Commonwealth Short Story Prize shortlist!

It was an honour this week to land on the shortlist for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize with these other fine writers. There are a lot of Canadians! 5 of us, amazingly. I believe our stories will eventually be posted online, but I haven’t heard anything about the particulars yet. Good luck to all!

My story, “Milk,” is about a parrot-loving mother with mental health issues who has made certain difficult deals with a man in order to support herself and her family. The story is told by her 11 year old daughter as the man barters for “access” to the girl. The threat of eviction lingers in the air like a parrot squawk. The mother has no good choices: rock on one side, hard place on the other. What will become of them (and their goat) in their housing-insecure world?

I based the parrots in the story on the lorikeets in the Lorikeet Loft at Jurang Bird Park in Singapore. I could happily have stayed in the Lory Loft the rest of my life. It’s been closed now and the 3500 birds relocated to the Bird Paradise in Mandai Wildlife Reserve.

The Shortlist

The 2024 Commonwealth Short Story Prize shortlist was announced on 17 April. Twenty-three writers have been selected for the shortlist after 7,359 entered stories this year’s prize.

• ”A River Then the Road” , Pip RobertsonNew Zealand
• ”Dite” , Reena Usha RungooMauritius
• ”Nobody Owns a Fire” , Jennifer SevernAustralia
• ”Mananangal” , M DonatoNew Zealand
• ”Wrinkle Release” , Stefan Bindley-TaylorTrinidad and Tobago
• ”So Clean” , Anna WoodsNew Zealand
• ”You Had Me at Aloe” , Ark RamsayBarbados
• ”Terre Brulée” , Celeste MohammedTrinidad and Tobago
• ”Thambi, Thambi” , Bharath KumarIndia
• ”Aishwarya Rai” , Sanjana ThakurIndia
• ”Mother May I” , Ajay PatriIndia
• ”When Things End” , Sarah BalakrishnanCanada
• ”What Burns” , Julie BouchardCanada
• ”Your Own Dear, Obedient Daughters” , F.E. ChoeCanada
• ”Milk” , Eaton HamiltonCanada
• ”Sookie Woodrow Goes to Heaven” , Ceilidh MichelleCanada
• ”The Devil’s Son” , Portia SubranTrinidad and Tobago
• ”Fadi” , Azags AgandaaGhana
• ”House No. 49” , Olajide OmojarabiNigeria
• ”A Song Sung in Secret” , Jayne BaulingSouth Africa
• ”The Goat” , Jean Pierre NikuzeRwanda
• ”The Marriage Proposal” , Heather ArchibaldSt Kitts and Nevis
• ”The Woman Upstairs” , Audrey TanSingapore

Link tracker

Literature, and the little guy

Painting: Eaton Hamilton, 2019/2024, Lemons in Raspberry Bowl, 16×20″ oil sticks and oil paint on loose canvas

ID: Blue bkgd, violet bowl, lemons, white counter with black slashes

What I’ve been reading:

More Stories, More Voices: On the Importance of the Small(ish) Book Publisher by Kristen McGuiness over at Literary Hub.

I’m in love with small presses. Are you? They make it so easy to appreciate them–well, many of them do, at least.

The lit world today…

ID: cover of Jean Kwok’s novel ‘Mambo in Chinatown’

Read her. You’ll love her. Enjoyed this one in particular because of the ballroom dancing.

Meantime, on twitter we have a feud about whether Mary Oliver or Rupi Kaur are equivalent, or, if not, which is the better poet? And, also, can you attract an agent with 50 poems published in 50 litmags over a year, or is better to have fewer in fewer, better publications?

Well now…

Painting: Eaton Hamilton 2024, oil on oil paper, 9″x12″ After Christine Lafuente

Busy, busy week of writing, painting, gardening, fretting. You? I wanted to tell you about an excellent bruhaha in the literary world, but instead I’ll just advice you to go explore a couple great sites. Many of the litmags in Canada also have blogs, so check those out too:

LitHub

Book Riot

Literary Review of Canada

49th Shelf

Spring, 2024

painting: Eaton Hamilton, 2024 12″x16″ cold wax on board

ID: Yt woman striking a dynamic pose against blue bkgd

Thank goodness for spring and flowers. Currently in our chilly world, the snowdrops bloom, and I’ve heard that cherry trees do too (there are none around here). Daffs are happy with the low temps. Hyacinths are springing into bloom. I wait for the mason bees to break free of their cocoons, and saw one, but the others are either dormant or dead, and I’m hoping it’s the former. Hopefully this week I’ll procure some needed soil and compost (if I empty the recycling from my trunk!). I had a crappy car breakdown this week that was costly and unexpected, with worse car news on the horizon. It’s just not safe for disabled people to drive around in wretched cars, since breakdowns could lead to our deaths. I wish the abled, employed world realized this and would do more to help. It should be a community goal to make sure disabled people are managing against all their excess pressures.

I’m working on my books a bit at a time. I wish every day was twice as long, even though I am already exhausted halfway through each one. More time, more time, more time is my plaintive whisper.

I won’t even talk about the state of the world today. I wish your tiny slice of it to be a beneficent one.

Mason bees … do you mud?

One of the many charms of moving back to the country was the abundance of mason bees and getting to know the ways of these early season super-pollinators. Last fall, I sat with my grandchild and together we took apart the tubes and cardboard liners to examine the cocoons, preparatory to cleaning them.

Today I watched a mason bee hatch from the (new) launching pad where I’d set out its cocoon. It struggled with a couple legs in the air for a few hours, then I thought to help by moving the cocoon to the front of the box, and I could feel it buzzing wildly under my fingers. All its zestful behaviour tore the cocoon open far enough and launched it into the air, the cocoon spinning away as it went. A male w a 2-wk lifespan, off to find the first flowers and soon the first females.

The first flowers, because my garden is still all in pots, borne here by movers, are small samples of pulmonaria (about the size of bedding plants, really) along with the first lovely muscari and the white hyacinth I planted in in Nov. I hope it’s enough. I brought a little male mason bee house with me (I say male because if a tube is short, a female will lay only male eggs; she lays females at the back of her tube), and all day I noticed splashes of dried mud under it and buzzing in the air, so the message is out: it’s time, it’s time, it’s time.

Though I had nothing prepped, and am in a place where it seems like no one had fed them previously, an Anna’s hummingbird flew right up to my nose. I didn’t have to be asked twice. I spent the day cleaning, sterilizing nectar, bleaching etc and now there are two feeders hung for her last drink before bed.

As well, I got the recirculating pump going in my water “feature” (just a small bowl). Birds appreciate it even when I don’t feed them seeds. I set up the saucer with rocks in it so insects can drink and birds can bathe.

That’s nothing, I realize, about art or writing, but we’ve had our first weather over 10°C this weekend, and I think we’ve all been out celebrating. I got the cushions for the yard swing out and the dog and I swung while I cut her long winter mane off–a procedure that takes many, many treats. My daughter and grandkids dropped by yesterday with their big doggy and my little doggy, ever so scared and excited by other dogs, played for her first time–probably ever. (She has an ugly back story of being tied to a roof for years and then living in a bathroom at a rescue.) I just ordered a long outdoor rope with knots hoping she might learn to generalize and play outside all the time. I can wind her up inside, if it’s just me, usually to play tug. She’s been learning to push her “treat” button. It’s fun watching her settle in even more. Now I can trust her in the front with no leash; she knows to stay and not go on the road, and she knows I’m proud of this, and she too is proud of this.

Sometimes, it is all we can do to endure

painting by: Eaton Hamilton 2024 cold wax and oil, 12″x16″ mixed media artboard

ID: Woman crouches as the impact of the difficult world hits

Sometimes, it really is all we can do to endure. This past week was challenging with a lengthy health-related interview followed by, the next day, connecting with my best childhood chum from about K-7 for an equally deep talk. All that remembering, all that agitation of systems calmed now by time. But I’m delighted to be back in touch. Another childhood friend lives just a few miles from me here, and I haven’t yet reached out–will I?

What about you? Have you reached out to someone you used to know lately?

The daffodils are blooming! Almost!

Painting: Eaton Hamilton, 12″x16″ cold wax on board

ID: Yt woman short red hair carries yellow flowers, blue behind her

I’ve never painted daffodils or tulips, but let’s pretend this person is carrying tulips to her lover for the pleasure of spring and the knowledge that in a week we’ll spring forward.

I’m happy to be coming out of moving, very slowly. I work on one thing a day besides daily upkeep stuff, but it’s small. Moving a painting over. Repainting a bit of wall. Today I’m priming my first mason bee house in this new location. Beyond that, I’m painting (visual art) every day, and trying to keep up with writing my novel and memoir.

I feel pressured because I haven’t started taxes, but I go through this every year.

The world is shite now, I know, and it blisters my eyes and soul. Every day there is at least something that makes me cry, and a thousand more things, besides, that should make me cry, but that I react to with something different than tears–what is that sluggish horror we feel, that heaviness for the horror that unfolds in Palestine, and that humans in charge won’t stop.

I wish you the best of all possible weeks under the circumstances, and the small saving beauties that make it possible to get through.

Cold wax for the win!

painting 2024 by Eaton Hamilton, cold wax and oil on oil paper, 4.5″ x 7″

ID: Woman sitting outside in green grass and blue sky, wearing orange t-shirt and black shorts, bare feet, black hair shoulder-length

Cold wax and oil is the fix I’ve been looking for in my art life. I’m delighted to add it to my repertoire. It’s the sexiest paint I’ve used other than R+F oil sticks and to a slightly lesser degree Paul deMarrais oil sticks. The wax also speeds up drying (so it makes sense why there’s some in oil sticks, which dry faster than tube oils too). It’s impossible to be as anal as I am, so it has my undying loyalty. It forces me to loosen up.

It’s blustery here today. Branches have been hitting the house. I’m more scared of wind than I am any other weather, and while I am tree-free here, there are huge nearby trees.

I hope everyone’s doing okay. I think “okay” is all we can ask during these days of failing democracies and the genocide of Gazans and plight of Ukranians (Alexi Navalny, hero and fighter for human rights, murdered), rising pathogens (wear your respirator! get your kids in them too particularly in unmitigated schools!), shrinkflation, inflation and skyrocketing costs. None of this is good for relationships; so many crack up over different “risk tolerances.” I’d hate to be sharing kids back and forth with a parent who doesn’t believe in covid (hello?) or doesn’t take precautions to make sure those kids get to adulthood as healthily as possible.

Writing is going well. I love one of the books, and hate the other, the latter of which is maybe the answer to my age-old question, “Have I finally got the infrastructure?” Probably not. Alas. Will keep assessing.

Been zooming out with cold wax

Eaton Hamilton: The Blue Eye, 2024, cold wax and oil, NFS

I love winter in many ways. I adore the hunkering down indoors, the way you can let yourself absorb into the world of your tasks, whatever they are, and truly tend to them. It’s less copacetic this year because I know BC has over 100 so-called “zombie fires” burning instead of the usual 5-6. These are fires that burn underground, smoldering along with smoke escaping and turning the sky as one drives–and even the snow–blue. We’ve had a couple of years of pronounced drought and this year, drought is continuing through winter. When I sunk bulbs late, in November, the soil was bone dry a half inch down; I’d be willing to be that it’s still that dry now. We had a couple feet of snow, and of course several rains, but it’s been a cuddly bear of a season overall. Nice for humans who don’t like cold, but scary because of what it presages, which is probably an early and particularly intense fire season. We burned through as much territory as the landmass of Cambodia last summer.

We are in grave climate-change trouble, and of course grave covid trouble too since this, year 5 of the pandemic, seems to be FAFO year. People who haven’t mitigated against the virus (ventilation, clean air, respirators) are dropping left and right, way too young.

And of course there’s the genocide in Palestine and the attacks at Rafah.

I don’t know how folks are to stay mentally well here in late-stage capitalism. Most people seem to do it by just ignoring the world and pretending their small chunk of life isn’t impacted by supply-chain issues and mega illness absences everywhere (schools! BC Ferry staff! Hospitals!), but that’s a time-limited plan that is going to fail spectacularly. It’s not sustainable. It’s probably true that our corporate overlords will *never* let governments govern us with safety in mind (bad for their bottom line), but at least we could wake up and complain. Complain to your MLA, your MP, the premier, the PM. Complain on a picket line, at a march. Write about what’s going on. Talk about safety.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead 

Move-in

The Garden Going on Without You, by Eaton Hamilton, 2018

How is everyone managing? So many people I know have been pretty well sick straight through from Cdn thanksgiving. Sending my best for healing along with encouragement to get you into N95s and pressing schools and federal buildings for clean air. Covid is airborne and showing no signs of slowing down.

It’s that wonderful time of year when cherry blossoms are budding and we know spring is around the corner. I’m hard at work writing and creating artworks … you? I’m tag-teaming a novel, 3rd draft, and a memoir, 4th draft, now finally taking good preliminary shapes at last. In my mind, they’re finally becoming first drafts because their infrastructure is loosely in place. An editor could come along and change all that, of course, but for the moment it’s something to go forward with.

What projects engage you at the moment?

Heads up, kids

by Eaton Hamilton. Portrait of a person with a raised chin. They’re wearing blue shirt, have very pink neck, black glassees and are bald. Green bkgd. Unsure of size/substrate, but it’s oil.

Just a small recognition today of how terribly hard our world is to navigate these days. I ache to watch the lovely people of Palestine being decimated. I’m scared for our children and our children’s children growing into a world where money is being devalued and the climate is becoming more severe, and covid rages on without mitigations despite knowing how it is is ruining our bodies internally. Know that I think of you, wherever you are, and hope you are managing as well as can be expected.

Personally, I’m still trying to move into my new place. I guess when one gets older, and is alone, it’s a much harder scenario. So that’s what keeps me from updating here, because there just isn’t enough of me, and what can go must go. But I’m still trying, along with adding writing if not art painting to the mix.

Such adorable sisters…

The very start of the flour fight as we made raspberry tarts! We had so much fun. They’d never played cards, so I taught them “wild” eights (we can do without the ableist reference!) and then moved on to rummy. We cooked, we learned to play “cups,” we practiced choreo to Stayin’ Alive, we dealt with the mason bee cocoon cleaning, we painted, we talked, we wrapped holiday presents, we dealt with the rescue dog being nonplussed from the change in her routine, we went for a walk on the foggy beach.

Hope you have a happy solstice as we welcome back the light; if you’re in the milder parts of BC, with El Niño active, we’ll likely have bulbs blooming in Jan and a worse drought this next summer.

I don’t know how I could still be moving, but I am still moving!

But the studio sale rages on with 20% off this month of December!

Painting by: Eaton Hamilton 2023

I’d give a lot not to be moving

painting by Eaton Hamilton, pastel on paper, 20″x30″ Vancouver with mountains

Moving, moving, moving. In another couple of weeks it will be all over except for the unpacking. That’s where I’m aiming myself.

Tell me about your moves. Did you pack yourself or did you have help? Did you shudder thinking every little thing you tucked in a box was something you’d once spent money on?

Dora Maar dumps the bastard, 2021

Painting by Eaton Hamilton, 2021, acrylic on paper, SOLD

Very unnerved by Bonnie Henry screwing up AGAIN and not protecting school children with covid mitigations even though there’s utterly no excuse, since research on covid damage to the body is no longer scant or equivocal (even her own research proved her spoken words false). Kids are the major driver of covid spread. Kids not only get it a lot but it damages their hearts, brains, kidneys and other bodily functions. Diabetes in children is sky rocketing. Covid is also oncogenic, meaning it causes or speeds up cancers, so there’s also a world of govt ignoring that. AU had a “respiratory season” more than twice as bad as last year, but BC is still in no hurry to get vaccines into arms or mitigations into hospitals and schools. The earliest we’ll have vaccines here is the end of Oct–even tho they’re going into US arms this week. Only good thing in this mess is they seem to have given up on their authoritarian and despised vaccine line. But will we get a refund from Penny Ballem?

Very upset by Bonnie Henry not keeping masks in healthcare, not upgrading them to N95s, and then removing them entirely, meaning vulnerable citizens can no longer seek care without a pretty acute chance of catching the covid that could or may likely kill them. Obviously covid surging in hospitals sends nurses et al off sick, meaning staff shortages from ambulances to hospitalists, meaning days’ long waits, meaning no hospitalists to admit and follow patients. I know BCNDP intends to privatize medicine (horrible, vile idea) but in the meantime, don’t they care that people are dying in waiting rooms, even when they’ve arrived with heart attacks, strokes or very severe accidental damage?

Bastards, every one of the colluding BCNDP MLAs. They should be ashamed, but instead they’re raking our $ into their pockets. Note what they’ve done instead of helping healthcare. They’ve created all sorts of well-paid bloat in the medical system which slows processes to a crawl. They’ve pampered gas and oil, taking dozens of meetings every week with them. They’ve got the buzz on museums. They’re maybe building new hospitals, or not–the projects seem never to get up and running.

I do trust that they have not been able to sufficiently indemnify themselves. Their lies and disinformation that have caused so many citizens to die will hopefully be investigated and eventually land them in jail.

Kiddos pushed back into unprotected schools

Painting by Eaton Hamilton, Lemons But No Lemonade, oil on canvas, 2019

ID: Yellow, blue-banded fluted bowl holds a pile of lemons, sits on black and white checked table. Orange/red walls behind; stripe of black and yellow near top

I think about BC children this week. US schoolkids start back several weeks before ours here, and their schools are a mess of covid. The current variants offer up prodigious amounts of vomit and diarrhea, and because we insist kids to go to school positive for covid these days, accidents will happen. We refuse to protect schoolkids, patients or shoppers with N95 mandates and HEPA filters to clean the air. It must be getting obvious to more people that until we all work together to end this thing, this thing is not going to end. It cost 6 kids their lives last fall. It’s the 10th of September, and no word about when we’re going to be vaccinated this year in Canada. Bonnie Henry waited last year so that people could have flu and covid vaxxes together–disastrous logic that kept folks unprotected so much longer than necessary.

BC began an emergency kid vaccine program in December last year meaning most folks were getting their vaccines right before Xmas holidays–and they need two weeks to kick in, leaving them unprotected during school break too.

Is it going to be such a gong show this year? Healthcare is worse than ever in BC no thanks to the BCNDP who made the asinine decision to remove masking in healthcare settings despite the immediate crash in service levels as people booked off sick plus the immediate surge in nosocomial infections (infections caught in hospital have a 10% fatality rate).

Personally, all I do is pack, pack, pack for an upcoming move. Hope your life is a bit more exciting.

Happy Labour Day weekend!

Painting (underpainting): Eaton Hamilton, youngest g-kid

ID: Blonde child seen from the side eating a pink ice cream (“unicorn”) cone

The dog almost died and she has seemed dysregulated since–some accidents, some growling; I wonder if she’s still in pain, or just quite sensitive with all her changes and all the changes in the household. I’m watching her carefully and being very strict with what she ingests. Giving loads of cuddles.

It’s cold and raining here after our long and hot drought, which hopefully will help to put out the 400+ BC wildfires–oh please, oh please. At the very least it will water all the thirsty conifers and the rest of the suffering plants. My kids are stuck at Burning Man, but finally today we got cell contact and both report being happy as clams. Porta potties were emptied! They have emergency cell coverage!

I’m packing this place up every day for the move in a month and not enjoying it. How again is it that we have to do all this work just to move the stuff a few miles? Dematerializing and rematerializing it seems a lot easier!

Meantime, I miss painting and I miss writing. I’m itching to get back to work, which is fitting for Labour Day weekend. I celebrate labour, unions and good working conditions for all. Long may we fight for them.

Somehow it’s almost September, isn’t it?

Painting by Eaton Hamilton. After Suzanne Valadon, during an online live sketching event, ’21.

ID: Painter Suzanne Valadon pictured at a round table drinking wine, lead leaning on hand, gripping glass. Blue shirt, black skirt, purple background

We’re smoky here now where I live, joining the rest of the damned world in drought and fire. 400 fires still going in BC and little rain forecast. What a dry dry season spring and summer have been here.

This week, the doofus in the US got indicted by Georgia, turned himself in and used his mug shot to get an immediate 7M in donations; Lahaina searched for more victims; evacuations were in full force in BC because of forest fires, Kelowna being hardest hit losing many W Kelowna houses.

Here on the micro level, I sold my old car and watched it go. It signified my kick to the ass of my abusive marriage–and good riddance. I’m now in the car I would have chosen for myself if I’d been allowed to choose for myself now.

Dog Days

After Matisse

Painting: Eaton Hamilton, portrait outline in red acrylic, 2013?

It’s been such a week. I’m moving and everything is and will remain topsy-turvy for some months. You know, all the cumbersome details–where to find boxes, how to pack in time, insurance, movers, utilities yada yada. I’ve moved about 50 times. It’s not like I don’t know the drill, but obviously every time I’m older and less able-bodied. However, there are things I’m looking forward to. Fewer ferries is the biggest one, esp as the ferries, who refuse to institute a mask mandate, deal with employee absences due to covid (and lack of housing) and partially collapse.

Swimming has been delerious. Nude swim at night in one of the lakes here–heaven on earth, staring up at the stars before the forest fire smoke came in and obscured everything. Floating on my back under the stars, trying my hardest not to want to pick out constellations to make geo-sense of my location, letting it be pure sparkle instead.

So that’s me. How about you? What is your precious memory/ies of the last months?