Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part three,

[Hugh Barclay, with his Thee Hellbox Press] Another listing of titles picked up at our most recent fair! See part one here and part two here, obviously. How much is too much? (We might need to build more shelves)

Ottawa ON: It’s nice to see a new small press offering from Toronto poet (and longtime editor of the Surrealist Poets Gardening Association) Lillian Nećakov, her chapbook The Lake Contains an Emergency Room (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, 2015).

The Lake Contains an Emergency Room

There are pacifists and mongrels sitting here

there is no window to look out of

you hold a small puddle of blood up against your cheek

outside, I imagine the clouds are blue

we have been waiting hours

it has been 16 years

we wait our turn

you can no longer hold a pencil

the doctor looks like a rooster

night is finished

there is no smell to pain

the needlework is shoddy

the door remembers us.

There is an odd humour and compelling candor to the surrealism of Lillian Nećakov, one that seems very human in nature, exploring the surrealism of such tangible subjects as gardening, the nature of origins, making soup, or a stroll through the park.

Step Away

Let’s return to an empty chair

or we could weed the garden

something to silence the haunting

a thing to teach us to carve bone

un-mouth the meanness

un-speak the dark promises

murmuring over our lakes

let’s return tonight

to our child’s skin

selfish, shirtless

bruised

let’s rage against the tongue

stich together

all our dead relatives

and linger

regretless

on the wind.

Ottawa ON: After an extended period working on a variety of other projects [see my recent Jacket2 piece on him here], jwcurry has been publishing again recently, with some recent oddbits including the collaborative (and hand printed) tchts (jwcurry and Rachel Zavitz) produced as CURVD H&Z 474 (31 oct 2014).

shadow planet

smithereens

at impact

The small collaboration between curry and Zavitz is one of but a long line of collaboration he’s been doing with multiple writers over the years. There is something about this short sequence of three-line stanzas that have the tautness of (English-language) haiku combined with an incredible precision that presents the illusion of a single (as opposed to double) hand present in every line. To order a copy, or inquire about other publications, write him c/o his new address: #302-28 Ladouceur Avenue, Ottawa ON K1Y 2T1

Another recent publication is the gestetnered INDUSTRIAL SABOTAGE #64, as jwcurry writes in the colophon, “the ‘selfstarterkid’ issue,’ the first to appear (after a long hiatus: #63, Messagio Amor Some More, was issued 13 april 2008),” featuring writing by a host of regular and irregular contributors to curry’s wealth of publications: Michael e. Casteels, M.R. Appell, P. Cob_, Lenore Cochrane, Jon Cone, Judith Copithorne, Marilyn Irwin, Lance LaRocque, Billy Little, bpNichol, Jim Smith, Hugh Thomas and Rachel Zavitz. One thing I’ve always admired about curry is his patience, fully aware that he has said that for his letterpress printing, he has to like a poem to produce it not once, but up to one or two hundred times (which makes one wonder how many published pieces would actually survive the same criteria, even from their own authors).

Apple

apple,

so to say, never again

uneaten

someone gave me a bump on the head (Hugh Thomas)