Open Letter

Just received this Open Letter in an email. Thought it should be posted because it elucidates some of the larger concerns operating in our commmunity in Calgary as well as in the communities beyond.

I would like to commend Jay for his thoughtful response to the discussions flying around and beyond the Blogs. I would also like to call attention to the fact that the target of public malignment can often seem too far away to actually be affected by negative and hostile assaults, or too far removed from an immediate vicinity to the attacker, the Internet offers just such a distance, but the attack is no less damaging --- no one has broad enough shoulders to suffer abuse and no one should have to. The world is too small for this bullshit, people work too hard, and the Canadian writing community shouldn't have to suffer the presence of anyone expressing intolerant or cruel views, especially when such views pretend to hold critical merit but are actually shallow, poorly-articulated and baseless bashing. I'm not going to name any names, but it is sad to see friendships and friendly relationships destroyed because of the selfish desires and adolescent hijinks of so few. And I find it particularly important that these selfish desires mask themselves as 'truth' --- a shakey proposition with which to begin warring, keeping it real as though real weren't the greatest falsehood going. Please read the Open Letter below and if you'd wish to add your name to the letter then please let me know and I can connect you to the appropriate person.

Angela, you've been a focus of a hateful energy lately and a deep negativity. Please don't let this derail your creativity. You are at the very least as strong as the people who care about you, and from what I've witnessed with the conversations I've had this week, and those on and off the blogs, we are many. Thank you for your efforts to diminish abusive behaviours within the communities you call home and to call attention to how these behaviours are silently accepted and proliferated by those who do not resist them, and thank you to those who drafted this open letter for doing the same. I gladly add my name to the list and hope the tide will turn. We all deserve better, and we should all endeavour to try to be a little better.



OPEN LETTER

In response to recent events in which Angela Rawlings has been publicly slagged, we the undersigned wish to vehemently express our love and respect and admiration, both personal and professional, for Angela and our opposition to personal attacks against members of our literary community.

For all of us, the lexiconjury reading series and the lex list have been vital elements of our Toronto writing community. The labour, vision, connectivity, and generosity donated by Angela over the past many years have touched all of us personally and contributed greatly to our practice as individual writers.

Angela, we love and respect you, your community-building impulse and pro-activism, and your brilliant, brave, truly inspired writing project. You inspire and teach us how to build positive community and to lead an integrated artistic life.

Angela deserves our thanks and protection when some among us engage in misguided bitter shallow sarcastic and often sexist behaviour which seems aimed only at finding negative attention and inflicting cruelty.

We also wish to commend Jay Millar for the difficult position in which he has found himself as publisher and blog host, and for navigating what has been a confusing week.

We realize this letter may provoke general curiosity and concern from those in our community whose backs instantly go up at injustice. We would like to confirm that recent defamation against Angela by specific individuals in the experimental writing community is the tip of an iceberg that we've all observed melting down for some time, and that there have been other targets of abuse as well.

This defamation has taken the following forms, among others: Colleague writers have mocked and/or attacked other writers maliciously and ongoingly in public spaces -- including at readings, and on blogs and websites; and, Colleague writers have colluded in the sexist parodying of the body and private person of female members of the literary community, including at a public reading and on blogs and websites.

Let's ask that we all pay attention to how we treat each other, and if there are future occasions on which we see our colleagues being slagged, that we stand up to it and challenge it directly and openly and quickly. The lex list can be a space of discussion and social justice, which does not mean that we reduce our critical polylogue. Perhaps it means we take ourselves more seriously as writers and humans, read each other's artistic production and, instead of lampooning the generalized idea and quality of our artistic projects, we give it the substantive consideration it deserves.

The below list of signatories is not intended to be exclusive. We believe and know that our concerns are shared by many others in the community. We welcome responses and further dialogue, and we invite you to post this Open Letter on your blog and website to publicly support Angela and others who have recently experienced harassment and to promote equity and collegiality in our community.