On my second open mic reading ever, last November, after all the writers had read, when the lights came back on, a man came over and handed me a card and said, "I want to publish that poem."

This is how I met the Toronto poet and publisher, Norman Cristofoli.

The issue of Labour of Love with my poem is now out, and, since the story of how the magazine itself  came to be is so interesting, I thought I would interview Norman so you could hear it too.

Labour of Love publishes poetry, prose, short short stories, artwork and photographs. Norman formats it himself and prints it twice a year, each issue having a print run of 400. The magazine is given out freely. It is fully funded by Norman himself.



Direct link: 'Interview with Norman Cristofoli on 'Labour of Love'' (13:48min)

PLEASE NOTE: It is now July 2016, and Norman has published the last Labour of Love.

Woman Seated, Waiting, a small, strange painting. She reminds of me the Eight of Swords in the Rider-Waite deck, with thorns and sharp things all around her. She is fairly placid in the middle of it, though. Patiently waiting. It also echoes the Pre-Raphaelites to me somehow, and I'll have to ponder of which of those artists - maybe Hope by Watts, (1886)? , and Medieval mystic, nearly Byzantine, though of course very modern and abstract. This is one of those paintings that I cannot hang at the top of the stairs for people to see when they first come in. Nothing too pretty here. :smiling: And a series is beginning to emerge, which makes me happy.

Woman Seated, Waiting, 2012, 16" x 20", 40.6cm x 50.8cm, graphite, India and acrylic inks on stretched canvas.

Thanks for any kind comments, and I also enjoy more difficult responses that call upon strange inner metaphorical systems and obtuse aesthetics, too. :smiling:






An album with earlier versions of this ink painting as well as the other one I did at a non-instructional drop-in live model painting session at TSA last Friday night. (Click on any image in the slideshow to go to the album and a larger size.)

'Ruminations on Consciousness' (9:41min) as I prepare to write a prose poem to be called Colour of Near Death for a forthcoming videopoem.

I'm so sad! I hope Joe Halder develops another venue for the minimalist and avante guard music he filled The Falling Room with. The Falling Room introduced me to many artists. I found his perceptions often so brilliant, and his taste in music echoed my own. Far out, funky, strange, moving, so many ways of describing it, and then the spoken word/acoustic artists, wow, his show was an example of transgenre music!

I deeply appreciate his support of my poetry and music productions, and wish him the best in all his endeavours.

Here is a show, Female Acoustic Artists, from The Falling Room:



From Joe (on March 25, 2012):

Hello all,

I wish to inform you that The Falling Room has come to an end and will no longer be broadcasting from CFBU 103.7FM.

It is time to say goodbye and to move on to different projects and other ideas.

Unfortunately, with the onset of new projects and other opportunities I no longer have the time to devote to the program.

My intention was to finish the currently 12 programs I have in pre-production and end The Falling Room in June 2012, but sadly I do not have the time to finish those programs and produce them for broadcast.

During its existence The Falling Room broadcast 113 shows and introduced over 140 independent artists to the acoustic art community.

You need to know that your art, has been heard in China, Poland, France, USA, Italy, England, Ireland, Russia, Finland and Australia via the internet download site and the distribution of copies of the show over the last 2 years.

I am extremely grateful to the artists who have supported the show and so readily have allowed me to broadcast their material to the community.

I wish you all the best in your endeavors; you are a very talented group of people.

My special thanks to those artists who demonstrated consistent support for the program over the last 2 years, they are;

Michael Chocholak
Brenda Clews
Mickey Zero
William Schaeffer
Richard Dunlap
Mickey Zero
Kraftim
Cometa (Angelo Secondini)
Dr. Memory (Marlon Kempman)

As to the future? I am not sure. I am sure that my passion for your music and art remains strong to give up on it completely. (another program, in 6 months via the internet titled “The Labyrinth”?) who knows, what I do know is that now, its time for a rest and other things.

Again, much thanks and best wishes to all.
Joe (aka Halder)

Woman of the Sea Far Inland is finished. I painted a beautiful model at a non-instructional drop-in session at TSA on Friday night. Last night I whipped up the energy of the painting with some oil sticks I had bought at Gwartzman's. Looking at it, I think it might be a painting to go with a poetry manuscript I am in the process of compiling for submission.

I'm still working on the second painting below, Woman Seated, Waiting. She does look like a woman caught in thorns, a jagged and perhaps dangerous situation, doesn't she. There's something Pre-Raphaelite about her, and Medieval Christian saint.

Last night I went to TSA (Toronto School of Art) drop-in painting session (it only took a year to get there). Many fine artists. Perhaps these capture an essence. I'm considering going at the painting with oil sticks, and the pencil drawing on the canvas is going to get an ink treatment.

A very simple sketch of a Saluki (smooth variety). Saluki are the oldest domesticated dogs. Saluki-like dogs have been found on Sumerian seals dating back to 7,000-6,000BC; they are in pictures in ancient Egyptian tombs from 2134-1650BC. They are also called Persian Greyhounds, and are an Egyptian desert dog, and often travelled across the Sahara to the Caspian Sea with nomadic tribes. They are extremely thin, sleek, fast, and intelligent. No idea how I'll finish this sketch - design, or paint - but sharing a little scan. No, not my dog, but an extraordinary animal.

Guess what I was watching tonight... actually I watched Tarkovsky's Solaris last night, along with the American re-make with that just-arrested at Sudanese protest, the arresting George Clooney (while a great sight better to look at, sorry George, and Steven Soderbergh, the director of the re-make, Tarkovsky's film remains a small masterpiece). Tonight it was the interviews with those who worked in and on the film with Tarkovsky. Amazing insights, and I couldn't grasp it all and will watch again. I completely fell for Tarkovsky many years ago, when I first saw Nostalighia, which became my favourite film for the next 20 years, and is still among my all-time favourites.

To say something about Solaris? What in death doesn't die...

( a line from my prosepoem, Whaleskin, sorry, it rose, so I said it)

(What is poetry to you...? In this prose poem, I indicated the craft, what wordsmiths poets are, as well as what the essence is to me, but realize that I made poetry sound perhaps rather sweet when there is also grunge, slam, anger, pain. Yet again, as a long-time meditator, I find writing poetry is like the deepest meditation, so the anger and pain are like storms on the ocean, a froth of waves, while the ocean itself is full with steady presence.)



We speak in tongues of poetry, rare spun silk woven into our raw edges.

And echoes, cadence, melody of image, for whom detail, hidden or overt, reveals breadths of vision.

Finesse, complex filigree patterns, considered interlacings of feelings in the verbal clusters of stanzas.

A poem of many voices, strands, cross-currents, opposing winds, and I prefer this to a single slant on, say, Rumi-esque love, or American violence.

Just as the ocean forms each spilling wave wetting our feet while the sand dissolves beneath us, poems should be carefully crafted with total emotional disclosure.

The surfaces, smooth, but buckled.

A self-consciousness of style, a sensitivity, the art of writing fine poetry.

Poetry emerges from our secret words to join the ocean of language through which we communicate. Poems play with grammars. The speaking voice is a tessitura, offered, sung in all its ranges.

Poetry is not only about your feelings; it is about the possibilities of language.

A poet, a jeweller of words, creating a cloisonne of images, a vessel of many colours and opacities like a turning shadow lamp.

If it is not alive, it isn't real.

Not to forget the dissolution of us.

The best poetry is the writing appearing and disappearing at the edge, on the precipices, of the known world.

Sketch of a Sketcher, from my Poetry Salon in March, of Jennifer Hosein, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, graphite, India and acrylic inks, Moleskine folio Sketchbook A4.

While I had thought to do wild, expressionist colours, to lose the form somewhat, my muse urged me in the direction of delicate restraint instead. Over many hours I created the colours stroke by stroke with a dip pen. Once I started working on this drawing, I knew I wished to keep the original sketch intact, that there is a softness that could not be rendered in ink. Jen's artwork is full of bright passionate colours, and she is a bold and talented writer, and yet, her gentleness, she is a kind, warm, compassionate person.