until the end of the world, : Victoria, part two,

Further to my adventures in Victoria, British Columbia [see part one here]:

Friday, April 24: I was to meet up with Steven Ross Smith for coffee around noonish, just prior to my early afternoon reading, so headed that way first thing to settle, read a bit, capture some notes. Coffee, naturally. Blossoms everywhere, again. Isn't it snowing in Calgary right now or something? The cafe was good enough to allow me to leave my large bag of books for the event in their space so I could walk the block or three over to the Emily Carr House, the birthplace and childhood home of the Canadian artist Emily Carr (1871-1945). My niece Emma is an artist, so I texted her a photo or two of the space [much as I had when we were in Owen Sound three years earlier, and saw Tom Thomson's grave]. I've long been intrigued by such spaces, and the stories of how well-known creators (writers, filmmakers, painters, actors) manage to get through those struggles of getting to the point of actually making. How does one make anything? Culture seems to want us to have created, but don't necessarily want to help get us there, so there's always that struggle, well beyond any specifics of family push-back, or any other hurdles that might exist. How do any of us get anywhere?

Interestingly, the house structure reminded me of the historic site Christine and I had caught a year-plus prior in Vancouver, the Roedde House Museum, "the restored 1893 home of Canada's first bookbinder," also I suspect that the Carr house lands more traffic.

There was a tour happening, started a few minutes before I arrived, so I tried to stay out of their way, work my own self-tour. One room held excerpts of a journal that Carr's father kept, some of which was quite a compelling read. When did folk stop keeping journals? I'd give anything to see further volumes of journals by Elizabeth Smart, certainly. Is this a nineteenth century hold-over, by the wealth class? I did peek into one of the rooms held by tour group, and who did I see but Ottawa poet (and relative Ottawa South neighbour) Susanne Fletcher? She won the 2025 John Newlove Poetry Award, if you might recall (so her chapbook as part of such will be out this fall). Apparently she and her husband were in town on holiday, unrelated to anything I was doing there. We talked for a bit around history just by the gift shop (where I'd already collected some postcards, naturally), where the Emily Carr House offers visitors a cup of tea (from their own house blend, a small box of which I did pick up for Christine). Apparently the Emily Carr House also offers painting classes; if you were interested in painting, I think that would be extremely cool, to be able to attend classes in her childhood home, akin to a writing class or residency in the former home of a well-known writer. Such as the Elizabeth Bishop House, for example (which we did wander by back in 2014).

Once done, I returned to the cafe, another coffee, my bag of books, and waited for Steven Ross Smith (I've since accepted work by him for the next issue of Touch the Donkey, by the way), who soon accompanied me across the street to the James Bay New Horizons Centre to where I'd be reading, via Planet Earth Poetry (a series now three decades old, you know). It was an interesting reading, with an open set, including a woman who said she used to live in Ottawa, and attended readings as part of The TREE Reading Series during the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, before relocating west. It suggests we were most likely at at least one or two of the same events, possibly. She hadn't written in moons, so she read one of the pieces she wrote during that particular era. Did a full half an hour reading, which gave my reading a bit of space to breathe. Opened with the book of smaller, moved into the book of sentences. A good event, overall, including meeting Allegra Kaplan (current Yolk editor, and copy editor of Misha Solomon's recent above/ground press title), a poet recently relocated from Montreal. A far way to meet a Montreal poet, but there you go.

After that, Steven Ross Smith was good enough to offer to hold onto my huge bag of books for the evening event, and dropped me off at the Royal BC Museum, a natural history museum comparable to Ottawa's Museum of Nature. It was interesting seeing some of the coastal BC exhibits of ecosystems and animals, plants and other things, so used to my eastern Ontario sense of landscape and geography, so attending the details of these landscapes were entirely new, and extremely engaging. Unfortunately, about a half-hour into my wander, I realized I hadn't actually had lunch or food of any sort yet (it was around 4:30pm by this point), so I realized, however much I wanted to explore the museum further, I really needed to deal with that.

So, I walked. It seemed to make the most sense to head closer to the evening's reading venue and find some food in that area, find a place to sit and just be for an hour or two. Lots of stuff to look at along the edge of the water, as well as a statue of Emily Carr, once more. Is she following me? Possibly.

Some food, a pint, a back issue of The Paris Review and a place to sit for a couple of hours. Mother-in-law did gift a subscription to the journal a couple of years back, but this issue lands prior to that. The interviews, really, are my favourite part of any issue, even if with authors I haven't heard of prior, and this issue is no exception.

A mostly-empty pub by the water, with a slow trickle of young people to an eventual thumpy-loud music and screen coming down for the hockey game. At least by that point, I was heading out to the reading venue.

The evening reading was at Russell Books, a store I realized I should have spent a couple of hours wandering before the reading began. There was no time, for which I am disappointed. It had a remarkable selection, although the store was technically closed during our event. Most of the lights were out, which made me presume the space most likely had at least one ghost.

Hosted by Kyeren Regehr, Victoria's seventh and current Poet Laureate (through Planet Earth Poetry), the crowd was stellar, and included Maleea Acker, Melanie Siebert, Chris Fink-Jensen [I did publish an essay by him, some six years ago, fyi], Sara Cassidy, Lorne Daniel, David Day, Patrick Friesen, Eve Joseph (I brought along my copy of her latest [see my review here], for her to sign), John Barton, Terese Svoboda, and a whole bunch of other folk. A really good crowd, and Anna Yin and Phoebe Wang gave good readings! Wang's mother was there as well, taking photos, which was quite charming (the one time my mother heard me read, as I launched my second poetry title back in April 1999, she actually heckled, if you can imagine, which delighted the audience; I was less pleased by it). After, I sold a bunch of books (and handed out chapbooks); the post-reading crowd lost a track of each other, with Anna Yin and Kyeren and I in one direction, for a drink, and others in another direction. After Anna and Kyeren retired, I did manage to figure out where Sara, Maleea [I've since published a poem by her, by the by], Chris and Melanie had landed, and hung out there for a bit. Into my (hosted) bed around 2am, so the days this way are long.

next up: Mile Zero, and podcasting with Kyeren,

Land of hope and glory, : Victoria, part one,

Is that too obscure a reference? The Kinks, after all, their song “Victoria.” Okay, so maybe that is too obscure. Or this Billy Bragg classic, as well (but my point was The Kinks, here), although both pulling from a British patriotic song from the turn of the prior century. I recently had some adventures in Victoria, British Columbia, doing two readings and a podcast in three days, which was a bit of a whirlwind. When was the last time I'd travelled for a reading? Dublin, last July with Christine. Or Vancouver, last year with Christine as well. Or Calgary, also with Christine. I am very fond of reading and/or travelling with Christine, as you might imagine. Do you remember when I read in London, Ontario, some two-plus years ago?

The blossoms [reminiscent, slightly, of our trip to Washington] were everywhere! Thanks to Planet Earth Poetry, The League of Canadian Poets and The Writers Union of Canada, all to help promote my University of Calgary Press poetry title from the last fall, the book of sentences. Thanks predominantly to current Victoria Poet Laureate Kyeren Regehr for bringing me out! I mean, it has been twenty years or possibly more since I've read in (or even been to) Victoria, despite the annual or semi-annual I did for a stretch beginning in 1997 or so. Maybe 2003 was the last time I was through? I can't even recall.

Thursday, April 23, 2026: Had a 3:45am alarm for 4am cab and 6am flight, landed in Victoria by 11am or so, local time. The Ottawa-Toronto part of the flight I think I slept, but the second flight I spent most of such reading through Phoebe Wang's Relative to Wind (Assembly Press, 2024), a really interesting memoir by the Ottawa-born Toronto poet [see my review of her second poetry title here] on being part of a sailing crew across Lake Ontario. The memoir begins with language in a really interesting way, and expands across a whole slew of details on the minutae of working such a craft, and how she's learned to navigate other elements through the lessons approached here. 

I landed, and my pal (from high school, even) Jennifer collected me from the airport, and we had breakfast (I had to eat something, even though I was exhausted) at Spoons, the coolest little diner. It had posters all over of classic (up to early 70s) Marvel and DC comic book covers, some of which I even have, kicking around. Then I had to crash, where I quickly discovered I'd managed to leave my computer cord at home, so my machine (and subsequent phone) were soon to die. I slept for an hour, before I caught up with my host, poet Rhona McAdam, who was kind enough to drive me out to Staples, where they sold me the incorrect cord (I was at least smart enough to also pick up a way to recharge my phone). From there, a short walk to downtown, to eventually meet up for a pub night, organized by the delightful (and Ottawa-born) Victoria writer and journalist Sara Cassidy. I figured, maybe hit a bookstore if possible, sit with notebook and read for a bit, hang about until I met up with them, all good.

The short walk, with my huge bag of books and envelopes (for that pub night, handouts, etcetera) was ninety minutes, so I completely miscalculated on that. Walked by a gallery show (gallery closed) that looked interesting, You Do Not Have to Be Good (apparently a line from this Mary Oliver poem, which is interesting), "a multi-media debut solo exhibition by Mila Rio," but more on that later. I caught C A V I T Y, a curiosity shop, which was pretty cool. Comics, records, books (I did pick up some stuff, including a back issue of The Paris Review, but was gratified to see some Barry McKinnon poetry titles in there; I nearly picked up an extra copy or two, just to carry around). Blasting punk music. Very nice. You should go to there.

From there, I finally made it downtown, wandering by this sign that led into an alley of Victoria's Chinatown Museum and little slips of history, making me aware just how unaware I am of Victoria history generally. I mean, I have a general sense of Vancouver history, but know absolutely nothing of Victoria. The little corners of history was reminiscent of the Hogan's Alley Society over in Vancouver, attempting to salvage a period and geography of Black history specific to Vancouver, most of which had long been lost (and which every city should attempt to do, acknowledging lost histories and spaces).

The alley threaded between buildings with slips of site-specific history of Chinese immigrants in Victoria, amid a sequence of quaint little shops and curious other spaces. It really is a remarkable (and very cool) array of small spaces, intersliced with histories that deserve not to be forgotten.

Given Ottawa has a Royal Arch (in that we are capital), I've been curious to see Chinatown arches in other Canadian cities, having caught Vancouver (years ago), Montreal (once, while completely lost) and in Winnipeg [during this trip, but I appear not to have taken a picture].

I eventually found my exhausted way to The Drake Eatery and Craft Beer Parlour, where I figured I could decompress with notebook and some reading before heading over to where Sara Cassidy had organized a pub night with a few local writers for me to meet. She'd originally picked one spot, and then relocated to another, neither of which I could remember properly, so when I presumed the Drake was the original spot, so I landed there (thinking this would allow me to see two different Victoria venues), asking Sara where we were ending up, and she said I was already there? So that's on me. A delightful spot, and even, at one point, Sara's teenaged son slipping through to deliver me a computer cord, so my machine wouldn't die. This is from Sara, he said, handing me a cord and disappearing. Relief for the save (but he was like a ghost, albeit far more polite).

I first met Sara [waving, in the pic on the left] back in 1998, after Rhonda Batchelor had told me if I could get myself to Victoria, she'd give me a chapbook and a reading, so, thanks to the ottawa international writers festival's 1998 Via Rail Tour (I participated all the way to Vancouver), it was a quick hop and jump to Victoria, as Sara and I both read from our newly-published Reference West chapbooks (the press ran from 1990 to 2000, co-founded by Batchelor and her husband, the late Charles Lillard). I hadn't seen Sara in more than twenty years, and then the extra delight of being able to meet poets such as Julie Paul [see her '12 or 20 questions' here], Melanie Siebert (both photos, on the left) [see my review of her latest] and Maleea Acker (above, right) [see her 2009 '12 or 20 questions' here], as well as an appearance by Kyeren Regehr and her partner. A lovely evening! Maleea landed early, followed close behind by Melanie, so it was very good to hang out with them, especially given the years we've been interacting over email (and through writing). And honestly, not only are Melanie and Sara extremely cool, but Maleea is an absolute delight (and completing a new manuscript, by the way, shhhhhh). I was worn out by the end of the night, naturally, as I'd probably been up for some uncountable array of hours. Next up? Two readings [part two to follow].

Sainte-Adèle (August,

After the long weekend, we collected the cat, and made for the Laurentians, to Christine's mother's cottage tucked away in Sainte-Adèle, Quebec. We'd only been talking about coming up here for months, given Christine's year of maternity leave, but we only managed to get our first trip up now (we are hoping to get at least two more in before winter).

A few days of doing not very much at all (which is so unlike me, I suppose). Rose was very uncertain of the lawn, which I'm sure will be quite different next summer, when she's tearing around and we hope the outdoors just might wear her out.

For the first day or so, it was entirely rain. I worked the bbq in-between flays of torrential downpours. Only the last of our full-days had any kind of sun to speak of.

While there, I worked on some edits on a poem-in-progress, a kind of abecedarian (thanks to generous feedback from Julie Carr), worked on some edits/comments for a couple of folk via my ongoing poetry editing services, and poked at a couple of other projects, including the Phil Hall selected I've been working on, and forthcoming above/ground press items by myself, Megan Kaminski and Andy Weaver, most of which should even be available for the big twenty-first anniversary event on the fourteenth.

I have yet to get back into fiction, after receiving some feedback from Sara Cassidy (hoping once we are home).

I've been attempting to prod Christine into return to our non-baby collaborative project [see further information on such here, and also here], but that hasn't quite happened. Yet.

And of course, we are still pushing our big Chaudiere Books indiegogo project; see how far we've come!

Since we haven't a crib, we even experimented with baby Rose sleeping upon the floor for her naps, which even occasionally worked. (Who knew?) Although she was slightly more cranky than usual, given we're off her usual routine and what-not (despite attempting not to be).

And we even experimented with allowing Rose to feed herself raspberries, going through nearly an entire pint. Of course, her hands and her clothes entirely covered with raspberry juice. Christine attempted blueberries a couple of weeks ago, and she loved them (but they seemed far less messy).

Quite the difference from last year. Or even the year before (twice).

And all the books I brought to read, almost none of which I've managed to even open...

Prairie Fire Vol. 32, No. 4 (January 2012)

Ghazal beginning with lines

by Yannis Ritsos

I know that each one of us travels to be alone,

alone to faith and to death.

When preparing to lower yourself into a well,

first send down a candle. They breathe air like men.

I dream about the war. Almost every night.

Or sometimes that I have misplaced my child.

Learn to walk as if you had a different history.

Toes unpointed. A hand that never knew a knife.

There is a wildness in God’s mercy,

I misread the hymnal. Think of hawks.

I am preoccupied with angels.

Their pulse and fur. Their eyes on me. (Erin Noteboom)

There is something that struck in the three ghazals by poet Erin Noteboom in the most recent issue of Winnipeg’s Prairie Fire: a Canadian magazine of new writing (Vol. 32, No. 4, January 2012). Over the past decade or so, ghazals have gone the way of the sonnet—everyone is doing them again, and most are unremarkable, watering down the brand. Still, exceptions remain, and I’m intrigued by these three by Noteboom, responding to and from lines by poets Yannis Ritsos, Wislawa Szymborska and Anna Akhmatova. I’m not entirely sure what triggered the most recent run of such, after John Thompson’s posthumous Stilt jack (1976) resulted in the previous burst of ghazals throughout Canadian writing; most were mediocre, but glowing examples by Phyllis Webb, D.G. Jones and a few other stand out. Perhaps the Collected Poems in the mid-1990s? From there, we saw worthy ghazals from Douglas Barbour, Andy Weaver, Eric Folsom and others. And now these, Noteboom’s spiritual reflections through the lines and phrasings of other poets. I’m not sure where she’s going with these, but I admit that I am at least interested in seeing where she is going.

I also admit, I miss opening issues of Prairie Fire to essays and reviews, but relieved that over the past few years the reviews posted online remain, and no longer vanish, as they once did, nearly preventing them from having existed at all. If a book review is posted online for only a year or three, will it have mattered at all? The issue, at least, includes The League of Canadian Poets’ annual “Anne Szumigalski Memorial Lecture,” produced for and presented at their Annual General Meeting. With previous issues featuring lectures by such as Margaret Atwood and Anne Carson, the most recent was by Saskatoon poet and publisher Glen Sorestad, his “Pristine and Startled: Ways of Seeing,” a biographical sketch of how he came into and through a life of writing, including talk of friends and mentors Anne Szumigalski and John Newlove, writing that “Reading Newlove is, for me, to receive a lesson in the economy, precision and musicality of our language.”

I must also pay proper homage to the late John Newlove, who was very much a mentor of mine with his amazing poems, especially “Ride Off Any Horizon.” I still love that poem and I keep returning to it and rereading it as a way of replenishing the spirit and restoring the enormous importance and impact of the incredible music that can be found in the simplest and most precise expression of our language. One of the reasons I was initially drawn to Newlove and his poetry was that we were of the same generation and had, in fact, spent our boyhoods in east-central Saskatchewan within thirty or forty miles of one another without ever knowing this until much later in our adult lives. So we clearly had shared many common experiences of young boys growing up in this parkland area of the northern plains. Sonia and I visited Newlove and his wife Susan in Toronto in 1979 or 1980. Newlove was, like Marriott and Ondaatje, welcoming, open and generous with his time, though he knew little about us when we arrived on his doorstep. I was full of questions about poetry and although Newlove was essentially a shy man and a loner, not much inclined to talk about his art, he nevertheless took us in and showed great patience with both my ignorance and my clumsy attempts to probe his art. (Glen Sorestad)

And what else can I say about Saskatoon poet Sylvia Legris, given all I have said before? [See the piece I wrote on her here, for The Capilano Review blog] I’m constantly heartened to see new work by her in any venue, and have seen enough now that I’m clamouring to see where and when her next trade book might appear, since her Griffin Poetry Prize-winning third trade collection, Nerve Squall (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2006). Four poems exist in this new issue. Legris constantly amazes in the language she uses, able to consistently bring language into poetry that is rarely seen, and used magnificently, a string-set of cadence, rhythm and acrobatics.

Fabrica (esophageal hiatus)

1

Count coaxial cartilage rings up the air channel. The utmost uppermost point is the pulmonary canopy.

A hole in the oscine layer is a study in tracheometrics. Windpipe orchestra. Woodwind bronchial forest. The voicebox? Flocculent. All utterance

scansorial.

2.

Notes are the things with feathers. Call and release. Hum-tones in antigravitational flight. The well-tempered subclavian avian veins its way to the first rib. From neck to diaphragm the phrenic nerve is a Strat string waiting to sing. The stratosphere

utter colour: ruby-gulleted, rose-torsoed, yellow covert sun with white scapulars, dappled. (Sylvia Legris)

I’d wonder the same of Victoria writer Sara Cassidy, with a short story in the new issue as well. Over the years, she’s published enough poetry (including a chapbook through Victoria’s Reference West in 1998) and short fiction (including a chapbook through Greenboathouse in 2006) over the years to produce a trade work of either, alongside her two already-published “youth novels” through Orca. When might the years of journal publications be selected, collected, collated and released? I call you out, Sara Cassidy.

ottawater #8 is now on-line! launch tonight,

the eighth issue of the Ottawa pdf poetry annual ottawater, edited by rob mclennan, is now live, featuring new writing by Sylvia Adams, John Barton, Stephanie Bolster, Frances Boyle, Sara Cassidy, Anita Dolman, Richard Froude, Phil Hall, Marilyn Irwin, Alastair Larwill, Anne Le Dressay, Robin K. Macdonald, Rob Manery, Karen Massey, Christine McNair, Justin Million, Cath Morris, Colin Morton, K.I. Press, Bardia Sinaee, jesslyn delia smith, Priscila Uppal and Andy Weaver, as well as interviews with Michael Dennis and Christine McNair.

Come out to the launch (featuring readings by a number of this issue’s contributors) on Friday, January 27, upstairs at The Carleton Tavern, Parkdale at Armstrong; doors 7pm, reading 7:30pm.