low-res panel at Toronto’s CCWWP

CCWWP Conference May 10-13, 2012

Creative Writing in the 21st C: Research and Practice

Toronto ON

I am pleased to be part of a panel discussion on Friday, May 11, with low-residency MFA directors Stephen Kimber (U King’s College, Halifax) and Andrew Gray (UBC). Our panel is “The Low-Residency MFA: Coast to Coast and Across the Border.” We’ll be discussing the presence and growth of low-residency MFA programs in Canada and the US.

Monday April 23 is the last day to register for the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP) inaugural conference.

The CCWWP conference is dedicated to the study of creative writing pedagogy and the promotion of creative writing standards and practices, including academic papers and keynote talks by national and international writers and creative writing teachers, researchers, and students.

Here’s what this year’s program has to offer: http://ccwwp.ca/conference/program-2-2/

See you there!

Yes, I have a cat poem and it's at LON

In celebration of National Poetry Month, Lansing Online News is sharing a poem a day from a Michigan poet. I have that honor today with my poem “Through the looking glass.”

Through the looking glass

Here the birds line up along fences to wave their heads

in anxious staccato beats. The cat, the brown cat, paces

in step alongside the window; she walks the high wire

sofa back, forward and back. Brown cat lets them twitch,

tease, and raise their beaks in temporary superiority as

she devises a plan for escape, conquer, defeat. Brown cat eyes

the winter wren, sizing up the beefy beige belly, exhales

a brief breath of anticipation. When white cat comes along,

brown keeps her guard and defends her fishbowl prey. Clear

skies illuminate beige against a powder fresh lawn, a blanket

for the buffet picnic she craves. White cat is sluggish, plump,

easily underestimated. Brown tunnels her vision through

sheer reflections, past the looking glass and out to frost

covered limbs, the wren a cherry atop her branch of cake.

White settles in at the edge of the leather, nestles into cushions

brown has left defenseless. The weight of winter snaps a crisp

crack of bark, startles the resting wren and sets off a flurry

of wings and waves against a still sky. Beige fades, brown

recedes, the empty glass abandoned; her cushioned fort

surrendered to an underestimated plump white predator,

brown traces the high wire, forward and back, with hunger.

***

Read this and other Michigan poems at LON here:

http://lansingonlinenews.com/news/birds-and-cats-play-a-game-through-a-looking-glass/