There are no words...

... except, perhaps, those of Miss Bishop:

 "This is a world of books gone flat.
 This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
 that dances weeping down the ward
 over the creaking sea of board
 of the batty sailor that winds his watch
 that tells the time of the busy man
that lies in the house of Bedlam."

Here is Devin Leonard's account of his recent visit to Saint Elizabeth's:

"Homeland Security's Future Home: A Former Mental Hospital"

ECHOES OF ELIZABETH BISHOP AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE

Bruce Grey

"This place, with its rolling emerald hills and thick forests, is my home. It’s a place where in autumn the air smells of ripe corn and asters, and in spring it sounds of newborn calves and foals. In the late winter it tastes of homemade maple syrup wrapped in sweet snow, and in the summer it feels of strong stalks of hay." Elizabeth Schofield, First Place, Grades 7–9 Category.

The response to Echoes of Elizabeth Bishop has been overwhelmingly positive. This Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Legacy project was designed and printed by the award-winning Gaspereau Press (http://www.gaspereau.com/) of Kentville, N.S. Gaspereau did its usual superb job and this collection of prose with beautiful visual art is a truly elegant volume. This limited edition book is a must for any book lover’s collection. It makes a wonderful gift.

The price is right, too: $15.00 (no tax), plus postage and handling, if you order online.

To find out more, go to the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia website: www.elizabethbishopns.org where you can purchase copies online. Bookmark (http://bookmarkinc.ca/halifax/), Halifax’s wonderful independent bookstore, is also selling copies (they are located on Spring Garden Road in downtown Halifax).

"Now, when I say the word "camp" chances are you're probably going to think of a tent and a log fire, or maybe even a camper trailer with satellite television in it. But one thing's for sure, when I hear that word those are the last images that come to my mind. The first thing that comes to my mind is the cabin that my grandfather owns." Aaron Holland, First Place, Grade 10-12 Category.

Laurie Gunn

Launch of ECHOES OF ELIZABETH BISHOP

The Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia launched Echoes of Elizabeth Bishop on Saturday afternoon, 22 June 2013, at the Great Village Legion. Since "a picture is worth a thousand words," this post will be a little photo essay of the festivities. The EBSNS thanks all those who attended, especially the contributors who could be present, some of whom came some distance. Anyone interested in purchasing a copy of Echoes of Elizabeth Bishop can do so at the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia website (www.elizabethbishopns.org). The EBSNS would like to thank the book artists at Gaspereau Press in Kentville, N.S., for their stellar work on this book. The contents are eloquent and the book itself is elegant.

The Venue: Great Village Legion, Great Village, N.S.

The EBSNS AGM in progress (Photo by Susan Kerslake).

(Photo by Patti Sharpe)

The contributors (left to right): Ryan Spencer, Maria Duynisveld, Monika Wright, Anne Pollett, Elizabeth Schofield, Mary Verna Feehan (Photo by Susan Kerslake).

The bountiful feast provided by the Great Village Fire Brigade Auxiliary (Photo by Patti Sharpe)

The post-launch mingling (Photo by Patti Sharpe).

Thanks to everyone who worked on this Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Legacy project, and all those who contributed to the book and those who attended the launch.

Elizabeth Bishop's Places in New York City and Great Village

Check out a wonderful recent article, 18 June 2013, in the online Paris Review by Laura C. Mallonee, about the Elizabeth Bishop sites in New York City, "Some Realms I Owned: Elizabeth Bishop in Manhatten." The Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia has a lovely walking tour booklet, Elizabeth Bishop's Great Village: A Self-Guide Tour, which does the same thing for her Nova Scotian childhood home. You can purchase a copy of it on the EBSNS website publications page. Tomorrow the EBSNS will launch Echoes of Elizabeth Bishop: The Elizabeth Bishop Centenary (2011) Writing Competition, at 2:00 p.m. in Great Village, Nova Scotia. The first place winner in the adult category, Australian poet Moya Pacey, is unable to attend, but she has written about her participation in this collection, "The book calls to mind the many wonderful memories I have of my time at the [Arts] Festival in Great Village in 2011. I was honoured to have my story, "My baby brother is born tonight," chosen. I was touched that a childhood memory of mine, that was potent and precious to me, had affected the judges so that they singled it out among the many exceptional stories that were submitted. The days I spent in Great Village, Nova Scotia, during the Festival engaged in the many activities and enjoying the hospitality, generosity and friendliness of the people there...are all engraved on my memory. Fine and perfect like this beautiful book." I will post some photos and an update about the launch next week.

Launch of Echoes of Elizabeth Bishop: Elizabeth Bishop Centenary (2011) Writing Competition

As part of the year-long celebration marking Elizabeth Bishop’s 100th birthday in 2011, the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia sponsored a writing competition (with financial assistance from Nova Scotia Communities, Culture and Heritage) for writers of all ages. Submissions came in five categories (Grades Primary to Six, Grades Seven to Nine, Grades Ten to Twelve, Post-Secondary and Adult). The competition received 106 entries and 15 writers were awarded prizes. Many of these writers are from Nova Scotia, but there are also writers from other parts of Canada, the United States and as far away as Australia. Winners received their awards at the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival in Great Village, 19-21 August 2011.

 

The EBSNS is thrilled to announce the publication and launch of Echoes of Elizabeth: Elizabeth Bishop Centenary (2011) Writing Competition at it Annual General Meeting in Great Village, N.S., on 22 June 2013.

This book was designed and printed by the award-winning Gaspereau Press in Kentville, N.S. The book contains the winning entries of the competition, as well as six colour images: photographs and paintings, which were part of two Elizabeth Bishop Centenary visual art exhibitions: Truro Art Society’s “Paint Great Village” exhibition held in Truro and Great Village, July–August 2011; and ViewPoint Gallery’s “One Art” photographic exhibition held in Halifax, September 2011.

Echoes of Elizabeth Bishop can be purchased online at the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia website:

http://www.elizabethbishopns.org/echoesofelizabethbishop.html 

Copies will also be for sale at Bookmark, Halifax, N.S., wonderful independent bookstore, and at the launch.

Echoes of Elizabeth Bishop is an
Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Legacy project.

“The reading circle — listening to Anne Simpson” – by Suzie LeBlanc

Nine pairs of legs, most of them crossed. One woman’s feet are naked. The closeness of her bare feet, despite the cold outside, brings intimacy to the room. Most feet are still, some moving a little, softly caressing the faded flowery carpet

I also feel everyone’s backs resting on the backs of chairs and the sofa, relaxed, as Anne Simpson reads a passage about “sinking into chairs.” The comfort I feel from everyone in the room, and from the room itself, makes me realize how vital, healing, warm and welcome it is to be in good company listening to someone read. Her reading is an extension of her speech. She begins by talking to us and, seamlessly, her voice launches into reading. Her voice, now with words and rhythms a bit more formalized, stems from the same place, the same discerning mind. We listen in a living room that doesn’t belong to anyone in particular anymore but where reading, writing and contemplating belong to all who visit.

Suddenly I am reminded of being in a similar small circle of legs, feet and chairs in a convent outside Montreal. After a concert we gave in their chapel, Alex (my accompanist) and I are invited to sit with the nuns in a circle while we talk about music, flowers and this and that. It is comforting to be there, in the quiet and circular serenity of 14 rocking chairs.

Left to right: Janet Maybee, Suzie LeBlanc, Mary Ellen Sullivan, Sandra Barry, Anne Simpson, Jill MacLean, Harry Thurston, Linda Hargrave (photo taken by Paul Kellogg -- at the Elizabeth Bishop House, Great Village, N.S.

Today, I am aware of everyone’s toes pointing towards the middle of the room, toward each other. It’s as though our feet are anxious to converse as well. Why am I attracted to everyone’s feet, instead of to their facial expressions? I’m finding our feet so expressive. They are not engaging in fascinating and inspiring intellectual pursuits, but they are eager to meet and commune, almost to touch. If the chairs came a little closer, our feet would touch, and we might giggle and talk less. If we were children, how quickly our feet would have touched, and after a laugh, moved on to another game.

The reason for our gathering was to listen to Griffin Poetry Prize winner (and winner of many other prizes) Anne Simpson, and it was a treat. She chose wonderful excerpts from The Maram Grass, a few poems from her collection Is, and an excerpt of her novel Falling, which made me want to read the book instantly so I bought a copy.

How lucky we were to be in this intimate and informal setting, able to ask questions about the writing process, or how it is to have your work read out loud by someone else, or about the role of the weather, or place, in a novel. Are these things peripheral, or essential to the unfolding of the story? How can they help to connect us to the world we are creating? We talked about connecting disparate things in poetry to create surprising and compelling metaphors, and about how scientists also create by connecting disparate things, and how these two worlds are more related than people realize. I can’t remember everything that was said but it was a very rich afternoon.

At the end of the day, we were treated to an unusual spectacle when a pileated woodpecker began carving a large living space in the dead tree in front of the veranda. He was very close to us and we watched him work for a long time before he flew away, or took a break.

The creature in question (photo by Suzie LeBlanc)

Sandra Barry has been organizing these afternoons at the EB House for years, inviting different artists to share their work. It was my second time and I strongly recommend going. This is the type of unique event that happens in a place like Nova Scotia, organized by generous and devoted people like Sandra. It is why I love living here and I wish I could attend more often. They replace the family and community life so many of us have lost in our frenzied pursuit of careers.

Checking things out (photo by Anne Simpson)

Celebration of Creativity Day in Great Village

Celebration of Creativity Day, Great Village, 18 May 2013 -- the audience!

On Saturday, 18 May 2013, the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia hosted a “Celebration of Creativity Day” at the Great Village School gymnasium. The day began with workshops for Grades 3-6 and Grades 7-9 with award-winning illustrators and authors Susan Tooke (http://www.susantooke.com/) and Richard Rudnicki (http://www.richardrudnicki.com/). Afternoon festivities included the unveiling a permanent banner for Great Village with artwork done by April Sharpe, a young artist from Great Village, and the launch of “Images of My Village,” a virtual website of art work by 201 young people in Colchester County. (www.imagesofmyvillage.com)

New Banner for Great Village, with the artist April Sharpe

After celebratory cake and ice cream, Colchester County fitness instructor Celeste Chesal got the audience dancing with “Music and Motion.” There was also face painting with Halifax writer and artist Susan Kerslake. Susan Tooke and Richard Rudnicki were in attendance for the whole event and signed copies of their books, which were for sale.

 

Celebratory Cake, from the Masstown Market. (Photo by Susan Kerslake) 

John Scott’s Elizabeth Bishop films: Update

Over the past couple of years, we have posted a number of pieces about John Scott’s Elizabeth Bishop films – a series of shorts based on Bishop poems: “Sandpiper,” “One Art,” “First Death in Nova Scotia.” These films have been shown in Nova Scotia and across the world in festivals and at other film events. Most recently, all three will be screened on 25 April 2013 at in Minneapolis at the Minneapolis Central Library. Further, “First Death” was also screened in Münster, Germany, in the townhall on 2 May 2013 in a best Zebra Film Festival (http://www.muenster.de/stadt/kulturamt/poetry_zebra.html).

John is also busy working on his adapation of “In the Waiting Room,” which he say he hopes to have finished early in May. He plans to submit it to film festivals, including the Atlantic Film Festival, which takes place in September 2013.

 Image from "In the Waiting Room" shoot, January 2013

Find out more about John Scott's films and Magpie Productions at: http://www.magpieproductions.com/

Celebration of Creativity Day in Great Village, N.S.

"IMAGES OF MY VILLAGE” CELEBRATION OF CREATIVITY DAY IN GREAT VILLAGE, 18 May 2013

On Saturday, 18 May 2013, the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia will host a “Celebration of Creativity Day” at the Great Village School gymnasium. The day will begin with morning workshops (9:30 to 11:30 a.m.) for Grades 3-6 and Grades 7-9 with award-winning illustrators and authors Susan Tooke and Richard Rudnicki (spaces are limited). Afternoon festivities kick off at 12:30 p.m. The Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia will unveil a permanent banner for Great Village with artwork done by a local young artist and will launch a virtual website of art work by 200 young people in Colchester County (www.imagesofmyvillage.com). After celebratory cake and ice cream, Colchester County fitness instructor Celeste Chesal will get everyone dancing with “Music and Motion.” There will also be face painting with Halifax writer and artist Susan Kerslake. Susan Tooke and Richard Rudnicki will be in attendance with their books, which will be for sale. They will do a book signing.

Banner and virtual exhibition background:

In the fall of 2012, the EBSNS requested all students in Colchester County to create and submit an “Image of My Village” to be part of a virtual exhibition. Approximately 200 images were submitted. The EBSNS, in partnership with Nathan McDonald and Riley MacDonald, two media arts students at the Nova Scotia Community College, Truro Campus, through their Capstone programme, created a virtual exhibition of all submissions (www.imagesofmyvillage.com). The EBSNS assembled a panel of judges from the community to select one image, from a young person directly connected to Great Village, to be a permanent banner for Great Village.

You can also check out this information and learn more about the EBSNS on the EBSNS website: www.elizabethbishopns.org 

This Celebration Day is part of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Legacy programme of the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia.

“Walking With EB” – Help support an exciting new documentary!!

Visual artist, videographer and film-maker Linda Rae Dornan, of Sackville, New Brunswick, is creating a wonderful new documentary, “Walking With EB.” She and Canadian sporano Suzie LeBlanc spent time on the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland in 2008 re-tracing Elizabeth Bishop’s walking tour of 1932.

Linda has reached the post-production stage and is doing a crowd-source fund-raising campaign on Indigogo. You can find out more about this campaign and about Linda’s delightful, funny, moving, inspiring (I have seen the draft version) documentary if you click on the link below.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/walking-with-eb?c=home 

"Walking With EB"

 

Joanna Cooper’s blog post about the Elizabeth Bishop House

Elizabeth Bishop House, Great Village, N.S.

On 11 April 2013, American writer, poet, blogger Joanna Cooper posted a reflection about her time at the Elizabeth Bishop House on her blog Tattycoram: Poems, Prose and Noticings. Check it out:

http://joannapenncooper.blogspot.ca/2013/04/april-11th-poem.html -- “While the Baby Sleeps.”

Joanna has a book coming out with Brooklyn Arts Press:

http://joannapenncooper.blogspot.ca/2013/02/the-next-big-thing.html

 

Suzie LeBlanc talks about Elizabeth Bishop at Ottawa Chamber Festival

On Wednesday, 31 July 2013, at 5:45 p.m., at the Dominion-Chalmers United Church in Ottawa, Ontario, Suzie LeBlanc (http://www.suzieleblanc.com) will be giving a short talk about the Elizabeth Bishop Legacy Recording. Suzie is taking part in the Ottawa Chamber Festival, 25 July to 8 August 2013. This talk is part of what the festival calls “Siskind Snapshots.” Suzie’s main concert, “The Awakened Rose,” will happen the next day, 1 August 2013. Click the link to see the full line-up of this impressive festival. We are delighted that Suzie will have a chance to spread the word about the Elizabeth Bishop music to this dedicated, appreciative audience. We are on track to launch the Elizabeth Bishop Legacy Recording in early fall. Stay tuned for updates. -- http://www.ottawachamberfest.com/concerts

 Suzie LeBlanc in Toronto, fall 2012, at a fund-raiser for the Elizabeth Bishop Legacy Recording

 

Haligonians will get to hear Suzie very soon. On Sunday afternoon at 2:00 p.m., 21 April 2013, Suzie joins with Opera Nova Scotia in a concert performance of selections from Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande, taking place at the Lilian Percy Concert Hall in Halifax. -- http://www.nsopera.org/

Suzie LeBlanc talks about the Elizabeth Bishop Legacy Recording with Michael Enright

CBC Radio One's The Sunday Edition has posted Michael Enright's interview with Suzie LeBlanc, about the Elizabeth Bishop Legacy Recording. Here is the link:

http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/shows/2013/03/10/suzie-leblanc-putting-poetry-to-music/

Suzie LeBlanc -- Upcoming Interview with Michael Enright on CBC Radio One's The Sunday Edition

We are excited to announce that on Sunday, 10 March 2013, the wonderful soprano Suzie LeBlanc will be interviewed by Michael Enright on CBC Radio One's The Sunday Edition (http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/), sometime between 9:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. (we are not sure in which hour the interview will be broadcast -- probably the third hour 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., but Mr. Enright always outlines the full three hours at the beginning of the show, so it will be revealed then). They will be talking about the Elizabeth Bishop Legacy Recording, as well as other musical and literary things. The interview will feature the lovely, lively setting of “Sandpiper” by the incomparable composer John Plant. If you miss it on Sunday, it will likely be posted on The Sunday Edition website, so you can check there in the coming week. It is exciting that the EB Legacy recording will receive some national attention!

James Merrill reads in memory of Elizabeth Bishop

Here is a link to a 1993 reading of several Bishop poems (and some of his own) by James Merrill in Key West.

A Glimpse of Dindy Vaughan’s Australian Fund-raiser for the Elizabeth Bishop Legacy Recording

On 28 October 2012, Australian composer, environmentalis and educator Dindy Vaughan (http://gallerywithoutwalls.com.au/artist/Dindy_Vaughan.html) held a fund-raiser for the Elizabeth Bishop Legacy Recording at her home. Her report was that the afternoon was enjoyed by all. Two of her students performed, as well as several professional musicians – and then everyone enjoyed food, wind and conversation. This event raised over $900 for the cd!

I asked Dindy to send me photographs of the event, and just today they arrived, and I want to share some with our readers – and it gives the EB Legacy Recording team another chance to say THANK YOU to Dindy and her friends, on the other side of the world, for supporting this project. We’ll have more updates about the EB Legacy cd in the weeks to come. Alas, except for Dindy herself, I do not know the names of the people in these photos, which I have chosen to convey the energy of what was, clearly, a lively afternoon. Thank you so much, Dindy!

 Dindy Vaughan herself.

Music in support of music. Violinist Ben Van Poppel.

Song in support of song. Soprano Jordie (Jordina) Howell.

Food, wine and conversation in the garden.
From left to right: Indigenous pianist Cass Richards, talking with
former school teacher Jim Lamb, and artists Mariette Perrinjaquet
and Graham Willoughby.

[Ed. Note. Thanks to Dindy for giving me the names of the artists in these photographs. Dindy tells me that those who attended this fund-raiser are now talking about having a follow-up day when the Elizabeth Bishop Legacy cd is released so that they can hear the music. The will be joined by a poetry-reading group who had, coincidentally, just discovered Bishop's poetry a few weeks before Dindy's fund-raiser. What a lovely story about the spread of Bishop's work "down under"!]

FIRST ENCOUNTER XXXVIII: Betty Bednarski Discovers Elizabeth Bishop

[Ed. Note: Betty Bednarski read her “First Encounter” to those gathered to celebrate Elizabeth Bishop’s birthday on February 10, 2013, at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, in Halifax, N.S.]

I’m going to be reading three quite short excerpts – passages of prose and poetry all very familiar to you, but “found” not very long ago by me.  I’d like to share with you some of the delight of my still fresh discovery and at the same time acknowledge my debt to Sandra and all the other people who made possible that discovery.

It’s true that I have come to the work of Elizabeth Bishop more recently – and later in life – than most, if not all, of you. It was through the different events of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary that I was able to finally get to know this writer. Until that point, she had only been a name and a reputation to me. Until then, I had not read a single page – a single line – by her.

There’s my “confession”!

But I’ve made up for it since. It’s hard to imagine now that time when I didn’t have her words inside me – because that’s where they have been ever since 2011 – well, 2010 to be exact: inside me. I can actually remember the circumstances of the very first contact….

The homecoming

It was summer. I’d just come home to N.S. after several months of travel in Europe. Sifting through the piles of mail that had accumulated, I came across a colourful brochure – a small leaflet (from the Elizabeth Bishop Society, I presume – you’ll know the one I mean) – announcing the events of the upcoming centenary year. I read the leaflet carefully and came in due course to the quotation of a brief descriptive passage from the story “In the Village” – a passage long familiar to you all, I’m sure. But to me it was a revelation, because never before had I read words that so perfectly captured the visual impressions made on me by a particular kind of N.S. landscape – the Minas Basin landscape. Many, many times I had tried myself to describe to people in other places, people who had never seen it, the spatial organization and the colour values of that landscape. And always, always, words had eluded me – in  particular words to convey the subtlety of coloration that results from the coming together of red mud, shifting tidal water, and luminous blue sky. Where I had failed (and concluded that there were no words, that language was inadequate), someone else had succeeded. I sensed here, in writing new to me, a supremely painterly vision (although I had no idea at that point that Bishop had actually painted). I recognized my own landscape at last perfectly rendered in the words she had written. That tiny paragraph was a gift to me – a confirmation of what my eye, from childhood on, had registered, and at the same time a confirmation of the power of words to render visual impressions, to make landscape present, to capture its essence. I read the passage and reread it, committed it to memory – and, in that moment of return, in my joy at being back in Nova Scotia after months and months in distant places, I lived it – lived this passage that I’m now going to read to you – like a homecoming.

1. “In the Village” (i)

“There are the tops of all the elm trees in the village and there, beyond them, the long green marshes, so fresh, so salt. Then the Minas Basin, with the tide halfway in or out, the wet red mud glazed with sky blue until it meets the creeping lavender-red water. In the middle of the view, like one hand of a clock pointing straight up, is the steeple of the Presbyterian Church. We are in the “Maritimes” but all that means is that we live by the sea.”

“…the wet red mud glazed with sky blue” – colour, then, not just mixed or overlaid with another colour, as I had always thought (“red” mixed or overlaid with “blue”, for example). No, nothing quite so opaque, so fixed, so solid, but colour overlaid with “glaze” – in other words, covered with a shining transparency, in which is reflected, from above, that other colour. Simple. Perfect.

Water

Water was one of the things that struck me most forcibly in that prose passage. And it was the presence of water that would strike me again and again as I came to read and hear Elizabeth Bishop’s poems (particularly hear them, because it was quite a while before I purchased my wonderful 2 volume complete works and began pouring over the pages myself, and in the early stages of the centenary, it was through the voice – the singing voice of Suzie LeBlanc and the reading voice of Harry Thurston – that I came to know Bishop’s poetry). At the Symphony Nova Scotia concert of poems set to music by contemporary Canadian composers there was the ocean water of Cape Breton, so different from that of the Minas Basin:

“The silken water … weaving and weaving”

-- from the poem “Cape Breton.”

And, from a memorable evening at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic,

“… the heavy surface of the sea,

swelling slowly, as if considering spilling over”

 – that’s from the poem “At the Fishhouses.”

And throughout that marvelous poem, the evocation of the contact of cold, clear rhythmically moving water and dark, hard stones.

But there is of course so much more than the visual or even the merely physical presence of that water, powerful though these are.

“[E]lement bearable to no mortal,”

that water becomes associated with something else. Listen now to this surely familiar excerpt, and try to discover anew, as if for the first time, as I did listening in 2011, Bishop’s association of ocean water flowing over rocks and the dark, flowing, fearsome, cold yet burning mystery of knowledge:

2. “At the Fishhouses”

… The water seems suspended

above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,

slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,

icily free above the stones,

above the stones and then the world.

If you should dip your hand in,

your wrist would ache immediately,

your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn

as if the water were a transmutation of fire

that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,

then briny, then surely burn your tongue.

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:

dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,

drawn from the cold hard mouth

of the world, derived from the rocky breasts

forever, flowing and drawn, and since

our knowledge is historical, flowing and flown.

So, not just an evocation of the ocean water at a rocky shoreline as it appears to our eye, but as it is given meaning in our human consciousness.

Something else

Now, to end with, I’d like to return to that story “In the Village”, because, there, too, there is so much more than I could at first tell, reading my brief passage in that little leaflet, reading it innocently, out of context. At that point, I’d assumed it to be the opening of the story, when in fact, as you will know, it appears about midway through. Seeing it for the first time in isolation, I’d been sensitive above all to the visual, the painterly qualities.  I’d read it greedily, gratefully, in a kind of euphoria. It was a long time – about a year, probably – before I actually read the whole story, and discovered the real opening paragraph and its dysphoria. Here was the same Minas Basin landscape and its exquisitely rendered palette. But little had I known that hanging over that landscape, pervading it, “heard” in its colours, was the “scream”, that “primal” scream that would forever be a part of it in Elizabeth Bishop’s consciousness.

3. “In the Village” (ii)

“A scream, the echo of a scream, hangs over that Nova Scotian village. No one hears it; it hangs there forever, a slight stain on those pure blue skies, skies that travellers compare to those of Switzerland, too dark, too blue, so that they seem to keep on darkening a little more around the horizon – or is it around the rims of the eyes? – the color of the cloud of bloom on the elm trees, the violet on the fields of oats, something darkening over the woods and waters as well as the sky. The scream hangs like that, unheard, in memory – in the past, in the present, and those years between. It was not even loud to begin with, perhaps. It just came there to live, forever – not loud, just alive forever. Its pitch would be the pitch of my village. Flick the lightning rod on top of the church steeple with your fingernail and you will hear it.”

“[T]he pitch of my village”, or to “[f]lick the lightning rod … with your fingernail”– what extraordinary notions these. What an extraordinary merging of sight and sound there is in the “stain” left on the sky by that scream. And then, is the darkening blue really at the edge of the sky, she asks, or at the rim of the eye of the beholder? What a startling confirmation this is of the power of the subjective to alter the very perception of colour. Colour changed by a scream.  Landscape and something else, landscape infused with – coloured by – the memory of trauma.  

I was grateful to Elizabeth Bishop, in my first ever – innocent – read, for her ability to make visually present through words – and thus reaffirm to me – elements of my own much-loved, familiar landscape. I am grateful now for so much more – not least of all for her painfully beautiful fusion of landscape with subjective experience. Her Nova Scotia – its pain and its beauty – is forever part of mine.

Thank you, Elizabeth Bishop. Thank you, Sandra. Thank you, John, Thank you, Suzie. Thank you, Harry… and thank you everyone who played a role in the wonderful celebratory year that introduced this writer to me.

Another lovely Elizabeth Bishop birthday party

Even though Nova Scotia was hit by an old-fashioned nor'easter winter storm, and snow was piled high on the sides of the streets, almost twenty Bishop fans braved the snow-covered roads and ventured to the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia this afternoon, Sunday, 10 February 2013, to celebrate Elizabeth Bishop's birthday (two days after the actual date, 8 Feb.), but since it is also Chinese New Year, we thought the 10th would be fine. We had the usual wonderful group of readers: novelist Valerie Compton, poet Mary Ellen Sullivan, retired professor Scott MacDougall, Russian professor John Barnstead, poet and novelist Jill MacLean, novelist Heather Jessup, translator Betty Bednarski, and yours truly. The readings were lovely and inspiring and the highlight of the afternoon. There was birthday cake and door prizes and good conversation. Hopefully, Bishop was pleased with this honouring of her, her words and her connection to Nova Scotia. Here are a few photos taken by novelist and volunteer extraordinaire Susan Kerslake. I would like to thank all those who attended for their warm good will and wonderful support of the Elizabeth Bishop House.

 

 The Audience

 

The readers: (l. to r.) Valerie, Jill, Mary Ellen, Betty, Sandra, John, Heather, Scott

 The Cake

The Toast

The Door Prizes

The Podium

Cutting the Cake

Overheard at No. 39, Newbury Street --

"Madame has lost her mother's watch? Of course it could never be replaced, but perhaps we can... Ah, I understand completely. This bezel phobia... If Madame were in New York and this were Tiffany's I would pronounce the whole tragic situation hopeless from the beginning... as hopeless as expecting a miracle for breakfast... But Madame is, fortunately, in Boston and has had the wisdom to apply to Shreve, Crump, and Low, an entirely different sort of firm, for a solution... If Madame would care to consider this, perhaps?"...

[In early December, 1975, I went to Shreve, Crump, and Low's to find a present for my parents' silver wedding anniversary. Although my budget was extremely limited and my coat more than shabby, I was treated like royalty, and I've never forgotten it. I should also perhaps note that the salesperson back in 1975 spoke a less stuffy variety of English than the caricature I've adduced here, and that no invidious comparisons of cities or firms were made... --JB]

A Remark

It seems ironic (in light of a line in her poem "The End of March") that one of the anagrams of "Elizabeth Bishop" is "this bezel phobia"...