Ongoing notes: mid(ish)-August, 2021: Aisha Sasha John + Pearl Pirie,

It seems I haven’t done one of these in a while. Where are all of the chapbooks?

Oh, and I’ve some new poems posted online, including at Watch Your Head and Train: a poetry journal. Exciting, yes? And have you seen all the new titles lately via above/ground press? New titles by Ken Sparling, Jessi MacEachern, Nathan Alexander Moore, Katie Naughton, Summer Brenner, Monica Mody, Kōan Anne Brink, Gregory Betts, Ken Norris, Michael Sikkema, and M.A.C. Farrant, etcetera. Twenty-eight years! I’ll most likely be announcing 2022 subscriptions in a few weeks.

And already thinking the next edition of the ottawa small press book fair might be January. Will that be safe?

Toronto ON/Brooklyn NY: From Brooklyn’s Ugly Duckling Presse comes the latest from Aisha Sasha John, the chapbook TO STAND AT THE PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED (2021). Composed as a kind of poetic diary, the collection opens: “In the fall of 2018, I left Toronto for Vancouver—the city where I spent the bulk of / my childhood and in whose suburbs my parents still live. // I stayed 4 months.” Akin to Bernadette Mayer’s poetic diary, John rushes through a first-person exploration of poetic prose in short, accumulative sections, from the standalone “I am sad, alone, bored and have no friends.” to longer stretches of explosive, extended bursts. She writes of seeing her father again after fourteen years, of wandering the SkyTrain, of simply being in Vancouver and meeting with friends, shopping and other daily tasks. While there do seem deep echoes of Mayer’s prose [see my recent review of such here], through both the sense of immediacy and prose/poem structures, John’s lyric is more deeply urgent, seeking and striving and demanding better, further and something other. The prose, too, is interspersed with sections of phrases set in bold, held as a staccato series of counterpoints to the prose-structure, composing a kind of Greek chorus to the collection in billboard fashion: “TO BE UNPITTIABLE // ADEQUATE LAUGHTER // WELCOME AFFECTION // SPONTANEITY // SURPRISE // TO BE SOUL // UNINJURED [...].” This is writing that seeks a strong ground upon which to stand, and does not easily find it.

To have the desire to get milk and to go and get actually milk, from the store, in New Balances, running down and then back up six flights, with milk, and to finish the Elenbaas talk about dharma and the ascendant, and to focus on this question of fountains, so as to begin something, and also continue, so as to have adequate days to amend, ameliorate, improve, polish, better that which I’ve begun, writing, that is, a piece – about fountains, so as to complete an assignment, a text, for an exhibition, so as to get money, so as to give it back, that’s right TD Visa, so as to negate what was made positive: a meal, a purchase, a cost, an item, made mine, by my word and will, with the absented head/away daze of being here, busy and idle, purposed and lost, tasked and unmoored, and, now, owled, as an owl, or with them or one or as yes as one, hunting in the night and resting too. I had a dream about a group of people and one of them, this man, something happened to him. I remembered it so well this morning I imagined never being able to forget. So I have not yet but will, immediately, stop at the round the corner grocery store, overpriced, expensive, windowed, there, and purchase with a wave of my bank card’s chip – milk.

Victoria BC/Alcove QC: Pearl Pirie’s latest [see my recent review of her latest trade collection here] is the chapbook Mudflaps for short dogs (2021) from John Goodman’s Trainwreck Press, a small assemblage of short poems that play with the concrete elements of form and surrealism, writing of cows, breasts, railway bridges, airport hangers. She writes in pentameter, word chains and sonnets, seeking what possibilities that form might offer that might not otherwise be. Pirie’s poems always have the flavour of thoughts in mid-process, catching themselves unawares or between certainties, seeking to ask whatever questions might occur. “i did say poppy not puppy, didn’t I?” she asks, at the end of “the body’s patient silence is damning, provocative even,” “if you say what is true, once is enough. / if someone listens.” There are some curious explorations through body image and self, asking questions I’ve not heard uttered before, whether in poems or anywhere else. She always seems to have the ability to take a question into entirely new realms, offering the space of the poem as a structured free-form arena of seemingly-random associations that sequence themselves into a series of entirely unique narratives.

raise the fat sacks

photoshop moves in mysterious ways.
wonderbra moulds breasts into shapes
uniform as kfc meat. calling the natural
unnatural. is this okay for breasts
to be pinned as a low chignon,
as if they were kielbasa plugs
inserted into a push barbie toll.
why strap sausages from strings, cut
neck and back into cutlets of cramps.
prehensile breasts should be a thing.
make the suckers work for a living.

 

Aisha Sasha John, I have to live.

I had a vision now.

It wasn’t a vision.

A man in a striped shirt stood in a line.

His hair looked like yours

So I thought of you.

Fuck I prolly should’ve messaged you back

After I asked for and you sent me that photo

Of your baby. (“Today I could aspire but I want to nap”)

Toronto poet, choreographer and performer Aisha Sasha John’s third poetry collection is the absolutely thrilling I have to live. (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 2017), a book-length suite of lyric poems running lengthwise across the entire stretch of being, exploring the physical, the sexual and the spiritual. Composed as a poetic diary, I have to live. is an incredibly sensual and deeply personal book, and sketches out across titles such as “Something softens me,” “I sleep in a room.” and “When I leave here I don’t know where I am.” to “What’s the big fucking deal about,” “The landlord said he lost his phone.” and “How much of your body is your head.” There is something memoir-ish, even “confessional” in her first-person poems, carved as a combination between lyric essay, storytelling and myth. “I am low and found; I am high and found.” she writes at one point. In another part of the collection, she adds: “If I’m wrong / If I’m wrong – who gives a fuck? // I have to live.”

Oh I feel great.

And jealous.

Ya I feel grealous.

I have ten minutes.

Today I want clarity.

I understand the next book cover

To be my tiny little ear so

If you want more instruction, note:

I already told you

To lie on the ground or

Sit on it.

It can’t be

Saturday morning

All the time. (“Happy Cup”)

The poems in this collection revel in the phrase and fragment, held together as a single, extended book-length declaration of story, personality and theatre; a declaration of standing firm, resisting when required, and being attentive to whatever might come. This is an open-hearted, no bullshit collection of hefty, articulate, funny and sensual poems. One of the more striking poems in the collection, originally published in The Capilano Review, is the sequence “In August I visited my Gran.” that includes:

On the television

A woman carves from a stack of rice krispie squares

Human breasts.

I feed cut watermelon to my grandmother.

I am low and found; I am high and found.

When I read that part to my mom over the phone she

Cries. It’s sad

She says.

I put my ticket there on her Visa.

The next day my cousin sends me a message.

I read the message.

Then what I do is call my mother.

Now you don’t have any more grandparents!

Fence magazine #32 : fall/winter 2016

It’s remarkably rare for the editorial of a journal to respond in such a way as Fence has to one of its own editors, as Charles Valle writes in his articulate and deeply sensitive editorial [see the full text here]:

            Earlier this year, the Fence editorial staff had several lengthy and intense discussions sparked by [editor] Rebecca [Wolff]’s insensitive Facebook comments on the Purdey Lord Kreiden/Michael Taren video and a poem with a racial slur in the title she wrote and read in public. The longest thread ran 56 emails deep. We were hurt and angry and disappointed in various degrees. As a person of color, as a friend, it felt shitty. As a colleague, it felt deflating knowing people would associate and attribute the words and actions of the public face (Rebecca) with the other 15 editors.

Long one of my favourite American journals, I’m pleased to see Fence discussing the actions and words of a single editor, responding to such as an organization, and attempting to move forward. The editorial ends with:

            Earlier in the year when we were reeling from Rebecca’s insensitivities and gross articulations of white privilege, we discussed several actions and proposals. Some of the actions were prescriptive and could be easily and quickly implemented. Others were more radical in scope.

            The consensus is that we do not want any tokenizing gestures. We want action and we want our actions to be intentional and transparent. We want to publish majority POC, majority Queer.

            We recognize a structural problem. We are in the process of a rethinking, a paradigm shift, a self-administered kick in the ass. In the next couple of years, Fence will continue to evolve and iterate. We will take risks. We will make mistakes. We will learn. We will refine. We are committed to making Fence a place that writers of color care about. We need you, dear reader, to hold us accountable.

Obviously, a discussion of the new issue can’t help but include a mention of such an editorial (I was completely unaware of any of this until reading such); while I’m not wishing to pour salt on any wounds or make matters worse, nor wishing to distract away from the actual content of the issue itself, but such a public admission by such a long-standing journal is not only brave, but required. I applaud them for such, and hope they can find their way forward.

On the television

A woman carves from a stack of rice krispie squares

Human breasts.

I feed cut watermelon to my grandmother.

I am low and found; I am high and found.

When I read that part to my mom over the phone she

Cries. It’s sad

She says.

I put my ticket there on her Visa.

The next day my cousin sends me a message.

I read the message.

Then what I do is call my mother.

Now you don’t have any more grandparents!
She’s crying – and good now

I am

Too. (Aisha Sasha John, “In August I visited my Gran.”)

Entirely separately to that, the issue itself holds some damned fine work, and the opening pieces by Toronto poet Aisha Sasha John, “from I have to live,” is just stunning, as are works by Emily Abendroth, Amanda Nadelberg, Henry Israeli, Elizabeth Robinson (a personal favourite) and Debora Kuan. The prose pieces by Khadijah Queen, also, apparently composed as breathless reminiscences, are incredibly striking; I would like to see more of these, please:

I was nine or ten when I met Minister Louis Farrakhan at Mosque No. 27 on Crenshaw

I was nine or ten when I met Minister Louis Farrakhan at Mosque No. 27 on Crenshaw everyone kept saying how he wouldn’t be giving that many appearances anymore because he had cancer & I stood in line with my mother & sister to meet him we had on our white MGT-GCC uniforms my mother was a captain so she had on a fez & my sister & I had pristine head scarves the same thick material as our dresses & starched to perfection the line was really long but we were close to the front so my white patent leather shoes hadn’t yet started to pinch when I climbed the steps of the dais & he held both his hands out for my hands & smiled & his skin was so clear I remember how shiny it was not in a greasy way but a bright kind & he called me little sister & asked my name & said it was the same as his wife’s & he expected me to live up to its greatness

Consider for a moment, if you will, the remarkable fact that American poet Cole Swensen is working on a sequence of poems under the title “LISA ROBERTSON: SEVEN WALKS,” clearly referencing Robertson’s Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture. I am very excited to see where and how these poems end up:

The petal was another one; it undid, and then one again, one pale room

over the market turning pink. It is early in the rhythm of the theater of

the soon. We walked the vowel into an archive through windows rent

apparent by bombing, entirely morning – light can seem to strike light in

a spear that breaks, but we are used to the broken, and so built a library. (“The First Walk”)

There is also a numerical work by Kyle Booten, “Laminations (after Ed Ruscha),” reminiscent slightly of the numerical works by the late Canadian poet Wilfred Watson (a kind of writing I haven’t seen anyone replicate or be influenced by, to my knowledge; I fully suspect Booten has never heard of Watson); while the numerical systems (each stanza repeating the cycle of three) might not be connected to the works of the American artist Edward Ruscha, the text itself does seem to be influenced by him, as the poem opens:

1:         Thanks to the doctors. I

2:                     123023 Wilshire B

3:                                        Honey

The issue also hosts a healthy folio of “Other Worlds,” a section of, as folio editors Andrea Lawlor and Trey Sagar call it, “new writing that called itself speculative, or fantasy, or science fiction, knowing that innovative writers have been working inside of and into these genres for years.” The folio includes works by M. Milks, Nathaniel Mackey, Elizabeth Breazeale, Kathryn Davis (as well as an interview with her conducted by Rav Grewal-Kök), Michael Holt, Brenda Iijima and Metta Sáma.

I will die as young as any other man who has ambition. I will die with thirty pieces of silver in my mouth. I will die with gold coins on my eyes. I will die with no hunger …no hunger. I will die filled and flesh-clean …lithe. Leader will call me Traitor …Judas. I will call him Liar. Dragon. Skins made of pounded copper flattened gold mica stolen from lands he called Empty of People. People, Leader said, have Souls. And all Souls Follow Leader. We killed those who refused to flee and Leader called us Holy Warriors. We drank the blood warm from the dying bodies we crushed their bones and fed on their marrow …Dragons, Leader said, we’ll all be Dragons …Too many unrecorded years have come and gone and I am no longer the boy raked from the trash. I am a man. I never believed in Dragons. I am a Man. Leader may no longer eat from my flesh. I am a Man. I will die covered in my sins. I will die a Man. I will die with no shame. I will die a Man. I am a Man. I never believed in Dragons. (Metta Sáma)

Aisha Sasha John, THOU

that none of the women here

are sick with.

May God heal us.

Today it was today I thought of the smooth cheek skin and aquiline nose of a person

In the morning I had a belief in her.

I had other beliefs this morning I did not express.

And I lost the doctrine that my dreams provided me with,

this morning. (“Girliness is a North American affectation”)

From Toronto poet and performer Aisha Sasha John comes her second trade poetry collection, THOU (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2014), close on the heels of her first, The Shining Material (BookThug, 2011). A book of meditative chant, sing-song patter and performance lyric, THOU is a collection of poetry shaped around a pronoun, inquiring, shaking and prodding and shattering. The two sections that make up the collection—“Physical” and “The book of you”—are self-described by the author as being two long poems, both of which are composed of accumulated lyric fragments of titled and untitled poem-shards that speak, accuse, question, shout out loud and often require if not outright demand the reader to respond. “I have to report something physically uncomfortable.” she writes, early on in the collection. “I said No, but I have to tell you – it’s ‘cause of physical reasons. / The inside of which is sticky.” There is something compelling about the way John discusses female beauty and the conflict of impossible cultural standards set upon women in such an open and even humourous way, managing to bring forth a conversation. Indeed, this is a very physical book. “The good and medium ass,” she writes, towards the beginning of “Physical,” “the long and medium waist // of a man. // The bit of back fat that romances his crisp shirt.” Later on, she writes:

I like to think of my body as a garment.

I have borrowed my body.

It means I need all afternoon to think every day.

That’s what it means.

It means money looks like movement.

I have to think about existence every fucking day.

And I am unwasteful.

If I don’t consider the day how can I live in it.

I see the contents of the day I see instruments of the moment.

Often these are physical objects.

Often these are trees, and bushes, and bushes

and trees.

I consider the objects in the day.

I consider the distances between bodies.

If I am the same as other people, why don’t they like poetry. I love poetry.

If I am the same as other people, why don’t they like poetry. I love poetry.

And I am the same as other people. I’ve checked. (“Okay I skimmed the book; that’s enough.”)

This book is almost built as a call-and-response or a conversation, as John engages a series of ideas and cultures through speaking directly to the external “thou” and internal monologues. As she writes in the second section: “I wanted to tell you some secrets. / I want a different relationship with my stories.” There is something of the collage to the way in which John has composed her THOU, two sections of poems-as-accumulation, structurally akin to works by Canadian poets Phil Hall and Dennis Cooley, as well as American poet Kate Greenstreet, for the sake of their books each managing to be a kind of catch-all, yet maintaining a coherence that almost belies what each work actually contains. This is a book that works to engage with the world, the body, the self and the other, including the darker elements of such engagements. As John writes, deep in the first section, near the middle of the collection: “I am weary / at the future. / I am always interested in things; it will never stop. / I can plump minutes with my always interest. / but I am weary.”

Poetry Connection, curated by Fred Wah,

During his tenure as Parliamentary Poet Laureate, Vancouver poet Fred Wah curated a video series of twenty-one poets for the sake of teaching contemporary Canadian poetry to high school students. The videos and accompanying write-ups are now online, including one with my very own self, reading two poems from Songs for little sleep, (2012) off the back deck of our former Centretown apartment. Check out the entire series, below:

Poetry Connection
Link Up with Canadian Poetry

“One of my projects as Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate is to produce a series of short videos to help make contemporary Canadian poetry more accessible. These recordings illustrate a range of poetry that reflects the identity, places and modes of poetic writing in Canada.” – Fred Wah

Visit Poetry Connection on YouTube to view the Poet Laureate’s video series, and download the PDFs below to learn more about the featured poets and their work. The PDF files also include the text of the poems, as well as discussion topics and writing ideas.

Aisha Sasha John
Annharte Baker
Christian Bök
Colin Smith
Daphne Marlatt
Darren Wershler
Douglas Barbour
Fred Wah
Gail Scott
George Bowering
Jay MillAr
Joanne Arnott
JR Carpenter
Meredith Quartermain
Oana Avasilichioaei
Rita Wong and Larissa Lai
rob mclennan
Roy Miki
Sina Queyras
Steven Ross Smith
Stuart Ross