Project Bookmark Canada

Imagine finding  an excerpt from your story on a marker at the location it takes place, or finding a favorite author’s story.

“Project Bookmark Canada marks the places where the real and imagined landscapes meet by placing text from imagined stories and poems in the exact, physical locations where literary scenes take place. We’re building a network of hundreds of Bookmarks around the country, so that residents and visitors can read their way across Canada.”

http://projectbookmarkcanada.ca/discover/

This is brilliant – and definitely goes on my bucket list as something to covet.

Maureen

First Flower

The garden is in that snow-rapidly-melting garden-emerging disheveled stage, when I’m desperate to get out and work, just to be in it, but I rather like the tousled-ness of it all. There’s a rawness to an early spring garden I hate to disturb with trimming and tidying and raking. And still, I do it, because it’s too cold to just sit outside. Perhaps I should light the chiminea and sit by the fire, instead.

Maureen

The first flower of spring

Writer-In-Residence

I’ve been the writer-in-residence for a Calgary elementary school, visiting once a week for six weeks.

First I met with all the kids, doing my usual “I’m a writer and here’s what I do” schtick. Since then I’ve been working with the grade 3s , 5s and 6s, making up stories together, creating monsters, and, most recently, making their monsters speak.

It’s been really interesting seeing the differences between the younger and older writers, and the range within each grade. Some kids leap right in, and write complex stories. Some of the younger ones simply stall, not able to get any words down. Talking it through often helps, or drawing the story as a cartoon, for the visual kids.

I love seeing what the kids come up with – they have amazing imaginations. And I’m particularly proud of the reluctant writers who find a voice. One boy struggled to get anything down at all. Yet he could tell me remarkable things about the planets. I wrote his first two sentences for him, and coached him through a couple more. Then he finally got rolling, and continued on describing Jupiter, his favorite planet, with 63 moons, and how Saturn’s ring is made of rocks. He was articulate and interesting, and surprised us all.

And that’s what makes the effort oh, so worth it.

Maureen