March 2010
33 posts
Closing Dispatch: I’ve Been Dreaming Other...
Why do so many of us find sport achievement inspiring? Why do the Olympics and other games seem to draw out of even some of the most timid of our friends and neighbors overwhelming, even volatile, passions and emotions? Over the last five to six weeks that I’ve been following the games (by the way, when I work out the math I’m astonished to discover that I’ve essentially attended at least one...
Other People's Dreams
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
The Art of Pain Management
I’ve made the claim several times that athletes and artists share a lot in common, and that one of the things they share is the ability to manage pain, or to use pain as a transforming, rather than debilitating, force in their lives and work. I’m a bit obsessed by the topic, and my new poetry collection Traumatology, to be released in a few days, explores traditional and contemporary concepts of...
Struck by Lightning
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
Play like a Paralympian
How do you play hockey without ice skates? What does it feel like to sit-ski? How does a blind biathlete shoot the targets? How to you aim stones in wheelchair curling? While I’ve been attempting to answer these questions throughout my Paralympic dispatches as a spectator of the games, beyond simply watching the athletes compete, each venue includes a “Play Like a Paralympian” area whereby the...
Swedaly
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
5 tags
Sledhead
When I made my first donation to CAN Fund, the athlete I was told received my money was a sledge hockey player named Billy Bridges. I hadn’t heard of him at the time, mostly because I hadn’t heard much...
Sledhead—The Poem
for Billy Bridges
This isn’t standup hockey.
Our team is colder, bolder,
more bruised under the maple leaf
than you can imagine.
This is the definition of physical.
Full-body contact into unforgiving boards,
pucks to the face, torsos to ice, spiked
sticks stabbing into sides.
Every man on the ice has a story
whose moral is victory, if only he doesn’t run out
of time.
This is...
3 tags
The Athlete-Guide Relationship
One of the most fascinating aspects of Paralympic sport is how the visually impaired athletes compete: what technology is used, how the rules are adjusted, and how a relationship is built between athlete and guide. The logistics are not just important for the success of the athlete, but are essential to ensure as much safety as is possible. In winter sport, after all, falls and spills and...
2 tags
My Guardian Angel
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
Shame, Shame on VANOC
I had intended to write about the logistics of visually-impaired skiing today. But it seems that will need to wait until tomorrow as my fellow riders on Greyhound this morning have urged me to write more on VANOC’s abandonment of the Paralympics and their fans.
My wake-up call came, as usual, at 5am. I now have all my clothes and gear set up the night before so that all I need to do upon hearing...
What Does the Fog Want Anyway?
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
5 tags
Paralympics Game Day Logistics; or VANOC Should be...
I wrote an entry on the same subject regarding the Olympic games. The time commitment required for the Paralympics is just as taxing as that required for the Paralympics, but for different reasons.
VANOC should be utterly ashamed: according to its promises to host both games, it ought to be providing adequate and relatively equal support in relation to scope for the Paralympics, as it did for the...
3 tags
Long Distance
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
3 tags
Bang-Bang, Bang-Bang
During the Beijing Olympics, a commercial aired introducing us to one of our 2010 Olympic biathlon hopefuls, a dimpled, young brunette from Quebec who acted out her sport, shooting, with hand gestures, enthusiastically spurting, Bang-bang, bang-bang! I found her utterly adorable and found myself contemplating biathlon, a sport I’ve never watched, even on television, and one I’ve certainly never...
3 tags
Biathlon Brings Me Closer to Religious Awakening
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
My Father as Olympian
When the sailboat my father was on capsized in the Caribbean, he was a changed man. The contaminated water he swallowed caused his quadriplegia. His life story altered from a successful immigrant story to a tale of tragedy.
At the time of his accident, in the 1970s, he was essentially told his life was over. He retired from his job. My mother left him. He didn’t even qualify for single parent...
My Father as Olympian
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
Mush Music
I have to admit that I’ve stolen this headline. It appeared in the Ulu News, a daily newspaper devoted to the games (ulu is an Inuit blade instrument—all the sport medals are in the shape of ulus), over a photograph of bright-eyed, lean, shimmering husky dogs and their family of owners (a brother and sister team from Alaska, eleven and fourteen years old respectively, compete together as well as...
Popsicle Sticks
The season of failures started with my birthday: a sleepover where no one slept, where none arrived—local parents too nervous to send their precious to party or prance about with the little girl with brown skin and buck teeth—without a mother living in an abandoned gymnasium turned apartment. We moved on to other events: Failure to overcome homesickness, Failure to catch the bus, Failure...
Snow Snakes, Arm Pulls, Alaskan High Kicks & Butt...
In today’s dispatch I simply want to tell you a bit about the different Dene Games and Arctic Sports I’ve had the pleasure of viewing in the last few days. As I mentioned in a previous blog, these sports have their bases in survival skills, either mimicking hunting or other life-skills or survival actions, or building skills of strength and balance for use in future life situations. Most are...
The Internal Dialogue of the Sledge Jumper
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
The Sledge Jumper
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
Sledge Jump Haiku
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
If You Can’t Break a Record, Break a Sledge
Ryan Blais, Olympic freestyle skier and Sports Ambassador for the 2010 Arctic Winter Games, has a favourite quotation: “Adversity causes some to break, others to break records.” Today, I overheard the coach of the Yukon Arctic Sports teams say jokingly to one of her athletes nervous about the daunting sledge jump event, “If you can’t break a record, break a sledge.” I believe the advice was taken...
Sling Shot
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
Against Border Guards
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
Hand Games and Two-Foot High Kicks
Before heading out west and north, I asked my graduate assistant to prepare binders for me with information regarding the rules and vocabulary of all the sports competitions included at the winter Olympics, Arctic Games and Paralympics. The binders have proved invaluable to me numerous times over the course of the last few weeks, from explaining the difference between a Salchow and a Lutz,...
Hand Games
I’ve got a coin in my hand.
I’ve got a button in my hand.
I’ve got a toothpick in my hand.
I’ve got bubblegum in my hand.
I’ve got a message in my hand.
I’ve got an omen in my hand.
I’ve got fire in my hand.
I’ve got desire in my hand.
I’ve got a river in my hand.
I’ve got an eagle in my hand.
I’ve got mountains in my hand.
I’ve got an avalanche in my hand.
I’ve got a wedding in my hand.
I’ve...
3 tags
Dream, Achieve, Inspire
The above three words comprise the motto for the 2010 Arctic Winter Games. I must admit that although it might be a bit too direct as a mantra, I like it an awful lot better than “I believe,” which merely feeds into our cultural mania that insists belief is all that is required for success (not hard work, or talent, or resources, or opportunity). At least “dream, achieve, inspire”...
Ravens
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
6 tags
Welcome to the Arctic Winter Games 2010
I say Welcome to the Arctic Winter Games 2010 because I’m not sure how many readers are familiar with these games or their history in Canada.
The first time I heard of them was from my friend Ann Peel, who had visited the games in her capacity as Executive Director of Right to Play, and who raved about the events, particularly the aboriginal arctic sports such as the One-Foot Kick and Arm Pull,...
4 tags
Running with Reindeer
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
Closing Time
I’ve never been great with goodbyes. I’m naturally a melancholy person, and endings reinforce my deepest instincts that all joy and pleasures eventually fade and one is left with loss and disillusionment. Although I am someone who seeks out good times and new experiences, I am aware of the toll they sometimes take—after I launch a new book, for instance, I find myself depressed and...
Closing Ceremonies
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
February 2010
35 posts
May Athena be on Your Side
There are moments in sport that I like to call “Athena moments”—where it seems the gods have adamantly decided on the fate of an individual person or result of an event and no amount of energy expended to oppose that outcome will elicit any change in effect. One of the best moments to illustrate this phenomenon occurred during the Beijing Olympics when it looked like Michael...
Judges Tower
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
Where is Quatchi?
This conundrum is presented to spectators during snow clearing off the ice-breaks at hockey games. On large video screens, the Olympic mascot hides behind trees, jumps in and out of groundhog holes, waving wildly to the audience as we follow his (is Quatchi a he? I have no idea) escapades, all in the end to determine whether or not he is hiding behind 1, 2, or 3. Why? No idea. Unlike the video...
penalty box: the nation’s confessional
triple axel: a pinwheel in a child’s hands on Canada day
moguls: mountain acne
slob air: couch surfing on snow
mirror skate: DaVinci’s handwriting
slaloms: gate-slayers
shoots clean: 5 ways of looking at a blackbird
ski-cross: cryptic crossword race
slap shot: the student’s turn to punish the teacher
McEgg: scrambled human on buttered...
7 tags
My Coach, My Self
More people are probably aware of the prominent role coaches play in the outcome of athletic performance in the wake of Sven Kramer’s disqualification from the men’s 10,000 metre long track speed skating event. Kramer was on his way to a gold medal in world record time when his coach, Gerard Kemkers, believing his athlete had failed to switch to the proper lane, signalled for him to do so....
5 tags
Lament for Disqualification
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
4 tags
God Made Me Funky
We don’t often automatically associate music with sport, but the partnership between music and sport is an interesting one for both fans and athletes. Arenas play music to rev up the crowds before games, between stoppages in play, at intermissions (just think of the anticipation of who will play the Super Bowl every year—and the controversies that have arisen from the performances of Janet...
Winter Sport Abecedarian
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
5 tags
Canada is the Hockey Ward
One of the biggest surprises I had compiling The Exile Book of Canadian Sport Stories (fall 2009), was that there are, overall, more baseball stories than hockey stories in Canadian Literature. However, hockey stories are a close second, and I predict they will outnumber baseball shortly, as many contemporary writers have latched onto hockey as legitimate literary subject matter, and several...
Ski-Cross Air
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
Game Day Logistics
Flags, cowbells, whistles, furry hats, gigantic photographs, inspirational signs, game-face make-up—all of these are part and parcel of game day fandom. But have you wondered, while you are watching the cheering crowds, what game day logistics are like, and how the spectators were able to nab choice tickets in the first place?
I’ve now had the opportunity to attend four different Olympic...
Ode to Zamboni Drivers
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.
Athletes vs. Artists?
I went to see Blue Dragon, French-Canadian artistic icon Robert Lepage’s new play, yesterday, a piece created for the Cultural Olympiad, or “The other Olympics going on in Vancouver right now,” as the play’s introducer announced to a smattering of applause. While I enjoyed the play, particularly the lighting and inventive staging, the smug snickering that accompanied the pronouncement, and even...
Ode to 4th Place
To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.