Episode Nineteen - Guest Author Dina Del Bucchia

Photo by Shay Wilson

This week, give your ears a treat with new work by Dina Del Bucchia. This Vancouver delight is the author of three collections of poetry: Coping with Emotions and Otters (Talonbooks, 2013), Blind Items (Insomniac Press, 2014), and Rom Com (Talonbooks, 2015), written with Daniel Zomparelli. She also hosts Can’t Lit, a gregarious podcast on Canadian literature and culture, with Zomparelli. Dina’s a senior editor of Poetry Is Dead magazine, the Artistic Director of the Real Vancouver Writers' Series and an expert beach-goer. This week, you should run out to a bookstore to pick up her first collection of short stories, Don’t Tell Me What to Do, out this month with Arsenal Pulp Press. We’re so happy to share her writing with you!

This week is also extra special because we've got theme music, courtesy of Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here--it's guitar surf-rock with a side of shoe gazer. Whatever you want to call it., it's a great listen.

Jefferson’s Ground Sloth Megalonyx jeffersonii

By Dina Del Bucchia

An American founding deadbeat dad thought, maybe, there were still ground sloths laying about, stripping leaves in the Midwest. “Hey Meriwether,” he said, “Keep your eyes peeled for a sloth, okay? I’d kill for one.” Paced the White House, arranged sloth bones along the oval carpet.  Meanwhile, you hadn’t been keeping it casual Friday everyday for nine thousand years. You disappeared a few years after humans showed up. They were entranced. You were so meaty. Some scientists believe climate change decimated populations. It seems most sensible that murder and weather join forces to ruin beautiful things. Jefferson stalked then married his name to you. Never one for assholes you wouldn’t have been interested. Lewis and Clark came back without you. Obsessives should keep their distance. Take it from you, stay chill.

(written by Dina Del Bucchia, read by Chioke I'Anson)

Subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever else you get your audio fix.

Episode Seventeen - Guest Author Clay Pearn

This week on The Oddments Tray, we're welcoming the talented Clay Pearn. Clay has an MFA from the University of Michigan and a few music degrees to boot. He works as an editor in Hamilton, Ontario and we think you'll be seeing more of his work soon. 

On Cleaning House

by Clay Pearn

I prefer the vacuum. Ours has a robot face with one long arm, and when I pull it behind me the wheels stick on the power cord, and I want to drive it over the edge of the stairs and let it tumble into the drywall on the landing. Yet it makes the dirt disappear with such relief. Every little nook can be touched by its wand. Just a touch here, and that’s clean. Easy touches. But they add up. All afternoon eaten up touch by touch and I find myself in a sweat, my jaw tight: I am obliterating my Sunday, my true free life where I am not who my co-workers think I am. To them I exist only to fix their mistakes and refill my bank account like a ration box. They don’t know I have land in the far North of Ontario. Four island acres and a tiny cabin overrun by mice. That I drive there alone, retrieve a fishing boat at a local marina, and speed across twenty minutes of open water. That I sleep on a cot without my wife, because neither does she know about my land and will only find out when I die. And that I can look out any window, here in our bedroom with the robot’s arm clenched in my fist, or through the steel mesh windows at work, and know the cabin is there, the land, that I have unmarked keys for the various padlocks, that if I leave out strands of shredded cheese on the cabin floor they will disappear overnight, replaced by grains of black poop that carry parasites and disease.

(written by Clay Pearn, read by Chioke I'Anson)

Subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever else you get your audio fix.

Episode Fifteen - Guest Author Pamela Mordecai

This week, we’re honoured to welcome Pamela Mordecai reading from her phenomenal performance poem “de book of Mary.” You might hear some birdsong in the background because Pamela graciously invited me into her home to record her. Pamela is a literary tour-de-force, having published five collections of poetry, an anthology of short fiction and a novel, Red Jacket, which was a finalist for the 2015 Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Award. As if that weren’t enough, Pamela is also well-known for her poetry and stories for children and is a recipient of the Institute of Jamaica’s Centenary and Bronze Musgrave Medals.

Subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever else you get your audio fix.

Mary convinces Jesus to perform the miracle at Cana

(written and read by Pamela Mordecai)

“Listen Jesus! De people dem run

out of wine.” What a crosses!

me thinking in my mind.

“Jesus! Son! You hear what me saying?

Dis party just begin

and de people wine done!”

Me raise my voice loud-loud but Jesus can’t hear

for him on de far side of dis yard.

Me shout louder.

“Son is me! Over here! Is your Ma!”

Him still don’t hear a word!

Make me move likl closer for not even me

can hear myself talking in dis noise.

“Cry excuse! Beg you please

give me pass? Me need to get through

to dat made over yonder, him

wid de beard.” Okay, See me right here

side of him. Him must can hear me now!

“Jesus, me telling you de wine done.

Down to de last dribble. Son, you don’t

Hear what me saying to you?”

“Woman, dat don’t have nothing to do

wid neither you nor me, for my time

don’t come yet.” Well dat one

surprise me. “But my son,

how you can take up dat attitude?

Look how much stranger come

wanting dis, begging dat

and you don’t turn down one?

Look how much time me watch

you peel clothes off your back,

give to strays on de street,

feed nuff hungry belly?

How come you now decide you

not concern wid dis situation,

‘for your time don’t come yet’?”

Him just look on me. Don’t say nothing.

Him plainly in one of him moods, so

me going just do what me have to do.

“Listen, servers. A word, if you please.

Kindly do as dis rabbi instruct. Never mind

what him say, just follow him orders.”

Sometimes me think my son is crazy.

Can’t think why him asking dose fellows

to fill up de big water jar dem

dat wash hand and wash foot.

Is not water dat finish, is wine!

But see here! Is what dat pikni doing?

Now him tell de server to draw

from one of de big jug and take to

headwaiter. Headwaiter take time taste,

den him call de bridegroom.

“Master, how you come so contrary?

Everybody me know when dem throw a party

Share de best wine out first,

bring de bad when de guest dem so drunk

dem can’t tell de difference.

but you keep de good wine

for de last.” De bridegroom well mix up.

Scratch him head. Can’t make no sense of it—

just well glad dem don’t have

to feel shame. But Jah-Jah,

is now I realize why my son

never want to make a miracle dat day.

Someting change from dat hour.

Like a weight descend

and seize him down to de bone.

Oh my son! Why your Ma

couldn't leave well enough alone?

Episode Ten - Guest Author Jamella Hagen

If you don’t have Jamella Hagen’s debut Kerosene on your bookshelf, drop what you are doing and go pick it up. Girls’ wrestling teams, mothers drowning rats in the bathtub, flamingos breaking through Bolivian ice--the poem’s subjects are as original as the author. You can also find Jamella’s work in journals and anthologies such as Arc, Event, The Malahat Reviewas, Unfurled: Collected Poetry from Northern BC Women and The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2010. She currently lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she has coordinated the Whitehorse Poetry Festival and is an instructor at Yukon College. Fun fact: Jamella is also a top-notch person to drive across the country with.

Yukon Insomnia Log by Jamella Hagen

Ten degrees colder than forecast and our breath frosted the tent walls with chandeliers of ice. All night we shivered as the wind roared like blood through an artery. By morning all the snow had blown off the ridge. We tripped across rocks in our ski boots. In the awful shelter of a pine, I held your feet in my armpits because they were so nearly frostbitten. The spring sun crested a distant ridge, pinning us in its gaze, and the air stilled to lift its chin toward that warmth.

Subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever else you get your audio fix.

Episode Eight - Guest Author Kellee Ngan

If this is your first time reading Kellee Ngan's work, you're in for a treat--this Vancouver writer's prose has equal parts humour and pathos. You can read more of her writing in Geist, Grain, Witness, Poetry Is Dead and, most recently, the anthology Growing Room: Forty Years of Room Magazine (Caitlin Press, 2017). She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and I've been dreaming of the day I get to pick up her forthcoming YA novel ever since I read a rough draft in workshop. 

You Are What You Eat

Flat whites, artisanal cheese, the correct pronunciation of Gewurztraminer: We trade affection in the form of a food basket, rely on gut feeling to gauge the fullness of our hearts. Our eyes deceive us, too. Tell us that white plates make everything more palatable, even though an apple is an apple is an apple despite its ripeness. You failed to cry at my father’s funeral. I blamed distance, marvelled at your deportment. But as I watch you weep over a tasting menu typed on brown deli paper, whet by suggestions, I question what you might be made of.

(written by Kellee Ngan and read by Chioke I'Anson)

Subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever else you get your audio fix.

Episode Seven - Guest Author rob mclennan

This week we are excited to welcome our first guest author, the prolific rob mclennan. rob currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair (check out her new poetry collection Charm). The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles includeThe Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014) and the poetry collection A perimeter (New Star Books, 2016). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

***

We were stretched flat on the dark side of the lawn, opposite the garage light and porch, staring up at the sky. We were counting the stars. I can’t believe you’ve never seen a shooting star, she said, as common as goldfish. We remained for a long time, sweeping our eyes across Ontario sky, and I looked over, amazed at this sprout of a child beside me, my ten-year-old daughter. I was studying the shadowed shapes of her developing profile, a sparkle in her eye. There’s one, she pointed. I turned to look. It had already vanished.

from The Uncertainty Principle by rob mclennan, Chaudiere Books, 2014

Subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever else you get your audio fix.