Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part two, : Jordan Davis + Ethan Rein Vilu,

[Grant Wilkins; see part one here] Be aware the next ottawa small press book fair is November 14 at Tom Brown Arena, yes? Even though I haven’t properly announced it, I’m already getting vendors. And don’t forget that myself and above/ground press will be attending the Fisher Library Small Press Fair in Toronto on September 19, yes?

Grand Lake NB/Teaneck NY: Further from russell carisse’s sider0xylon press is the small chapbook SORRY, GOD by New Jersey poet and editor Jordan Davis, a poet I’d very much like to see further from [see my review of Davis’ latest full-length collection here]. SORRY, GOD is a chapbook made up of sixteen short, accumulated and untitled poem-fragments, a long poem composed via one step against another in sequence. “If you think about the future / everything gets worse but,” he writes, early on in the sequence, “if you think about other people / you have a chance / of not being the reason / everything gets worse [.]” The title suggests a kind of lyric act of contrition, yet the piece opens more into a suggestion of how to approach being an interacting with the world in a positive and constructive way, instead of simply being the problem, as it were. As the sequence opens:

How does it even happen
I was right there
paying attention, even!
and right in my blind spot — 

complete understanding
blipped out of existence —

[Christian McPherson, author]

Ottawa ON/Calgary AB: It is good to see new work from Calgary poet and editor Ethan Rein Vilu, THE LONESOME GLORY (Ottawa ON: Horsebroke Press, 2026), an assemblage of what appear as sonnet-variants, following chapbooks DRAWINGS FROM BEFORE THE RED YEAR (Anstruther Press, 2024) [see my review of such here] and A DECISION RE: ZURICH (The Blasted Tree, 2020). The seventeen poems that make up THE LONESOME GLORY speak on horseraces, offering specific lyrics on “Kentucky Derby, 2003” to “Starlet Stakes, 2022,” the Belmont Cup and “Yearling Sale, 1954,” writing in and around poems set within that particular world, but from different temporal points, which becomes curious in itself. Why so much movement across time? The poems bounce around perspectives of not a singular event but a larger, ongoing culture, which is curious to see. “For some,” the poem “Kentucky Derby, 2003,” begins, “it was an eden pierced / by world-weariness.” Vilu writes of horseracing in ways transcendent and intimate, mundane and glorified. While the moments that Vilu writes are interesting, I’m uncertain how these moments connect to each other, beyond elements of structure, and the loose content of horseracing. What is the purpose to this assemblage, what is the structure? There are moments I wish the narrative was less straight and more nuanced, more subtle, such as the poem “Starlet Stakes, 2022,” that closes:

She was denied her fairy-tale ending,
and yet her brave narrative prevails.
the race possessed the rhythm
of a legend—an arc unwinding
deep across the Orange County sky.

 

[Jay MillAr, Book*hug Press] 

Four poems for Christian McPherson

at the behest of reading

 

1

Pandemic. To exist, precisely, as a speculative discourse.

Orchard, orchard, trees. A past hope, and
a formal splinter. Contemporary absence

of what once a wealth of apples,
farmland. News

that stays news.

I see you, standing. Driveway visits
from within.

Writerly, of course. Two laptops fueled
by indignation, and

by formal method.

 

2.

Prior. The quiet diffusion of
the front step, yard. What neighbours

gather.

 

3.

Listening. I write again the first person. I write
again the third. You read a poem glitch and

glitch and glitch glitch. Poetry
is barbaric.

Lost.

 

4.

Wine.

 

(another) very short story;

Most of the houses on Orchard Avenue are similar in age to my wife, in a neighbourhood the age of her parents. Half a block north, you can see the original farmhouse, set between in-fills. This was most likely the first house to emerge from this former assemblage of fields, now unidentifiable as anything but contemporary suburban sprawl: a street named for what it once held. And forty years on, from the exodus of apples, stray tree roots still infect the backyard pastiche of new in-ground pools. They enact their revenge.

(for Christian McPherson,

 

Profile of Christian McPherson, with a few questions, at Open Book: Ontario

My profile of Ottawa writer Christian McPherson, with a few questions, is now online at Open Book: Ontario.

Postcard: Billings Estate Museum,

We made our way to the Billings Estate Museum last week, an Ottawa historical site neither Christine nor I had previously visited (we weren’t entirely sure where it was before). Since we moved out of Centretown last fall, I’ve been curious about a number of aspects of our new neighbourhood, slowly making our way out to explore side-streets and parks, and a series of small pockets of city I knew little or nothing about. Our immediate part of Alta Vista Drive was originally one of a series of farmer’s fields before the advent of mid-1950s housing development. To the east, houses are slightly more recent, stepping into the early 1960s. A few blocks to the north-east, the houses along Orchard Avenue, for example, weren’t constructed until the late 1970s (what I would consider rather late for the area), and various neighbours apparently still have memory of a plethora of fruit trees. Christian McPherson, who owns a house on Orchard, recently discovered a lattice of tree-roots throughout his back yard.

We’d only been meaning for a couple of months to start taking advantage (in the tourist sense) of Christine’s maternity leave, and the three of us finally ventured the half an hour or so walk north along Alta Vista through Pleasant Park, over the Transitway towards Riverside, and up into the estate of old Braddish Billings (1762-1864) and his wife, Lamira Dow Billings (I’m curious to know if she, in fact, was related in any way of the Dow family who helped name Dow’s Great Swamp, later cleared out as Dow’s Lake). Curious, too, to see the occasional house around the transitway that seem to pre-date the other houses in the area (including the loveliest green house at the corner of Cavendish and Pleasant Park, with charming log fence), suggesting the 1940s, 1930s and even a house that appeared to be built closer to the end of the 19^th Century (among, of course, the more modern and expensive monolithic in-fills). Once closer, we saw that the estate sits on a fascinating rise, and there is a section of Cabot Street where one can even catch a glimpse of the Peace Tower, which suggests it must have been quite a view before the emergence of city.

Given my fascination with history, I thought the tour quite compelling, and learned a number of things I didn’t previously know, including the fact that American-born Braddish Billings was raised in Brockville, and later moved to the area to work for American-born Philemon Wright (1760 - 1839), the same Wright who established the first permanent settlement in the area (Wrightstown, Wright’s Village, Wrightsville; what eventually became Hull, Quebec). Interesting enough, Billings and Wright were both originally from neighbouring towns in Massachusetts, born two years apart in the towns of Ware and Woburn, respectably. Billings also managed to get the contract to provide food to the workers who built the Rideau Canal, long before being known as one of the city’s founding lumber barons, helping him establish himself enough to build his grand estate on the Rideau River, slightly east of where Billings Bridge and Billings Bridge Plaza now sit. The tour was pretty interesting, with a number of characters throughout the family worth paying attention to, some of whom were quite colourful. It was interesting to compare the story of Billings and his family, as well as see how his connects, with other tales of early Ottawa-area settlers and figures, including Colonel John By, Hamnett Pinhey, Ottawa lumber barons Booth and Eddy, and William Stewart (who invented Stewarton) [see my piece on such here].

According to Wikipedia (which appears to have far more information than The Billings Estate website actually has):

The Billings Estate National Historic Site is an Ottawa museum located 2100 Cabot St. in the former home of one of the region’s earliest settlers. The oldest wood framed house in Ottawa was built in 1827-9 by Massachusetts-born Braddish Billings. It became the home for the following four generations of the Billings family. It is Ottawa’s oldest surviving house, though the Bytown Museum building is older. Billings had moved to the area in 1812, and was the first settler in Gloucester Township.

Billings became prosperous in the timber trade, and built the large home that was named Park Hill. Billings later moved into agriculture, and the house became the centre of a large and prosperous farm providing produce for Bytown, with the farm linked to town by the Bytown and Prescott Railway.

The estate remained in the Billings family until 1975. Over time the property was slowly sold off to developers, and today the estate retains only a relatively small plot of land. In 1975 the house became a Billings Estate Museum which is today operated by the city of Ottawa. The house was included amongst other architecturally interesting and historically significant buildings in Doors Open Ottawa, held June 2 and 3, 2012.

The estate also includes a historic cemetery that contains graves dating back to 1820.

For whatever reason, one of the bedrooms in the house, decorated with an exhibit on World War I, reminded slightly of the Hemingway House in Key West [see my post on such here].

We were given our own personal tour of the house, and later wandered a bit on the grounds, before stopping for tea (my scones are better than theirs). High tea: not something I’d done before either, but I know something my mother would have appreciated. Rose sat on the lawn for a spell, brushing her palms through the grass before finally tearing out a series of small handfuls. After tea (during which Rose was amused and distracted by Christine's change purse), we picked out postcards and guide books, and Christine gifted Rose a small kerchief doll, which brought up peals of laughter from the wee babe. Before we left, we wandered the small cemetery, and Rose fell asleep on my chest, nestled deep in her snuggly. What else might our summer bring?

postal address change! (what? again?)

After two years in our lovely apartment on McLeod Street [see my essay on such here], we've purchased a house (if you can believe it) on Alta Vista Drive. Today is moving day, so update your address books!

rob mclennan + Christine McNair
2423 Alta Vista Drive
Ottawa Ontario Canada
K1H 7M9

Phone numbers remain the same, but the mailing addresses (obviously) for above/ground press, Chaudiere Books and the ottawa small press book fair will be changing as well.

Apparently our new neighbourhood (which is actually the old neighbourhood for my mother and her family) includes writers such as Christian McPherson and Chris Jennings, among others. What else might we discover?

Cards, letters, cheques and review copies encouraged.

The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading: Simpson, Blaikie, McPherson, Lithgow + Clarke,

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series
pre-small press book fair reading

with readings/launches by:

Rachael Simpson (Ottawa)
David Blaikie (Ottawa)
Christian McPherson (Ottawa)
Michael Lithgow (Gatineau)
+ George Elliott Clarke (Toronto)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 16, 2012;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

For author bios and links, check here.

The Dusty Owl Reading Series: February 20 + March 6;

The Dusty Owl Reading Series, for the next couple of months, will be featuring special guest-hosts in place of Steve Zytveld, as we support his ongoing schooling at St. Paul's University. Learning is good! 

And note the temporary shift in venue from Swizzles on Queen Street to the upstairs of The Carleton Tavern in the Parkdale Market (watch for Dusty Owl’s anniversary party and new venue announcement coming up in May, alongside Dusty Owl’s fifteenth anniversary!);

The next two events at the Dusty Owl Reading Series are:

1) Sunday, February 20, 2011
20 February – Christian McPherson

Christian McPherson is the author of Six Ways to Sunday (shortlisted for the 2008 ReLit Awards), "Poems that swim from my brain like rats leaving a sinking ship," and his new novel The Cube People.  His new collection of poems The Sun Has Forgotten Where I Live is being launched at Collected Works on April 16th, 2011.  He lives in Ottawa with his wife Marty and his two kids, Molly and Henry. 

As part of Steve Zytveld's spring term at school, this event will be lovingly guest-hosted by rob mclennan;

2) Sunday, March 6, 2011
Ottawa poet Sean Moreland with Call Me Katie

Sean Moreland's poetry and short fiction has appeared in venues including The Bywords Quarterly Journal and the Malahat Review, and online in The Puritan, Experiment-O, bywords.ca and ditch. He won the John Newlove award in 2007, and was named one of Ottawa's Hot Voices in 2009. He co-organizes the blUe m0nday reading series and sits on the editorial board for Arc Poetry Magazine. He earned his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Ottawa, where he currently teaches. His research interests include Gothic fiction, horror fiction and film, modern American fiction, and (post)modern poetics.

followed by a musical performance by fan-favourites, Call Me Katie!

As part of Steve Zytveld's spring term at school, this event will be lovingly guest-hosted by Pearl Pirie;

And watch for the triumphant return of "Dusty Owl" Steve Zytveld on May 8st! Upcoming readers include jwcurry (as part of a special VERSeFest event, March 13) Gabriella Goliger (April 3), David Groulx (April 17), Ronnie R. Brown (May 8), Michael Blouin (June 5), and the Ottawa Slam Team (September 18). Check website for updates!

The Dusty Owl Reading Series

5pm with featured performer(s) and open stage by 6;
Admission is free. Donations will be lovingly accepted.

For more information please contact: Steve Zytveld and/or Catherine MacDonald-Zytveld, Reading Series Coordinator + Media Coordinator
Tel: (613) 230-7710

E-mail: steve@dustyowl.com E-mail: media@dustyowl.com

Edmonton: (some of) the past few days

Thursday, September 27

This is a photograph of Ottawa writer Christian McPherson and I after the reading we did together at Audrey’s Book (photo courtesy Jeff Carpenter). I think my t-shirt (I had it made before coming west) is far cooler than his (even though I don’t care for the shape of my head). Not a large crowd, but certainly an appreciative one, the first time I’d read in that space was nine years ago through the ottawa international writers festival and their Great Canadian Via Rail Tour (the staff even remembered me from that); ask David McGimpsey about the vodka paralyzers and about what happened next. Ask kath macLean. I’m not saying a word on-line.

I read selections from The Ottawa City Project (2007), and sex at thirty-eight: letters to unfinished g. (2007) as well as a selection of poems I’d written since arriving in Edmonton. The only book I sold was to McPherson; what? And then we drank. But why did we go to that terrible bar first?

The third bar had karaoke. I was brilliant and completely awful; we have to do that again.

Friday, September 28

In a packed house at Convocation Hall, Nobel Prize Laureate (the second I've met in a week or so, after Roald Hoffmann) Derek Walcott gave a too-short reading and answered questions. Why didn’t I take notes at this event? I would love to get in this space when someone is playing the pipe organ; even to look around the room was music enough. There was much discussion on the responsibility of the artist being aware of and responding to the immediate world around him/her, which I found particularly interesting, and this man certainly has walked the walk for many years. A compelling man and compelling speaker. Why didn’t I take notes at this event (I saw Christine Stewart take notes during the whole thing, but she won’t let me read them, let alone post)? At the reception, on my way out the door, I slipped a copy of my red earth (2003) to Walcott before he left.

Wednesday, October 3

I went to the WILD PROSE COUNTRY reading at The Black Dog Freehouse on Whyte Avenue, organized by powerhouse T.L. Cowan, with readings by her, Thea Bowering, Laura Crawford, Rebecca Fredrickson and Kathryn Payne. Apparently this is an occasional series they do around town for fiction writers; I think they should do it more often, an interesting counterpoint to all the poetry that keeps happening around town.

It’s been years since I’ve even seen Kathryn Payne, let alone heard her read, since the publication of her first poetry collection, Longing at Least is Constant (1998), came out with Broken Jaw Press. Can it have been that long? Even longer since I published her first chapbook in 1994, with a launch at SAW Gallery that included readings by Louis Cabri and some songs by a friend of Payne’s, Ember Swift. It was good, too, to hear Thea Bowering read, from a story published recently in The Capilano Review. I was actually able to publish a poem of hers back in 1993 (that later went into her section of the first Breathing Fire), but hadn’t actually heard her read until now. Just how long should someone wait?

And Laura Crawford is just amazing; she could give just about any spoken word artist in the country a run for their money. She deserves a line here all to herself. Himself?

I’m thinking of seeing if I can use that space to host events myself…

Thursday, October 4

Hosted by the Environmental Research and Studies Centre at the University of Alberta, Jan Zwicky did a lecture and reading on the topic of “what role can lyric poetry play in addressing environmental crisis?” Speaking on poetry as the combination of science and thinking, there felt even echoes of the earlier talk that Anne Simpson gave at the Edmonton Poetry Festival [see my note on such here], with the inference (through the promotional material) of being engaged in a wider scope of poetry even as scientific research (something that Christian Bök has been engaged with for years).

It was interesting to have Zwicky talk as an Albertan, even though, as she said, she grew up just west of Edmonton but hadn’t actually read here in quite a long time. She said that to shift perception, we have to “shift our rhetoric.” To move in a language, she said, you can get trapped in the limitations of that language.

As she wrote on the board before we arrived:

Living Canadian poets whose work speaks directly of their love for and involvement with the natural world.

Jane Munro, Roo Borson, Lorna Crozier, Robert Bringhurst, Adam Dickinson, Tim Lilburn, Sue Sinclair, Don Domanski, Liz Phillips, Don McKay, John Steffer.

With two others added:

Mary Oliver (US)
Robert Grey (Australia)

She read poems from her Songs for Relinquishing the Earth (1999) and Robinson’s Crossing (2004), the second of which, she said, was written very consciously as a reaction to environmental concerns, and the family farm just west of Edmonton that existed as part of that “100 year failed experiment in white colonialism” that was long over. We are needing a new language, she said, for a new perspective (but then why not acknowledge the language poets, I wondered?). A poem a day or even a week would change thinking.

She talked about the “end of nature,” and that there was no longer any thing that could be called nature. “Poetry, I believe can help us say… authentically, how bad we feel; that it ain’t over.” She talked about how the genius of poetry was in the integration of thought and feeling, and that she wanted to build community on the back of elegy (“elegy is the flip-side of praise”).

As interesting as the talk was, she still held her talk within the realm of one kind of writing, which I found disappointing. Why not bring in other styles of poetry doing shades of the same thing? Why does the notion of elegy and love only exist within one form? She seemed very open to other forms within other arts, praising the photography of Edward Burtynsky as something that was made as a reaction and provokes thinking through a simple form, but aren’t there other kinds of poetry doing same? Again, what of the language poets, working through the language itself to find new meanings and new perspectives? Why were all of her examples on the board working the same kind of lyric?

Upcoming: The Edmonton International Literary Festival, October 11-14; Elizabeth Bachinsky at U of A on October 30; a talk/reading I do for the Writers Guild of Alberta on Hallowe'en (???), more info tba;