conferences are fun!

the keynote speakers, in particular, were fabulous. one of them read interesting poetry about change and bodies, and i got to be part of a performance poem, which was fun - there were seven of us in a row, and we each unscrewed a little container, read a stanza, then put the container back together and passed it on. another one was the woman who wrote the novel i'm writing my essay on, who had some very interesting stuff to say about sexuality and sensuality and change/evolution and read a bit from the novel she's currently writing - beautiful and shocking. the last one was the fabulous long creative/theoretical piece which ranged all sorts of topics, mainly on terrorism and race, and involved dress-ups and rapping and recordings of the cops who shot the suspected terrorist in Britain. it didn't seem like it was making any sense for a long time, then it suddenly just fell into place and elucidated all of the things we dance around at these sorts of things. well, not the gender and sexuality stuff, but stuff about power and lived experience. to me, all of the key notes brought up questions of community and friendship, mostly because they *weren't* mentioned as solutions or mitigating factors for all the problems they were discussing.

the other student papers were interesting as well, but mostly about books i hadn't read (i was on a panel with one on hemingway and another on anne carson), but lots of ideas about what i should be reading, in all my masses of spare time. . .

my presentation went well. i opened with reading the end of "william's doll", you know, like they read picturebooks in kindy, with the book off to the side and my special voice. it all sort of followed from there. they laughed in the right bits, and there was an actual murmur of consternation when i got to my key point (ie. gender and sexuality are being conflated in these texts) which was very rewarding. i got a good response afterwards as well, mainly from people impressed that i managed to talk theory using words that we all knew and understood. academics!

one of the key notes (the last one) said he liked it and suggested some people in winnipeg i might like to work with. not moving to winnipeg, you understand, as it habitually hits -40 in winter, but there's this thing called the western deans agreement which means i could take a couple of subjects there, or do a directed reading, by correspondence or something. so i'm to email him and get some contacts and that would be so exciting! there's a couple of really cool kidlit ppl at UofW, and someone who's working on race in children's books. squee!

the same guy hosted the last night party at his house. it was this fabulous house, very small and thin, but about five floors high, and decorated with the most amazing stuff, with a view out over the water to the city. oooo. . . so the place was packed out with drunken academics, writers, poets and grad students and we had a great time. i even spoke to the author of the book i'm writing on and managed to be a normal human.

and now i'm exhausted and have to get back into it. tired but inspired.