Sonja A. Skarstedt News Page

June featured two particularly challenging rounds of chemo, especially given the dwindling but continuing post-cortisone impact. As always, however, encroaching fatigue only served to spur her determination: she not only enjoyed her first long distance walk in months, but also two vigorous uphill city hikes. She swims almost every day and also hit the bowling alley for the first time since April 6th, surprising herself and Geof by rolling four strikes in that single 'test' game. SAS also enjoyed a return to painting and is now working on a canvas inspired by her battle against cancer.

Between editing stints, SAS continues to edit her short stories: "Bernie" revolves around a single man who gets more than he bargains for when he joins two on-line dating services. "Stricklam" is about a wealthy, aging bachelor suddenly overwhelmed by regret. She is also preparing a YouTube video of "Mousetrap," the third song from Colleen B. McCool's burgeoning new album.

Concurrently, the new chemo treatments are having a dramatic, even surprisingly positive impact. However, post-cortisone recuperation continues to be slow, particularly due to its mingling with chemo side effects. Even so, week by week, SAS notices a welcome incremental return to her energy reserves. Although she appreciates daily exercises in the pool, she is greatly looking forward to taking her first five mile city hike in nearly three months.

Its path cleared by the completion of the chapbook, Friperie Swing, SAS' new poetry collection, Abundances, continues to take shape. A number of the poems are spurred by disparate elements of the Iraqui war. For example, "Bloodstone" is centered around the last walk of Dr David Kelly, former UN weapons inspector whose suicide continues to disturb and mystify.

On the health front, SAS commenced a new chemo regime in late April in fine form, despite the challenges presented by clearing cortisone-based medication from her system. This required taking it easy for a while, but she is now back to daily swims and brief walks in the unexpected splendour of Montreal's summery degrees.

Now available on YouTube: SAS' video of Colleen B. McCool's new song, Bird How?

March turned out to be quite the mixed health bag indeed. Best and most encouraging of all was news that, despite ongoing challenges such as fatigue, the cancer has officially stabilized, much of that which was visible in October's scan no longer present. SAS continues her daily regime of work and light swimming and enjoyed her annual inaugural sandal trek on April 17th, Montreal's first truly temperate spring day. On the creative front, she will soon upload a video of Colleen McCool's new song, Bird How? and Mousetrap, each based on early SAS poems. Her most recent YouTube video, Jean Beaudet's Victoire de la Paix, features yet another dreamy summertime meander through Montreal. SAS also completed a revised edition of her 2007 chapbook, Abundances, now entitled Friperie Swing. Click here if you would like a free copy of the PDF.

SAS continues to make progress on the health front. Despite a more challenging than usual few weeks, the chemo commenced in December is having a positive impact as the cancer marker descended to its lowest point since July. She continues her daily swimming, some walking (when the temperature is not in the sub-arctic range) and bowling. She is also working on her fiction and non-fiction, having recently added her Moroccan memoir, "To Ouarzazate and Back", to that page. She also revised her play, Saint Francis of Esplanade, and has made it available in its entirety on this site.

Skarstedt recently digitized two old camcorder video segments and added them to YouTube: Doug Winspear Visits Blue Metropolis, a charming and humorous portrait of this one-of-a-kind Montreal storyteller, and The Montreal Gazette Book Fair 1993, presented in three parts. She is also laying out two new videos for YouTube, one of which features her sister Colleen McCool's brand new song, "Bird How," based on Skarstedt's poetic tribute to Charlie Parker (Mythographies). Also on the movie front, she is about to embark on two professional editing assignments.

SAS has been gleaning more enjoyment than ever with the art of making videos. Her latest additions to YouTube's Skarwood Channel include Jean Beaudet's "Ostinations" which she has set to blizzard and post-blizzard Montreal sequences, circa 2008. She also edited and captioned an unfinished circa-2005 film by Montreal filmmaker Annie MacDonald, entitled Feast. On the comedic side, SAS unearthed The Montreal Poets' Gong Show (in four parts) which comprises circa-1991 analog footage featuring 'spoken word' improvisations by herself, Colleen B. McCool and Geof Isherwood. There has also been much heralded progress on the health front: throughout January: among other positive developments, SAS' breathing improved to the point where she has returned to taking her high-speed walks.

January 1st, 2009

Happy New Year!

"Here's to 2009 — Divine!"

SAS has been rolling along on chemo, as she likes to put it, since July. When they first heard about her diagnosis, family and friends, well aware of her enthusiasm for supplements, couldn't help exclaiming: "So much for vitamins preventing cancer!" To which she replied: "I never took suppplements for that purpose, never even thinking cancer would happen to me. But I continue taking them for the same reasons as before my diagnosis: prevention of infections and severe allergies." Nowadays, she is more thankful than ever for these boosters, because they help galvanize her immune system against the constant bombardment of chemo.

Even though the side effects can make her rather sleepy at times, SAS keeps up with her daily assignments, creative goals and physical workouts. The latter are most vital and rewarding, as the endorphins create an immediate supply of fresh energy. In mid-December, she surprised herself by bowling games in the 200+ range for the first time in many months. She is still shaping stories to add to her fiction page, working on new poems and paintings. She also continues to dabble in what she likes to call her movie making apprenticeship, and has added the following new productions to YouTube's Skarwood channel: Obama Bowl!, Squirrel Trot, The Triumph of Peter Flinsch and Colleen McCool's bluesy premier musical composition, Silent Love. [Remember to click "watch in high quality" command that appears on the bottom right of the viewing screen]

September-October 2008

SAS is rolling along with her fifth, soon to be sixth, chemo treatment. Because this particular drug is time-released, the flu-like side effect tends to be more pronounced with each dosage. Nevertheless, progress is slow but steady; SAS continues to keep up with daily assignments, her writing and painting. She will soon add two more selections to her Prose section, including a memoir of her trip to Morocco in 2000. She is also making steady progress on her new poetry manuscript, Abundances.

SAS also pushes herself to walk at least one vigorous mile and swim for one hour each day. This can be particularly challenging during the week following a chemo administration. Before long, however, the endorphins kick in with their undeniable benefits: renewal of mental and physical energy. To her great surprise, a trek to the bowling alley on September 19th resulted in two 200+ consecutive games. Geof Isherwood took video clips of these coups, which SAS then mingled with other clips, entitled the melange Just Bowl and added it to her Skarwood Channel on YouTube.

photoSAS
SAS, filmmaker Annie MacDonald, Babak Kaboli, Geof Isherwood and author Roma Bross at Chine Toque, Montreal, Monday August 11th, 2008.

In late June, SAS learned that a fraction of cancer had escaped last year's onslaught of chemo/surgery. Given the original stage 4 diagnosis, this did not come as a surprise (regardless of the fact that she was focusing fully on last year's positive "all clear" throughout the winter and spring months). The good news, however, is that the cancer is microscopic and response to the first chemo was immediate. This chemo features comparatively light side effects, most notably a temporary, pronounced sleepiness. Nevertheless, SAS is continuing her daily physical regime: over the course of last year's battle, she came to the conclusion that physical activity is as vital as nutrition and adequate rest.

SAS returned to bowling with her summer league on July 29th and maintained her average. Before this, she went to the lanes on three different occasions to re-familiarize herself with her technique: SAS Bowls a Spare, July 25th, 2008. In mid-June, her game improved thanks to coaching tips from Robert Hollis (whose daughter Cierra scored silver in the 2008 Canadian National Youth Championships). Not only did her average climb to 170 but she bowled a 224 during her last league play on June 24th.

SAS continues with her daily schedule, as well as working on new poems, narratives, drawings, paintings. Perhaps most personally rewarding, however, is her recent venture into making miniature movies. The most recent features her sister, Colleen B. McCool, in a humorous tribute to bowling. Not long thereafter, SAS produced another whimsical bowling-related video: "Meet Stormin' Norman Kingdon!"

SAS finally returned to editing her current manuscript of poems, Abundances. To celebrate the inauguration of her Skarwood Channel on YouTube, she added her fourth mini-film. "Down Here" features the music of Montreal jazz pianist Jean Beaudet. On the extracurricular front, she recently bowled two 190+ games in a row as a farewell to her now-former style. In early May, she joined her first league with husband Geof. During the league's third week she made the switch to a comparatively-restrained (but far more professional, as Quebec champ Jean Charbonneau assured her) approach, and was more than a little relieved to maintain her steady 150 average.January-March 2008SAS received a Pentax Optio 8 digital camera on her birthday in October of last year. One of the fuctions typically includes a movie clip feature.

To her great surprise, the poet discovered the the quality of the Pentax video clips was far higher than her expectations —to such a degree that it even surpassed that of her old Sony Hi-8 camcorder. For nearly a decade, SAS has nurtured a dream to make and edit films. She did make some sporadic attempts back in 2001 but found that the process was hampered by primitive editing software and moreso, by the painstaking amount of time resulting from insufficient computer memory. It wasn't long before her use of the camera's video-clip device far outweighed that of its ordinary picture-taking propensities. In late December, when presented with a new hard drive she also began to experiment with some simple movie editing software (NeroVision and Avidemux).

Soon thereafter, she assembled her first mini-videos and has subsequently established Skarwood, her own YouTube channel. Because she frequently goes bowling with family and friends, that subject (particularly given the flamboyant, humorous style of Jean Lafaurie) served as a natural primary source of raw material. Her current goals now include: music videos featuring Colleen B. McCool and Quebec's jazz piano genius Jean Beaudet, as well as digitizing and editing of analog videos (literary events featuring such luminaries as Louis Dudek and DG Jones) filmed by SAS and Geof Isherwood from 1990 to 2004.

On May 15th, 2007, SAS was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. Over the course of that year she was amazed by how "civilized" the chemotherapy process was in relation to her expectations, but especially to have been able to proceed with "life as usual" throughout, from fulfilling assignments and creative goals to rigorous daily exercising: hiking, swimming, even bowling. Complete eradication of the cancer occurred during surgery in late October, at which point she began to call 2007 her "Miracle Year." Needless to say, she, Geof and her family danced up a joyful storm on New Year's Eve.

On November 18th, SAS and Geof Isherwood met with John Asfour to read his poetry at Montreal's legendary Chateau Ramazay. Between poems, John played eloquent tunes on his lute to the total delight of the audience.

Sonja Skarstedt's Abundances was published as an on-line chapbook by Coracle Press.

SAS' memoir of legendary George Sanderson, co-editor of
The Antigonish Review for decades, appeared in a
special issue of that distinguished literary journal.

Skarstedt's essay, "Zymergy: from the Neo-Ephemeral
to the Occasional Imbroglio," appears in Language Acts:
Anglo-Quebec Poetry, 1976 to the 21st Century.
Edited by Jason Camlot and Todd Swift.

Québec literary and cultural revue Spirale Number 210,
contains a critique of the Skarstedt's most recent poetry collection,
In the House of the Sun. Please click here
to read the (English) translation of this review.