: this is austin's blog :

Today in my poetry course, I learned something pretty awesome about my instructor, Patrick Friesen. He was talking about his hometown of Steinbach, Manitoba, which also happens to be the home town of Miriam Toews, author of A Complicated Kindness. He was talking about how he knew her when he was living in Winnipeg and so on. I then mentioned that the lead singer of The Weakerthans is also from Winnipeg, owns a publishing house and supported her book in the Canada Reads 2006 competition. Patrick then said, "Oh yeah, John Sampson. He used to come to lots of my readings in Winnipeg and talk to me afterwards. Actually on their latest album he wrote a song based on one of my poems. I think the song's called benediction."

Needless to say, after going crazy inside for a moment, when I got home from class I looked it all up and sure enough: The opening lyrics for Benediction are "So you don't get to be a saint", which is also a line, title and book by the same name by Patrick Friesen. Crazy times? Oh yeah.

On his website, he has a small section of recorded poems. I recommend the Bordello poem and the Dvorak piece. He's got a great reading voice.

Today when I came home from school, I tried greeting my sister but she just started singing a mexican hat dance song and dancing. So I just joined her dancing around the kitchen. We are amazing.

Um, yeah that's about it. There was something else but I forget. Oh well.