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] 

Ongoing notes: late February, 2024 : Michael Chang + Ethan Vilu,

There are only THREE DAYS LEFT in the VERSeFest fundraiser! But you already knew that, yes? And the schedule for this spring’s VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival (March 21-24) will be announced very very soon!

Toronto ON/Brooklyn NY: I’ve seen work by American poet and editor Michael Chang around for a while now, so it is good to finally get my hands on a small collection, the chapbook SWEET MOSS (Anstruther Press, 2024), following collections such as SYNTHETIC JUNGLE (Northwestern University Press, 2023) and EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS (GreenTower Press, 2024). Jim Johnstone’s Anstruther has been leaning into publishing work by more Americans these days, I’ve noticed, allowing for a particular kind of cross-border conversation within the bounds of his press, one of the more active chapbook publishers in Canada. The seventeen poems that make up SWEET MOSS shift in structure, from prose poems to more traditional line-breaks, each of which offer accumulations of first-person statements. Chang’s poems write in a kind of propulsion of direct statements, sly commentary and observation in a language condensed, communicating with the immediacy of social media or text messages. “if the gods are watching,” Chang writes, as part of the poem “SPECIAL SNOOZE,” “I’m not allowed to be too happy // I’m not sure why I think this / Probably something learned from television [.]” There’s an element of Chang’s lyric lined with input from every direction, whether culture, social media, relationships and travel, attempting not only a through-line but a line through. Perhaps, through Michael Chang, one might manage, and even maintain, a degree of clarity through all the external noise.

SMOKE IN JAPAN

the man u loved
died in a war
of ur own making
downturned mouth
mess of fallopian tubes
yes but have u heard of
staring in the same direction
chanting NO HOPE FOR US !!!
we’re full
of special moments
that end
in a matter of hrs
a place in nature
we can finally meet
pegged by peggy
hootin’ for hooten
heads in clouds
in flagrante delicto
the battys in the club
peep ur finest garb
seething assured
a hit dog will holler

Toronto ON/Calgary AB: The latest from Calgary poet, reviewer and editor Ethan Vilu, following the longsheet, A Decision Re: Zurich (The Blasted Tree, 2020), is Drawings From Before The Red Year (Anstruther Press, 2024), an assemblage of short narrative scenes with a clipped lyric. Vilu’s poems are lean, and precise, a sketchform of lines enough to see the whole portrait, even the spaces not drawn. Taking their content from the online fantasy game series, Elder Scrolls, I’m surprised there aren’t more poems composed across further elements of pop culture (although the list of those composing poems for superhero comic characters are fairly short, also), specifically online gaming, something Leah MacLean-Evans has been working for a while (I’ve been awaiting a chapbook or collection of some time) and Ottawa poet IAN MARTIN, who has been exploring both gaming and programming. “In my skull I hear the clattering of bad fables. Dark signal,” Vilu writes, to open the poem “Galtis Guvron,” “scrabled scar. Down the stairs, a messenger approaches: // blood on her hands, a translusccent musical name. A siren // siphoning from the stars.” Vilu’s poems here are sharp, serious and playful, and one might wonder if there might be a full-length collection-to-come, perhaps, one that might even allow certain readers an entry point into poetry, from online gaming. The opening lines of the poem “Drarayne Girith,” might even serve as a kind of ars poetica for Vilu’s explorations through gaming: “I stop just short. // Clipped writsts, ragged staff, crushed tongue.”

The Docks Outside Vivec

Ambrosial, this sea breeze –
salt, anther pollen and pearl.

Linen and wood
form a necklace to collar the cove.

straight ahead: the heather patch,
the sigil-stone, the sky-vibrant beach

and the wide bridge,
tense and time-honoured,

carrier of secrets,
working to cast off its burden.