Luanne Armstrong, Writer, Editor, Mentor

Part of my life’s work has been to truly understand the place where I live and the other creatures that dwell there with me. In my daily walks, I focus on the quiet, always changing occurrences of nature. Every day, I stand, watch,... listen at the margins of things, the line between mountains and sky, lake and mountains, the ragged roughness that separates human from non-human. When something snags my attention, I stop and look. I try to bring such moments home with me in the form of words or photographs. This book is a small compilation of these meditations. Luanne Armstrong See more

Writing and Publishing in 2020 What will become of the arts during the pandemic? What happens to all the people who depends on readers, listeners, live audiences, touring, connecting with others in close collaboration. I don't kno but I am very worried But I do know that writing, in particular, is changing, will change further, and, at the moment, it's hard to see what is coming. I have been a working, publishing writer since 1979. I have written and published pretty stea...Continue reading

Music and My Mother When I was very young, we had a small record player in a red box on top of the black book case, under the window in the living room. There was always music pouring out of it. Then we got a bigger record player, because even when she could barely afford shoes for her children, my mother managed to afford music, and all day long, music filled our farmhouse, and my mother's clear soprano rang from the kitchen as she cooked and cleaned. My mother loved music...Continue reading

Growing into death: It was one of the many intense conversations I so love to have. They feel like food to me. This time, we were exchanging birth stories, mine, hers, many others we knew about. But it has been a long time since I gave a lot of intense thought to birth. For the last few years, I have thought abut many things, but at night, when a ton of weight settles on my chest before I sleep, it is hard not to think about death as very present. For a long time, I have ta...Continue reading

Writing and Teaching: One of my long term goals has always been to write about teaching writing. After all, I have now been teaching writing since 1986, when I began at the University of Alberta, in their Extension Program. I have taught in drafty community halls, in libraries, in people's houses, in universities, and whatever venues were available and appropriate at the time, in BC, Alberta and even Saskatchewan. It was in Pentiction, one long ago summer, when I began to ...Continue reading

Listening to Animals: My old dog died over Christmas. As I was shopping in order to make stockings for six kids and their parents, and then shopping for each meal, list in hand, and then to the liquor store, meal by meal and person by person, she decided to go hide so she could die alone in the cold. And so I would come home every day from Christmas preparations and go look for her. After it was clear she would never walk to the beach again, or very far anywhere, I began to...Continue reading

Another Advance column: Not Guilty Some time ago, CBC radio was running a phone in show about guilty pleasures. Wait, I thought. I don't have any of those anymore. I used to have them. What happened?...Continue reading

I am now writing a series of monthly columns for the local newspaper and I will also post them here. First one, The Kid Are All Right! The kids are allright... I am really tired of people complaining about kids and screens. Yes, I am very biased on this subject. I have eight of the best and brightest and most beautiful grandkids ever. They range in age from three to twenty-four. Two of them have grown up with computers and screens and video games and let me tell you, they ar...Continue reading

When We Are Broken A Lyric Essay by Luanne Armstrong The late season dahlia heads, suffocated by heat, droop on their thin stalks.Dead gold grass mats under a confusion of fallen grapes -- flash in the slant light of fragrant sun....Continue reading

I always remember summer, as warm, as soft breath, wrapped around me. in the long blue gold afternoons, the breathing of the lake, and the song sparrows orchestrating us into dusk, the evenings with gold clouds, and the light so blue, dusky in the mountain valleys the sound of the wind coming down, down the trees. So that, all through the seasons, I can sit here now, still listening to it. Every August, being too hot is the best thing in a chair at the water's edge, in an...Continue reading

Walking with Caraigh Master Jizo asked Hogen, Where have you come from? I pilgrimage aimlessly replied Hogen. What is the nature of your pilgrimage, asked Jizo....Continue reading