Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part two : Pearl Pirie, Sacha Archer + STUMPT 7 + issue eight,

[nina jane drystek, jwcurry + Chris Johnson doing the first of their two sound performances mid-fair]

[see the first part of these notes here]

Toronto ON/rural QC: From Quebec poet Pearl Pirie comes the chapbook we astronauts (Pinhole Poetry, 2025), a title the acknowledgements suggest “could be considered a sequel to Sex in Sevens (above/ground, Sept. 2016).” With a poetics that includes collage-movement and haiku, this small collection again works Pirie’s own familiar forms while expanding her nuance, her repertoire, of poetic assemblage, collision, sketch-notes and density. “inside the exquisite loss of everything / except where skin knows sweat,” begins the poem “vacation day,” “time and all else will be someone else’s problem, / here is birdsong and wave crash, // eyelash and breath, lips as if warmed silk / and a hiking up onto one elbow.” Her phrases almost read accumulatively, with the slight disconnect between each one, allowing the poem to exist in the collision between descriptive phrases. What amuses, as well, is Pirie’s further inclusion into the ongoing “Sex at 31” series [see my own notes on the origins of the project here, and my participation in same], her “sex at fifty,” a two-page poem that opens with “perhaps I have seen my last / set of menstrual cramps. // I never needed to collect / the whole bleeding set.” and ends with the couplet: “eight minutes until a / teleconferencing call.”

light on your feet

how did it take decades
for the full moon to catch
you, the sun? your sunspots,
your corona flare of backlit hair
the dinner plate of light
on your chest, and your
shoulder blades as you
rise to turn down the heat
at 9pm, the moonlight is
music scoring your ribs,
and hip notch,
slips with my eyes
down to the horizon
of your fine, sculpted
delectable ankles, arches.

Hamilton ON/Achill, Co. Mayo, Ireland: There is a beautiful compactness to Hamilton (formerly Burlington) poet, publisher, editor Sacha Archer’s latest, the delicately-lovely Second Sight (Ireland: Redfoxpress, April 2025), a title subtitled “(36 Masks)” and produced as a hardcover edition, number 214 in the “C’est mon dada” series, a “collection for visual poetry, experimental texts and works influenced by Dada and Fluxus.” I’m fascinated by these blends of handwritten text and physical object, image, stitch and erasure, and would want to hear far more on his process around such a project, and how far he might take such structures in subsequent work. And while the production for such an object is wonderfully graceful, I do hope there is an opportunity to see these works in larger renderings at some point. As the introduction to the collection offers:

The work of Second Sight repurposes facsimiles of so-called famous/canonical MSS to create masks in what is both a gesture of looking backward and forward. While reconsidering the manuscripts themselves, their relevance and legibility (handwriting and content) to the contemporary reader, the act of creating masks transforms the MSS into surface matter or, raw material, which is to say, the concrete. The mask, being a loaded tool both for its intended use as a transformative piece of costume and for its trans-cultural historical presence, not to mention the colonial exoticization of African masks met in Modernism, primarily in the work of Picasso, makes of the mask a powerful vessel for a leap of faith which is the blind gesture forward, concretizing the MSS via cutting and the addition of banal (read totemic) objects into masks which cannot be worn, but which may reveal.

Stuart Ross, Proper Tales Press

Kingston ON: If you’ve never encountered any publications from Kingston writer, editor and publisher Michael e. Casteels, through his Puddles of Sky Press, I would highly recommend: at any small press fair you might encounter Casteels at his table, quietly staping, cutting, folding and assembling small publications throughout the day, throughout the afternoon. Two of his latest include the envelope STUMPT 7 (64 copies; June 2025) and the Japanese-sewn STUMPT issue eight (60 copies; June 2025), all hand-stamped (echoing jwcurry’s own infamous production, through his 1cent series and other productions via Room 302 Books) by the publisher himself. There is a kind of care, an attention, to publications and processes such as these that photocopied items are simply unable to replicate: consider that this is not sixty-some copies of a single poem, but sixty-some times the publisher hand-printed each poem, each line, in the same way on each slice of carved paper. One has to admire the patience, and the attention, as well as the craft. STUMPT 7 is made up of three poems on cards, one per card: an untitled poem by Hamilton writer Gary Barwin, BC poet Dale Tracy’s “Soft Growth,” and Kingston poet Allison Chisholm’s “Attachment Unavailable,” which I photographed, below:

Most small press publications are very good at offering different elements of pieces by emerging, and established writers, and Casteels works a very nice balance as well, but working from a far different pool of writers than might ever appear across mainstream publishing. STUMPT issue eight, produced with hand-sewn binding, offers a poem each by Keaton Studebaker, John Grey, John Repp, daniel f. bradley, and, on the back cover, which I photographed, below, this piece by David Romanda:
 

Ongoing notes: TIFA’s Small Press Market (part one: Dale Martin Smith + Chris Johnson,

[see my four posts from the debut fair back in 2019 here and here and here and here] What a delightful fair this was! I was unable to make last year’s event due to my host falling sick with covid last minute, but managed to drive down for the sake of this small curated small press fair at Toronto’s Harbourfront, as hosted by Kate Siklosi/Gap Riot Press. Here are a couple of the items I collected as part of this year’s event:

Toronto ON: Some of the most intriguing small publishing work right now is being produced by Kirby’s Knife|Fork|Book; I’ve really been admiring the way that Kirby manages to find remarkable work by an array of writers that might not have been able to find homes for their work, at least easily. One of the titles I picked up at the fair was by Dale Martin Smith [see my review of his 2021 Talonbook title, Flying Red Horse, here], the chapbook Blur (2022). Dedicated to his partner, the poet Hoa Nguyen, the poems in Blur are an assemblage of short lyrics composed with such a light and even delicate touch. “What you know of me / is duration,” he writes, to open “Circles,” “movement / along the path between / our home and the neighbors’.” Smith’s work has long held an element of the personal in his work, but there is an intimacy here that focuses very deeply on the small that is stunningly, staggeringly moving and beautiful. Here is Dale Martin Smith composing poems with the density and brevity of poets such as Mark Truscott or Cameron Anstee, but set with the entirety of his whole heart.

Mundane

You step out of the house
with trash and rain
comes down cold, intimately
known across the time you imagine
is your life.

Jim Johnstone, Anstruther Press

oronto ON: It was interesting to catch Ottawa poet Chris Johnson’s latest title, 320 lines of poetry (counting blank lines) (2023) from Jim Johnstone’s Anstruther Press, apparently in my hands before even the author got to see copies (this has happened the rare time before over the years with other publishers). There is something about Johnson’s poetry that is intriguing for the way he is so overtly exploring the lyric through experimentations with form and influence, seeking out a form through which to finally land. His poems are so clearly exploratory, seeking and reaching out to see what might strike, from his prior explorations through the haibun to these explorations through elegy, prose poems and extended lines, with individual poems composed “after” specific works by Jessie Jones, Kim Mannix, John Newlove, Artie Gold (his entire prior chapbook was a riff of a specific title by Artie Gold) and Christian Wiman.

Other pieces in the collection reference specific friends, many of whom also happen to be contemporary writers. “the rain has stopped,” Johnson writes, to open “some days are harder than others,” “but Monty says / there is always something / with bigger holes in it.” There are moments that the poems do fall too deeply into the self-referential, such as the opening poem, “elegy for chris johnson,” offering “today I ate a turkey sandwich and / thought about stephanie roberts’ turkey sandwich.” Throughout this piece he cites and he references, but doesn’t seem to offer really anything more than that, so the poem is intriguing, but doesn’t really seem to go anywhere. There are times that his line breaks do offer some nicely sharp turns, moments and corners, such as the opening of “when does the hunger begin?”: “the last days of February were honeyed, / snowy, and enlightened by whisky and weed.” That’s some fine precision, there. As well, there are moments within his prose poems where the music in his lyric shows itself quite nicely, whether the poem “asleep” (after “Awake” by Kim Mannix) or “a regular person” (after “Better Manifesto” by Jessie Jones). All in all, it feels (in an interesting and positive way) as though Johnson is still searching, still experimenting; I look forward to seeing what occurs when he finally lands.

Ongoing notes: Canada Day, 2022: VII (Manahil Bandukwala, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Conyer Clayton, nina jane drystek, Chris Johnson, Margo LaPierre and Helen Robertson,

Another season of home, as the potential for nonsense descends, again, into Ottawa’s downtown. I care not for the deceptions, disruptions and dishonesties of these right-wing convoys (especially aware of how too many of them are being utilized as cannon-fodder by background interests with far darker agendas). But so it goes. Perhaps today is a day (among so many other days when such should be attended) to donate money and attention to one of the multiple charities that focus on Indigenous people and communities across the country. Happy Canada Day, indeed.

Ottawa/Toronto ON: I didn’t see their collective debut, Towers (Collusion Books, 2021), I was curious to see the second chapbook-length offering, holy disorder of being (Gap Riot Press, 2022), by VII, an Ottawa-based collective and collaborative group that self-describes as “seven voices fused into one exquisite corpse: Manahil Bandukwala, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Conyer Clayton, nina jane drystek, Chris Johnson, Margo LaPierre and Helen Robertson. Based on the belief that seven minds are better than one and that many ideas make joyous chorus, we say: We are I and I is VII.” I’m fascinated by an ongoing collaborative group, aware of numerous examples of pairs of collaborators over the years, but scant examples of more than two: Pain-Not-Bread comes to mind, after the collaborations between Kim Maltman and Roo Borson brought on a third. The only other examples I can think of are sound poets, whether The Four Horsemen or Owen Sound. Are there any I’m either unaware of, or just not recalling?

take those ripped envelopes from the desk drawer
takeout containers from moth-filled cupboards, them too
take off the bovine-patterned briefs with the crotch chewed out, trash ‘em
take the soil from the shed where squirrels make scratchy holds
take up knitting or running or raking
tag friends witty Twitter posts
attack the accordion folder, sort
tackle the overgrown hard drive
tack glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceilings
tack glow-in-the-dark stars to the backs of our hands, let us
            be the stars you don’t know are planets
            be a green blink low on the horizon
            be a moth mistaken for dust
            be a memory of a library, an inflatable domed planetarium
            be a rum-coloured ache the shape of a moon that’s not a window’s lemon light
                        not a clock’s ochre glow, not a burner left on through the night

The combined experience of the group is interesting to consider together, as every participant has published a single-author chapbook, with multiple already published first books (Manahil and Margo) and even a second (Conyer), and various of the group (Chris and nina, and possibly one or two others) have worked extensively with jwcurry as part of his sound poetry ensemble/choir, Messagio Galore. VII’s holy disorder of being appears to be exactly what their title suggests, a fragmentary, disconnected mix of styles, shapes and syntax, still feeling through what might be a rather complicated exploration to arrive at a coherent offering through seven different, distinct participants. Set as a chapbook-length assemblage of untitled fragments, lyrics pool into rhythmic and rhetorical corners before splaying off into other directions, from prose poems to full-page poems of expanded, open spacings (akin to American poets Jessica Smith or Melissa Eleftherion) to short, haiku-like bursts at the tail ends of what might be utanikki. The collection exists in a form wide open, blending a disorder into polyphony; not as a choir, but as a deliberate, ongoing collage. Either way, I am curious to see how this collective develops.

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

Hard to believe another fair has come and gone so quickly (and this fall will mark the fair’s twenty-fourth anniversary)! But it was a good one: here are a couple of the items I managed to pick up throughout the day.

[Chris Johnson at the Arc Poetry Magazine table, grimacing]

Ottawa ON: It’s good to see Marilyn Irwin continuing to produce items through her shreeking violet press, and her latest is the chapbook Eleven Elleve Alive : poems, “Original poems & translations by Stuart Ross & Dag T. Straumsvåg & Hugh Thomas,” and, at fifty-six pages, sits as her heftiest production yet. The publication stems from Thomas’ ongoing work translating poems from Swedish, a language he doesn’t understand, deliberately not looking up words, but taking what he sees and composing an English-language poem in response (for example, see his chapbook Six Swedish Poets from above/ground press, 2015). This chapbook, I suspect, came from an exchange between Thomas and Ross during a pre-fair reading, about Hugh wishing to translate some of Ross’ poems into English, and the results are quite striking. So the book itself contains twelve poems: an original poem by Stuart Ross, a translation of that poem into Nynorsk by poet and editor Dag T. Straumsvåg, and then Thomas’ “translation” of Straumsvåg’s translation back into English. For example:

Landscape

            after Larry Fagin

The bright green apple sails over the white fence.

The small running shoe lies in an overgrown field.

The man rappels down the side of a sidescraper.

The happy mice burrow through the rotting garbage.

The Latvian hairdresser leaps with joy.

Malarial flies float dead in the gutter.

A paperboy takes a bow.

Landscap

            etter Larry Fagin

Det Lysegrøne eplet seglar over det kvite gjerdet.

Den vesle joggeskoen ligg i ein overgrodd åker.

Mannen rappelerer ned sida a vein skyscraper.

Dei lykkelege musene grev seg gjennom den rotnande søpla.

Den latviske frisøren hopar av glede.

Malariafluger flyt døde i rennensteinen.

Ein avisgut bukkar.

Landscape

            Larry Fagin, otter

A green light shines over the planet.

A yoga studio starts to grow in the vacant lot.

A man remembers a disease and a skyscraper.

The happy muses bury themselves in the road map.

The freshly washed hairdresser flaps in the breeze.

Maria flies in the open window.

Both Ross and Thomas’ works have long been known for their engagements with surrealism and sense of play, so the interplay between the two is entertaining to see, especially with the added element of Dag T. Straumsvåg.

[Kate Siklosi at the Gap Riot Press table]

Ottawa ON: Cameron Anstee’s Apt.9 Press has been known for some time for producing lovely handmade books and, given he’s been producing less the past year or two, it was good to see a new item of his at the fair this year: Peterborough writer, publisher and artist Elisha May Rubacha’s chapbook, Too Much Nothing (2018). Rubacha, along with her partner, Justin Million, run readings in Peterborough, Ontario, as well as co-publish the small press, bird, buried press.

some smoked right up to the launch pad

there is no smoking in space

there is no smoking in the barn either

I’m impressed by the amount of activity Rubacha manages to contain within these small, deceptively straightforward poems, writing short observational musings on space, childhood and Roberta Bondar, and her poems close well before they end, leaving the rest of each piece to sit in the thoughts of the reader for some time after. These are poems that might be small in size, but contain multitudes, composed as quiet, thoughtful pieces I would like to see more of. I am hoping there might be more.

little girls

little girls bring their parents

to the opening of Dr. Bondar’s photography exhibit

she autographs their drawings

of rocket ships and planets

while their brothers wait impatiently to leave

Arc walks, 2018 : centretown

[official Arc Poetry Magazine twitter photo by Chris Johnson] On Tuesday, I hosted the first of a series of “Arc walks” that Arc Poetry Magazine approached me to curate on their behalf, aiming for a series of hour-long literary (poetry specific) walks around various Ottawa neighbourhoods, to showcase a series of known and unknown landmarks, sites and whatnots. The first walk focused on a fragment of Centretown, walking along a stretch of Bank Street to Parliament Hill, before ending up on Sparks Street, just at Elgin. One of the challenges of these walks is not only to find a series of spots that might be interesting enough to discuss, but that would fit into the space of an hour’s walk (Lowertown, I think, might be a bit of a challenge, given how scattered around some of the research seems, so far). With this one completed, I’m now looking around on figuring out my Glebe walk, and then a potential Lowertown walk, with six to be completed this year in total, including a French walk and an Aboriginal walk (the curators/hosts of such as yet to be determined). For information on the days/locations of the further walks, either check out Bywords.ca or the website for Arc Poetry Magazine (or, like, just come back here). Thanks to Arc Poetry Magazine, Frances Boyle and Chris Johnson, and everyone involved for the opportunity! It was more fun than I might have thought (the walking part, I mean). And we even ended with a pint at D’Arcy McGee’s.

Here’s a slightly edited version of the script I read from on Tuesday (with a guest-appearance by poet Jennifer Baker, who read a poem by John Newlove as well as one of her own).

WALK ONE:

For this series of walks, I’ve deliberately aimed to be more contemporary than much of the information on Ottawa’s literary history, forgoing much of the facts of the Confederation Poets Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott, for example, for more contemporary examples such as John Newlove, Michael Dennis and jwcurry, among others. Some have claimed the history of the city is made up of examples of those who have moved through the city but chose not to remain, and writers in this category are numerous, from Norman Levine, Al Purdy, Raymond Souster, Hugh MacLennan and George Elliott Clarke to Joan Finnigan, Stephanie Bolster, Robin Hannah, Elizabeth Smart, Robert Fontaine, Carol Shields and John Barton. While elements of this might be true (I’m not convinced this occurs more in Ottawa, as suggested, than any other city), there are lots of people and activities that have existed here for years, some of whom continue to inspire activity.

FIRST STOP: 248 Bank Street: In the early 1960s, 248 Bank Street was the second of three locations of Ottawa’s infamous Le Hibou coffeehouse, which would have been run at the time by William and Sheila Hawkins. From 1960 to 61, it lived at 544 Rideau, relocating here until 1965, when it moved 521 Sussex for Le Hibou’s final decade. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, William Hawkins [archival photo provided by Cameron Anstee] was known as Ottawa’s most dangerous poet, and easily one of the most well-known Ottawa poets of the period, publishing numerous poetry books, organizing readings and generally causing trouble. It would have been here that Hawkins ran fundraisers for himself and Roy MacSkimming to be the only poets east of the Rocky Mountains to make it out to the Vancouver Poetry Conference of 1963, asking friends and enemies alike for cash to help him get out of town (Toronto poet Victor Coleman was apparently offered the opportunity to ride with them, but didn't trust their car to make the trip). And when their car broke down on the way home, it was Black Mountain poet Robert Creeley who paid for the repairs, preventing them from being stranded in the interior of British Columbia.

Le Hibou in the first half of the 1960s included numerous readings alongside the musical performances, and some of the literary activity in and around the coffeehouse included poet Harry Howith and his short-lived Bytown Books, designer/printer Robert Rosewarne and his Nil Press, poets Roy MacSkimming and George Johnston, and the single issue of Something Else, edited by William Hawkins and Denis Faulker. It was only later on that Le Hibou moved over to Sussex Avenue, where it continued to host poets and musicians alike, including Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, bpNichol, Victor Coleman, Robert Hogg and many, many, many others. In 2013, VERSe Ottawa made William Hawkins one of the first two inductees of the Hall of Honour, and he died three years later.

SECOND STOP: 231 Bank Street/319 Lisgar: While the space above has hosted living and studio spaces for numerous artists and illustrators over the years, including Adrian Gollner, David Cation, Jennifer Dickson and Dave Cooper, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis also lived upstairs for a number of years, roughly from 1985 to 1988, and again from 1994 to 2002. Originally sharing the space with artist Daniel Sharp, he moved out when Sharp got married, and moved back in to replace the Sharps, once Dan and his wife started having children.

Michael Dennis came to Ottawa from Peterborough in 1984 to attend Carleton University, and became one of the most published poets in the city, having managed some two hundred journal publications by the end of the decade, as well as multiple chapbooks and books, culminating in Fade to Blue from Pulp Press. He was also one of a small handful of writers and artist that appeared in Ottawa in the early 1980s from Peterborough, arriving in conjunction with poet Riley Tench, and writer and visual artist Dennis Tourbin.

There are those that might recall that 319 Lisgar Street used to host Invisible Cinema, after years of hosting Gallery 101, where readings were held throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s by Rob Manery and Louis Cabri’s The Transparency Machine, back in the days when Dennis Tourbin ran the gallery. The Transparency Machine existed under the umbrella of the experimental writers group, a group loosely based on bpNichol and Steve McCaffery’s Toronto Research Group. Focusing on formally innovative English-language poetry, The Transparency Machine hosted a series of readings and talks by a variety of North American poets, including Steve McCaffery, Jorge Etcheverry, Robert Hogg, Lisa Robertson and Tom Raworth, focusing their attention on the Vancouver Kootenay School of Writing, as well as various American and British language writers. Later on, the series rebranded as the N400 Series at the Manx Pub, which existed until Rob Manery moved to Vancouver in 1996, two years after Cabri had left for Philadelphia. Further into the 1990s, Gallery 101 also hosted my poetry 101 series, the short-lived name of what ended up becoming The Factory Reading Series. Subsequent locations of Gallery 101 also hosted Max Middle’s now-defunct performance series, The AB Series.

Another occupant of the same space at 319 Lisgar, prior to Gallery 101, was legendary Ottawa curator and bookseller Richard Simmins, who operated a used bookstore there for many years. Author of the early 1980s novel Sweet Marie, published through Vancouver’s Pulp Press, the precursor to Arsenal Pulp Press, Simmins was also the father of British Columbia poet Zoe Landale.

THIRD STOP: L’Esplanade Laurier Building (140 O’Connor Street/Bank): Despite living in Ottawa longer than he lived anywhere, John Newlove always considered himself to be a Saskatchewan poet. He worked for years as an editor for Official Languages in one of the office towers at L’Esplanade Laurier, originally moving to Ottawa in 1986 from Nelson, British Columbia, after John Metcalf’s wife Myrna (owner of the Elgin Street Diner) helped secure him an interview. Years later, Newlove would joke that moving from permanent job to renewable contract, he had become a government whore as opposed to merely a slave. Here’s a poem he wrote during that period, composed around his experience with government service, originally published as “LEONARD, IT'S WINTER IN OTTAWA” in a festshrift for the Montreal poet and musician in 1994.

IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA

The streets are full of overweight corporals,

of sad grey computer captains, the impedimentia

of a capital city, struggling through the snow.

There is a cold gel on my belly, an instrument

is stroking it incisively, the machine

in the half-lit room is scribbling my future.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.

A shadowy technician says alternately,

Breathe, and, You may stop now.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.

[Jennifer Baker, reading John Newlove] Across the street, I used to see John Newlove quite regularly, as I sat daily in the Dunkin’ Donuts window to write, from 10am to 3pm, six days a week, from May 1994 through to June 2000, existing in the space for the entire lifespan of the donut chain, living in the space now occupied by Tim Hortons. Newlove would step off the bus at the stop outside my window, nod and wave his cane at me as he would head off to the office. While sitting in my daily space, one that became quite well-known after a few years, I hosted numerous writers and artists who came in to visit me as I worked, including John Barton, John Metcalf, Dennis Tourbin, b stephen harding, Victor Coleman, John Boyle, Tom Fowler and even Newlove himself.

FOURTH STOP: Parliament Hill: There is a great deal of literary conversation one could have around Parliament Hill, much of which has been covered multiple times over. When the public service was moved from Quebec City to Ottawa in 1865, we gained numerous writers in both languages, including well-known Quebec poets Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, Joseph Marmette, and Alfred Garneau. Prince Edward Island poet Milton Acorn sold copies of his poetry books on the grounds to tourists in 1970. George Elliott Clarke claimed to host the first poetry reading on Parliament Hill in 2016 [see my report on such here], a claim I’d rather do more research on before repeating too often. Clarke himself launched his 1990 collection Whylah Falls as part of an event in the Parliament Buildings through Southwestern Ontario Member of Parliament (for Windsor-Tecumseh) Howard McCurdy, for whom Clarke had worked previously as a parliamentary assistant.

Instead, I’d like to focus on the late poet Judith Fitzgerald, who wrote a poem on Paul Chartier, the man who attempted to bomb Parliament in 1966. Imagine: he attempted to throw explosives from the second floor gallery into the sitting house, which would have easily killed Prime Minster Lester B. Pearson, Official Leader of the Opposition, John Diefenbaker, and dozens of other sitting Members. Fortunately, the second floor gallery was filled with a school group that included a thirteen-year-old Fitzgerald, forcing him up another floor, and the fuse he lit was too short, causing his death in the third floor men’s room. It is through Fitzgerald I first heard of this at all, from her 1977 collection lacerating heartwood:

ottawa

he descended the fire escape

with the coffee in my hand

and a guitar in his

was running down

my white wrist

you are sleeping

in ottawa

it’s another hot night

after the fashion

of steam and tendrils

the humidity and stains

hamper the delight

you take in your fingers

the audience has claims

on these hands

paul chartier

was on the steps

of the commons

while i was thirteen

in a gallery chair

his face was red

it was april and the washroom

was the high note

in his history

for that split second

stains and humidity

hang in this air

resembling war wreaths

the dried blood

angles its journey

down the porcelain wall

the body was changed

by its explosion

he jacked off with a bomb

the prime minister went white

the arm was holding

the back of the head splinter style

in perfect vertical symmetry

you are sleeping in ottawa

were sweating in fine hair

it gets god-awful hot

sometimes in those bars

and directly above

the spick and span urinals

paul chartier’s body comes violently to rest

I could also point out that on July 29, 2006, Ottawa poet, publisher and editor jwcurry held a marathon public reading of bpNichol’s nine-volume The Martyrology in the gazebo behind the Parliament Buildings [see my brief report on such here]. The bibliographer of bpNichol since the 1980s, this event was held secretly, and promoted almost exclusively by word-of-mouth. As curry said at the time, in what other country could you simply arrive and read poetry for hours publicly outside the seat of parliament?

FIFTH STOP: Sparks Street: Most people know that on April 7, 1868, poet, Father of Confederation and Member of Parliament Thomas D’Arcy McGee was walking home after a particularly late session when he was shot dead while walking down Sparks Street. Tried, convicted and executed for the crime was Fenian sympathizer Patrick James Whelan, who many believe was falsely accused to be a scapegoat for the murder. Known as Canada’s first (and hopefully only) political assassination, a plaque has been erected since in front of the Royal Bank Building at 142 Sparks, identifying the location of Mrs. Trotter’s boarding house where D’Arcy McGee was killed.

What few might know is that the boarding house was owned by George-Édouard Desbarats (forebear of journalist Peter Desbarats and his daughter, Ottawa poet Michelle Desbarats), one of a long line of influential printers running the family business. It was during George-Édouard’s tenure that Prime Minister John A. Macdonald made the Desberats the first official printer of the Dominion of Canada in 1869. The first plaque for D’Arcy McGee was put in place by George-Édouard, but soon after, he received an anonymous warning that his printing establishment in the Desberats Building, at what is now 152-54 Sparks Street, the first building to sit on that corner, would be destroyed. The building was, indeed, lost to a fire in 1869, barely a year after McGee's assassination. Currently, D'Arcy McGee’s Irish Pub sits at the corner of Elgin and Sparks Streets.

The author of over a dozen books and some three hundred poems, his work is still being read, and discussed. One of his poems was read by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney at the funeral of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

[end of walk one; this is where we went to the pub]