Over one month last autumn I shlumped around in robe and slippers all morning and part of the afternoon feeling sorry for myself. I was convalescing from a brutal cough. In the evenings I plugged in to the boob tube. (Boob as in booby, but was it me or the characters on TV who were […]
I started writing poems in my teens and I was one of the few who didn’t stop. I started doing spoken word in my late twenties. In between those times a lot of things about the Canadian poetry scene put me off my food: I couldn’t find one poet who had anything good to say […]
Writer Frances Brandow and I met in 2003 for coffee at the Brûlerie near the Université de Montréal, where one of her daughters was studying. She was small, with fading auburn hair and eyes the colour of cornflowers. Scottish looks, which surprised me because she lived in the Beauce region of Quebec. We talked for […]
Last time I was in Paris, two men travelling on my train got into a fight when one dared address the other using tu. “Vous m’avez tutoyé, monsieur! Vous m’avez tutoyé!” A face was slapped. A beret was knocked askew. Their hullaballoo over tu reminded me of the time I was at my Montreal gym […]
