The Omniscient Sheriff

j.s. makkos, Gary Barwin, Mathew Timmons, and Gregory Betts at the Grey Borders Reading Series in St. Catharines, Ontario 4 February 2008. Filmed by Lisa Betts at Strega Cafe, this piece was inspired by Claude Gauvreau's "Jappement a la lune."

Next reading: The Great Canadian Surreal Beaver Ball Refuse Locale: An Evening of Surrealism in St. Catharines, Wed., Mar. 5, 2008, for a very special evening celebrating the ongoing legacy of surrealism in Canada at the Niagara Artists' Centre at 7 p.m. Featuring readings by contemporary surrealist poets Stuart Ross and Beatriz Hausner, and acclaimed Automatist scholar Ray Ellenwood.

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Beginning of a story that I was helping a student with today:

"The lamb yelped. It was shot by the sheriff. He was omniscient. He knew that he was going to shoot the animal."

This is the exercise that I gave him. He had to randomly select four words from the dictionary (opening it at random and plonking his finger down. He'd read the word and its definition.) He had to write a short paragraph-length story incorporating the four words.