1) What do I hope to achieve through / how do I intend to apply your review and criticism?  (Three aspects...)

2) (links to) actual works I'd appreciate your thoughts on regarding their suitability for the mandates of section 1.

3) Ideas for and information regarding formal and stylistic bells, whistles and necessary constraints --

A) I intend to apply to the Creative Writing department at UBC for which I require a 30-35 page portfolio representing at least two genres of writing, likely to turn out a combination of poetry, excerpts from stories / 3-day-novels and some creative non-fiction.  This has to be in by April 30th - ultimately the decision on what to include needs to be done in short order and will most likely be executed in a burst of arbitrariness by myself, but your suggestions and/or recommendations are appreciated.

B) A more long-term personal project of mine has been to assemble a chapbook (that is, a self-published collection of my own past writing) partially for reasons of vanity, partially for the convenience of having everything I might want to share at any given open stage available in a slim volume and partially for reasons of trade-exchange, peer review and eligibility for contests and the like. There is no deadline for this project save a self-imposed one - I've been itching to do this for a long time and if I stave it off for any longer I greatly fear my head should explode, putting any innocent bystanders at risk of serious injury and enlightenment.  It is for their sake that I humbly request your services in advising me what belongs in the public domain, what belongs in a smouldering heap with those more shameful indulgences of juvenalia and what might very well be upgraded from the fate of the latter to that of the former in one swell foop with the application of some guided revision.

C) A revision of this very webpage complex containing the combined contents of A and B and, free from their constraints, more - full works instead of excerpts, recordings, full-colour illustrations where such exist, more adult indulgences such as the entire contents of my hat, elaborations as to stories behind and references in works, promotions of people engaged in similar activities and events I'm involved in, and, ultimately, unique technological widgets of interactivity and dynamicism whence I might exploit my interpretation of buzzwords totally to the max, dude. This isn't in itself terribly important, but I'd like to be able to refer to it in B at least - if I'm going to be making a splash, since I expect it to be a small splash I'd like to keep the ripples wiggling and waggling back and forth as long as possible. I don't consider any of you uberwebmeisters, but you can surely share comments about this present setup (or lack thereof) and offer suggestions as to how I could render it less tedious and agonizing to linger here. (I imagine ultimately cutting the verbosity will be a large step in the right direction.) Don't dwell on the webpage aspect of this-all intently for the time being: I may well take the list of approved works we end up with and submitting it as an online chapbook to inkpotpress.com - but, of course, failing acceptance by then, I'll definitely be investigating making this very space a gentler and more tolerable (and hey, a more USEFUL) one.

A few more, possibly important, things: a) I don't expect all of you to read all (or even most) of the texts linked here, so when presented with the monster list of titles stand firm that it is only a task of spare time-filling and curiosity-sating I demand of you rather than some Aegean feat of systematic sanitization. b) There are a few writings in here (a handful, no more, primarily of old stuff) that I don't seriously intend to use in any incarnation of the project regardless of your response. They're just in here to act as an incidental "control" reading of your individual feelings about what kind of writing you prefer. c) since it's taking me quite a while to tabulate my stylistic and formatting concerns, I'll do it (aka 3) above) in a subsequent webpage after the links to the texts themselves are all up. Style and formatting is sadly secondary. I'll indicate here when it comes up. d) and this is the important one - I ask that your comments, suggestions and criticisms be posted to the e-mail list (joinable at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rowetry/ - post to rowetry@yahoogroups.com) such that the editorial kollektif can reach an uneasy concensus in light of each others' comments. This is not required, but we think it will be helpful. --

Previous poetry portfolios:

Introduction: Distance and Directness

Birds

BEING NORMAL KEEPS US SANE (?) (in dire need of a title change, methinks)

* The Poet-Stalker (subjectively the best / most successful of this lot, though still pretty darned arcane)

Noises

Blue-tinted Glasses (this and noises: what charm they may have lies I think not so much in their desperately earnest words but rather in the naivity behind them)

The french kiss no longer (meaningless post-context, methinks - what think you, who may never have known the context?)

Afterword: distance and directness

* Going on first (for placement at the beginning of the volume, of course.)

* the curse! (highest-ranked slam poem by me ever - slim praise indeed. somewhat uneasy sensation of appropriation / exploitation of experiences I don't have and making little of them for metaphor's sake.)

* shut up and pass the havarti (punctuation intended to be evocative of a citation)

A bed is a time traveling device (I imagine they'll tell me that an H.G. Wells reference doesn't count as an ending)

Story of my life (moving, isn't it?) (appeared in The Bloody Liar)

This is a chain poem. (originally appeared with a long example chain poem, garbage save for a slowly revealed acrostic which  I don't think I can spare the room or you the patience for.)

unfiltered (appeared in the slice magazine)

guilt(seems to require a lot of explanation for me to avoid coming across as a complete Humbert Humbert, and I should be showing rather than telling.)

to escape a house gone mad (appeared in The Bloody Liar)

To MUM (does it work without the accompanying / inspirational graphic?)

* in progress

scat

As a small child I cultivated an ardent solipsism

* staring contest

I am gravely ill

* bumper sticker koans

accident in the intersection of art and commerce

It is too nice out to write poetry today.

"I'm not a misogynist, I'm a misanthrope. That means I hate you for less obvious reasons."

Our last conversation

Tabnet collaborations:

Works composed for public performance:

Excerpts from 3-day-novels:

Stuff published (real-world-like) elsewhere (and credit 'em if used):

taste,

tlc poem "disaster is sure to ensue",

urbanity 1,

from tastes just like chicken,

* penciled-in paranoia (regrettably presently in this form without its drawn-on editorial comments.)

* i was expecting it to hurt like a fuck,

when crows mate

snow crow

Pieces of writing actually originating as e2 nodes (and not ending up anywhere else, much of it creative non-fiction):
 

February 05, 2001,

October 15, 2000 ... or should I be employing found poetry at all?

A truncated February 5, 2001,

Dream Log: September 14, 2000

* a fragment, the final element from the end of my December 31, 2000 day log/diary entry:,

She stands on the eleventh-floor balcony of her West End apartment in the stark summer rays - before her, the vast blueth of False Creek. I catch something out of the corner of my eye - a flutter, a flap. A sheet of paper swooshes by at a tremendous clip, zig-zagging past the balcony and out of our frames of vision.

She opens her notebook, calmly selects another sacrifice, cleanly tears it away from the binding, and releases the page to take flight.

I demand to know what she's doing - after all, she has never allowed me to read any of her words, and at this rate there won't remain any for me to someday sneak through.

The rejects, the unsuccessful exercises, the lines she dislikes or is ashamed of - they are being lain to rest in a ceremony not entirely unlike the seabound pyres of the Vikings, and even the lowliest lyric briefly comes to know the kiss of flight.

... except the funereal flights of these pages is anything but brief - a half-dozen lazily spiraling on their way to the ground catch a thermal and rise Lazarus-like to greet and pass us, flippantly floating over the roofs of adjoining complexes and disappearing, flecks of parchment in the pale blue...

... and I wonder what would happen if she ever allowed to fly those words that she felt actually contained merit.