Sunday, July 30, 2006

A Bad Year for Journalists


this is the cover of my new book of poetry, A Bad Year for Journalists, which came out this spring from Frontenac House. i had a great time at the book launches in Calgary and in Toronto (mucho thanks to all involved, especially to my great editor, Rose Scollard!)

the cover is a photograph by Neil Petrunia of a Chinese resto; he photoshopped it to get this nice eerie green colour.

i keep meaning to update my blog, come up with a witty new design, etc etc but life keeps getting in the way.and i can't complain, because some of the things in the way are pretty fabulous...including the astonishing news that The Globe & Mail reviewed my book (hence the brief excerpt below). and the plan to turn the book into a theatre piece seems to be gaining speed. we have funding from the Toronto Arts Council & the Canada Council--hallelujah! the theatre project is a collaboration with Emily Pearlman, Bremner Duthie, and Craig Desson, and i can't wait to get to Toronto in October to get our plans in motion. meanwhile, it is impressively hot in Paris, but there is a lot of cool jazz in the city to keep temperatures at bay (especially after the madness of the World Cup).

"By turns sympathetic, critical, darkly funny and painstakingly lyrical [...] Pasold's colloquial, cynical squint is refreshing, disarming and often funny (reporters making up guidebook titles: "Let's Go Mogadishu")... In an increasingly hyperbolic idiom where everything is so conveniently unspeakable, Pasold speaks up, conveying more than impressions or exaggerations; these poems "explain what it was/ not what it was like." - Katia Grubisic, The Globe & Mail (Toronto, July 8/06)