The Bookshelf -- new blog by Kerri Cull

So the smart and saucy Kerri Cull has started a books blog: The Bookshelf. Ms Cull's a diverse reader and hilariously blunt. Find her here.

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?

Simple, hard

I'm working on a scene in a new novel, scene with a World War Two Royal Navy veteran flashing back to battle at sea while a thunderstorm crashes. The character, Dick Harnum, is based on my maternal grandfather, Harold Francis, a Newfoundlander who served with the Newfoundland Overseas Forestry Unit and then the Royal Navy in WW2. My grandfather hated thunderstorms; I never knew why until about a few weeks ago.

Thunder dragged him back to the guns.

My father found him one day, hunched in his chair, gripping his head, pale and terrified when he finally looked up: -- Oh God, b'y, the thunder.

The low storm that day made everyone's ears vibrate.

Being at sea makes my ears hum and slush, and occasionally vibrate.

My grandfather's head, reinforced by a metal plate after injuries in a blitz -- did that also vibrate with each bang of thunder?

Bent at the waist, gripping his head ...

Try sitting in a chair, bent forward at the waist, holding your head. Either bit of flesh on your belly, and your breathing's cut. So, head pain, ear pain, fear, memory, shallow breathing, ears sloshing -- body memory of being at sea -- ship up, down, port, starboard BOOM up, down, port, starboard, smoke and screams and alarms and BANG dark mystery Where the fuck are we silence silence silence mouths just dark holes ears unblock BOOM ...

A half hour listening to RN footage on Youtube, bang of the naval guns. Five minutes hunched in a chair, elbows stabbing my knees, hands caging my head and those cut short breaths --

Trivial bit of method acting. Pathetic, really. And the comic-book diction of "boom?" Failure of words. And imagination.

Imagination here not just a gift but a duty.

So. Head pain, ear pain, fear, memory ...

Video: Persecution of the Baha'is in Iran

Link to a video on the status of the Baha'is in Iran