Writing With a Broken Tusk
Writing With a Broken Tusk began in 2006 as a blog about overlapping geographies, personal and real-world, and writing books for children. Since March 2024, Jen Breach (writer, VCFA graduate, and former student) has helped me curate and manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog.
The blog name refers to the mythical pact between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of the epic narrative, the Mahabharata. It also refers to my second published book, edited by the generous and brilliant Diantha Thorpe of Linnet Books/The Shoe String Press, published in 1996, acquired and republished by August House, now part of Reading Is Fundamental, and still miraculously in print.
Posts on this site reflect personal opinion and commentary protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Landmark, Seamark, or Soul's Star?
Years ago, an English teacher handed me a volume of poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins and forever changed my relationship with words. "Vex'd elm-heads" and a "listing heart" and the moon "dwindled and thinned to the fringe | of a fingernail...." It was as if that long-ago voice was showing me how heart and place could meet within a twist of a word or a single rhythmic leap.Thank you, Christina Harrington, for telling me about Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane, because here is a book that delves into the inseparable nature of place and language, despite out best efforts to tear them apart. Macfarlane's introductory chapter discusses the culling of words related to nature from the Oxford Junior Dictionary: