ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair

Sure is strange to be home. If you want, check out this podcast of the reading I did recently at the Dusty Owl Reading Series, or these features on me online at Other Voices International and at Poet's Corner - Fieralingue, with recent-ish poems and such, and check out the new fiction chapbook Departures (above/ground press) I'm part of, released for the fair as well. Otherwise, come see me kick Nathaniel G. Moore's ass this Friday at the THROWDOWN IN O-TOWN (check out the youtube links; I still don’t remember agreeing to do any of this…). And don’t forget, if you want to know about small press book fairs happening in Canada, refer regularly to the Canadian small press fair blog; and check out what Amanda Earl wrote, or Charles Earl posted...

Toronto ON: A book fair isn’t a book fair without the presence of Toronto writer/editor/publisher Stuart Ross, one of the inventors of the Toronto Small Press Fair, way back in 1987. He came to Ottawa with a number of publications large and small, including this handout made for the fair, and the pre-fair reading he was part of the night before:

Vesuvius

American volanologists often hang their
prey on barbed-wire fences. Only a dozen
or so skeletons are easily recognized by
their roller-coaster flight and clear song.
Migrating birds pass over a smothering
snow of ash and pumice, fish sauce and
wine, severely charred by the glowing
avalanches. One is deeply moved by the
postures and is now a serious pest, a
collective groan across the ages. Pliny's tale
of the catastrophe, on the other hand,
varies its insect diet with bayberries. Thus,
many died at Pompeii, fleeing in a zigzag
path, as they fed on flying insects.

Another publication he appeared in Ottawa with was Toronto writer Tom Walmsley's small poetry chapbook concrete sky (Toronto ON: Proper Tales Press, 2007). Walmsley has been publishing for years, known more for his fiction and plays (including the novels Shades and Kid Stuff, both from Arsenal Pulp Press), his poetry collections also include Rabies and Lexington Hero (Pulp Press), Honeymoon in Berlin (Anvil Press), Sin (Lyricalmyrical) and What Happened (BookThug).

1

look — a concrete sky

don't tell me not to worry

earth is wet cement.

A small chapbook of a fifteen-part sequence, each poem repeats itself in three line haiku-like stanzas, repeating like a mantra the same first line, enough times that you begin to see the small differences between each piece, and just how powerful they are.

6

look — a concrete sky

who do i remind you of —

you fucking asshole.

Do you remember that part of the movie Smoke (written by the novelist Paul Auster), where the character who owned the smoke shop showed off his decades of photographs, each from the same position outside his front door at exactly the same minute every morning. After the first few dozen they look exactly the same, but once you keep going, you begin to see the differences and understand their importance. It makes me wonder, should Walmsley have kept going?

12

look — a concrete sky

and the cosmos upside down —

up is gone for good.

Another Stuart Ross publication was the fourth issue of Peter O'Toole: A Magazine of One-Line Poems [see where I mentioned a previous issue here]. Is Ross actually mailing these to the actor O'Toole? I really think O'Toole should be made aware of such a thing. Would he even submit something? Here are the three lines by east coast writer George Murray:

The head of this pin has left holes in my feet.

*

Everyday: unremembered anniversaries of eye contact.

*

The fly owns just enough life to crunch under your shoe.

Ottawa ON: Another publication I picked up at the fair was the seemingly-untitled chapbook of poetry (the publication has a card-deck theme) by Amanda Earl (ice of hurts), Marcus McCann (spleen of demons), Nicholas Lea (whore of spaces), Pearl Pirie (hive of clouds) and Roland Prevost (whack of spaces), produced in an edition of fifty-four by Earl's own AngelHousePress, specifically for the fair.

One

one sounds cornered
one touches the real
one spends months in concrete
one portends or wars
one found a forest forever
one is cajoled by oddness
one sucker-punches his own landscape
one escapes
one eats many crepes and is glad
one owns nothing and is glad
one listens to ancient music and is glad
one lives with the ultraist
one is survivalist for some reasons
one is trivialist for—who cares
one mutters in an unwierd way
one stumbles
one crumbles
one disassembles the dark room
one resembles every rock
one rocks
one talks and talks
one records the event as it re-folds
one goes home and is glad
one severs ties and is glad
one severs tiers and is glad
one severs tears and is glad
one is expecting expectorating expatriating
one found their guitar-sound
one dishevels the dark room
one experiences the boom
one is heavily in love
one says love
one says one
one said one (Nicholas Lea)

Apparently they started meeting (according to the "afterbit") "to work together on poems in January, 2008 [… and this] chapbook is a small sample of what results, inspired by camaraderie, imagination and wordplay." Considering they all came out of poetry workshops I've been running in town the past few years (something they also acknowledge as their "main commonality," which is neat to see), it's fascinating to watch just where some of their work has gone over the past couple of years. These folk are some of those around Ottawa that prove, yet again, just how much can be accomplished through what is called "community."

5 more hours of economy class

till lunch. it's like standing over a toaster
waiting 500 miles for the pop up

a card deck drawn on lined note page
a dozen per serrated pull from coil

lessons from KD scarcity of scissors
rewards again;

paper licked on the fold
to weaken, tear a strip straight off

heart upside down, flip
scribble in a stick for a spade

realize in dealing what
I don’t remember;

rummy rules and UNO meld
one queen is naked, missing her suit

a laugh, puff a hand
out of hand

light deck
new set of tricks (Pearl Pirie)

related notes: the last fair; the one before;

ongoing notes: early December, 2007

Apparently this person themselves an arbiter of what is “good” against “bad”; do I need to start reviewing book I hate? Why do I constantly have to defend what I’m doing here, that I’m simply not just “praising everything I get,” but instead trying to talk about work that I think is doing interesting things? How can anyone be an arbiter of good/bad in a way that doesn’t involve any degree of subjective personal taste (see another conversation thread that came out of a review of mine)?

Me and my new Edmonton pals, or at least two of them; Lainna Lane and Trisia Eddy and I at George Bowering’s Olive reading [see my note on such here] in November (did you see the other photo Lainna took of me during our adventures at the West Edmonton Mall?). The three of us head out to Calgary soon for the big December 8th reading and launch!

Apparently Stuart Ross might like my novel; check out the "stack 'em Max" game we played (John got the name slightly off) we played during the writers festival; a review of Brockwell's last book that I don't think "gets it"; apparently I'm a sexy fiction writer now; a very cool photo from a very cool reading; I get memed; Marcus McCann, as a blogger, has just got more and more interesting lately; I'm in the new issue of Noon; Lars Palm loves and laments the Martian Press.

Toronto ON: While briefly in Toronto, I was able to get a copy of the second issue of Stuart Ross’ PETER O’TOOLE: a magazine of one-line poems (Proper Tales Press, September 2007). One thing that I’ve always liked about Ross’ aesthetic is that he is completely honest about where it comes from, whether giving credit to some of his writing heroes, including Toronto writer David W. McFadden (Ross recently edited McFadden’s selected poems) and American poet Ron Padgett, and now with this new venture, including a poem by (as the bio tells us), “Bill Zavatsky, of New York City [who] published Roy Rogers, a magazine of one-line poems, in the 1970s.”

A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT, A STORY

Thinking about Dickinson she walked off the edge of the world. (Sina Queyras)

This new issue has poem or poems by Gary Barwin, Dani Couture, Lynn Crosbie, Clarice Eckford, Debby Florence, Frank, Niels Hav, Richard Huttel, Phillip Lopate, Camille Martin, Lynn McClory, Sina Queyras, Sandra Ridley [see my earlier note on her here], Stuart Ross, Steve Venright [see his recent 12 or 20 questions here] and Zavatsky. To order a copy, or to find out about further or previous issues, email Ross at hunkamooga@sympatico.ca

Wake up, take a pill, I’m Ted Berrigan! (Bill Zavatsky & Phillip Lopate)

Ottawa ON: I recently got a box of the fourth issue of The Puritan: Ottawa’s Literary Prose Journal to give out, edited by those plucky young University of Ottawa grad students, Spencer Gordon and Tyler Willis. The issues are getting increasingly more interesting, without them losing any of the feel of the original; it’s not easy for a journal to get a good sense of self already developed by the first issue, and, no matter what improvements come along from issue to next, manage to maintain that sense all the way along. The new issue has short fiction by George Bowering, Paul A. Toth, John Moss, Brian Carr, J.J. Steinfeld, Rebecca Cuttler, Darryl Berger, Michelle Miller, Annie Zhu, Wes Smiderle, Kate Heartfield and Dayle Furlong, as well as a foreword by David Staines.

Montreal in the early ‘nineties. It felt separate, removed from Canada, its own little glamorous world. While the rest of the country wasn’t shaving their legs, wearing soft sandals and experimenting with heroin, we were making theatrical spectacles, installing art in every conceivable spot, resurrecting coffee houses, staying up all night. Francois and I would dance at the discothéques every evening, after classes and homework. We’d skip dinner to spend more time on the dance floor, eat the fruit in our drinks. The way he led me, his hips swaying, footwork impeccable. One night he told me, after he had stepped on a bigger man’s foot and a fight erupted, he told me what he did—and he made me promise not to tell anyone. (Dayle Furlong)

Be aware, too, that the writing from all four issues are available online in pdf format, which you have to admit is pretty cool.

Edmonton AB: Poet and publisher Trisia Eddy has announced her new chapbook enterprise, red nettle press, with the appearance of her own what if there’s no weather (2007). Dedicated “to bringing the work of Edmonton poets to a wider audience,” this is also a first chapbook for Eddy herself, and her poetry has some interesting moments here and there, slowly feeling their ways through playing with line breaks, rhythms and simple movement.

what

what if you miss me
what if we can’t find it
what if i wake up
what if the doorbell rings
what if there’s no weather
what if we spill
what if someone else finds the key

what’s the next letter

I like the rhythms in this short piece, perhaps one of the strongest in the collection:

city

traffic lights change in the distance,
amplifying the cold. the deep space

of road, disemboweled. her brow
an orange dawn, an open field:

furrowed, newly sown. the day
is skimming, a swan on the man-made

lake, trailing memory behind a
reflection of yet another architectural

wonder. but those buildings rarely
survive, replaced by newer, glossier

models. & she misses these friends,
red-handed, macerated, still.

Back to those roads: steel-plated,
peeling aereolas of their pink.

grooved by arrivals, departure.
a train could ride those rails, bent

and occupied. slightly bold, seven
times. if only the garlic-breath

of a late-born city skyline
would snag the clouds.

What’s interesting to note, too, is that the website for her press also lists a series of other Edmonton-area literary events.

Toronto ON: Another thing I picked up while in Toronto was Stephen Cain’s chapbook Montreality B-Sides & Rarities (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2006) while dropping a whole wad of cash on BookThug items at This Ain’t The Rosedale Library Bookstore on Church Street (they even have a BookThug display at the cash).

To Epimenides

Don’t read this
And I won’t write it down

Cain has always been one of my favourite contemporaries, and working, predominantly it seems, in sequential works in multiples of ten, so a selection of “one-offs” was, in its own way, somehow inevitable (even Bowering had his own version of “one-offs,” the collection In The Flesh from 1974). With what he’s done so far, I like the way Cain has always experimented, but almost carefully, as though he knows so much of what other experimentation has gone on before that he treads not lightly but still spare; he says little enough that you know it will always be interesting.

The Ubi Sunt Engine

Where is the plane, Flight 77?
Where is The Simpson’s Springfield?
Where is the money?
Where is the Love Ringtone?
Where is the evidence that animal research benefits
humans?
Where is the sun?
Where is the love?
Where is the learning?
Where is the Earth’s water located?
Where is the mango princess?
Where is the true danger?
Where is the pub?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the car?
Where is the war in Iraq heading?
Where is the greatest difference between true north
and magnetic north?
Where is the feminism in cyberfeminism?
Where is the beer?
Where is the action in virtual communities of
practice?
Where is the revolution?
Where is the horror?
Where is the religious right hiding out now?
Where is the spleen?
Where is the tundra?
Where is the digital highway really heading?
Where is the public domain?
Where is the best place to sit when I go to the
movies?
Where is the graveyard of dead gods?
Where is the New Woman now?
Where is the outrage?
Where is the government?
Where is the washroom?
Where is the energy?
Where is the clitoris?
Where is the Lone Ranger when we need him?
Where is the Ark of the Covenant?
Where is the center of the universe?
Where is the stage?
Where is the apology for slavery?
Where is the bed?
Where is the problem?
Where is the wiggle-room?
Where is the poetry reading tonight?

ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part one)

This past weekend the ottawa small press book fair, the last one before I head out west (although they will still happen in fall and next spring, I'll just have to organize from a distance and fly out for it). Finally made that broadsheet by Richard Harrison, a poem for the late Riley Tench [see my note on him here]; if you want a copy of the poem, send me an s.a.s.e. to 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario K1R 6R7 and I'll send you a copy, and maybe a copy or two of other broadsheets, including recent ones by Monty Reid, Amanda Earl [see her entry on the book fair here, and post on the reading the night before] and myself. Were you even at the fair? Did you see the little postcard freebie that Bywords was handing out to promote Roland Prevost's chapbook this fall, last year's Newlove Award winner?

Can you believe, Ottawa: The Unknown City is almost finished? I can't really believe it myself. Check out here for a photo of myself and Amanda Earl at the Ottawa Art Gallery art auction.

Vancouver BC: After not being in Ottawa for fourteen years, Pooka Press publisher Warren Fulton showed up in town with a whole slew of chapbooks he's been making over the years, including a new edition of George Bowering's Autobiology (2006) and a new small chapbook of his, U.S. Sonnets (2007). Autobiology originally appeared as Georgia Straight Writing Supplement, Vancouver Series #7 back in 1972, and reprinted in his trade collection The Catch (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 1976), reissued here by Pooka in an edition photocopied from the original (to keep the typeface and spacing) in an edition of 52 copies, and written as a series of forty-eight prose sections, writing his biology, writing his autobiography; as they said in Walt Kelly's Pogo comic, I'm gonna write my autobiology. You'd have to check with the publisher to even know if there are any copies left.

CHAPTER 20: THE BREAKS

I broke my note on a girl's heel. I broke my foot under a ladder. I broke my nose on a baseball. I broke my finger under a wagon. I broke my nose on a man's fist. I broke my hand against a concrete wall. I wisht my nose did not turn up & I broke it. Has the cat got your tongue? I wisht my nose did not have a hump in it & I broke it. Who told you to hold your tongue? I wisht my nose was not pusht to one side & I broke it & it was pusht over to the side. Investigate him. Seek the vestiges of his movement. Look for footprints. Gumshoe investigator, break the case.

He wants to know why the bones are broken & why they are not stronger where they broke him. He calls a strike on you if you break your wrists. I broke my nose again on a baseball. I struck the wall behind burlap & broke my fist.

Birney broke his fast thru a wired shut jaw. Jerry broke across the street & a car hit him now he's in traction. Lionel was hit by a car that left him broken on the street. The wagon was free from the tractor & it broke my finger. Jesus Christ, I said. They broke the back of my car on the wet dark street.

I got too close & the foot broke my nose. It was the first. It was right in front of my brain. (Autobiology)

The newest small George Bowering publication is U.S. Sonnets, published in an edition of 100 copies. How does this book compare, say, to his previous small collection At War With The U.S. (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 1974)? How does this compare to a cover image of George W. Bush giving a thumbs-up in the centre of a Confederate flag? Written from newspaper stories, and various other quoted sources, these poems move through the medias version of our neighbour to the south, and all the implications there.

14. Unless the

Unless the UFO is surrounded by a force field to
vaporize the slugs, you are going to cause some serious

damage to the craft and its inhabitants. Maybe if
we shoot up a few of them, they (whoever they are)

will rethink their game plan. Don't let anyone or
anything take you inside a craft that has landed.

You aren’t required to follow. Think and act as
the aggressor rather than as a prisoner. You don't

have to give any of your body parts to anyone if
you don’t want to. You don’t have to give your

planet to anyone if you don’t want to. Shoot first
and ask questions later. At this stage of the game

I believe we shoot, shoot them down. The more
damage you can cause, the better for our side.

Bowering has been working for some time on a chapbook a month, attempting to write twelve in a row all working a particular and different construct, others of which out recently with Calgary's No Press and Toronto's BookThug [see my review of one here]. Where is this all going? And what, pray tell, is the glue that might hold all twelve of these together?

23. It's a

It's a hot summer's day somewhere; everyone is
wearing shorts. There's a kid in that uniform, tee

shirt, yellow shorts, white socks, sneakers. There's a guy
beside him, fat legs between white socks and shorts.

Behind him there's a USAmerican flag, a woman
taking a picture, another woman with her hands on her

hips. She's wearing tee shirt and shorts. She's overweight.
In the middle, up front, is the center of this picture,

a guy in shorts and a St. Louis Cardinals tee shirt.
He's wearing the stars and stripes around his head, long

hair hanging down in thin twists. He's got narrow sun-
glasses and a thin moustache. He is carrying two hand-lettered

signs. The one held low says GO USA. In his other hand
he holds up a sign that says Get A BRAIN! MORANS.

Toronto ON: Proper Tales Press editor/publisher Stuart Ross was at the fair again this year, and he brought with him two new publications, his newest trade poetry collection I Cut My Finger (Vancouver BC: Anvil Press, 2007) and his PETER O'TOOLE: A MAGAZINE OF ONE-LINE POEMS (Proper Tales Press, 2007). How do you make a whole magazine of one-line poems? With the cover bearing an image of legendary actor O'Toole (looking very much like Montreal's own William Shatner) smoking a cigarette, the issue contains work by Sandra Alland, Gary Barwin, Kim Bernstein, Joel Dailey, Michael Dennis, Paul Dutton, Lance La Rocque, Camille Martin, Stuart Ross, Jim Smith, Hugh Thomas and Bill Zavatsky.

EXISTENTIALISM

Skin as thick as rubber running down the street (Lance La Rocque)

SISTERS OF CONSOLATION

The convent has been converted into condos. (Hugh Thomas)

I MET A WOMAN WHEN I WAS A YOUNGER MAN

She knows me as an old man now (Michael Dennis)

THIS SHOUTING, WHISTLING LUMP

Oh Velveeta, oh Jos. Louis, oh still-digesting Maraschinos of youth (Sandra Alland)

Vancouver's Anvil Press has been a supporter of Ross' work for a while now, from publishing his column in sub-Terrain magazine (formerly held in WORD: The Literary Calendar) and even producing his "grumpy collection of personal essays," Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (2005). One of my favourite aspects of this new poetry collection has to be the cover artwork and design by illustrator Gary Clement; just who is this guy? Ross gave a magnificent reading on Friday night at the Carleton Tavern surrounded by friends and admirers, providing his usual surreal commentary on the world around and inside him, from the absolutely bizarre to the downright disturbing, including a businessman with flippers and the U.S. military following a trail of ants.

FISHING

Oh right, that time
he caught a fish, a fish
so big it ate his car,
his family, his
cottage. A thing of
sleek beauty, it gleamed
and twinkled in the
police spotlight. The
bullet it caught
lodged behind its left
gill, and Jesus
wept, the fish
wept, we all fell
to the ground
and wept, sweet fish.

There is something about how Ross shows, in but a bare few lines, how the real world actually works. By starting out with the appearance of saying something of little consequence, you can somehow get the permission to get deeper into saying how the world works, whether television comedians being the best at cutting through political jibber-jabber, or cartoon animals allowed to get away on television with things that dramatic actors never would. It's as though Ross not only regularly crosses the line into pure sanity regularly, but that for him, it simply doesn’t exist. And it becomes interesting, that after his collection Razovsky at Peace (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2001) [see my review of such here] and Hey, Crumbling Balcony! Poems New & Selected (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2003) that spoke much of fathers and even brothers, he has moved on to referencing children in this most recent collection; is this simply a matter of natural progression?

NEW HOPE FOR THE DISENFRANCHISED

It was at that exact moment, when
I began to empty my pockets,
which were empty to begin with,
except for a bent paperclip
and a tennis court oeuf (an
athletic and popular omlette,
sprinkled with pocket lint),
that my children returned from the future,
from long after my sorry death,
where they were quite comfortable and,
I was happy to hear,
saw each other often and spoke of me
not unkindly, if infrequently.
"I was just emptying my pockets,"
I told them, "liberating myself
from all things material, but look,
let's go to the zoo!" "The zoo!" they cried.
As we ambled amongst the apes,
my eldest, whose name I no longer
remember, gone from my noggin
along with my own, said to me,
"Everything's different later on.
A guy got shot
and hubbub ensued,
but when the dust settled, Dad,
it was a whole other thing."
Flanked by lemurs and ostriches,
I gathered my children
within the arc
of my fatherly arms.
I knew now that after I croaked,
a guy would get shot
and all would be better.
With the penguins looking on,
and under the gaze of giant turtles,
I kissed each of my children
(it took nearly an hour) upon
their foreheads, and I set off
for home. I had children
to conceive, a blender to fix,
rectangular books
to return to the library.