Overnight Success at the Age of Fifty-One - Patrick Connors

Essay by Patrick Connors on the publication of his first major poetry collection, The Other Life, by Mosaic Press.

 

              On December 29th, 2018, Terry Barker, my editor, drove me to the home of Howard Aster, Mosaic Press publisher, to have lunch and deliver my first full poetry manuscript, then titled What Runs Through.

              It was the culmination of many years of hard work, refining my craft, making a name for myself, experiencing a lot of frustration and failure, and even some success.

              However, it was also the beginning of the next stage of my development.

              I had already published two chapbooks, dozens of poems, become established as both a poet and event host in Toronto and beyond, given readings in Texas and Cuba, and helped organize the Great Canadian PoeTrain Tour.

              All of this was worthwhile, and would contribute to an impressive CV, if I ever get around to compiling one.

              Putting together a good book length manuscript, really being able to call myself an author, is another matter entirely.

              The first quarter of the year is an overwhelming time for me. I do about $250,000 worth of business at my telemarketing job during this period. Between this, and the dreary effects of winter, I am generally exhausted in the evening. Activities like readings, volunteer work, and maintaining a busy social life fade into the background.

              However, I also had a part-time job in the first quarter of 2019.

              Revising my manuscript.

              Twice.

              By the beginning of spring, I thought I had it all figured out. Barker contacted me, and we arranged to go to dinner at the local establishment. I assumed we were going to discuss marketing and promotion.

              After the requisite small talk, we got down to the topic at hand. While the book was much improved, it was still not ready to go. He said that Aster was interested in the manuscript, but pointed out that he had not formally accepted it, and that he might not be inclined to in its present form. There was much to be done.

              First of all, the working title, What Runs Through, is the name of a piece which is very personal to me. However, having that as the title of a manuscript is chapbook thinking, not full collection thinking. Barker showed me that evening how important it is to present a book as a coherent whole in order to engage the reader. That's the night the title of my collection became The Other Life. This is a line from the poem "Madness", which is about my day job.

              Six months and several revisions later, the book was ready to go. I had created a clearer image of what my poetry was about, what I am about, and done so in a manner which created a dialogue with the reader.

              Howard Aster is a very busy man, and does a lot of travelling. So, while my book was pretty much complete in fall 2019, I had to wait patiently while he became available to have another meeting.

              On February 15th, 2020, Terry Barker drove me to the office of Mosaic Press, where I handed Howard Aster a hard copy of my manuscript. Having read a digital version earlier that week, Aster said he liked it, and accepted it for publication.

              Then, of course, Covid-19 came along, resulting in further delays.

              I took it as an opportunity to do more revision, fine tune certain poems, and really take pride in my work.

              Realizing I was doing this, Aster asked me to re-send the manuscript in June.

              However, the document was now rife with formatting errors. The version I submitted in December 2018 was done in Windows XP on a computer I don't own anymore. The newer version was constructed in Google Docs on a Chromebook. The two programs were not communicating with each other.

              Fortunately, my far more technologically competent brother Paul saved the day.

              None of us ever does this alone. I could not have gotten to this point without the help of Barker, Aster, my mother, my brother, Mick Burrs, Luciano Iacobelli, Richard Grove, James Deahl, and so many others.

I also could not have done this without overcoming those who have told me that I'm terrible or shouldn't bother, a few of whom clearly thought they were doing so with something resembling good intentions.

The Other Life is now available for purchase at a significant discount from the publisher: http://www.mosaic-press.com/product/the-other-life-poems-by-patrick-connors/

It is also available for pre-order on the websites of Indigo, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, as well as some European booksellers. The formal release of the book will be in July, by which time I will actually be 52.

However, this is also only a beginning. I am currently doing what I can to promote the book, despite the lack of live readings due to Covid. I have scheduled interviews, and am also actively pursuing reviews, fully aware that some are likely to be negative.

If you want to be a published poet, I recommend you read and write a lot of poetry, study books on process, and develop your own unique voice. But you also need to go to events, develop an effective reading posture, and build a network. And you better be willing to do something to help and promote somebody if you want somebody else to help you.

If you want to be an author, you must be able to handle criticism, including tough love from your closest supporters, and be ready to do more work on your manuscript and yourself, even if you think both are complete.

And then, even if there isn't a pandemic, you'll have to be patient. Nothing is going to happen on your schedule, your perception of when things are supposed to happen.

But, when it does come to fruition, it will have been worth the wait.

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.j.connors.3

 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/81912CON

 

Joyce Wayne: The Titanic Failure to Curb the Spread of COVID

Following is a repost from Joyce Wayne's new newsletter, Northern Exposure, about Canadian politics and culture. Yesterday I felt encouraged to do a brief posting of my own experience with getting vaccinated for COVID-19 after reading Joyce's excellent analysis. 

 

 The Titanic Failure to Curb the Spread of COVID

Joyce Wayne
Apr 11    



“Ever since U.S. President Ronald Reagan declared in his 1981 inaugural address that ‘government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,’ Conservatives have argued that the best way to run a country is to dismantle the federal government and turn the fundamental operations of the country over to private enterprise. Conservatives have argued that government is inefficient and wasteful, while businesses can pivot rapidly and are far more efficient than their government counterparts,” writes Heather Cox Richardson, in her Letters from an American.

I beg to differ with this Conservative mantra. Canada’s handling of the COVID crisis is a living example of how government inaction and lack of long-term strategies to protect its people have resulted in the virus’s exponential growth across the country from Quebec westward.


During the weekend, neither the Liberal nor the NDP conventions buckled down on resolutions about how government intervention could work to control pandemics, as it has operated successfully in Australia and New Zealand. The NDP spent more time focusing on the Israel-Palestine resolution than it did on re-building Canadian pharmaceutical capacity, so we aren’t entirely reliant on vaccines imported from abroad.


Two days ago, 7,020,562 or 18.7 per cent of Canadians had at least one dose of a vaccination. Another 794,186 or 2.1 per cent were fully vaccinated. At the same time, 60 per cent of those over 65 are fully vaccinated in America.  Joe Biden’s aggressive vaccination strategy is working, while our governments try to cover their tracks making endless excuses and blaming each other for why our so-called vaccination roll-out is slower than molasses, inaccessible to many and unforgivably confusing.

Why provincial governments in large urban communities haven’t considered organizing multiple drive-in centres or taking vaccines directly to housing complexes in COVID hotspots ---until a few days ago---, borders on the criminal. During last week’s press conference, where Doug Ford announced locking down the province once again, after opening it up a week prior, it sounded as if he’d just heard of the effectiveness of mobile vaccination units.

The combination of the Ford cabinet’s incompetency coupled with its overarching ideological disagreement with government action (except when it benefits its corporate friends) has created an ongoing health crisis the province has never before experienced. While Doug Ford continues to mouth platitudes about how much he cares about Ontarians and has our backs, let’s remember that he cancelled the previous government’s sick pay legislation and refuses to institute new sick pay provisions during the worst health crisis in a century. Employees are going to work sick because they need to put food on the table. The Amazon fulfillment warehouse in Brampton, the epi-centre of Ontario’s pandemic, remains shuttered. More than 600 cases of COVID emanated from that one facility. And it’s spreading like wildfire throughout that community.

While numbers escalated to more than 4,500 new infections in Ontario today, the celebratory nature of both Liberal and NDP conventions belied the reality of life on the ground. ICU wards are hitting capacity, and patients in Ontario are being transferred to outlying hospitals with or without their permission. For weeks, exhausted medical professionals were begging provincial governments to crack down and assert more stringent lockdown rules, but the Ontario government paid their exhortations no mind.

It’s not difficult for the Liberals or the NDP to look and sound better than Erin O’Toole’s party after last month’s disastrous Conservative convention. Or after the repeated fumbling by Doug Ford and his cabinet to assert its responsibility to keep citizens safe. Yet, resolutions to address the crisis were few and far between during this weekend’s party gatherings. Chrystia Freeland’s epiphany speech about the need to institute improved daycare access across the country received little coverage, although women are leaving the workforce in droves as the pandemic multiples.

Driving to our contactless grocery pick-up in Burlington, Ontario yesterday, my husband and I sat inside our car to observe a packed parking lot overflowing with shoppers. It felt like a regular pre-pandemic Saturday shopping blitz. Most stores were offering curbside delivery, which from what we observed, meant entering stores to pick up shopping, or dropping off clothes for dry-cleaning or entering restaurants for take-out. I’m not clear how any of this is curbside.

The confusion and inattention to new safeguards continue, the number of infections grows, directions for “lockdowns” change every week while politicians celebrate.

getting the jab in rural Ontario

 
I got my first jab in rural Ontario on Monday, April 12. Twice I had tried to register online at the beginning of April without success. The provincial registry refused my booking with no explanation. Perhaps my system is too old or compromised with viruses, maybe there was some other reason - I'll never know. I'm able to buy the occasional item online without problems. I believe the provincial computer system should be as accessible and forgiving.

Fortunately I forgot that our village library is curbside only service, so I called to see if I could use a library computer to register. Our head librarian is extremely friendly and efficient, and she just went ahead and used her computer to book my appointment in the nearby village of Campbellford. We have a nice medical building in Marmora which isn't being used for vaccinations, so it's nonsensical why I had to drive 40 or 50 miles round trip to another county to get my jab. I thought we weren't supposed to travel during this third major clampdown.

The vaccination centre in Campbellford is in the new fire hall, which has all the ambiance of an airplane hangar. I arrived less than 10 minutes ahead of my scheduled time, and waited in the drizzle with all the other seniors. There was no information given, and when I asked the burly doorman, he said they don't have any information themselves. It felt like a cattle call of a situation, with no covid information or friendly instructions. Our huddled group of bedraggled seniors was finally allowed into an anteroom and motioned to sit on several chairs spaced 6 feet apart. A list of covid symptoms was read out while we sat mutely, drying off. After too many minutes we were finally directed down a narrow corridor, with several people scurrying past us in the other direction just inches away. The corridor led to our huge holding pen, with long lines of chairs occupied by perhaps 50 or 60 other cattle. I was pointed to sit in one line of chairs, and then another line, and finally the head chair in another long line-up. This is good, I thought, I'm at the head of a line, until I realized the two nurses and their wheeled station were working their way up from the back of the line. I didn't see any other injection stations, although there must have been several more in operation.

Eventually the nurses reached me, and briefly told me what they were about to do. They were the only efficient and friendly people I encountered during my visit. After the quick jab and advice not to drink alcohol for 24 hours, I was told to wait 15 minutes to see if there was a reaction, and then I was free to go. After my time was up I headed for the nearest marked exit, only to be told I couldn't leave by this door 15 feet from me, but that I had to walk down a centre aisle through all the other waiting jabbees.

It was not a pleasant experience. This could be forgiven if this had been the early days of vaccine access in Canada - the awkward "military" style of directing us, the lack of information, etc.. But this was many months into the mass vaccination process, and things are still a confusing, disorganized, disorienting and unfriendly kershsmozzle. I sure don't want to tell my friends who are vaguely anti-vaxxer what a snafu they'll encounter getting their shots, as they're already somewhat vaccine hesitant.    

Does Culture Matter As Much As Dining Out? - from Joyce Wayne's important new blog

 

Welcome to Northern Exposure, my newsletter about politics, culture and the media. Please click on the BLUE subscribe button to receive the weekly post in your inbox.

Subscribe now by googling "Northern Exposure"

Does culture matter as much as dining out?

copyright Joyce Wayne
Mar 28    

Does it surprise you that there’s so much anxious talk about the death of restaurants and so little conversation about the declining arts scene during COVID? There was hardly a mention of it in the new Ontario budget, although I’ve included a link to the beneficiaries of the recent “Rescue Fund” from this government. To be fair, the provincial government also announced a new “Magazine Fund” on budget day, March 24th.

Under the auspices of the rescue fund, the Stratford Festival, the National Ballet, the Canadian Opera Company, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Shaw Festival received $1-million or more in rescue support, well-deserved after an entire year of darkened stages. Yet if I remove the big five’s grants from the total support package, everyone else is left with considerably lesser amounts, perhaps just enough to keep small to medium organizations above water until the fall ---or perhaps not.

Across Canada, restaurants, retail stores, including big-box Costco and Wal-Mart, are allowed to stay open (within certain limits), throughout the pandemic, as theatrical stages, galleries and museums remain shuttered. Don’t get me wrong. In no way am I suggesting that cultural venues remain open when they pose a danger to community health. Still, I’m thinking of how government-sponsored technology and delivery methods could help bring the arts into our homes. The only way independent bookstores are surviving the pandemic is by delivering customer’s book orders to their doorstep.


The fact remains: very few consider bookstores an essential service, not like Costco and Wal-Mart that also sell skids of books. As CTV reported in January, “Retail stores like Wal-Mart and Costco are excluded from many of the new rules surrounding the state of emergency in Ontario. If a store sells a full complement of groceries, it is considered essential. The problem for some smaller business owners – these big box stores can also sell everything else. “

As for publishers, I can’t think of more than a handful of independently-owned book publishers whose future is not in peril. It’s not only the pandemic’s economic devastation; it’s also about galloping corporate concentration in the industry that could not be descending on Canada’s publishers or writers at a more inopportune time.

The red flag is Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade publisher that registered its successful bid to purchase Simon & Schuster for $2-billion U.S. from entertainment conglomerate ViacomCBS last November. Let’s begin with the fact that Random House is owned by the German giant Bertelsmann media and investment corporation that also owns the broadcaster RTL, the magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr, the music company BMG, the service provider Arvato, the Bertelsmann Printing Group, the Bertelsmann Education Group and Bertelsmann Investments, an international network of funds.

By wrapping Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster inside its capacious arms, not only will the new company be publishing 40 per cent or more of the trade book titles in Canada, but it could also dominate the market in the U.S. and Britain.

While Canada dithers, the Guardian reports, “The U.K. competition watchdog has launched an investigation into Penguin Random House’s $2bn (£1.45bn) takeover of Simon & Schuster, a deal rivals have warned will create a ‘behemoth of books’ with too much power in the global publishing industry.”

In her Globe and Mail article, Anna Porter, author and founder of Key Porter Books, explains why we should be concerned about this merger:

“Here is why it matters: the combined publisher would dominate the Canadian market in a way that has so far not been possible. Authors would have fewer options for publishing their books, jobs will be lost – and with those lost jobs, there will be less diversity of interest in subjects and literary tastes. With the mergers, some of the editors and publicists in each of the acquired firms will lose their jobs, and we will lose their selections of books that make it to the marketplace.”

Let’s be honest with each other. Penguin Random House’s domination of the book trade in Canada started in 2011 when McClelland & Stewart, the last large, well-recognized Canadian-owned publishing house, was as Porter describes it, “swallowed up by Random House.”

What happened to McClelland and Stewart is a story that demands re-telling as it paved the way for the extensive multi-national control of Canada’s reading habits. Here’s what happened. Publisher Jack McClelland was an inspired media maven with a taste for good books, a nose for talented writers and an indefatigable desire to instil a national book culture in the Canadian soul. He kept his company afloat for as long as he could. How he did it was a magical mix of management “hutzpah,” his irresistible charm, which kept such bestselling authors as Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, and Michael Ondaatje in his stable, along with inspired government support from Pierre Trudeau’s government and the Ontario government.

McClelland couldn’t continue forever. Market conditions for Canadian books were becoming increasingly precarious. When First Plazas Inc. founder and strip mall developer Avie Bennett offered to rescue the company in 1985, Jack McClelland folded his hand.

Bennett, who demonstrated a compelling desire to be an active member of the cultural and academic elite in the country, managed M&S for 15 years, all the while bleeding considerable amounts of money. At first, he believed that his business acumen could turn the company around. Then in 2000, in a slick deal pasted together by Bennett and his legal team, the University of Toronto, the Federal government and Random House, he donated 75 per cent of his shares in M&S to the University of Toronto, while Random House acquired 25 per cent ownership in the company. Eleven years later, M&S completely merged with Random House. (Read publisher Ken Whyte’s succinct description of what actually happened). For Bennett’s earlier generosity, Maclean’s reported that he was awarded up to a $15-million reduction of taxes owed to the Feds.


Jack McClelland and Avie Bennett

 
In her meticulously researched book The Handover: how bigwigs and bureaucrats transferred Canada’s best publisher and the best part of our literary heritage to a foreign multi-national, journalist Elaine Dewar describes the transaction and its fallout in detail. I urge you to read it.

Since this merger, Canadian book publishing has faced ever more obstacles as it struggles along during an era of galloping corporate concentration and new media competition in the entertainment business. Canadian-owned publishing’s operating revenues have tanked every year since 2006. Canadian-based authors who do publish with independently-owned houses seldom receive the media attention of those published by large multi-national presses. A small house simply doesn’t have the resources to throw at editing, promotion, publicity and marketing that a company like Penguin Random House regularly exerts.

You might ask if that matters. I think it does. It means:

1. Books that are geared to larger markets than the Canadian market are more attractive to multi-national publishing houses located here.

2. Books intended expressly for Canadian readers are often buried under the advertising weight exerted by multi-national book publishers.

3. Independent Canadian-owned publishers have come to rely increasingly on grants from the federal ministry of Heritage Canada, the Canada Council or provincial granting sources.

4. Canadian book culture, which exploded during the 1970s, is no longer the major force it once was as book sales continue to plummet and U.S. books overwhelm our bestseller charts.
 

As the pandemic drags on, the government’s overarching role in supporting book publishing is more important than ever. We need more sophisticated and more active government intervention if Canada is to maintain its own book culture. Unfettered market conditions will not be enough to keep a wide variety of Canadian authors and their Canadian-owned publishing houses in business in a country of 37-million. Publishing ought not to be a matter of adeptly filling out grant applications for the Canada Council or Heritage Canada’s Canadian Book Fund.

The political vision ought to be grander, more intentional, and based on strictly enforced Canadian ownership requirements, generous tax incentives, implementation of new technologies in schools and universities to favour Canadian books, and bookstore policies that honour independent bookstores as they do in Quebec where schools, libraries and other government institutions can only purchase their books from accredited retailers.

Without creative, bold measures implemented at the federal and provincial level, Canadian book publishing is doomed to continue to fade as mergers such as the one between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster dominate our literary landscape.

Like you, I hanker for a delicious meal in a first-rate restaurant, but what I care about more is the resuscitation of the unique book culture authors, publishers and booksellers built brick by brick in this country from 1970 until the handover of McClelland & Stewart to Random House. As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, it’s time for new beginnings.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share



 

Springtime in Canada - Patrick Connors

from Patrick Connors new book from Mosaic Press

The Other Life


April snow billows and  blows
but goes nowhere, with drifts
just long enough to cause accidents
which change lives forever.

Blustery wet wind rattles rooftops
topples and tears down trees
older than the neighbourhood around them
and makes small dogs pensive.

Springtime in Canada means we watch
children play hockey in outdoor rinks,
millionaires play baseball in domed stadiums
and say, "I can't wait until it's really Spring!"

It is planting seeds in unreceptive soil
hoping to make life out of nothing -
cold, cracked hands the mark of your labours,
and you know that the trying is worthwhile.

praise for Patrick's new book, his first major collection: 

from Mosaic Press website

 

George Elliott Clarke, “Pat Connors is an unpretentious and unassuming a poet as his hero, that bard of the everyman and everywoman, Al Purdy.”

Bruce Meyer, “Here is a voice whose precision, sense of focus, grace, and economy of language, are brought together in poems that are memorable and gifted. The beauty of these pieces is that if you blink, you will miss them. Keep your eyes open, and watch as Connors runs through his memories and his vision of what life can be.””

Dr. Georgia Wider, “…a collection of accessible meditations on hockey and hotdogs and friends and faith. His work is local, tactile, and specific in imagery…Connors speaks in the language of a working-class hero, a true people’s poet.”

Robert Priest, “Patrick Connors deceptively plain spoken poems give us a man in need of unadorned truth…he lays bare the heart and hopes of a seeker whose urge to reach the true light of faith refuses to be distracted by baubles and trinkets. It is refreshing to read these poems of spirit.”

Max Layton, “Strong, forthright expression of abiding faith.”

Lillian Allan, “Here’s a writer who spends much creative-time facilitating opportunities for other writers, so it’s indeed a happy occasion to see his first collection take shape.”

John B. Lee, “…the writer is attentive to the betterment of the self, and through the example thereby becoming an inspiration to others through what the written word aspires to achieve. Poetry becomes a beacon to follow driving inward and illuminating interior darkness, the lifting that cup of light to lips for the speaking and to the ear for the hearing.”

Stanley Fefferman, “…Connors courageously puts on paper what’s in his heart about himself and what he cares about: poetry., hockey, religion, family, politics and love. His plainspeaking is supported by a craftsman’s attention to detail.”

 

Patrick Connors has been a mainstay of the poetry scene in Toronto for many years. His contribution and his commitment to the poetic life of the GTA and beyond is well known. The Other Life, his first collection of poems, establishes him as an original and distinctive poetic voice. His considerable reputation is already well established and this volume will be read, enjoyed and cherished by his many admirers.

 

TAX THE RICH (it's a Canuck campaign!)

Our Canadian tax system has always struck me as extremely unfair. It's always appeared to me as a high level scam created by the rich 1% to maintain their wealth by robbing and weakening the other 99% of our citizens.  Trudeau, Morneau, Ford etc. etc. are all trust kids born into the 1%. What our system is is a plutocracy, not a real democracy. Rule by the rich over everyone else. I received the following email today which has some real suggestions on how to start rebalancing our social, economic, cultural, and politikal systems as we emerge from the pandemic.

 

 
2 days left to participate in the 2021 Federal Budget! 

 
There are just a couple of days left to fill out the federal government’s pre-budget consultation questionnaire. This year’s budget will probably be one of the most significant ones in recent history, as the government plans to spend about $100 billion in its COVID-19 economic recovery plan. We urge you to fill it out, as it’s a democratic opportunity for all of us to share our ideas about what we want taxpayers’ money to be invested in. Deadline is February 19.

The questionnaire doesn’t ask specific questions about the wealth tax, but you can include it in the comments. Our submission, for example, will urge the government to include tax reforms with three key measures from our #TaxtheRich campaign:

Implement a wealth tax on the ultra rich
Close tax loopholes used to hoard wealth
Implement a tax on excess profits made during the pandemic
 

Young Canadians, women, racialized and Indigenous people are currently bearing the brunt of the health and economic crisis, and we must ensure that they are not left behind in the recovery process.
Join the movement to #TaxtheRich and
help forge a future for the many, not just a few.

Take action, build momentum.

Hungry to do more? Here are three things you can do in less than 10 minutes that can help build the call to tax the rich:

Sign the Canadians for Tax Fairness’ letter urging Chrystia Freeland to include progressive tax measures in this year’s budget and build back an economy for all: https://www.taxfairness.ca/en/action/we-need-tax-fairness-budget-build-back-better
 

Ask your friends, family and organizations you think may want to get involved to add their name to the movement here: letstaxtherich.ca
 

Share the campaign letstaxtherich.ca on your social media channels

In other wealth tax related news:
 

-UK considering a one-off 1% wealth tax on wealth over $700,000 for individuals, and $1.4 million for couples
-How an excess profits tax helped post World War II recovery, and how it can help a COVID-19 recovery
-New study from the London School of Economics says 50 years of tax cuts only helped the rich

Share this and build a movement:
1.Canada’s top 1% currently holds more than 25% of the country’s wealth. How is this fair? We need to #TaxtheRich to recover from the pandemic.
2.I am one of 76% of Canadians that supports a #WealthTax.
3.We need to #TaxtheRich now so we can invest back into our economy & communities.
 

Together, let’s forge a future for the many, not just the few. We’ll keep you updated.
Be well,
 

Tax the Rich Campaign Team
Broadbent Institute · 220 Laurier Ave W, 510, Ottawa, ON K1P 5Z9, Canada

You can also keep up with Broadbent Institute on Twitter or Facebook.