The Best Ideas Always Come from the Act of Writing
TAKE-5 Interview with Author and Poet Dan Gilmore
by Allyson Latta
Dan Gilmore speaking at Sabino Springs Writers' Retreat in Tucson, Arizona, January 2010. (Photo: Mary E. McIntyre)
DAN GILMORE has published a novel, A Howl for Mayflower (Imago Press, 2006), and two collections of stories and poems,Season Tickets (Pima Press, 2003), and Love Takes a Bow (Imago Press, 2010). He has received awards from the Raymond Carver Fiction Contest, the Martindale Fiction Contest, and Sandscript. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Aethlon,and numerous other journals. Several were anthologized in Loft and Range (Pima Press, 2001). His novel has been adapted as a stage play and will be produced in 2012. Dan continues to work on poetry, as well as a novel set in a wedding chapel in Reno. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
“My life is not unique, secret or precious. The way I talk about it, if I’m lucky, is unique.” —Dan Gilmore
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
Writing in My Father’s Voice: Honouring His Wartime Experience (Part 2 of 2)
Guest Post by Barbara Trendos
My idea of writing a mock journal turned out to be not so far beyond the realm of possibility. The Canadian YMCA had distributed log books, like the one Johnny kept, to help Canadian PoWs fill time, cope, and record the day-to-day routine of an utterly un-routine life experience. Dad surprised me when he told me that he too had kept a log book; however, he’d left it behind when the men were marched from the camp on foot in January 1945. For Dad, practical then as he is now, it was a matter of squeezing the most out of the precious space in his backpack: it was the log book, or chocolate and smokes. There was no contest.
I began interviewing Dad formally three years ago, to fill in some of the gaps in his timeline. We spent hours together, huddled over my old Dictaphone, often in Mom’s room at the nursing home. It was terrific “together time” and very informative for me; however, the transcribing process was incredibly tedious. In hindsight, a digital voice recorder and voice-recognition software could have been my new best friends. And there were other challenges.
Saturday, May 28th, 2011
Writing in My Father’s Voice: Honouring His Wartime Experience (Part 1 of 2)
Guest Post by Barbara Trendos
It was one night over thirty years ago when Dad first brought out that plain, beat-up file folder. Although I can’t recall what prompted him to do so, I clearly remember sitting on the shag carpet at the foot of his easy chair in front of the fireplace in our family room. The file was full of telegrams, war correspondence, and all the letters and Postkartes he’d written to Grandma from the prison camp. They were handwritten in pencil, the letters on long skinny, flimsy stationery with Kriegsgefangenenpost (Prisoner of War Post) printed at the top, each beginning “Dear Ma” and faintly postmarked 1943 or 1944, some with sections blacked out by a zealous Gepruft (censor), many worn through on the fold lines.
Fragile pieces of history.
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
