.
Thank you to the atmospheric quarterly for publishing the opening section from Desire Without Expectation:
https://www.atmosphericquarterly.com/jacob-wren
Here's a short excerpt:
“I understand the desire for revenge. I have felt it, though I have rarely acted on such feelings. Instead I have let the desire for revenge fester within me. And yet, at the same time, I have never felt that if someone who hurt me was hurt in turn, it would make me feel any better. I have felt the desire for revenge but also see such desires as basically pointless. Sometimes I wonder if a sincere apology would make me feel better. Perhaps most of the apologies I have received didn’t quite feel sincere. Or I didn’t know how to take them in. I often find myself apologizing to others. I fear I might have gotten too good at it.”
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July 16, 2024
July 11, 2024
To the Giller Foundation: Cut Ties with Genocide
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"We, the undersigned, have made the decision to withdraw our books from consideration for the 2024 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and to refuse participation in all programming or promotions associated with the Giller Foundation."
Read the full letter here.
Instagram post here.
You can also read about it in The Globe and Mail, CBC, Toronto Star, Quill and Quire, and LitHub.
For a longer read: How the Giller Prize Became Associated with Genocide
Grateful to be a part of this. And to all the other authors taking a stand.
In one week, 27 authors with books eligible for this year's Giller Prize have pulled their titles from consideration. 2 of the 5 jurors (Dinaw Mengestu and Megha Majumdar) have also pulled out.
If you have a book out within the Giller Prize eligibility period (Oct 1 2023 - Sept 30 2024), then you should seriously consider signing this letter as well.
# No Business As Usual In Can Lit
.
"We, the undersigned, have made the decision to withdraw our books from consideration for the 2024 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and to refuse participation in all programming or promotions associated with the Giller Foundation."
Read the full letter here.
Instagram post here.
You can also read about it in The Globe and Mail, CBC, Toronto Star, Quill and Quire, and LitHub.
For a longer read: How the Giller Prize Became Associated with Genocide
Grateful to be a part of this. And to all the other authors taking a stand.
In one week, 27 authors with books eligible for this year's Giller Prize have pulled their titles from consideration. 2 of the 5 jurors (Dinaw Mengestu and Megha Majumdar) have also pulled out.
If you have a book out within the Giller Prize eligibility period (Oct 1 2023 - Sept 30 2024), then you should seriously consider signing this letter as well.
# No Business As Usual In Can Lit
.
July 8, 2024
The table of contents from The Poetics of Translation: A Thinking Structure
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The table of contents from:
The Poetics of Translation: A Thinking Structure
by Geneviève Robichaud
(Perhaps the first chapter on PME-ART written by someone other than me.)
.
The table of contents from:
The Poetics of Translation: A Thinking Structure
by Geneviève Robichaud
(Perhaps the first chapter on PME-ART written by someone other than me.)
.
July 3, 2024
Excerpt from Things That Insist (in three parts)
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“What first attracted me to making performances was the fact that it was so ephemeral. You had to be in the moment and, if it was going to happen, it had to happen right fucking now. Yet now I’m basically over that aspect of it.
Artistically I lead a double life: half my life spent writing books, the other half spent performing. And more and more I prefer the books side of my life for the simple reason that books last.
Every once in a while, someone writes to me, saying they just read a book I wrote a very long time ago, and I experience these messages almost like a relief: that there is an object out there in the world, with my name on it, doing the work for me. Doing the work in my place.
Yet something similar does sometimes happen with performance. For example, I’ll add someone on social media and they’ll send me a message saying they saw me perform ten years ago, and they still fondly remember the experience.
Why do I find this version of past works entering into the present somehow less satisfying? The performance version less satisfying than the one involving books. Is it only because it occurs less frequently?
In 2018, I attempted to partly solve this dilemma by writing a book that recounted twenty years of my performance work. And, in doing so, I made a kind of small discovery: that the descriptions of the performances recounted in the book almost replaced people’s memories of the performances themselves.
The printed version was sharper, clearer and more recent when compared to the vagueness of memory. And yet, of course, there was another way in which memories were more intense, evocative and personal.
Performance is ephemeral, but the performances we remember also exist because we remember them. The very fact we remember them is a testament to their value.
I have never gone to an archive, any sort of archive, to look up a performance I’ve previously seen. I have only ever looked up performances I didn’t see.
In this way, I might intuit that I value the live experience more than I value any recorded account of it. I don’t want to spoil my fading memory of the performance by consulting an archived account of it.
But enough about me.”
From my response to the dance+words’ Dance Dialogues series. Read the entire piece here: https://www.dancepluswords.ca/artistresponses/jacob-wren
.
“What first attracted me to making performances was the fact that it was so ephemeral. You had to be in the moment and, if it was going to happen, it had to happen right fucking now. Yet now I’m basically over that aspect of it.
Artistically I lead a double life: half my life spent writing books, the other half spent performing. And more and more I prefer the books side of my life for the simple reason that books last.
Every once in a while, someone writes to me, saying they just read a book I wrote a very long time ago, and I experience these messages almost like a relief: that there is an object out there in the world, with my name on it, doing the work for me. Doing the work in my place.
Yet something similar does sometimes happen with performance. For example, I’ll add someone on social media and they’ll send me a message saying they saw me perform ten years ago, and they still fondly remember the experience.
Why do I find this version of past works entering into the present somehow less satisfying? The performance version less satisfying than the one involving books. Is it only because it occurs less frequently?
In 2018, I attempted to partly solve this dilemma by writing a book that recounted twenty years of my performance work. And, in doing so, I made a kind of small discovery: that the descriptions of the performances recounted in the book almost replaced people’s memories of the performances themselves.
The printed version was sharper, clearer and more recent when compared to the vagueness of memory. And yet, of course, there was another way in which memories were more intense, evocative and personal.
Performance is ephemeral, but the performances we remember also exist because we remember them. The very fact we remember them is a testament to their value.
I have never gone to an archive, any sort of archive, to look up a performance I’ve previously seen. I have only ever looked up performances I didn’t see.
In this way, I might intuit that I value the live experience more than I value any recorded account of it. I don’t want to spoil my fading memory of the performance by consulting an archived account of it.
But enough about me.”
From my response to the dance+words’ Dance Dialogues series. Read the entire piece here: https://www.dancepluswords.ca/artistresponses/jacob-wren
.
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