Tag: Mercedes Eng

2019 week seventeen

Books Read
17. Trauma Head – Elee Kraljii Gardiner
18. Prison Industrial Complex Explodes – Mercedes Eng
19. Port of Being – Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Kilometres Ran
week seventeen – 49.5

2019 to date: 835 KM

April is National Poetry Month, which was started in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets and shortly there after was picked up on by the League of Canadian Poets, and which I cannot recall knowing about until after my departure from The Capilano Review, which is weird to me but probably anyone reading this is thinking are you starting a coven? that’s too many whiches, which is now making me wonder if since it’s witches is it really whiches or is it whichs. I suppose I could look it up but I’m not sure I’ll find what I’m looking for. All that to say that I thought that April would be a good time to pick up a few of the poetry collections that have been languishing in my to-read pile for a while, and all three of these women I first discovered through The Capilano Review. As it turns out, I am one of the lucky few to have a copy of the handmade Trauma Head chapbook and by turns out lucky I mean I didn’t know that there were only 50 made. EKG expanded the work into a full book that explores her near-death experience and recovery from having a stroke. I loved the bits of Kierkegaard sprinkled through it too. Eng’s 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize-winning book provides a scathing critique of the prison system and its institutionalized racism. It is deeply personal, pulling from correspondence with her incarcerated father. SHR’s Port of Being is a short collection with plenty of depth and won the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. I enjoyed peering into these pieces and finding little bits of Vancouver inside. I have a few more poetry collections on the go so my poetry month might spill over into May.

Splashy splash

Yesterday I go onto a Mobi bike and rode over to Kitsilano and then ran the last 16 KM of the BMO Vancouver Marathon route from Point Grey Road over the Burrard Bridge and around Stanley Park clockwise ending up at the corner of Pender and Bute and it was a bit of an adventure thanks to winds between 40 and 50 KM/H that were in my face for most of the route. As I rounded the Seawall east of the Lions Gate Bridge park rangers were in the process of closing it down. Suffice it to say all fingers are crossed and all wood knocked for not that sort of weather next weekend. And so begins the constant weather app checking. With a week for meteorologists to finish making up their mind it is currently looking cool and wet with a bit of a breeze. Given the choice between that and the heat of last year, I’ll take the wet though I’d really prefer it to be merely cool and damp. On Wednesday I was back at the Point Grey track with the Mile2Marathon crew and had a good workout and then just as good conversation with Coach Kevin about May 5 and since then and including yesterday I’m feeling pretty good about how things might go down in a week. I’m also inspired by results from last night’s London Marathon and this morning’s marathon in Eugene, OR where a handful of Strava friends and M2M teammates ran excellent races posting results that have me excited for them, as well as feeling the pressure to perform just as well. I’m looking forward to finding out.

week twenty seven

Books Read:
41. The Queue — Basma Abdel Aziz
42. Mercenary English — Mercedes Eng

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 41.56
to date — 958.79

I imagine that when Trump wins the US presidential election this November that America will soon descending to the Kafkaesque post-Arab Spring world that Aziz describes so uncomfortably well in The Queue. It’s disheartening to think that what she describes may very well be happening in many places in the Middle East right now. Egypt comes to mind as most obvious. A post civil war Syria seems likely as well. I followed The Queue with a revisit to Eng’s Mercenary English — from a book about ultimate government surveillance, bureaucracy and control, to one about a group of people and a neighbourhood that for too long was largely ignored in the hopes that it would just go away. I’m currently working on an expanded new edition of Mercenary English for CUE Books. The new edition has a new introduction from Eng along with some additions to the autocartography section, and concludes with an interview between Eng and the inimitable Fred Moten (that I am [still] anxious to see/read). I’m hoping to have it out by September, but all of a sudden it’s nearly the middle of July — it’s not looking good. But I’m going to try.
week twenty seven
After putting bout 550 kilometres on my Adidas runners I went out on my birthday (back in June) and bought some new Nike runners from The Right Shoe. And they were great. She was great. I cannot remember her name. Anyway, it was a first for me. Until then all of my runners have come from Costco or Winners. And I’ve had mostly good luck. My physiotherapist suggested The Right Shoe because, well, it’s not just a clever name. And the woman that helped me (Tashaorsomething) made me try on a whole pile of shoes and I honestly went with the ones that I thought felt the best and then I started to get a pain in the top of my foot and the last time this happened was when I bought a pair of Saucony runners (from Winners) and in the first run on them I started experiencing extensor tendonitis and as soon as I went back to my old runners (Nikes, also from Winners) it went away. So I thought that me and Saucony just weren’t going to get along. So I went and bought Adidas runners (from Winners) and they were great, and I wore them out and then bought another pair (from Costco) and (now we’re full circle) and wore them out and then ended up at The Right Shoe on my birthday buying a pair of Nikes that I’d previously had good luck with but this time I did not. So I’m at a bit of a loss because there was zero indication in the store that these shoes were going to hurt my feet (also, gave me my first running blister ever during the Scotiabank half marathon). Anyway, it’s just a bit frustrating. And I don’t know what the solution is except to just chance it and see.