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thinkingimages · 3 years

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You know at least a hundred Annas, stranded in fictional love affairs written by men who do not know that Ellesmere exists. Come to that, women are all Annas, caught or not, Annas sweating their way from one day to the next. They know the wars within their orbits, between children and husbands and lovers, need and desire and the desperate necessities of symmetry, how they will be always and for ever culpable, exiled for their visceras, eviscerated for their exiles.

Aritha Van Herk (Places Far From Ellesmere, 82 83)

Thus, Ellesmere is a space where all Annas, fictional or real, can escape from gender impositions. In Ellesmere, women are free to explore their personal fictions. Ellesmere offers a possibility "of a new story; Anna can invent herself in an undocumented landscape, an undetermined fiction" (125), since "reading is a new act here, not introverted and possessive but exploratory, the text a new body of self, the self a new reading of place" (113). Ellesmere becomes a place where literary heroines can participate in a different fiction, and their readers can explore and liberate themselves from the gender constraints of the society they left behind in the south. Moreover, van Herk is conscious of having fictionalized herself:

You know you are a character in a larger novel, a novel of geography and passion, reading yourself as you are being read by a comprehensive reader. How would this reading read your places, you self written between habitations, the braille of fingers on each locational inflection? (Places 118)

Ellesmere becomes a shelter for Tolstoy's Anna and all entrapped literary heroines as well as for the fictional and real van Herk. Because of an effective erasure of the boundaries between fiction and non fiction, writer and reader, Ellesmere becomes a space of freedom for readers as well. Ellesmere, then, is described in terms of mystery, escape and, to a certain degree, adventure. Ellesmere is viewed in terms of blankness: it is described as an "undocumented" and "unaltered" desert. It is romanticized, idealized and rendered mysterious as an ideal place for women....

#Aritha Van Herk #Places Far From Ellesmere #Literary Quotations #Lit Quotes

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retrogirlsbooks · 3 years

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Judith by Aritha Van Herk

ISBN 0-770-41556-3

#1970s #1979 #Seal Books #photo

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anotherplacemag · 4 years

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Crown Ditch and The Prairie Castle | Kyler Zeleny

Crown Ditch and the Prairie Castle documents the spaces and people of the last great ‘proving out’. The project presents the space as an understudied region, a beast upon itself, a unique meeting of landscape, industry, and most importantly, people, who are a resilient breed created by generational lessons in fortitude and fortuned circumstance.

At the turn of the 20th Century, North America’s last great land rush took place in the Canadian West. It was on the prairies that the soil made the farmer, the herd the rancher. A lingering question for the sons and daughters of the ‘last great west’ is what, or who, are we? Overshadowed and often visually conflated with its neighbour to the south, we forget to turn our gaze to the Canadian prairies. The area was settled by a unique brand of hardened frontiersmen—cowboys, ranch hands, miners, farmers, and outlaws—the dirty and determined, the persistent sludge at the bottom of every gas tank. These good ol’ boys were chasing the exalted allure of a grand landscape defined by its apparent nothingness, a landscape mystical by its inadequate representation, its mystery, and a whisper of it being the last ‘Promised Land’.

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book - ‘Crown Ditch & the Prairie Castle’ has recently been released as a photobook by The Velvet Cell, and includes texts by Kyler Zeleny and famed prairie author Aritha Van Herk. A wonderful series of images combined with fantastic production by TVC makes this new book highly recommended!

All images & text © Kyler Zeleny

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1five1two · 6 years

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I discovered I was infected with a terrible suspicion of myself and my inability to stay still, my dreadful insomnia of place.

Aritha Van Herk

#quotes #discovery #infected #suspicion #myself #still #insomnia #writing

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whattoreadnext · 2 years

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DAVIES, Robertson

Canadian novelist, journalist and playwright (1913-1995)

The deceptively gentle, expansive tone of Davies' satires belies their extraordinary subject-matter: it is as if Jane Austen had reworked Rabelais. Davies' books are comedies of manners, many set in small university towns riven with gossip and pretension. Tempest-tost (1951) is about an amateur production of Shakespeare's The Tempest all but sabotaged by the unexpected, lacerating love of the middle-aged leading man for the girl who plays his daughter. A Mixture of Frailties (1958) describes the chain of bizarre events after a woman leaves money to educate a girl in the arts, unless and until the woman's son sires a male heir. The Deptford trilogy (1970-75) begins with the throwing of a stone-filled snowball, and spirals out to cover three 20th-century lives, interlocking in a dazzling, bizarre mosaic, involving medieval (and modern) saints, big business, Houdini, Jungian analysis, touring freak-shows and a barnstorming company of travelling actors.

THE 'CORNISH' TRILOGY (1982) The books in this trilogy, about members of the wealthy, eccentric Cornish family, are The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone and The Lyre of Orpheus. Hovering over the events, as puppeteers loom over marionettes, are guardian angels, devils and spirits of medieval mischief; we humans are not alone. Alternate chapters of The Rebel Angels are told by Father Darcourt, a professor of Biblical Greek at a small, Roman Catholic, Canadian university, and Maria Magdalene Theotoky, a research student. The university is a quiet place, dedicated to placid scholarship and barbed common-room gossip. But Ms Theotoky is researching Rabelais, and the plot suddenly erupts with priceless manuscripts, bizarre lusts, devil worship, scatology, and a storm of passion and deceit against which no grove of academe could stand unbowed. What's Bred in the Bone is the life-story of Francis Cornish, art expert, multi-millionaire, wartime spy and loner, whose search for himself, and for love, is hampered by his guardian devil Maimas. The Lyre of Orpheus tells of the recreation, in 20th-century Canadian academe, of a lost Arthurian opera by the devil-inspired 19th-century romantic composer E.T.A. Hoffman. The style in all three books is urbane, placid narrative, but the contents are sown with mines. If Jane Austen rules the tone of Davies' early trilogies, in this one Rabelais keeps blowing raspberries.

The books in The Deptford Trilogy are Fifth Business, The Manticore and World of Wonders. Davies' other novels include Murther and Walking Spirits and a third trilogy, in a similarly urbane and hilarious vein, set in a small Ontario university town, The Salterton Trilogy. The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks and Marchbanks' Almanac are collections of humorous journalism, and Davies' plays include A Jig for the Gipsy, Hunting Stuart and the political satire Question Time. Happy Alchem is a posthumous collection of his engaging, erudite writings on theatre.

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Robertson Davies, A Leaven of Malice

To The Rebel Angels : Anthony Burgess, Enderby's Dark Lady David Lodge, Small World

To What's Bred in the Bone : Richard Condon, Any God Will Do Thomas Mann, The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man

To The Lyre of Orpheus : D.J. Enright, Academic Year Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution

To Davies' work in general : Peter Ackroyd, English Music John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany Aritha Van Herk, No Fixed Address

more :Tags Pathways Themes & Places

#AUTHORS #DAVIES_Robertson #ACKROYD_Peter #BURGESS_Anthony #CONDON_Richard #ENRIGHT_DJ #IRVING_John #JARRELL_Randall #LODGE_David #MANN_Thomas #VAN_HERK_Aritha

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bluepointcoin · 4 years

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OPINION | COVID-19: The future is here, now we must be resilient, nimble and smart

This column is an opinion from Calgary author Aritha van Herk.

Reset or surrender?

Orators may be tempted to cite Churchill’s famous speech, made in 1940 before most of us were born, his “blood, toil, tears and sweat” exhortation to fight the enemy. More apropos now may be his prediction to prepare “for hard and heavy tidings.”

For here we are. The reset that everyone glibly thought might…

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youre-on-a-starship · 7 years

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11 Questions (Now with 22 Bonus Questions)

Rules

1. Always post these rules

2. Answer the questions given by the person who tagged you

3. Write 11 questions of your own

4. Tag 11 people

I was tagged by @outside-the-government, @kaitymccoy123, AND @enterprisewriting I’m doing all of their sets of questions in one post because I’m just that great (I also don’t want to come up with 33 new questions)

Jules’ 11 Questions

If you had the power to eliminate any one single form of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, etc), which would it be and why? Oh god... um... this is a really tough question because I feel like I have to choose who stays marginalized. God... I think I’d go with racism because... well it’s a problem. I can’t really explain this one better than that.

If you could live in any one make-believe land or universe, which would it be and why? I’d live in the Star Trek universe, hands down. I feel so at home there, it would be just so comfortable for me.

If you were an animal, what animal would you be and why? I am basically a cat. I just want sleep, occasional snuggles, and lots of sun.

Which of your teachers (in any level of education) had the greatest impact on you - how and why? Oh God... It’s somewhere between my 7th grade English Language Arts teacher and my creative writing professor from 4th year. On one hand, my 7th grade ELA teacher taught me how to read effectively and how to record what I read so that I could learn from it (and she was also one of the only ones who could be arsed to teach us grammar). But Aritha van Herk... she elevated my writing and taught me how to really be critical of my work. That is so valuable to me.

If your closest loved one came down with some awful, painful, incurable illness and you could save them in one of two ways, which of these would you pick and why: 1) you can cure them instantly, but the second you do they forget you ever existed and you must live your lives apart, or 2) you can cure them instantly, but you die in their place and they have to live forever without you. I’d pick option 1 because either way they’re going to have to live without me, and least it won’t hurt them if they think they never knew me to begin with.

What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done to impress someone? *sigh* I don’t know. I spent so many years embarrassing myself trying to impress people (read: boys) that I just... I repress those memories because the person doing that wasn’t really me. I suppose the craziest thing that *stuck* with me was my love of hockey. I tried to get into it to impress this guy and if I hadn’t been a moody teenager... well. Anyway, I really like hockey now, anyway. I actually went into the competitive stream in jr high gym for floor hockey (note: that was super dangerous for someone with my condition) just so I could play with him and show off.

How good are you at facing your fears? Honest to God, I keep sticking myself in situations where I have to deal with that a lot. I just give it a good push because I have to, and I make it work.

What characteristic do you value the most in friends and why? I value honesty. When a friend tells me that they don’t want to hang out because they’re having a bad mental health day, that means I know we’ve really made it as friends because they don’t feel the need to impress me or make excuses. And that means I’m allowed to do the same thing, which is super relaxing.

If you could wake up tomorrow and suddenly be the world’s best at something, what would it be and why? I’d be the world’s best writer so I could get all my stories picked up by peeps in Hollywood and have them made into movies so I could meet all these amazing people I want to meet.

What’s the worst injury you’ve ever gotten and how? Er... how do I pick the *worst*? THIS IS GOING TO BE GRAPHIC! I think... when I was 7 I jumped off a wall unit and broke my tib/fib just below the knee. I was in hospital for 3 days because they needed to do something fancy to get it back in line and I had a cast nearly up to my crotch to keep everything still while it healed. The alternative is when I broke my own arm kinda-sorta-not-really on purpose when I was 12. I lashed out at my brother because he was being annoying and I ended up twisting my arm while we were fighting (please note I am having horrible flashbacks while I’m writing this and I’m literally gagging at the memory), and I snapped my ulna right in two, twisting it completely out of place. I was given local anesthesia so that they could set my arm, but they gave me the wrong kind of meds and I had something akin to an LSD trip during which I verbally abused my entire family and became super afraid of narcotics. They fixed my arm, though. I’ve got 13 other stories where those came from, hit me up, I dare you.

Name one random fact that you know that people are always surprised to learn when you tell them. I’m a bellydancer. Not professionally or anything, but I’m actually really good at it and it makes me happy that I can do something beautiful with my body even during times when I don’t like my body that much.

Kaity’s 11 Questions:

What person do you most look up to in the world and why? Does Kathryn Janeway count? I honestly can never think of anyone else when I’m asked a question like this. I just aspire to be as badass as her.

What book really spoke to you, maybe even changed your view on things, and how did it do that? I want to talk about a book by Aritha van Herk for a moment. Restlessness. This book is set in my home city, for one, and it was written by my creative writing teacher. It’s about a woman who is so tired of being busy that she hires an assassin to kill her. Then they spend the evening together just talking before she makes the final call. It’s an amazing exploration of good writing, my wonderful city, the nature of being a woman, the nature of being a working woman, work interspersed with pleasure, and how to find balance. It’s amazing, please go read it.

If you could spend the afternoon snuggled on a couch watching a movie with a fictional character, who would it be? Holy... this is a really specific instance. I think my answer would be... probably Jim Kirk, actually. He just looks like a really nice guy to cuddle with, you know? It’s the strong arms. And he just looks like he’d be warm?

If you are in a bad mood, do you prefer to be left alone or have someone to cheer you up? I wanna be left the hell alone. I wanna listen to music and write and brood.

Do you judge a book by it’s cover (literally or figuratively)? It often influences whether or not I pick it up off the shelf, yeah. I ultimately *judge* a book by its contents.

What’s the one thing that people always misunderstand about you? I’m not horrendously awkward, I just don’t get my words right the first time sometimes.

What is your Harry Potter house and do you feel you were sorted correctly? Ravenclaw and fuck yes.

Do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert? It depends, but on the whole I’m an introvert.

What is your favourite colour? Why? I like navy because it’s less harsh than black (says the girl who owns a metric fuckload of black), and it looks great with almost everything. It feels like a really mature colour.

What’s your most listened to song? Right now? That’s a really good question; I’ve had “Rhinestone Eyes” by the Gorillaz on repeat lately.

What celebrity would you trade lives with? Trade lives with? Oh hell, I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to saddle anyone with my life, I guess. Maybe... you know what, Margaret Atwood. She’s bomb, her work is bomb, and I want to be her someday.

Taal’s 11 questions

1. if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? I really want to go to Germany and just live amongst my people and practice my language for a while. 2. what would you want your tombstone to say and why? Literally anything BUT “RIP.” 3. how do you feel about astrology? I take it into account, but I don’t let it govern my actions. For instance, Aries and Virgo aren’t supposed to go well together apparently but most of my friends and my partner are Virgos and here we are. 4. what is the most irritating, borderline trash ass fashion trend you’ve ever encountered? Crocs? 5. how long do you think you would last as a vegan? Maybe 45 minutes? 6. if you were to own an airline company, what would you name it and what would the slogan be? This is the coolest question. I’d call it HobbitAir and the slogan would be “There and back again.” I’m not that creative. 7. which fictional character would you like to switch lives with and why? Can I be Lieutenant Romaine so that Scotty will look at me the way he does in TOS? 8. what subject did you despise the most throughout your education? Fucking Chemistry. Fuck. Chemistry. I just... I don’t... how can I understand something so well and still fucking fail, like I don’t even. (I didn’t actually fail chem, but I came damn close) 9. are you a smoothie person or a milkshake person? Depends on the day. In Calgary we’ve got a place called Peter’s Drive-in and there’s nothing quite like a Peter’s shake. Coffee-oreo-marshmallow, baby. 10. are you able to tell when someone is flirting with you or are you of the oblivious type? I think everyone’s flirting with me, but literally only one person has ever bothered to act on it and I had to break the ice first. So I guess it’s just wishful thinking. 11. name 11 things about yourself that you love and/or want to learn to love. N’awww I love this question ^^ I love: 1. my smile 2. my eyes 3. my crazy hips 4. my capacity for love and compassion 5. my ability to come alive in crisis 6. my intelligence and I want to learn to love 7. my creativity 8. my overactive imagination 9. my impulsiveness 10. my voice (that’s probably on everyone’s list XD) and 11. my disability.

Alex’s Questions

If you could go on a week-long camping trip with three people, real, fictional, or both, who would you go with?

If you could instantly master one physical skill, what would it be?

You’ve got a half hour to kill before your appointment and your phone’s dead. What do you do?

What’s your alignment in DnD terms (Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic Good/Neutral/Evil)? What do you wish it was?

What’s that one weird film you watched on repeat when you were a kid?

What’s your go-to style?

Do it for the vine. What’s the craziest thing you’ve done just to do it?

What never fails to put a smile on your face?

Who’s you’re favourite author and why?

What book actually changed your life?

What’s the last fanfic you read? Link it maybe?

And now I gotta tag 11 of you fine folks. @fandomheadrush, @starshiphufflebadger, @star-trekkin-across-theuniverse, @trekken81, @spacethewritingfrontier, @rae723 (hey, gurl), @schatten88 (do it, I dare you), @fanscribbling, @imaginestartrek, @imaginenterprise, aaaaaaaand @distinguishedqueenofbooks

Can’t wait to see what y’all say!!

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fuc3ry · 7 years

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I cannot escape myself. I have tried, tried and tried. And trying, I discovered I was infected with a terrible suspicion of myself and my inability to stay still, my dreadful insomnia of place.

Restlessness by Aritha Van Herk

#im reading again and its heaven #restlessness #travel

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csrgood · 6 years

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Global Conference on Indigenous Solutions for Environmental Challenges Set for November in Canada

A major international conference focused on indigenous legal principles, the environment, and the landmark $12 billion pollution judgment won by rainforest communities in Ecuador against Chevron is scheduled to take placeNovember 10-12 in Banff, Canada. The conference is being organized by a group of professors at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law. Indigenous leaders from North and South America, environmentalists, resource company representatives, government officials and lawyers are planning to attend. A significant part of the conference will engage with indigenous youth and grass roots peoples.

Registration for the conference is open via this website, which contains a list of speakers and a current overview of the program.

Organizers say one of the main goals of the conference is to establish a global coalition that would further the ideas and solutions coming out of the conference discussions. “We live in a critically important moment in history when extractive activities on traditional indigenous lands raise a number of cutting edge legal and policy issues that the conference will explore,” said Kathleen Mahoney, Professor of Law at the University of Calgary, and an organizer of the event. The coalition project would be “intimately connected” to the Paris Accords to reverse global warming trends and also will closely consider the consultative process with Indigenous groups as informed by a recent court decision in Canada suspending construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline, she said.

The conference is being co-hosted by Phil Fontaine, the thrice-elected National Chief of Canada, and the recipient of 19 honorary doctoral degrees; Luis Macas, the Saraguro leader considered the father of the modern Indigenous movement in Ecuador; and Mahoney, who was a lead negotiator in the historic class action settlement of Canada’s Indian residential schools case and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Sponsors include the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Amazon Defense Coalition, and the Center for International Governance Innovation.

The Ecuador case, Aguinda v Chevron, involving unpaid judgments for the world’s worst oil-related environmental disaster, will be one of the important issues discussed by both experts and indigenous representatives who will attend from Canada, the United States, Ecuador, and several other countries. Indigenous peoples and farmer communities in Ecuador won the judgment against Chevron after four layers of courts found the company discharged billions of gallons of oil waste into the rainforest, decimating Indigenous groups and causing a major public health catastrophe.

Top officials from Canada’s Assembly of First Nations, a national group which represents all 634 First Nations in Canada and is considered one of the most influential rights groups in the world, will also attend and speak at the event. The AFN last year signed a joint protocol with Ecuadorian Indigenous groups to hold Chevron accountable for failing to address its pollution issues.

In addition to the above hosts, those slated to speak at the conference include Canadian environmentalist, author, and scientist David Suzuki; Aritha van Herk, an award-winning Canadian novelist from Alberta who has won acclaim throughout North America and Europe; Cora Voyageur, a Dene leader from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, and advocate of interests of First Nations; Grand Chief Ed John, a noted lawyer and a former expert to the United Nations Permanent Forum On Indigenous Issues; and Glen Murray formerly of the Pembina Institute, Canada’s leading energy think tank.

Also speaking will be Charles Nesson, the William F. Weld Professor at Harvard Law School; Sharon Mascher, a professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law and expert on climate change litigation; Steven Donziger, American social justice advocate who has represented survivors in Ecuador for 25 years; Grand Chief Wilton Littlechild, an international lawyer and architect of the United Nations Declaration On the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and Rex Weyler, the co-founder of Greenpeace and author.

Fontaine said he had high hopes for the conference, calling it “a potential paradigm-shifting” event by advancing the use of Indigenous legal traditions in national court systems.

“This is also about examining better ways to hold polluters accountable for wrongdoing in a timely fashion,” he said. “The Ecuador pollution case is an important context in which to better understand the issues involved which are critical for all Indigenous peoples in Canada and around the world. We stand with our brothers and sisters in Ecuador as they seek fair and just reparations for the tremendous harms that has been done to them and their lands. We are going to use the conference to try to make that happen.”

Panels will include one with survivors from Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest devastation; an analysis of reparations based on indigenous legal principles; how corporate obstructionism to human rights and environmental cases creates impunity; how private arbitrations under international trade treaties impact human rights protections; an analysis of successful reparations for mass harms in Canada; and conceptualizing harms from the perspectives of those harmed rather than those who harm.

Also planning to attend are 15 Ecuadorian indigenous persons and farmers who are part of the class that won the judgment against Chevron. Among them is Luis Yanza, an Ecuadorian author and community leader who in 2008 won the Goldman Environmental Prize.

A limited number of scholarships are available to attend the conference. To apply, please contact Penny Jacko at [email protected].

For follow-up for media and academics, please contact Kathleen Mahoney at [email protected] or Phil Fontaine at [email protected].

source: http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/41356-Global-Conference-on-Indigenous-Solutions-for-Environmental-Challenges-Set-for-November-in-Canada?tracking_source=rss

#CSR #corporate social responsibility #social good #philanthropy #employee engagement #workplace givi

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