Every weekday morning I go to Bannerman Brewing Co. to work. It is the place to be in St. John’s, where creatives gather to write and chat and hustle in a space big enough that no one ever rushes you to leave even if you can’t afford to buy much. The staff are hugely supportive of the arts and host many events for the community in their upstairs space. Here, we lack public indoor spaces downtown, and Bannerman, on the east end of Duckworth, our most eclectic street, is filling a gap. I am sitting here right now to write this. I salute and thank them.
It is an easy place to become inspired as a poet. The writing community is alive and buzzing in Newfoundland and Labrador. Here are some cool things that are happening that people on the mainland might not notice, but should. Newfoundland and Labrador is Canada’s most powerful cultural capital.
Recently, I talked to writer and audio producer Luke Quinton whose new piece of radio journalism, Come by Chance, is about two men, Craig Avery and Clarence Hynes, who were switched at birth at a cottage hospital. In the process he heard from others who came close to having their newborns replaced by a different baby. On the medium of podcasting he says “[t]he ability to make longform stories is so key to this kind of storytelling. You're really able to sort of inhabit this world for a time, and as a listener I think that's the most amazing experience. Audio is such an interactive medium, the listener gets to take in the writing and the sounds, and really bring it alive in their own minds.” Luke is a believer in Newfoundland stories, he is someone who understands that the creative soul of this place is what drives us forward away from the void.
Stories like that of
Craig and Clarence remind us how close we remain to our past in Newfoundland,
how linear time is meaningless. How tiny events like the placement of a baby in
a cot can have massive, life-altering impacts on generations of people. Another
writer that contemplates the ripple effects of seemingly small actions on an
entire community is Susie Taylor, whose new book of short stories, Vigil, is set in a
fictional town that’s close to St. John’s. The people of Bay Mal Verde are very
good at minding their own businesses. As I wrote in Riddle
Fence,
“[s]elf-delusion is a blessing and a curse that affects everyone in Bay Mal
Verde. Whether it’s Nan pretending not to notice her resident teens getting
high or drunk, or the bys not acknowledging that their friend or cousin is
queer, not noticing is a vital skill
for happy co-existence in any small town. Not
sticking out is another.” Susie, while she is not originally from this
province, has been a fair and sharp observer of the lives we lead here in rural
Newfoundland and town alike. She is an exacting critic, here to hold up a
mirror to our hypocrisies and fear. I love Susie’s writing, maybe more than any
short fiction I have ever encountered (sorry Alice).
Another cool fiction
writer is Megan Gail Coles, who recently put off a play called Grace, an adaptation of Lisa Moore’s
novella of the same name, at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John’s. You can
read the review by Drew Brown here. Drew is an
excellent reviewer. He is my friend, and I am biased, but I love the way he
speaks of Megan’s work. “Grace
reminds us that there is no finer setting than a wedding to marvel at the
triumph and terror of the human heart in either its monogamous or
non-monogamous tethering—and no better playwright than Megan Gail Coles,
Newfoundland’s finest contemporary writer on the heartache and hope involved in
Love’s Work, to gently but firmly crack open that heart’s hard spiked shell to
show us the delicate flesh inside.”
Perhaps the most impressive local actor in the arts community is Riddle Fence itself. They are running a pop-up bookstore all summer to fill the void left by the exit of the independent bookstores from the downtown. They launched a digital content portion of their brand, bringing more frequent reviews to the public, which was sorely needed. In Newfoundland we have a tendency to avoid reviewing peoples’ works, because it’s such a small community, you can’t really be critical of others. But Riddle Fence isn’t afraid to host reviews of art and culture. Riddle Fence partners with other organizations such as Lawnya Vawnya to bring amazing Canadian writers to town, Waubgeshig Rice being the most recent visitor. Bringing in people from away is essential for those of us who write, who need to see the world at large to expand our frame outside of the province we call home.
Riddle Fence also recently launched a debut authors imprint, a wonderful contribution to the local publishing scene. They published debut books of poetry by Tia McLennan, Jennifer May Newhook, Danielle Devereaux, and a short stories collection by Kate Segriff. All worth reading, I’ve just got through the whole set, which you can buy online here.
Another interesting person in the poetry world is Craig Francis Power, who has a book coming out soon with Breakwater. I encourage you to preorder it. Christian Bök writes of Total Party Kill “Craig Francis Power in Total Party Kill teaches you that, to become a bard (capable of slaying any monster with a song), you must, at first, select your weapon — and like me, he has chosen the icosahedron.” Craig is a unique voice in Canadian literature and I can’t wait for the new book to drop.
For every cool writer in Newfoundland there are five or ten other writers that read their drafts, talk about shit together at Bannerman on a Monday morning, or otherwise prop them up and support them through the arduous process of trying to be a Serious Writer in this country. If there was more arts funding there would be even more amazing writers. In the meantime, hats off to everyone who is helping writers eke out a living on the rock. Buy our books and listen to our podcasts! Cheers from Newfoundland.
