Season’s Greetings friends from Heather, Josef and Lucas.

FIRST COMES MARY

Enchanted morning swim, matrix of turquoise
lagoon. Silver palometas, yellow damselfish
caress my legs. Casa Ocio walls whitewashed
in cactus milk. Coconuts on the lawn.
Palm fronds bowing, rippling like sea anemones.
Heavy mahogany Hemingway digs.
Gecko chirps from behind a gilt frame.
Cool terrazzo marble pulls sand from toes.
Double rain showerhead. Full throttle bottle bar
under a palapa. I ponder the power
of local masonry to withstand hurricanes,
why it seems odd to name them after men.

Who are you going to meet at a resort?
Mail carriers from St. Catharines. Chiropractors
from Winnipeg. Programmed amusements for fraught
tourists wary of beggars. Cockatiels. Street vendors.
They recoil at pulque, mescal, even tequila,
unless it’s frozen, goes down like a Slurpee.
They tap into barrels of Corona or deposit derrières
under cabanas to read the latest Grisham.

Beneath an arbor of pink bougainvillea
sit my dubious nephew, delicate girlfriend,
doubts sinking slowly into the deep
purple cushions. We are going to town. To Playa.
Soft brown doves adorn neon.
Turtles bask on green tile mosaic. Red house
hosts a party tableau of orange Fanta, blue corn
flowers, flags of paper lace, chocolate pan de huevos.
We smell agave, chili, vanilla, coriander and anise,
hear mariachis blaze a mighty La Bamba. Gobble
pumpkin tamales, snow-white beach cooling our heels.
Mongrels expire at the feet of professional urchins
soliciting pesos. I will not cry, pick a white handkerchief
festooned with poinsettias embroidered by his mother.
No, I can’t buy them all. Though downcast he will not cry.
Our Lady of Guadalupe provides. Protects.

Christmastime but it’s Mary I see. Everywhere. To the faithful
the forever virgin manifests in Continue Reading »

Off to Grandma’s house in a freezing drownpour! Need to stop off and buy some flowers. Went to a lovely party last night. Our friend Fitch always hosts the liveliest assortment of islanders. The Black Morris Dancers showed up and spiced things up with their shenanigans. Bob Doucet invited me to join. I am not too inclined to prance around in blackface and feathers, had to decline his kind offer. I do want to participate in one of his kitchen junkets-don’t get to sing enough-so I will make an attempt to go next time.

Sean Cranberry of Books On The Radio kindly invited me to participate in his Advent Book Blog on Books On The Radio for December. Here’s what I sent: I heard Keath Fraser read from The Voice Gallery this summer at the Write On Bowen (Island) Festival, a book about his journey with laryngeal dystonia, a misfiring of the vocal cords caused by faulty transmitters in the brain. His story resonated with me on several levels, as a language artist, singer, traveler and mother of an autistic child. So, I bought a copy; a fascinating read indeed. Check it out. The Voice Gallery-Travels with a Glass Throat Thomas Allen Publishers-ISBN: 0-88762-101-5

Yesterday we tried to shoot some video after rising to a rainless morning and some promising light. We need to re-shoot some of the shots from the AURAL Heather How To Remain video. I corralled the dogs, dug out some ladders and props, applied makeup. We had to conduct a search to find the charger for the camera. I have designated a cupboard in the family room for such gear but it still seems to wind up spread throughout the house or in Josef’s office. Fortunately I found it though I wasn’t sure what the thing looked like, charged the camera while I ironed a black sheet to use as a backdrop. By then time was running out. We had about fours shots to get, we started with the most important one of me lying on the ground. “She could retire to her body.” Josef’s back is screwed and he had a difficult, painful time trying to hold the camera steady enough for the directly-above shot. “The things we do for art!” he moaned. Turns out the main problem was composition. I could not get my hair to look the way I wanted and turns out it was night impossible to lie on the cold ground, be the subject as well as director, grip, stylist, makeup artist. Of course we ran out of light by 4 pm and though the lighting looked better than I thought it would, the damn hair was all wrong. I’m just going to have to get help next time or try to rescue the shot we already did. Urf. DIY ain’t easy!

Let there be confusion and terror, bleached bones in the closet, crows soaring into the chimney. Here I sit, sweating in the dead of winter, mind and guts roiling. My new collection, Three Blocks West of Wonderland, is out, I’m feeling fabulous and working hard at workin’ it. That’s actually the cover of Gabrielle Everall’s remarkable verse novel Dona Juanita and the love of boys but there is so much life within this one life! My life. Such as it is. Still, precious.

This frenzied phase began about a month ago, in Gibsons of all places. Brian Palmu kindly invited me to read my poetry along with my dear friend Peter Trower. I had reassured Pete that I would go up there to help clear out the 40-year long residence he was vacating. Small house, big job. So, I thought I would kill the proverbial two birds with one stone, keep my promise and do the reading.

Pete grovelled, grateful for my well-honed organizational skills. I walked in, opened cupboards and drawers, asking, “What’s this? You keeping it? Giving it away?” Then I made piles, one for the Salvation Army, one for Stuff To Keep and one for The Dump. This town still has a town dump! Bear Watching we called it in Salmo, cheap entertainment, featuring the best in local talent. Voila! The packing took a while, we had to retrieve boxes and tape, but the work was accomplished with a minimum of fuss.

The next day, Brian and his girlfriend Verna graciously hosted Pete and I Continue Reading »

…which is my excuse for the dearth of blog entries. My neck was screwed up and caused an incredible amount of pain.

I’ll shall return with a proper journal type entry, I promise

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HALEY’S POETRY STIRS AND SHAKES, KNOCKS AND SHOCKS
Heather Susan Haley, Three Blocks West of Wonderland, Ekstasis Editions

Vancouver, BC, Dec. 14, 2009 —Trailblazing poet, author, musician and media artist Heather Susan Haley’s new book, Three Blocks West of Wonderland, has hit the streets just in time for the holidays.

“Fierce, racy, full of stiletto irony, verve — yet rife with sensitivity. Three Blocks West of Wonderland is a highly fuelled poetic ride. Her LA, southern B.C. coast, energy-haunted world draws you electrically in and does not let you go. Like the subject of one of the elegies in this collection, Haley stirs, provokes the atmosphere.” – Author Russell Thornton,The Human Shore, House Built of Rain, Harbour Publishing.

Haley has been actively involved in her art for over a decade and has gained renown as an engaging performer and media artist; she is the author of a previous collection, Sideways (Anvil Press), Haley’s poetry has been selected for inclusion in numerous prestigious journals and anthologies including Geist and last year’s Verse Map of Vancouver.

Haley has been an editor for LA Weekly and publisher of Rattler and the Edgewise Café, one of Canada’s first electronic literary magazines. Founder of Continue Reading »