Review of Sky Waves, by Amanda Tripp in Maple Tree Literary Supplement

Transmission received.

Skeletal birdsong

Anxiety, me? I don't think of myself as an anxious person. Keep busy during the day and keep pushing the anxiety away 'til it wakes me up in a sweat, yeah okay, that makes sense, but if I let the anxiety out -- screaming, scratching at the cage which is my own body -- if I let the anxiety out -- dark stabs of fear, like being grabbed from behind -- if I let the anxiety out -- lift weights, walk hard, harder harder harder back bent head low -- damned dull light today, clouds pulpy black and grey, trees skeletal -- birdsong, no, not the defiance I take it for, but simply birdsong, existing long before and long after me, birdsong for no other reason than birds sing -- comforting -- walk hard but head up -- grace?

Twit

Yes, I'm on Twitter. First signed up to keep in touch with an old friend and his rancid gut; now I really like reading little bits of info and perspective. Jann Arden, Chris Cornell and Doonesbury character Roland Hedley are truly funny. You can find me there as MButlerHallett.

Desperate for connection, all of us.

Reading: Wednesday April 15

I'll be reading Wednesday evening with Mike Heffernan as part of the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador Monthly Reading Series. We'll be at the Railway Coastal Museum, downtown St. John's. Free admission, books for sale -- mine are all a flat $20 each -- and it starts at 7. But wait! There's more! The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council will also announce this year's winner of the Lawrence Jackson Award. Heffernan will be reading from Rig: An Oral History of the Ocean Ranger Disaster. I'll be heaving some of Sky Waves out of me, and some new stuff that quivers under that useful label "work in progress." (All this, and I can still slice a tomato paper thin.)

Asking myself tonight as I rehearse: go for funny? sad? manic? or all at once and utterly fucked up?