Story in NeoOpsis (and WWC/Chatauqua)

NeoOpsis 28 is now available to order, and it includes my story 'Broken Dishes'. Here's the link:

http://www.neo-opsis.ca/Twenty-Eight.htm

When Words Collide was wonderful as usual. Lots of inspiration and good company, and I also got some practical advice about self publishing. I am leaning more and more towards going that route with my current novel. I just need to find time for a few final revisions and figuring out how to format it and making a cover and all the other stuff that I'm sure I'll discover needs doing. . .

The Chatauqua event also went well, and gave me an excuse to explore some really interesting areas of history. Dawn Blue was great to work with: it was one of those cases where we were very much in tune with our ideas of what sort of stories to tell, and the set just naturally came together.

Read 'By Hadrian's Wall' online! Also Pure Spec

I decided to try submitting a story to Vocal Media / Omni. This is a platform that, as far as I understand it, works sort of like youtube for writing in that if you get enough views on the things you post, it is monetized. I am hoping to get more stories and poems up and see whether I can build a presence there. In any case my first story is up now. It called 'By Hadrian's Wall' and is a sort of quirky future fantasy piece about glaciers advancing and about fairies and about the importance of heritage and the ties between people, land, and livestock.

Here is the link to my author page, from which you can view (and hopefully read!) the story:

https://futurism.media/authors/jyt-kennedy

While I'm posting, I also wanted to mention that I had a terrific time at Pure Speculation this year. I am so grateful to all the friends who helped me bring Overtime - The Musical to life, and also the people who came out on a Saturday morning to support us. The whole event just had a wonderful, positive community feel to it, and the programming was great. I was also introduced to the work of Zenna Henderson, who I need to read more of! (Inner grammar nazi: that should be 'of whom I need to read more' I think in correct old fashioned Standard English. . .but I just would feel like a Jane Austen character or something putting it that way. . .)

Upcoming Events

I have a lot going on the next few weeks:

July 26 I am doing a song for Weird Al Karaoke at the Buckingham on Whyte.

July 28-29 I am at the Pure Speculation festival where, among other things, I am going to be presenting my musical version of Charles Stross' story Overtime, with a wonderful group of my friends (and children) that I managed to talk into singing and dressing up as zombies and things of that sort.

August 11-13 I am at When Words Collide in Calgary

August 16th I am doing a set of historical Canadian stories for Strathcona County's Chatauqua event, along with Dawn Blue.

Also, when I came on this blog to post, I discovered that most of the text of my last post somehow came out as black-on-black, which hopefully is fixed now. The poem is, in fact, more than one line long.

Lesser Slave Lake

I went to Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park last week with my daughter's Environmental Education class. Here are a couple pictures and an attempt at a Sapphic Ode.

Under weighted clouds now the rippling blue lake,

pale as fairy's eyes in the land of songbirds,

calls the shy spring from beneath the bleached blond

grass to arise fresh.

Birches shine white, echoed by juiceless driftwood.

Left behind by winter, a lonesome snow ridge

hides behind sand dunes and the fiery dogwood,

cool in the damp wind.

Saskatoon twigs rise into gleaming gemstone

buds and starkly black, among muted wood tones,

trunks of burnt trees linger erect like charcoal

marks on the landscape.

Further off, bird banders are watching flocks swoop,

knowing all their patterns of flight and shrill calls.

Morning brings them captives in spider web nets,

tangled and wide eyed.

Hands as gently firm as those of midwives

hold the small captives as they stretch and measure.

Softer yet, breath rustles the feathers, flows through,

revealing pink flesh.

Soon the task is done and the bird is set free.

Up it flies now, grazing the top-most tree limbs,

scenting nesting grounds in its waking homeland

north of the pale lake.

Storytelling Conference

http://www.storytellers-conteurs.ca/en/conference/Edmonton-2017-Conference.html

The Storytellers of Canada/Conteurs du Canada annual conference is coming up in just a couple of weeks, from May 22 through 28. This event rotates through the country, and having it here in Edmonton is a wonderful chance to experience some of the best storytellers from all over Canada. The link above goes to the webpage with all the details, but I would like to highlight a few things:

On Saturday and Sunday afternoon there will be free storytelling sets in Old Strathcona. There are both adult-oriented and child-oriented venues, and a great variety of tellers. There are also story concerts and slams on several evenings (there is a small charge for these, and some are adults only) including a Francophone concert.

There is also a free introductory storytelling workshop during the day on Wednesday, taught by MaryAnn Lippiatt. MaryAnn is a very entertaining teller, who I am sure will put together a fun and memorable session. The workshop is geared toward adults, but motivated teens may also register.

We are still in need of volunteers. Help is particularly needed during the Saturday and Sunday afternoon sessions. Also, I am running a merchandise table for the conference and am looking for helpers on Thursday morning and Sunday afternoon. If anyone sees this and feels inspired to help, email me at jytkennedy@gmail.com and I can give you more details.

The Beast

I have been doing some songwriting lately and there is one song I wrote that I particularly wanted to put out there before the upcoming anniversary of the Fort McMurray fire. It is not very polished but I hope that some will appreciate the sentiment. I am still trying to figure out how to insert the mp3 file into a post, but for now it is on my webpage here:
https://sites.google.com/site/jytkennedy/assorted-things/audio-files

Romeo and Juliet

I went to a dance show last week (by toygunstheatre.com) that was based on the story of Romeo and Juliet, though more in the sense of riffing off the story than telling it. It was done with a wonderful sense of humour that had me laughing out loud many times, and I enjoyed the show thoroughly. A few days down the road, though, I find myself thinking of a particular issue I have with the way many people approach that play.

I feel that the main tragic hero of the show is Juliet's father, Capulet. It is his hubris that drives the plot into tragedy, and he meets with one of the most terrible retributions imaginable for his pride. It seems to me a far easier thing to merely die oneself than to be responsible for the death of one's child, and he fully realizes his responsibility by the end of the play. To some extent hubris is a characteristic of the two clans as a whole, not just Capulet, and they share in the tragedy. But Romeo and Juliet are not really tragic heroes. Their mistakes are innocent ones, and the warning the play seeks to give us is not about the dangers of falling in love.

This was a big part of my issue with the Citadel production of the play a couple years ago. Capulet's part was cut to the point where he came across as a simple two dimensional villain. And to my mind that missed the whole point of the play. Perhaps this is a case where what speaks to me in the story is different from what speaks to others, but I will point out that Shakespeare explores a similar theme in other plays, most notably King Lear.