November 27
Laurie Block, local poet and storyteller, will be reading and signing copies of his book "Time Out of Mind."
In the foreword to this moving, honest and luminous collection of poems, Laurie Block inscribes the last coherent words his mother said to him: I used to be quite fond of you. Shortly after that, she lost what remained of her senses and sank into the vegetative state in which she spent her last years. Lights Out, the first section of Time Out of Mind, is the poet’s journey into a darkness that is only in part his mother’s. He writes to touch the borders of consciousness and emerges with a map of the mind and body in extremis. Many of these poems are rooted in disorientation, displacement and loss of equilibrium, the friction between what happens outside the skin and what may be taking place on the inside. The poet believes that we value consciousness as somehow more concrete, enduring and linked to assumptions about identity than our bodies. He therefore asks the question: Is the self first a face or a soul?For more information about Laurie and his work, please visit www.laurieblock.ca.
November 29
Get to know Manitoba with the stories of over 500 names, ranging from the humorous to the historic. Communities included are particularly rich with an array of whimsical, descriptive, historical and aboriginal names. Perhaps because of our frontier heritage, towns and cities in North America come named after all manner of unlikely people, places and things, and they come in dozens of languages, all of which add interest and color to the stories behind the names.
Manitoba's names stand with the best. From a town named after a baking powder can to the village of Dropmore, whose town fathers couldn't decide on a name until they'd had "a drop more" from a shared bottle; towns in Manitoba have been named after everything from bacon to ducks. One village was named after a local species of tree by local residents who only discovered later that they had been mistaken about just what kind of tree they had growing in the town. Other Manitoba communities have been named after early residents, prominent people, local incidents, former homes in other places and Indian legends. No matter if you're from Manitoba or someplace far away the stories behind the names on Manitoba's map make for stories that seem hilariously unbelievable, but that really are true. They also help illuminate the history and culture of Western Canada.Ted Stone, author of The Story Behind Manitoba Names, will be on hand to sign copies of this book on November 29 at 1:30 PM.
For more information on either of these events, please call Keith at Pennywise at (204) 728-2665.
