Q&A: GEORDIE MILLER

Proving that the national importance of poetry in Canada cannot be hemmed into a single month, we continue to celebrate the form by welcoming Haligonian (originally of St. Catherines) to the bookstore to trumpet his hot new book, Re:union. Geordie took the time off from a hangover incurred at a local wedding to field a few pressing questions--each more pressing than the last.

Andrew Hood: Your poem "Disciples" begins "Dear Andrew..." Writing this poem, did it occur to you that I would think you were addressing me and find this confusing, maybe even troubling?

Geordie Miller: It hadn't actually occurred to me that anyone other than the addressee of my poem could be named Andrew. I'm a poet and therefore at least two parts narcissist. I could go on to say something about the difference between personal expression and effective communication, but for now I'll just pledge to change it to "Andy" in the second edition. (There's only one Andy, right?).
 
Why on earth did you write a book of poetry? Why not a sitcom pilot, say, or a recipe book for gluten-rich dishes?

Well the poetry book doesn't preclude me moving to Hollywood or gluten-world; after all, the Coen brothers were a famous Montreal poet before they hit it big. Wait. Wrong Cohen. Well, there ARE plenty of poems about pizza. Probably. In all honesty, I like writing poetry--like it as a way of organizing my experience of the world. I think that it enables me to articulate fragments from this experience--things I've felt and learned about, as well as phrases and ideas that obsess me--in a compelling way.
 
Let's say I hate poetry. Point me to some poetry books--ex- or including Re:union--that will change my sour tune.

You're not alone, and I love this question because I'm a closet Book Club Czar (having never belonged to a Book Club). If you wanted to become H8R Free, you would do well to start with David Berman's Actual Air. It's wry and catches you in the gut or throat (your pick), and since I'm not writing a blurb I'll stop there. Other potential tune-changers include Brad Cran's Ink on Paper, anything by Elizabeth Bishop (full disclosure: I did one of those quizzes that make their rounds on Facebook, "Which Poet Are You?", and got Bishop. As I said, two parts narcissist), and Mike Spry's Bourbon & Eventide. If you're short on time, go read Kayla Czaga's poem, "Victoria Soto," in a recent edition of The Walrus. If that doesn't do it, maybe nothing will.  

Oh, and yes--I hope that Re:union might change your mind. I'm after a reader who need not bring a host of formal poetry knowledge or interest to the table, and whose (possibly) negative associations with the form I aim to challenge.
 
The "re:" theme implies "in regards to" but also connotes repetition of and return to. What the heck are you trying to get at here, Geordie?

Re: "re"--I hope I'm not being too clever (a fault). You're right on with the memory and repetition reading. When I was a young jerk, I was sure I would someday become a famous writer. So I read the work of other young jerks who did become famous writers (Jack Kerouac being the prime example for me). Kerouac was constantly writing and revising his autobiography under the guise of a new novel, so I felt that cataloging my impressions of the world was the only way to write. That nostalgia + gossip about yourself=Art. This equation has since been complicated by/for me, but I can't help but sometimes return to it.

The repetition (of certain words, concepts etc.) is a way for the collection to cohere. I wrote something in the Literary Press Group entry about "recoding," so there's another "re" for us to include. 

The "re" also invokes "in regards to" (as you note), like the reader has raised something to which I'm responding. And I've been drawn to prose poetry (with some words left out) as a way of addressing my memories and the more immediate stuff. Nearly half of the poems in Re:union are formatted as letters. Letters appealed to me as a model because they allowed me to get over the self-conscious sense that poetry was an outmoded genre. In other words, I doubled down on the outmoded'ness. And despite the ascendance of email and other communicative avenues (maybe because of?), people like writing letters. Like poetry, they are performances meant to be overheard and something more personal, but no less easy to understand. 



You've been active in the Halifax comedy scene, but are also active in academics, and now here's this book of poems by you. Can you describe the weird bubble triangle made by the Venn diagram of these three spheres overlapping?
 
I'd love to say that this "weird bubble triangle" is seamless, as if it was a model for intellectual and creative labour. It's not, of course, although it's hard for me to deconstruct them regardless. There's humour in my poetry, but it's not a bit. My poetics are informed by my critical writings about poetry, not to mention my book 'learnin more generally. Like there's literary or philosophical allusions in several of the poems, which help add depth to what are otherwise fairly short set pieces, yet you don't need to "get" these allusions to have the poem affect you. I hope? Someday I'll read my poems at Yuk Yuk's and demand that the audience writes a reflective essay on the performance which I'll then grade. That would probably make the overlap more weird though.
 
You're hitting The Bookshelf a day shy of National Poetry Month, what role--not to put you on the spot too much here, man--do you see poetry playing in this nation we're currently in?

Raising the public profile of poetry is a commendable aim, no doubt. I think we just need to be attentive to how poetry is calling out to a public because from a political perspective--it is International Workers' Day--I think it's dangerous to instrumentalize poetry. There's the temptation when answering such a question to do something to this effect. To say that poetry "saves lives" (as the headline in The Coast on NPM put it) or something equally dramatic that doubles as a value claim. I guess if I re-frame the nation as an entertainment state, then poetry is competing (as your second question implies) with other genres, such as movies, novels, and even cookbooks. From a market standpoint, it's losing. From a social standpoint, it's worth claiming that poetry is a form that is well-attuned or well-adapted to the inundation of narratives and narrative fragments (bits of information) to which we are exposed on a daily basis. That reading poetry pulls us out of this digitized narrative space, encouraging us to slow down, and ruminate upon or return to certain and uncertain words. I suppose I might be saying such things because I often write short poems which want to be social.
 
More than once you make reference to know-it-all Slavoj Zizek. Are you aware that there was a time when he was the most stolen author in our bookstore? Why would people be jerks like that? And what are you--as a public figure now--doing to help or hinder this type of garbage behavior?

Property is theft, as a slogan from Proudhon that Zizek often steals puts it. I will not, however, align myself with these bookish deviants. If they're reading these words: STEAL HIS BOOKS FROM AMAZON. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR SUPPLY CHAINS.
 

If you had to pick a line-up for a slo-pitch team, and the poems in Re:union were players who'd showed up for tryouts, which ones would you pick for your team?

I think that the only appropriate way to handle this question is by assigning my poems the identities of players featured in The Simpsons softball episode and then resorting to plot points or sports cliches as rationale (NB: The batting order is based on where I would bat the players. I'm already taking this question too seriously). Accordingly,

1. "Field Notes" as Steve Sax--a bit mysterious, like those unsolved murders Sax is accused of committing.
2. "9 Things That You Never" as Ozzie Smith--"a real team player"
3. "Zero Dark Thirty" as Ken Griffey Jr.--the most, um, 'heady' poem in the collection.
4. "Reunion" as Jose Canseco--the theme of rescue; oh, and I also took a lot of steroids while writing it.
5. "Inaugural" as Wade Boggs--a poem that could start a bar fight.
6. "Baggage" as Don Mattingly--what some would describe Mattingly's sideburns as (i.e. "baggage").
7. "A Rival" as Darryl Strawberry--"gave it everything we had out there tonight"
8. "Airport Refrain" as Mike Scioscia--Scioscia learns a harsh lesson about "cause and effect" in the episode.
9. "No Hands Clapping" as Roger Clemens--"no one should ever clap for Roger Clemons."




Re:unite with your new favourite book of poetry in the back of the bookstore, Thursday May 1st at 6:30pm. Be prepared to write a reflective essay afterwards, which Geordie will grade.

THE JULIEN PROJECT FUNDRAISER

Greetings supporters and gardening lovers!

April 20-26 marks a very important time for the Julien Project; it is Earth Week and Horticultural Therapy Awareness Week. We are celebrating  the integral role these concepts have in the organization with a week of  fundraising and awareness about what we do. The Julien Project is a  community-based, charitable organization that provides social and therapeutic gardening opportunities for people of diverse backgrounds  and abilities enabling personal growth, community membership, and environmental well-being.

For the week of April 20-27,many Guelph businesses are displaying information about the Julien Project and providing opportunities for  patrons to donate to the Julien Project. The Bookshelf and eBar are generously hosting a book review by one of our team, some blog posts for people to learn more about the impact of our programs, and at the end of the exciting week, a fundraising open stage event at the eBar hosted by Greg Denton, with feature performances by Ambre McLean, Scott Merritt,  Richard Laviolette, and Nathan Coles! Bring some cash to purchase Julien Project goods and a chance to win some great door prizes donated by generous partners and supporters in the community.

Thanks so all for your continued support. Please pass this message of
what we do on far and wide.

The Julien Project Team

MEMOIR OF MÁRQUEZ

In July of last year, Márquez’s brother, Jaime García Márquez reported that Gabo had dementia. “He has problems with his memory. Sometimes I cry because I feel like I’m losing him.” Márquez had stopped writing and would not publish another book. Now that Gabriel García Márquez has exchanged one solitude for another, a great voice has been stilled. It is difficult to accept this news about a writer who has been such a part of our lives for over four decades.

On the soft cover edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967),[1] two lovers embrace, heated by the ball of the tropical sun. This image seemed to be everywhere in the 1970s. Poking out of knapsacks. Intently read on buses, trains and airplanes. The book engaged deeply with the hopes of that time. Was the title a premonition of the onset of increasingly untrustworthy histories we now face? Or the start of understanding and rejecting them? In retrospect, yes. 

I started the book a number of times, and gave up repeatedly. There were just too many Aurelianos and Buendías. But eventually, as I recovered from a fever, while my mind cooled, I began to read it again, barely pausing to put it down.

I picked the book up again recently, wondering how it would unfold, after a few decades. Long forgotten scenes returned, the most disturbing and repressed of which was the massacre of the banana plantation workers who were planning to unionize. Those desaparecidos of the past had prefigured new terror in countries like Chile and Argentina. I emerged once again “from this marvellous novel as if from a dream, the mind on fire,” as John Leonard, in the New York Times Book Review, said of the book when it was first published. At that time, Márquez said that he was stunned when the publisher of the first edition printed so many copies—8,000 of them. By 2011, over 50 million copies had been sold worldwide.

Márquez’s writing continued to permeate our lives. In 1978, decades after Franco’s planes strafed women and children on the Almería road, La Mala Hora (1961) surfaced in this quiet little town in southern Spain. Franco had died three years earlier, and the country was exhaling a sigh of relief. But it was still a country where, in every city and town, the Guardia Civil carried loaded submachine guns in the streets. I was there, hitchhiking to Morocco, with Susanna, the love of my life, and had to hitchhike alone back up the coast to Cullera. While I was away, she met a Korean man who was hitchhiking through Spain, sleeping at night in abandoned castle ruins and signal towers. She invited him up to our room, so that he could bathe, do his laundry, and hang it with ours on the roof of the pension. A terrible mistake in such a conservative town. Una mala hora!

When I returned to the pension, Susanna and Kim were having lunch in the pension dining room. As I appeared in the doorway of the room, the waiters glanced at me, and fled in fear and silent trepidation to the kitchen. In the sudden descent of quiet, I heard the theme music from Fistful of Dollars, filmed in the arid sierra I had just crossed twice. A mysterious and resonant story, something like a Márquez narrative was unfolding. The regulars stared away, or looked down at their food, hoping against hope. When I reached her table, she hugged me, and then introduced Kim. I shook his hand warmly. We became friends and talked about writers we loved, such as Márquez. Before Kim left Almería to pick fruit in France, he gave us a Spanish copy of La Mala Hora. Márquez’s preferred title for this taut little book, which looks at the conspiracy of silence that haunts a small place, was This Shit-Eating Town. He had to be convinced by his publisher to change it to In Evil Hour.

In a Paris Review interview in 1981 Márquez was asked if he would be interested in the Nobel Prize for Literature. He replied, “I think that for me it would be an absolute catastrophe . . . it would be terrible.” Receiving the Nobel the next year was not a catastrophe. In his Nobel acceptance speech, he took the opportunity to present the distant and incredible nature of Latin America’s solitude. “Our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.” He went on to argue that it was “the very scale of our solitude” that “did not put us beyond the reach of madness.” The Nobel gave him no pause. After receiving it, he published Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), The General in His Labyrinth (1989), Strange Pilgrims (1992), and Living to Tell the Tale (2002). Is there more of his work to be translated?

Some time in the early 1990s I arrived early for a flight from Toronto to western Canada. At the terminal, I purchased a copy of The General in His Labyrinth, to read while waiting for my boarding call. Sitting down next to the departure gate for my flight, I opened the book to its first sentence: “José Palacios, his oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned.” Much time passed after Simon Bolívar rose from his bath and took flight over the continent of madness he loved so deeply that he dreamt of uniting it. So much time, that I missed every flight boarding call broadcast by the speaker above my head. I travelled on the next available plane, accompanied by the loneliness and immense dream of General Bolívar.

Sixteen years after his report of The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (1970), Márquez published another piece of non-fiction, Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littín (1986). The timing was perfect: Pinochet in Chile, Reagan in America, Thatcher in Britain, Videla’s genocidal dictatorship in Argentina, and that little PM in Canada had all been attacking or rending the social contract in their countries, under the baleful gaze of the neoconservative economics of the Chicago school. Littín was an exiled Chilean film maker who returned surreptitiously to Chile to film the fear and psychological devastation wrought by Pinochet’s dictatorship. Initially disappointed to hear that the book contained an edited version of an interview with Littín, I soon warmed to Márquez-Littín hybrid sentences such as, “I suppressed my innermost feelings and assumed the strange condition of an exile in my own country, the most bitter experience imaginable for me.”

A decade later, his reporting in News of a Kidnapping (1996) was difficult reading. Although he sometimes disparaged his work as a journalist, this book was journalism of the highest order. It was deeply disturbing, and true. At one point, Columbian drug barons had bombed the offices of El Espectador, the newspaper where Márquez began his writing career decades ago. Why did he risk writing this look at the heartrending atrocities of the drug trade that poisoned and ended so many lives in Colombia? His Acknowledgments provided an answer, “Their pain, their patience, and their rage gave me the courage to persist in this autumnal task, the saddest and most difficult of my life.”

Over the years Márquez personally, as well as in his writing, has been buffeted by the collisions of the now becalmed storm fronts of communism and capitalism. It is becoming more difficult to remember the tensions between conservatives and liberals, and the climate of the Cold War, now that they are being swept away by the current rise of ignorance and enraged zealotry. Some of the hope and complexity of the politics of that time are revealed in One Hundred Years of Solitude, in the dream of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, late in life: “Later it would be learned that the idea that was working on him at the time was the unification of the federalist forces of Central America in order to wipe out conservative regimes from Alaska to Patagonia.” And “the possibility of coordinating the popular elements of both parties, doing away with the influence of military men and professional politicians, and setting up a humanitarian regime that would take the best from each doctrine.” Such an inspired, retreating, necessary and impossible dream.

The first volume of Márquez’ autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale (2002), revealed that his childhood realities were often inspirations for his “magic realism”. But was it magical? Colombia before the drug cartels was a place where ghosts were seen and accepted as real presences. Where gun duels were fought in the streets. Where, for many years, his mother was able to conceal from her children the truth of their abject poverty. Where his grandfather took three year old Márquez to look at the Pacific for the first time, and in response to the child’s innocent question about what was on the other shore, he answered with certainty, “There is no shore on the other side.” Where, at the age of four, Márquez spoke “only to recount absurdities,” but no one is too concerned—in fact his grandmother regarded it as a gift of prophecy. Where the future Nobel laureate and author of dozens of books never learned to spell, and still can’t. To the end of his career, his copy editors have assumed that he could not type, and have been silently correcting his appalling manuscripts.

Living to Tell the Tale concluded at the beginning of his fiction writing career. It was also the moment in the 1950s when the love of his life replies to his letter to her. Those who awaited the second volume of this projected trilogy were saddened by the rumour that Márquez had become too ill to complete further installments. Then relieved in April 2009 when he responded to a question from El Tiempo about this rumour, “Not only is it not true, but the only thing I do is write.” In Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, his persistent biographer, Gerald Martin, describes Living to Tell the Tale as “brilliant but not always accurate.” Adapted accounts sometimes trump the impossibility of accuracy through time. Accurate or not, how many unshakeable truths are revealed about the earliest years of his past in the certitude of, “There is no shore on the other side”? The past is not a foreign country—it is a lost continent, as far away and present as that nonexistent shore.

In 2005 Márquez tossed a grenade, both loaded and disarming, into the hierarchical arenas of literary reviewing. Fragments also landed in the less modulated stadiums of political correctness. After reading the first sentence of Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004), I wanted to discard the book: “The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.” No wonder the book appeared to widespread grim and judgmental condemnation—it was easy to miss the book’s melancholy, sly humour, and deliberate provocation, especially in that opening sentence. There was some praise by those who understood its wintry tenderness, but generally it received the worst reviews of any of his books. For praising the book in a review, I was denounced angrily at a party by a woman for my obtuse sexism. My question to her,  “Did you read the book?” ended the contretemps. A question some other reviewers may not have been able to answer affirmatively either.

I am now re-reading The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), the book he called “my most difficult and adventurous work.” It is perhaps his greatest and most demanding work. Punctuation free sentences proliferate across many pages in twisting profusion like coiling liana vines, as each one culminates in a leaf storm of absurd, majestic, and sometimes startling finality just as the next one begins to unfurl its tendrils toward you with their inextricable and multiple unfoldings of despair and humour.

Miguel de Unamumo spoke of the choice in Spain between the approaches to life of Christ and Cervantes. Christ who wept for the world, and Cervantes who laughed at our faith in the absurdity of our repeatedly broken dreams. Now, with the passing of our patriarch, Gabriel García Márquez, what does he choose?  In the Prologue to Strange Pilgrims (1992), he provided a chronicle of his own death foretold, with the answer waiting unexpectedly for him in the last solitude:

“I dreamed I was attending my own funeral, walking with a group of friends dressed in solemn mourning but in a festive mood. We all seemed happy to be together. And I more than anyone else, because of the wonderful opportunity that death afforded me to be with my friends from Latin America, my oldest and dearest friends, the ones I had not seen for so long. At the end of the service, when they began to disperse, I attempted to leave too, but one of them made me see with decisive finality that as far as I was concerned, the party was over. “’You’re the only one who can’t go,’ he said. Only then did I understand that dying means never being with friends again.” 

Read more from James Reid at www.jamesedwardreid.ca

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[1] Dates in parentheses indicate publication in Spanish. Other dates refer to the publication date in English. Both sets of publication dates appear at the Nobel website.

GET DOWN TO BUSINESS!

The Bookshelf has put on hundreds of different speaking events over the years that have spanned a multitude of different topics, but one subject that has been underrepresented is business. We are excited to announce the launch of our new speaker series Get Down to Business on April 29^th at 7:00 pm in the eBar. The proceeds from the series will go to the Guelph Chamber of Commerce Millennium Scholarship fund, a scholarship for students entering Conestoga College who require financial assistance. The series will feature a business author who will be discussing their book for half an hour, followed by an audience-led conversation. The evening will conclude with a book signing, tasty food courtesy of the Greenroom Kitchen and great tunes by DJ Steph.

Reva Seth will kick off the series with her new book The Momshift: Women Share Their Stories of Career Success. Seth’s book explores how skills acquired through motherhood helped her tremendously in the world of business. Seth’s research includes hundreds of interviews of mothers who have careers in business.

Come on out, listen to an inspiring speaker, and have some interesting chats in a fun and inviting atmosphere! The $10.00 door fee will be donated to The Guelph Chamber of Commerce Millennium Scholarship Fund. 

Tickets are available at The Bookshelf or  www.guelphchamber.com.

Q&A: JESSY BELL SMITH

Community-wise, the release of Jessy Bell Smith's first album, The Town, is a bit of a big deal. For a few years now, Jessy's voice has been an important and staggering presence in the sound of Guelph. When not on it's own, Jessy has lent her decimating parlor-ish vocals to a slew of local musicians, most recently backing The Skydiggers. In a town with a strong DIY ethic where albums get released almost compulsively, it seems initially odd that it's taken Jessy until now to release a full-fledged thing you can have and hold, but the proof of patience is strong through the ten tracks. The Town is confident and realized in a way first volleys rarely are.

Jessy did us the solid of answering a few questions:

You've said that The Town was 10 years coming, but how long have you been plugging away at music? When did it become something that you, you know, "took seriously?"

I can't say that I remember a time when I didn't take music seriously. I come from a musical family and singing and playing was a big part of my growing up. Listening to music was also very important to me from my earliest memories. I think it was in high school, at around 17 years old, when I was first recognized for having a talent in music. Although I was not much of a participant in high school, mostly hanging out downtown when I should have been in class, I was pushed into auditioning for a the school Christmas assembly by a close friend. Forced, actually. The reaction from the audience, about 500 people, crammed into the school cafeteria, has still yet to be topped in any musical experience I have had to date. There was absolute silence while I sang and at the end the audience erupted in cheering, everyone cried, my teachers, my tough smoking-pit friends. I had spent the day in meditation, to steady my nerves and also because I wanted to give a gift. I was just starting to learn that the world may not be as nice a place as I had thought it was, and I felt that I might have something hopeful to offer. It seemed to work. That's really what I have been doing with music since. 

I feel as though I have something to give, that doesn't really belong to me, and when I encounter someone who feels moved by something I have written or by the way I sing, I feel a great sense of completion. As far as a music career goes, that happened very gradually, and many aspects of it I struggle with. There seems to be a preconception that if you have talent, the business side just happens naturally and fame and riches are automatic. Self promotion is not a strong point of mine. The only reason I have have any recognition as a musician is really because of being invited to play and sing. Actually the first gig I have booked at my own initiation, that is without being asked, was the release for this record. I feel very lucky for all of the support and encouragement I've found among my musical friends.

Is this the album you'd imagined your first album would be? What sort of album would Jessy Bell Smith have put out, say, 9 years ago?

When I write music it comes to me like a premonition of a song that is already finished, and exists out there in the aether. I actually hear it, like picking up a feint radio station, with the lyrics structure, progression, style already there for the most part. This is a truly magical phenomena for me. I am very excited when it happens and usually race to find something to write it down on before it disappears. My efforts in recording can be summed up as really an attempt to recreate exactly what I heard when I heard it the first time. I like to imagine that it is one of my special tasks or duties in this life, and despite being a bit shy and overly agreeable at times, I will do what it takes to get the songs there, even if it means starting over, and even starting over again. 

Until I started working with J.J. Ipsen and Andy Magoffin (House of Miracles), who co-produced the album, I hadn't met anyone yet that really understood what I was trying to do. They were somehow able to intuit what the songs needed and give them the treatment and Instrumentation I had imagined, and sometimes struggled to articulate. It was still a long road getting there, but I finally feel satisfied that we've given the songs everything we could. In actual fact, this album was recorded 9 years ago as an EP that I recorded myself on a 4 track. I played all of the instruments except the drums. It wasn't until now that I have developed the important relationships needed to flesh the songs out entirely and I think I can let them go now and truly consider them finished.

How'd you get hooked up with these Choose My Music people in the UK?

My good friend Jesse Ruddock  (Koko Bonaparte) connected me with Dom Pascko, with a glowing endorsement. She told me that her friend Dom was looking for more music to promote on his small homegrown record label, and assured me that he was a sweet guy and really cared about music. It was slightly nerve wracking at first, working with someone I'd never met, but Dom has already done so much to introduce my music to people on his side of the pond and I believe that Jesse was right in her assessment. Dom has an interest specifically in music from Guelph, which I think is very smart, because we are all undiscovered where he is from. He's tapped into our little scene here and is creating a channel for it to the UK. My first dealing with him involved a compilation album he released on his label comprised entirely of  music from Guelph called These Arms Are Too Wide. The Album has songs from Jenny Omnichord, Alanna Gurr, Gregory Pepper, Esther Grey, and other musical pals. It's opened some great opportunities for me, including being featured on BBC 6, on Cerys Mathew's show, Catatonia, and possibly in the fall, a trip over there to play. We'll see!

Maybe on account of the old shot of Guelph on the cover the urge is there to think that this town is the titular town. Is that fair, or is there a grander idea of The Town that you were aiming for?

I named it The Town because it couldn't exist without the contribution of my peers in Guelph. I've learned that although this music comes to me in a very private and personal way, it can only be recreated with the help of others. I can only take them so far within my own limitations, something akin to a barn raising perhaps. Human beings are meant to be interdependent, to celebrate each others success, and assist and comfort in times of loss. This, for all the bad that people are capable of, is in my opinion the truest expression of what is good in humanity, and somewhat sadly, one of the things we do best. Guelph is unique in that, as it grows on the outskirts, there is a village that exists in the downtown that has really kept it's small town-ness in tact. The beauty of the small town is that things are allowed to be a bit strange, a bit forgotten, mysterious and overgrown, but full of love and story. My hope is that this album captures and reflects this. I think we were successful.

The Town is available in the bookstore, you guys. Do yourself a favour.

Are you a book nerd? A culture vulture? Do you have a strong work ethic? You may want to read this!

The Bookshelf is Seeking an Amazing Individual to Join Our Great Team!

The Bookshelf is seeking a part- to full-time employee, with flexible availability: days, evenings and weekends.  The ideal candidate will possess excellent customer service skills, and a kind, task-oriented approach. This position requires competence with computers and online media, and a creative, curious mind is a must.

Bookseller tasks include, but are not limited to, receiving and shelving new stock, responding to customer inquiries, creating displays, blogging (both written and video), organizing book launches and readings, being awesome.

If you are a book nerd and an all-round culture vulture, we want to hear from you. Please drop a resume off at The Bookshelf or email jobs@bookshelf.ca