-25T19:35:00.003-03:00

On Friday, 27 May, 2011, The Medical Humanities--H.E.A.L.S. Program of Dalhousie University in Halifax, N.S., presents its "Music -- the Best Medicine" -- an annual showcase of the Dalhousie Medical School talent. Featuring the Dalhousie Medical School Chorale, The Vocal Chords and The TestosterTONES. This concert, taking place at Faith Tabernacle at Windsor and Summit Streets, at 7:30 p.m. is sponsored by the Music-In-Medicine Programme of Dalhousie in partnership with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia. (Tickets are $15 and can be reserved at 494-6574 -- and available at the door.)

Why do I mention this event, which in and of itself will be a fun time? I have been told by one of the choir members that one of selections chosen for the Chorale to sing is a setting of "I am in need of music" ("Sonnet"), a poem by Elizabeth Bishop. This selection was made because the choir admires the setting, and I think they had no idea that they are performing in the midst of Nova Scotia's year-long Elizabeth Bishop Centenary celebrations.

Bishop was fascinated by all things medical. Indeed, she almost abandoned poetry at Vassar to study science and become a doctor. Marianne Moore talked her out of it. Her own health issues (asthma and allergies) and the fact that her mother and two maternal aunts and two maternal cousins were nurses, makes it no surprise that Bishop had a life-long interest in all things medical. Years ago I gave a presentation to the History of Medicine Society (I think that was around 1997) -- also connected to the Dalhousie Medical school, about Bishop's interest in medicine. So it seems entirely appropriate that this setting of Bishop, which is about the healing powers of poetry (really of all the arts), be performed in this setting, by this particularly ensemble.

What intrigues me is how we are seeing in Nova Scotia our beloved poet find her way into the wider society and culture, taken up by artists of all disciplines and embraced by all types of readers. Perhaps our message about Bishop and her connection to and influence on Nova Scotia, is sinking in.

Scotia Festival of Music is fast approaching and there will be five special Elizabeth Bishop tribute concerts. The Elizabeth Bishop Symposium at University of King's College is also nearly upon us. We will be posting information about both these events in the coming days.

I would have happily put in a link for the Music -- the Best Medicine concert, but there was no website listed on the poster. But do your own search and sites do turn up for related activities.

Two recent EB100 events -- a brief report

2011-05-23T11:18:00.016-03:00

Music and Painting: On 5 May 2011, the folks from Scotia Festival of Music went to the Great Village School, along with the Halifax ensemble The Blue Engine String Quartet, to hold a morning of painting and music session with the children (Grades Primary to Four). While the children painted posters for Scotia Festival, the quartet played the music of Mozart, Handel and others. It was a lively, fun morning for everyone and some fabulous works of art were created. Here is a glimpse of the gathering.

Photo by Linda Shears

The 2011 season of Scotia Festival of Music begins on 29 May in Halifax, N.S. This year there will be five special concerts in tribute to Elizabeth Bishop, in celebration of her centenary. Check out the schedule for this upcoming season on the Scotia Festival website. We will be posting more information about the concerts in days to come.

A book launch: On Saturday 14 May I had the great delight to launch my new Bishop book, Elizabeth Bishop: Nova Scotia's "Home-Made" Poet, at the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village (I had a launch in Halifax a few days earlier, which was also great fun, but it was so nice and right to gather in Bishop's childhood home and share this book with the folks of Great Village). Here are a few images from that day. I want to thank everyone who came out for the launches. You can order the book online at the publisher's website: Nimbus Publishing -- or, if you are in Nova Scotia, pick it up at your local independent bookstore.

Photos by Brenda Barry

Another Little Technical Note

2011-05-18T12:46:00.006-03:00

I will be leaving Oakland City early tomorrow morning for Texas to attend my nephew Robert's graduation from the University of Texas at Austin, and returning late Monday night. This is why the "Today in Bishop" entries for May 18-23 have been posted en masse. Please don't forget about the poetry reading at Five Islands this weekend! -- JB

Nova Scotia Poets' Tribute to Elizabeth Bishop

2011-05-15T14:25:00.012-03:00

NOVA SCOTIA POETS PAY TRIBUTE TO ELIZABETH BISHOP
A reading and conversation
21 May 2011, 1:00-3:00 p.m.
Mo’s at Five Islands, 951 Highway 2
Free. Everyone welcome!
An Elizabeth Bishop Centenary, 2011 Event

~ DISSOLVE IN A DAZZLING DIALECTIC ~

~~~~~
Some of Nova Scotia’s best poets gather to pay tribute to Elizabeth Bishop and celebrate her centenary. Reading from Bishop and their own poetry, and in lively conversation, these poets will highlight the idea of influence and explore the importance of poetry in our culture.

Poets include: Brian Bartlett, Rosaria Campbell, Joanne Light, Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Chad Norman, Harry Thurston, Margo Wheaton and Paul Zann. Hosted by Sandra Barry and Dick Lemon.

Five Islands, N.S., was a literal and iconic geography for Bishop, appearing in her much beloved poem “The Moose.” She knew the history and landscape well. Mo’s at Five Islands is an exciting spot on the road that runs along Cobequid Bay and Minas Basin. It has developed a reputation as a place for good food and art and lively music and literary gatherings. Come join the party on Saturday, 21 May 2011, at 1:00 p.m.

The Poets

Brian Bartlett is a Halifax poet whose recent collections are The Watchmaker's Table (Acorn-Plantos Award) and Wanting the Day: Selected Poems (Atlantic Book Award), as well as the chapbook Being Charlie. He's also edited a book of prose on the poet Don McKay and three volumes of selected poems -- by Don Domanski, James Reaney, and Robert Gibbs. Since 1990 he has taught Creative Writing and literature at Saint Mary's University.

Rosaria Campbell writes short fiction and essays and on occasion tries her hand at poetry. Originally from Campbell’s Creek, Nfld, she now lives on a small farm in Wallace Station, N.S., and works at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro. She is a particular admirer of the poets from the first half of the twentieth century.

As Gillian Wallace writes, “Joanne Light speaks her poems into the audience’s air with a marvelous strength, becoming the voice she is speaking. It is so exciting to hear her. Her fusion poem with a Spanish classical guitarist that was one of the pieces I had the privilege of hearing recently was beautifully wrought, twining around the notes until I could see the images she was creating right in front of my eyes. I hadn’t been a huge fan of Spoken Word poetry until I heard her. Now I know what it can offer.”

Lorri Neilsen Glenn is a poet and essayist with four collections of poetry, the most recent being Lost Gospels (Brick Books, 2010). She was Poet Laureate for Halifax from 2005-2009, where she lives. Her collection of essays on grief and loss will be published this fall by Haglos Press.

Chad Norman enjoys the pace of living beside the Atlantic. Over the years he has published in many journals in several countries, occasionally making it into one which actually pays a few dollars. His most recent book, Ants On the Rainbow: Poems To, For, And About Children was published by Undertow Press in October 2010. His collection Hugging the Huge Father is due out in 2011.

Harry Thurston is a poet and author of more than twenty books, including Animals Of My Own Kind: New and Selected Poems and The Atlantic Coast: A Natural History, forthcoming in the fall of 2011.

Margo Wheaton lives in Halifax where she completed a Master’s degree in English at Dalhousie University. Her poetry has appeared in a number of publications including The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, CV2, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, and Undercurrents: New Voices in Canadian Poetry. Her work received the Alfred G. Bailey award from the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick for best unpublished poetry manuscript and she is currently completing a first collection of poems.

Paul Zann is a much-published author. An adult novel, a book of poetry, three children’s novels, a collection of humorous essays, a one-person play, and a book of nonsense verses for children, illustrate the versatility of his writing interests. These books have been published by five Canadian publishers.

For more information contact Sandra Barry at slbarry@ns.sympatico.ca

Technical Note

2011-05-13T16:46:00.003-03:00

Until June 1 we will be posting the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday entries for "Today in Bishop" as a block on Friday, due to the complications arising from working at quite a fair remove from our usual haunts (Halifax, Nova Scotia ==> Oakland City, Indiana). Thank you for your patience!

Launch of Elizabeth Bishop: Nova Scotia’s “Home-Made” Poet, by Sandra Barry

2011-05-05T19:12:00.010-03:00

I am delighted to say that my book about Elizabeth Bishop will soon be launched. Those who know me understand that getting to this point has been s a long, complex journey. Nimbus is calling it a “pictorial biography” which I like – it is a little book with lots of interesting pictures – which is always fun. A brief account of her life with a focus on her connection to Nova Scotia, this book will, I hope, be a good introduction for many Nova Scotians and Canadians who have yet to discover her – and a way for the wider world to learn more about the deep and abiding link she had with her childhood home. Those who know me understand that this little book is not all I have to say about Elizabeth Bishop, but it is a compression I feel good about because I think it is of a size that will draw in readers who do not want to wade through academic or critical works about this important poet.

I am most grateful to all the people who have supported me over the past twenty years, as I have explored and lived with Elizabeth Bishop and Nova Scotia, family and friends without whom my work would not be possible. I will not name them because they know who they are and I hope they know the depth of my gratitude.

I am launching it in Halifax on 10 May (the above poster gives the details) and then in Great Village on Saturday, 14 May 2011, at 1:30 p.m. in the Elizabeth Bishop House (8740 Highway 2, Great Village, N.S.) – this latter is very special and appropriate because the EB House was the centre of her childhood universe and now has become a place where artists find inspiration and quietude to create.

The book is be available locally (in NS and across Canada) at bookstores -- please try to buy it at an independent bookstore (in Halifax I am particularly partial to BookMark). You can also get it through the publisher: www.nimbus.ca. However, I know a many people order online. It is available through Amazon.ca and in the fall will be available through Amazon.com. The ISBN is: 978155109234.

Scotia Festival rally on May 4th at 7pm

2011-05-03T21:07:00.007-03:00

A reminder

On Wednesday, May 4th at 7pm in The Music Room, 6181 Lady Hammond Rd., Halifax, Nova Scotia, Scotia Festival of Music is holding a rally for its upcoming Festival in June 2011.

Soprano Suzie Le Blanc will sing Mozart's fiery motet "Exultate Jubilate" with pianist Simon Docking and the performance will be followed by a description of the main events of the Festival including five concerts given in honour of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary (EB100). These concerts will feature International and local artists such as RH Thompson (Toronto) Alexander Weimann (Munich & Montreal), Blue Engine String Quartet (Halifax) Tempest Baroque Ensemble (Halifax), Suzanne Lemieux (Halifax) and Suzie LeBlanc (Montreal & Halifax). Performances will include works from the Baroque and Classical eras as well as Premieres of Canadian compositions by composers Dinuk Wijeratne and John Plant.

Please join us and bring a friend who may enjoy "Halifax's Rite of Spring" with Scotia Festival of Music.

Scotia Festival of Music is an annual two-week chamber music festival held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, during the first two weeks of June, boasting over fifty public events. Featuring international talent of the highest caliber, the festival offers Highlight Concerts, Recitals, open rehearsals, masterclasses, coaching sessions, lectures, and more.

FIRST ENCOUNTER XXXIII: Bishop’s “Roosters” by Elizabeth Jones

2011-04-30T07:32:00.007-03:00

Recently I’ve been reading and rereading Bishop’s “Roosters” in order to compare it to a short story by Chekhov. Not unsurprisingly, the “old holy sculpture” that Bishop evokes representing “one small scene” of Christ, Peter and “in between / a little cock … / carved on a dim column in the travertine” (stanzas 29-31) set me wondering what and where this sculpture might be. It didn’t sound like something Bishop had invented. Was it something she had seen in Europe? From my own limited sightseeing, I remembered a vivid depiction of such a scene in S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, but this was, of course, done in mosaic. A friend who had studied art history remembered illustrations in a book of this scene carved on sarcophagi of the early centuries A.D. The next obvious step was to go to the Internet where I found this article: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3046629, which excitingly went further than just answering my question.

Entitled “The Iconography of the Cock on the Column” and written by S.A. Callisen, it appeared in The Art Bulletin in June 1939, not long before Bishop started on “Roosters”. The gist of this article is that the image of a cock on a column in Christian art was adapted from a pagan motif that went back centuries. Even a quick perusal of the article makes clear how much Bishop is indebted to it for images, ideas, and phrases, particularly in the second section of the poem, where hope responds to despair. And oh joy, it features an illustration of the “Christ, Peter and cock” scene carved on one side of a sarcophagus in the Lateran museum, the very scene that Bishop describes! (Only the cock is not so “little” but the size of a turkey.) One can see too (something that always puzzled me) why she describes Christ as “stand(ing) amazed”. However, Bishop’s scene is a composite, as the inscription “gallus canit; / flet Petrus” appears, not under the sculpture illustrated, but under another depiction of St. Peter weeping, mentioned but not reproduced in the article. The comparison between Magdalen’s sin “of the flesh” and St. Peter’s “of the spirit”, the “bronze cock on a porphyry pillar” near the Lateran, its association with the erring “Prince of the Apostles”, the cock as weathervane on basilica (“churches” in Callisen) and barn, all appear in the article. Only four of the thirteen stanzas of this section could have been written without reference to it.

What the article also cleared up for me were two of the three allusions to the Greeks in stanzas 17 and 18. On page 170 of the article, mention is made of “the ancient sport of shooting at a rooster placed on top of a column”, something I had never read of anywhere else. On page 166 we discover that it was Pausanias, the Greek geographer, who explained, concerning a statue of Athena, that a cock was perched on her helmet “because cocks are very combative.” (The third allusion, that to a sacrificed cock, I’ve always taken to be a reference to Socrates’ request, before he took the hemlock, that his friend, Crito, should sacrifice a cock to Asclepius. The cock’s struggling I attributed to Bishop’s imagination. But perhaps this alludes to something else Bishop read.)

Also striking is Callisen’s observation (p.173) that “the feathers of the rooster” on the sarcophagus mentioned above are so precisely carved as to “seem almost to have been inspired by some metallic prototype”. Could this have inspired Bishop’s image of “those metallic feathers” that “oxidize” in stanza 26? Or did it just corroborate her own observation of the metallic sheen on rooster’s feathers?

As this article is available to anyone who can access the JSTOR archive, I can’t think of it as a discovery. However, I have not as yet had time to do a thorough search to see if someone has written on it, noting what Bishop borrowed from the article and how she used these borrowings. In the meantime I thought that anyone interested in “Roosters” might like to read it. However, fascinating though it is as a source on which Bishop drew, and then consider it as an example of how an artist refashions borrowings, one can still appreciate this fine poem without reading the article, much as one can, on a larger scale, appreciate Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra without recourse to the relevant part of North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives.

Read "Roosters" here.

{Ed. note: While Elizabeth’s piece is technically not her first encounter with Bishop – she has been reading Bishop for many years – it is a particularly interesting close encounter, which needed to be shared for its discovery of this important source for Bishop. If anyone else has made this link, let us know in a comment or drop us an email.}

EB Projected: Short Films + Videos about Elizabeth Bishop -- launch screening

2011-04-25T18:36:00.014-03:00

To mark Elizabeth Bishop’s centenary, the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia (EBSNS) join forces with interdisciplinary artist Linda Rae Dornan and Bishop scholar Sandra Barry to present new and old short films about Elizabeth Bishop. Dipping into the CBC and CBS archives, tapping the creative minds of Maritime, American and British filmmakers, collecting the best videos of the YouTube explosion, this screening and discussion will give a wide-ranging view and interpretation of this beloved poet, who was herself fascinated by film and cinema.

New short films by Suzie Hannah (UK), Elli Heartz (NB), Joy Laking/Laurie Gunn (NS), Linda Rae Dornan (NB), John Scott (NS/USA), and Angela Thibodeau (NB).

Better than the wedding of Will and Kate!!

*****
Screening will take place on Friday, 29 April 2011, 7:00 p.m.
The Music Room, 6181 Lady Hammond Road, Halifax, N.S.
Free. Everyone Welcome!

*****

First Take: Bishop and Cinema – Background

Elizabeth Bishop had a life-long interest in cinema. From her early encounters with the silent films of Buster Keaton in the 1920s to her strong opinions on the iconic Brazilian film “Black Orpheus” of 1959, Bishop was fascinated by this medium as expression and art form. So convinced was she of Keaton as consummate artist that she wrote a poem in praise: “I was made at right angles to the world / and I see it so. I can only see it so.”

Elizabeth Bishop has been herself the subject of film. The first documentary about her was done by PBS in 1988-1989 in its “Voices and Visions” series. Two short features were done by CBS (1994) and CBC (2002), and a short film by Nexus Media (2005). With the exponential growth of YouTube in the past few years, dozens of videos have appeared, most connected to her poems: countless readers around the world recording themselves reading her work.

The Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia has set up its own Bishop YouTube channel:
(http://www.youtube.com/user/ElizabethBishop100#p/a) --
or click on the link at the top of the page.

With Bishop’s interest in film and cinema and the film activity around her over the years, a film project is an important addition to her centenary celebrations. A call was issued to filmmakers to create new short films in honour of Bishop’s 100th birthday. Curated by Linda Rae Dornan, the screening offers some of these new films with some old works about Bishop and inspired by her art.

Linda Rae Dornan is an interdisciplinary artist creating performance, video and audio art about interior spaces and processes of bring, using language, memory, sound and body. She lives in Sackville, N.B., and has had her work shown across Canada and the United States, and in South American and Europe. She has an audio art radio show every week on CHMA 100.9FM, the campus/community voice of the Tantramar marshes (11 p.m. AST, available online) – http://www.lrdornan.ca

Sandra Barry is a poet and independent scholar. She has researched and written about the life and work of Elizabeth Bishop for over twenty years. She is a co-founder, past president and current secretary of the EBSNS. She is a co-owner and administrator of the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village, N.S. Her book Elizabeth Bishop: An Archival Guide to Her Life in Nova Scotia was published by the EBSNS in 1996. She co-edited with Gwen Davies and Peter Sanger Divisions of the Heart: Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Memory and Place, published by Gaspereau Press in 2002. Her book Elizabeth Bishop: Nova Scotia’s “Home-Made” Poet is forthcoming from Nimbus Publishing in May 2011. She is co-host of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary blog.