Rampike 20.1 ____________________________________________________________________________________ INDEX Gus Morin : p. 2 Editorial : p. 3 Nicole Brossard : p. 4 Alistair MacLeod : p. 10 Robert Kroetsch : p. 18 Claudette Abrams : p. 20 Gerald Vizenor : p. 22 Terry Griggs: p. 33 Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm: p. 34 Lesley Belleau : p. 40 Cyril Dabydeen : p. 46 Lance Olsen : p. 50 Steve Tomasula : p. 63 Lucy Corin : p. 66 Hal Jaffe : p. 68 Diane Williams : p. 70 Daniel King : p. 73 Cris Mazza : p. 74 Rob Stephenson : p. 77 Matthew Roberson : p. 79 Kate Hargreaves : p. 82 Lisa Young : p. 84 Beverly Akerman : p. 86 Alexander MacLeod: p. 88 Rodge Glass : p. 91 Joshua Rapp Learn : p. 94 Roger Knox : p. 95 Jason Camlot : p. 96 1 Rampike 20.1 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Typewriter Poem by Gustav Morin (Canada) 2 Rampike 20.1 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Editorial This issue of Rampike focuses on contemporary fiction. Herein, we have assembled a cadre of preeminent authors arranged in several cluster groups. The first cluster features Indigenous authors including both interview and fiction from the internationally celebrated, Gerald Vizenor, as well as Anishinaabe writer/publisher Kateri-Akiwenzie Damm, plus fiction from Lesley Belleau. The second cluster features noted Canadian specialists in fictional form including Nicole Brossard, Cyril Dabydeen, Terry Griggs, Robert Kroetsch, and Alistair MacLeod. The third cluster includes a range of writers from the FC2 (Fiction Collective Two) group, coordinated by Lance Olsen who has served as our Associate Editor for this issue. The FC2 group was inspired by the first Fiction Collective Group out of New York which featured authors such as Raymond Federman and Ronald Sukenick who have appeared in earlier issues of Rampike. Members of the current generation of FC2 authors in this issue include Lance Olsen, Steve Tomasula, Lucy Corin, Hal Jaffe, Diane Williams, Cris Mazza, Rob Stephenson, and Matthew Roberson. In addition, we present an assortment of fresh innovators including Gus Morin, Daniel King, Kate Hargreaves, Lisa Young, Beverly Ackerman, Rodge Glass, Joshua Rapp Learn, Roger Knox, and Jason Camlot, as well as an interview with Alexander MacLeod. Our cover image for this issue, titled “Sling,” is by critically acclaimed Toronto photographer, Claudette Abrams who includes two additional photographs within these pages. Claudette Abrams’ photo works are available at artnet.com and http://www.saatchionline.com/claudetteabrams and are archived at: http://www.claudetteabrams.com/. We trust you’ll enjoy this collection of contemporary texts and images, and we hope that you’ll find them engaging and stimulating! – Karl Jirgens, Editor 3 Rampike 20.1 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Excerpt from: Fences in Breathing Nicole Brossard Translation: Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood Every fly has its shadow. − Châteaubriand A light at the end of the hallway is I realize quite friend brought cake recipes and Charles ate all the clearly in the other language a light bulb a thing apples yelling Adam Adam it’s mine what are we deep in the eyes that encroaches on words like a going to devour today the tree or the living wood of symphony in a park on a beautiful July afternoon the forest while looking at the château in the with traffic noises in the distance and fragments of distance and a lot of words that would love to silence strewn here and there in my life I’ve been penetrate me I am not afraid I am not afraid to go told I should repeat the same words often and not where it is necessary to translate the names of be afraid of burning like money in your pocket and sponges and shells birdsongs and the law book that that nobody would complain because the more we injures if it falls on my fingers are we today going are able to catch new expressions in another to sponge my mother’s large back caress her language the more it becomes legible and beautiful silences or let them drop into the bathwater while with new sounds so I am going directly to invent watching the foamy little waves around her thighs the horizon and be careful of my mother’s bare feet and the delicate shadow on her back naturally scrub on the bathroom tiles while my brother waits for me the spine the nurse had said for there under the skin in the kitchen making holes in the hard oak with a is a living world I listen to it while scrubbing knife like he has done ever since he started chasing always a bit harder yet I must finish this report I after words I often caught sight of him naked he would like to write what I was told to write without was indeed holding his knife in front of him and leaving any traces I also think the opposite while opening an armoire to retrieve a sketchbook or a caressing my mother’s hair as I help her to get up message in a white envelope I know I watched him it’s as if there were fences in our breathing and this get on tiptoes and he was talking to the armoire helps me to draw sketches in the morning when I singing a tune our mother loved before her death get up and breathing is difficult the sketch is filled she who all her life wanted to live at the bottom of with lines and nasty black nails that fall hard on the the lake there to sing while blowing bubbles unable page if the wind passes through my lungs like I to get to the end of the lyrics while I spread the want it to shaking the Damask roses in the garden tablecloth to the vast confines of the universe where then I no longer see the fences and can more easily reindeer reign as do polar bears always very white get closer to summer by looking at the lake I love when running at the foot of the mountains on the separating the colours and caresses of June and of turquoise ice of the glaciers great mirror this I know Kim that estrange me from my soul it’s as if I were at the core of my soul although I often remain behind a hedge of thorns when I look at them and I trapped in the image and the impasse of the tell myself I must breathe everywhere with my violence of glaciers when they start to crack like ice body because I need all of my breath and I also floes I know you have to run and breathe deeply need nails to stash in the armoire for later next to nobody is guilty of breathing well nor of breathing the unstamped white envelope that contains my loudly like at the movies or like Charles when he is inventions. making his holes in the wooden floor with nails like I have secrets that’s normal it’s true about mouths round and dark awaiting a straw a little pea me as it is about others when I run through my own or a marble or eyes that can see from the inside and secrets it’s like crossing barbed-wire fences that that pierce my soul the floor is also a coffin my soil my shirt and make bloodstains on my hands mother often went dancing there on days when a and my knees down to the heels not at all in the 4 Rampike 20.1 ____________________________________________________________________________________ morning when there is too much mystery in my all it is just bruised all over like in a dream or when crazy canopy bed that I built like a large armoire I in the early morning I go to the post office to buy pretend I’m breathing or walking while moving white envelopes for my secrets there are strange away from myself and making sure to scream flavours in my mouth tickly manoeuvres of goldfish mysterious syllables that sometimes produce a list or crazy tongues slightly naughty always very soft of beautiful fruits and vegetables that I put in my and full of surprises that make you rush headfirst jacket pocket then I thrust my hand into the list it’s into the abyss with hands and thoughts flapping so easy to follow with my finger to understand and as to hurt yourself not at all because of the strike- draw better fences in the end it’s true I am on the throughs in the wood the pieces of bark scattered verge of tears but in a state of fatigue not at all. over the workshop floor I wear myself out making People think badly of us because we live useful holes and looking inside my memory at in a village with a château vineyards and a post images of time in the wood it’s as if I were opening office as landscape and because we hide behind the and closing the pages of a celestial dictionary at windows in an armoire in the far reaches of our will and always falling upon the words hair fur and hearts not at all not at all often I say it’s nothing sex until a bunch of distant images arise at the same let’s give it a good soaping dunk the loofah glove in time as June when she kneels in front of me her the water and let’s go back to square one to the tongue making little cross-strokes in my full-moon great cry of dawn let out at birth and then let’s dive fur my enchanted-lake fur we should do it again so once again into the tenderness of mothers and let’s that I too can stroke through June’s fur.