Aboutness / Like a cough / I cannot shake
Aboutness / Like a cough / I cannot shake
One week till Jane Huffman reads at Green College!
Dear Friends,
We look forward to gathering in one week to listen to
read Public Abstract.October 30th, 2024
5 - 6:30 pm
Coach House, Green College, University of British Columbia
Please note that the in-person reading will be a masked event, and masks will be available at the door. We also plan to run air purifiers and keep the windows open if weather permits.
If you live far away, or you can’t make it to the cozy coach house of Green College that evening, you’re welcome to follow along from home via Livestream.
If you show up in person, you may well leave with your own copy of Public Abstract, as we’ve used our series budget to purchase copies for folks to follow along during the reading and take home. There’s still time to reserve a meal ticket if you’d like to stay on for dinner at the Green College dining hall after the reading.
A Poem Preview
We’re so curious and eager to hear this book voiced in its entirety with you. These are poems of tight restraint, obsessive reworking, and idiosyncratic wordplay. Moving between short lines and prose paragraphs, with nods to (at times “failed”) sestina, sonnet, and villanelle, Huffman is never less than fully awake to each word’s possibilities of meaning, association, and sound.
Here’s just one sample poem to give you a sense of what to look forward to.
On difficulty
Difficulty is sacred. Even this thought. Like a yawn that fights its way out from the cochlea. Private as a runny nose. The word “Say” that begins Kay Ryan’s seminal poem: “Say when rain / cannot make / you more wet.” “Say” its own unit of meaning until “when” arrives, and the unit is transformed. “Say when” is then tripled by “rain.” Tripled by the rain — which rhymes with the poet’s name.
Rhyme is so public. / Weeping openly / in a crowded latitude.
*
This haibun from Public Abstract first appeared in The American Poetry Review.
Join Us for Dinner
The Green College Dining Society invites event attendees to stay on for dinner to continue the conversation in the dining hall next door to the Coach House. Meal tickets are available for $25 for non-students and $20 for students and must be reserved by noon the October 29th using this Google form. Each meal includes meat and vegetarian options, and most dietary preferences can be accommodated.
The UBC School of Creative Writing is providing several fully subsidized tickets for UBC students for each event. If you’re a UBC creative writing student, sign up here to receive an email inviting you to express interest. We’ll be emailing this list later today!
Upcoming Whole Cloth Events
All the best from your hosts,
Bronwen and Elee