In the Summer of 2006, poet Catherine Owen moved to a house in Millwoods, a suburb in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
She thought it had a park at the back, but it turned out to be a berm - a hill
designed to separate her neighbourhood from the sounds of the Whitemud Freeway.
Both the word ‘berm’ and watching it, writing about it and eventually videotaping it became a daily obsession for her.
By late 2007, she began to collaborate on this project with visual artist Sydney Lancaster.
Archives of Absence is the culmination of this multimedia extravaganza. A meditation on landscape, the environment, notions of home/alienation and the transformations wrought through art, this event will feature an exhibit of artifacts and gel transfer photographs, video loops, music, and a reading from two new handmade chapbooks of poems released by rednettle press:
Berm, morning eclogues & Berm: a miscellany.
Sydney and Catherine were joined for the launch of the first iteration of Archives of Absence by musician and composer Thom Golub.
Sydney and Catherine would like to thank Trisia Eddy at Red Nettle Press for being a vital part of making this project a reality, and Thom Golub for bringing his musical genius to the evening. Out thanks also the the Edmonton Poetry Festival and to the Artery for their support in the presentation of this work.
Check out the news from The Edmonton Poetry Festival and Red Nettle Press by clicking on the images to the right ................................
Archives of Absence Project Launch
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ABOUT CATHERINE OWEN:
Catherine Owen is currently living in Vancouver again after spending several productive years from 2006-2009 in Edmonton. She is the author of seven trade collections of poems, some of which have been nominated for the BC Book Prize, the Gerald Lampert Award, the ReLit Award and the Earle Birney Prize. She holds an MA in English from Simon Fraser university, and is also an accomplished musician and editor.
Her latest book is Seeing Lessons from Wolsak & Wynn (2010). Frenzy (2009), won the Stephan G. Stephanson Award from the Writers Guild of Alberta.
A collection of prose memoirs & essays called Catalysts is due out in 2011.
She remains enamoured by the magical process of collaboration with musicians, photographers and artists.
ABOUT THOM GOLUB:
Thom Golub lives, performs and writes music in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. As a string bassist, he can be heard on recent recordings by Robin Hunter & the Six Foot Bullies, You Just Gotta Get Used Of It and Andrea House, The Same Inside on which he arranged a song for string quartet as well. Thom has performed on records by guitarist and oud player George Koufogiannakis, Generations: Greek Oud Jazz which was nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award in 2009, as well as Scott Cook's This One's On The House. He continues to perform extensively with the multi-cultural band Le Fuzz across the province and westward.
As a composer, Golub saw the release of a six movement suite: cynsen32 for two violins and piano, performed by the Warszinski Trio (Canada), on the recording Devil's Dance on Clef Records.
In the upcoming year he will have two more works that he composed issued on Clef Records: Three Short Pieces for flute and piano, performed by Isabelle Schnoeller (Switzerland) and Sylvia Shadick-Taylor (Canada), Back When the Earth Was Flat for bass clarinet and organ, performed by Harry Spaarnay and Sylvia Castillo (Netherlands). New recordings from wandering minstrel Scott Cook and Le Fuzz are in the can for 2011. A new commissioned piece for the Warszinski Trio has been completed and is slated for performance in the 2011/12 season.
