My first shazam was a Stromae banger, Alors On Danse. I was at a red light hoping Shazam would find the tune before I had to drop my phone and drive. Success! Great beat, gorgeous voice, and content that made me feel something – all the more as I translated from the French. Someone on Youtube wrote, “Guy writes one of the most genius cynical takes about the false relief of clubbing. Ironically becomes one of the biggest club hits.” Exactly.
Thank you to everyone who came out to the Fredericton Public Library this weekend to celebrate our 80 Years of Art at The Fiddlehead Gallery Opening and Winter Issue Launch! We were thrilled to see how many people were excited to celebrate the journal with us.
I’ve been reading Rob Taylor’s poetry for years and have been looking forward to his latest, Weather (Gaspereau Press, 2024). Now, once again I’m struck by his poetry’s honesty, heart, and honed insights. That’s the thing about news-- / you’ve heard it before, Taylor wrote previously (in The News) but here his poetic updates are fresh with previously unreported advancements.
I arrived at Laura Cumming’s beautiful book, Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death, just before it won the 2024 Writers’ Prize for Non-Fiction. I had lovingly remembered her previous book, On Chapel Sands, a story of her mother’s life. In Thunderclap, she turns her close attention to the golden age of Dutch art in the 1600s, in particular the cataclysmic gunpowder explosion in Delft that killed the painter Carel Fabritius and destroyed many precious works of art.