Welcome!

Welcome to Pig Squash Press! You have arrived at the cyber-home, alter ego, publishing imprint and creative conduit connecting me – Kim Goldberg – to the rest of the planet (and possibly beyond). I am the author of eight books of poetry and nonfiction, a couple thousand published articles, as well as poems, science fiction short stories, and a screenplay or two. Join me as I blog about books, poetry, and more!

My latest books are:

Devolution (from Caitlin Press, 2020), surreal poems and fables of ecopocalypse. This is my eighth book and my personal act of extinction rebellion. The poems and fables span the Anthropocene, speaking to ecological unraveling, social confusion, private pilgrimage, urbanization and wildness. “She can write lines that literally take your breath away, and creates images that will remain with you long after you close the book.” – Vancouver Sun

Undetectable, a lyrical journey through illness, wellness, Hepatitis C and virus as metaphor. I lived with Hepatitis C for 45 years before being cured in 2015 with the breakthrough new drug Harvoni. I wrote Undetectable in the Japanese literary style of haibun – a travel diary paired with haiku – as I wandered the streets and forests of Nanaimo, BC, during my 84 days of treatment, meditating on all things undetectable.

RED ZONE, a graffiti-strewn poem diary of homelessness in Nanaimo, BC, where I live. More than 300 people live and sleep on the streets of Nanaimo. RED ZONE has been taught in university literature courses. Reviewers have compared it to the writings of Allen Ginsberg, Marge Piercy, and John Steinbeck.

Ride Backwards on Dragon: a poet’s journey through Liuhebafa – finalist for Canada’s Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. A collection of 66 linked poems following the 66-move sequence of the ancient martial art of Liuhebafa on a mythic quest for internal alchemy and immortality. Visit my Liuhebafagirl blog for deets.

~

So make yourself comfy, have a boo at my blog postings about literary happenings and other current events, leave a comment, walk your dog, order a book or two.

My other coordinates are:

Facebook at @kim.goldberg.71

Instagram at @kim.goldberg.poet

Gettr at @KimGoldberg

Substack at https://kimgoldbergx1.substack.com/

Twitter at … NOWHERE! All three of my Twitter accounts have been permanently deplatformed for Wrong Speak, as has happened to countless professional journalists, authors, medical doctors, research scientists and many other highly credible people whose content challenges the Official Narrative in any way on any topic.

May the metaphors be with you!

Kim Goldberg
goldberg@ncf.ca

carbon leakage (poem)

I was very pleased to have my poem “carbon leakage” included in the Cooch Behar Anthology of World Poetry that was released earlier this year from Cooch Behar, India.

The anthology is the brainchild of Indian poet and editor Sourav Sarkar, who says this about the anthology:

“Cooch Behar is a city and a municipality in the Indian state of West Bengal. Cooch Behar Anthology is an initiative by the poets around the world to inspire people when the world is going through a tough time, so we poets come together to give a message of Unity to the people of all countries of the world.”

It is available on amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09RPTWVPR/

And here is my poem “carbon leakage,” included in this anthology:

 

Worth More Standing – Nanaimo Book Launch

I am honored to have two poems included in the fabulous new anthology of tree poetry, WORTH MORE STANDING, edited by Christine Lowther, and published this month by Caitlin Press. There will be many local launch events for this important and lyrical testament to the power of trees and forests.

If you are on Vancouver Island, come join us for the Nanaimo launch on Saturday, May 28 at Nanaimo Harbourfront Library (90 Commercial Street), from 1:00-3:00 pm.

Listen to poetry readings and share in passionate love for forests, individual trees, and their significance to us all.

Poets who will be in attendance to share their work from the anthology include Leanne McIntosh, Ann Graham Walker. Rhona McAdam, Nicole Moen, Sheena Robinson, and Kim Goldberg.

Copies will be available for purchase at the event from local Nanaimo bookseller WindowSeat Books.

“In WORTH MORE STANDING, celebrated poets and activists pay homage to the ghosts of lost forests and issue a rallying cry to protect remaining ancient giants and restore uncolonized spaces. Themes of connection, ecology, grief, and protection are explored through poems about trees and forests written by an impressive number of influential poets, several of whom have attended the recent Fairy Creek blockades and still others who defended old growth ecosystems in Clayoquot Sound nearly 30 years ago.” –Caitlin Press

NO registration required. For more information please call 1-877-415-8475 or email cc@virl.bc.ca

Here is one of my two poems from WORTH MORE STANDING, which I will be reading at the Nanaimo launch.

(Notes: Thuja plicata is the Latin name for Western Redcedar. People suffering from electrosensitivity find respite in deep forests, which shield against the penetrating frequencies of wireless radiation.)

Garden (poem)

I am delighted to make the cut for the 2021 Dwarf Stars anthology with my poem “Garden”.

The Dwarf Stars anthology is produced annually by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, an organization founded in 1978 by science fiction author and linguist Suzette Haden Elgin.

Each year, Dwarf Stars showcases the editor’s pick of the best science fiction poetry of 10 lines or less that was published the preceding year. This year’s editor was Charles Christian.

My poem is a triolet, which is an 8-line French form dating to the 1300s. The triolet has a very specific scheme of rhyme and repeating lines: ABaAabAB.

“Garden” was first published last year in my book Devolution (Caitlin Press, 2020).

GARDEN

Deep in the garden lush and wild

Beneath a rotting log

A salamander grows three eyes

Deep in the garden lush and wild

You love each tumor like a child

An owl gives birth to rolling fog

Deep in the garden lush and wild

Beneath a rotting log

~

Codex Exterminarius (poem)

I was honored to have a poem of mine included in Issue #5 (“Rhythms”) of Consilience, which is a peer-reviewed journal exploring the spaces where science meets poetry and art.

My poem “Codex Exterminarius” is featured both in print and as an audio recording where you can listen to me read it.

The editors of Consilience ask each artist/poet to supply a short statement commenting on the science that underlies our piece. Here is mine:

“Codex Exterminarius” is a mapping of our cultural genome in an age of post-peak oil. Each pair of conjoined words at the centre of every line is car model names. The bonding letters conform to the molecular structure of DNA by replicating the Adenine-Thymine (A-T) and Cytosine-Guanine (C-G) base pairs that cement the double helix.

Every genetic code is a narrative assembly pre-configuring a developmental trajectory. The trajectory of this cultural genome would appear to open with idyllic bliss (“sonatA=Tempo”) and conclude with apocalypse (“omegA=Talon”).

The setting for the poem is the Nanaimo Estuary on Vancouver Island, where young salmon (smolts) with their large black eyes hide in the eelgrass before going out to sea. In Nanaimo Harbour beyond the estuary freighters stacked high with new cars from Europe (via the Panama Canal) are anchored before unloading. Despite car-makers naming so many models after animals, that will not forestall the mass extinction our cultural genome appears to be hurtling us toward.

Nanaimo Estuary, Vancouver Island, Canada. (Kim Goldberg photo)

Banned from twitter for mentioning ivermectin

I have just received a 12-hour ban from twitter for tweeting that my doctor has prescribed ivermectin for me as prophylaxis/prevention against Covid-19.

Banned from twitter for 12 hours for saying this.

Not only can the public not be allowed to know that there are existing effective anti-viral treatments available for Covid-19, the public now also cannot be allowed to know that there are doctors who are prescribing these treatments to their patients. And achieving good results. And saving lives. Many lives.

This is a ridiculous level of censorship and suppression of information we are now living with.

As Salman Rushdie wrote decades ago in his novel Shame,

“There are things that cannot be said. No, it’s more than that: there are things that cannot be permitted to be true.”

Earlier I blogged about My Ivermectin Journey So Far. I am continuing with the ivermectin prophylaxis protocol, which involves taking my 12 mg dose of ivermectin once every two weeks, as per this protocol from the Frontline Covid Critical Care Alliance of doctors (FLCCC), who have been saving lives worldwide with this approach.

Ivermectin Prophylaxis Protocol for Covid-19 Prevention (Frontline Covid Critical Care Alliance)

And if I become symptomatic, I will shift up to the FLCCC’s protocol for Early Outpatient Treatment with ivermectin, which involves increasing to daily dosing.

Ivermectin Early Outpatient Protocol (FLCCC)

Full details of this protocol are found here on the FLCCC’s website.

Be well everyone!

Kim Goldberg

April 11, 2021
Nanaimo, BC

My Ivermectin Journey So Far

I took my second dose of ivermectin today for the Covid prophylaxis protocol. The prophylaxis protocol involves dosing on Day 1 & Day 3, and then just taking one dose every two weeks thereafter. If I develop Covid symptoms, I’ll increase to daily dosing for five days and get tested. But I won’t wait on test results before shifting to the daily treatment protocol.

FRONTLINE COVID CRITICAL CARE ALLIANCE

The full protocol for using ivermectin for prophylaxis or early outpatient treatment for Covid-19 is here: https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FLCCC-Alliance-I-MASKplus-Protocol-ENGLISH.pdf. It has been developed by the doctors of the Frontline Covid Critical Care Alliance, and is being used in countries around the world to reduce Covid deaths and hospitalizations. The FLCCC’s full website is here: https://covid19criticalcare.com/. The organization was founded in March 2020 by Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Paul Marek, and other frontline physicians shown here: https://covid19criticalcare.com/about/the-flccc-physicians/ 

DOSING AND SAFETY

My dose (based on body weight) is 12 mg. The formula for calculating correct ivermectin dose for Covid prophylaxis and early outpatient treatment is 0.2 mg per kg body weight. Higher doses are used for severe Covid in hospitalized cases, where results have been remarkable. Doses in those applications range from 0.3-1.0 mg/kg.

This low dose (0.2 mg/kg) is the same dose that has been used for more than 30 years to treat parasites in humans around the world, with 3.7 billion such doses delivered for anti-parasite use over the decades. So this drug and this dosage of it have an extremely well documented safety profile that has stood the test of time, unlike various other approaches to Covid we are being offered.

In addition to ivermectin’s Nobel Prize-winning anti-parasite action, it turns out to also have considerable antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties at this same low dosage, hence its effectiveness for treating Covid-19.

AVAILABILITY IN CANADA

In Canada, ivermectin is legally sold in pharmacies under the brand name Stromectol (from Merck). But you need a prescription to buy it this way. Most Canadians are reporting that their GPs are unwilling to write the script. But some medical professionals in this country do understand the importance of making ivermectin available to patients for prophylaxis and early treatment—especially a so-called “high-risk” patient such as myself.

Ontario GP Ira Bernstein is one such family physician prescribing ivermectin to his high-risk patients. But this level of physician foresight in Canada is so rare that his story actually made the news a few days ago: https://www.thesuburban.com/news/city_news/ivermectin-another-therapeutic-bringing-hope-against-covid-symptoms/article_a23a959c-9cf6-50cd-9c7b-bf4c2a615ede.html.

I suspect he is now flooded with calls from people across Canada desperately seeking their own ivermectin prescription to protect themselves and their loved ones. I hope more Canadian GPs will follow his lead and start doing the right thing for their patients.

PRICING IN CANADA

Buying ivermectin with a prescription (if you can obtain one) at a Canadian pharmacy is the most expensive way to acquire ivermectin, which is an incredibly cheap, old, safe, off-patent drug that costs pennies to produce. Each box shown in my photo contains 4x 3mg tablets, or 12mg per box. Exactly my dose. And each of those 12mg boxes costs me $36 at a Nanaimo pharmacy. So every dose of ivermectin I take at my body weight (125 lbs), costs me $36 if I buy it “officially” with doctor’s prescription.

You can buy an equivalent 12mg dose of ivermectin from numerous online pharmacies selling generic versions (usually from India or Mexico), and requiring no prescription, for about $10 or less, for what costs me $36 in Nanaimo with a prescription. The online approach is not as risky as it sounds once you start asking around and get good leads on online stores that other people are using successfully. Even if you have the money to buy the branded drug at your local pharmacy, you may not have the luxury of a prescription to enable that.

These realities are driving the large and growing market of online purchasing from generic pharmacies abroad. The many stores listed on IndiaMart appear to be legit (they would get delisted quickly if they weren’t). People are getting their drugs, the drugs are working.

And then there is always the horse paste at feed and seed stores (or via Amazon). Yes it’s really ivermectin. Yes people all over the world are using it successfully to treat and resolve Covid. No there are no other drugs in it unless listed on box (although there may be apple flavour!).

I’m not making any recommendations yea or nay. Just sharing my own journey and what I have learned so far.

Stay safe, be well,

Kim Goldberg
February 23, 2021
(Nanaimo, BC)

3 Fables from Devolution

Here is your chance to listen to me read 3 fables from my latest book, Devolution (tales of ecopocalypse).

I was delighted to have “Armadillo,” “Constant Comment,” and “Rabbits” included in Dark Mountain’s Fall 2020 anthology Fabula – a tour de force collection of uncivilised fiction and art from writers and artists around the world. The Dark Mountain staff got some of us to voice our stories for you, and here are my three!

I hope you enjoy them!

Poem: Necropolis

NECROPOLIS

“Racial capitalism is the equivalent of a giant necropolis.

It rests on the traffic of the dead and human bones.”

-Achille Mbembe

~

By the end of the twentieth year

of the third millennium after someone may

or may not have been birthed, someone of umber

skin and opal eyes that would henceforth be

purified to mother-of-pearl, someone in the long-dead

and desiccated straw of an idealized

hay manger amid simple creatures with cloven

hooves, a manger aglow in golden

rays and the sheen from velvety robes, burgundy

and indigo, suffused with frankincense and myrrh

that waft right off the magazine page

.

By the end of the aforementioned year

in the Age of Abomination and QAnon

they were putting the finishing touches, the last pour

of concrete, upon the Necropolis, resting

as it were on the traffic of the dead.

The hue of this traffic, these accumulating bones,

is always one of the known knowns.

.

Somewhere there is a seashore receding.

Somewhere a canister is flung.

Somewhere a star shines down.

Somewhere a child fingers a toy gun.

Somewhere a teenager tries to walk home.

.

The truth about traffic: It grows

until a Grand Smelting reformulates all.

Will one Necropolis be enough?

An Abolition 2.0 has been proposed, shouted

from the barricades, past umbrellas, leaf blowers,

trashcan lid shields.

.

Upon returning to Earth, astronauts

have remarked that the silence of the bones

can be heard from outer space.

.

-Kim Goldberg

Rave Review for Devolution in Vancouver Sun

I was thrilled to wake up Saturday morning to find Tom Sandborn’s rave review of my new book Devolution in the Vancouver Sun.

He bills it an “elegant and ferocious collection of poems and fables. Like Magritte and other surrealist painters, Goldberg is fascinated by dream-like images dredged up from the muck at the bottom of the mind, and she deploys these images to reflect on our intertwined crises of environmental collapse and social injustice.”

Book review: Nanaimo poet deploys dreamlike surrealism in ferocious collection

From the review: “Goldberg creates a dream world in her writing, full of nightmarish loss, fragmentation and decay juxtaposed with shards of radiant, resonant beauty. Like Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne, Goldberg shows us where to look amongst the garbage and the flowers.”

And: “She can write lines that literally take your breath away, and creates images that will remain with you long after you close the book.”

The pandemic has been hard on poets. Especially those of us with new books. No coffee shops or libraries or other cool haunts where we can perform our words and connect with a live audience.

I was scheduled to launch Devolution on March 21st, World Poetry Day, at Nanaimo Harbourfront Library. But by the time that date rolled around, lockdown had commenced and the library (like most other establishments) was closed so we could all shelter in place and head off a potential crisis that could flatten our health care resources.

Poets have had to carve out and invent new methods of sharing our work in the last three months. Online launches and readings with Zoom and other crowdcasting platforms, for example.

I held an online launch and reading for Devolution on June 5th with Planet Earth Poetry. You can view that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUAYxoRaS04

A video of my Devolution poem “A Tall Girl” was featured on Poet’s Corner here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZnrWk-OAac

You can watch and hear me read 3 of my Devolution poems here on rob mclennan’s periodicities virtual reading series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0gu2QNkah8&feature=emb_logo

And if you want a glimpse inside the poet’s mind (it’s scary in there!) to see what went into the creation of Devolution, you can read my essay here on the All Lit Up blog Under the Cover: https://alllitup.ca/Blog/2020/Under-the-Cover-Seizing-absurdity-in-Devolution

Devolution can be ordered directly from the publisher.

Caitlin Press: https://caitlin-press.com/our-books/devolution/

Or from any online bookseller (Amazon, Chapters, etc), or through your favorite indie bookstore.

And I am selling signed copies from my door or garden in Nanaimo for $18. Or I can ship you a signed copy for $23. (e-transfer to goldberg@ncf.ca)

 

Devolution – Cover Reveal

Thrilled to unveil the cover for my latest book: Devolution – poems of the ecopocalypse.

The cover art is a 1934 painting, “The Collective Invention,” by legendary Belgian Surrealist artist René Magritte.

Devolution will be released by Caitlin Press in February 2020. I hope to bring it to an open mic or festival or reading series near you. One planet is all we’ve got!

From the catalogue:

Devolution is Kim Goldberg’s eighth book and her personal act of extinction rebellion. The poems and fables span the Anthropocene, speaking to ecological unraveling, social confusion, private pilgrimage, urbanization and wildness. Using absurdism, surrealism and satire, Goldberg offers up businessmen who loft away as crows, a town that reshapes itself each night, a journey through caves so narrow we must become centipedes to pass. Goldberg’s canvas holds both the personal and the political at once, offering rich layers of meaning, but with a playfulness reminiscent of Calvino or Borges. Each imaginative narrative will haunt the reader long after the book has been put down.

More info here: http://caitlin-press.com/our-books/devolution/