Spotlight series #123 : Suzanne Zelazo

The one hundred and twenty-third in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Canadian-American writer, editor, and educator Suzanne Zelazo.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber, California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman, Brooklyn poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray, Vernon, BC poet Kerry Gilbert, South Carolina poet and translator Lindsay Turner, Vancouver poet and editor Adèle Barclay, Thorold, Ontario poet Franco Cortese, Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton, Lawrence, Kansas poet Megan Kaminski, Ottawa poet and fiction writer Frances Boyle, Ithica, NY poet, editor and publisher Marty Cain, New York City poet Amanda Deutch, Iranian-born and Toronto-based writer/translator Khashayar Mohammadi, Mendocino County writer, librarian, and a visual artist Melissa Eleftherion, Ottawa poet and editor Sarah MacDonell, Montreal poet Simina Banu, Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher J. R. Carpenter, Toronto poet MLA Chernoff, Boise, Idaho poet and critic Martin Corless-Smith, Canadian poet and fiction writer Erin Emily Ann Vance, Toronto poet, editor and publisher Kate Siklosi, Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, Birmingham, Alabama poet and editor Alina Stefanescu, Waterloo, Ontario poet Chris Banks, Chicago poet and editor Carrie Olivia Adams, Vancouver poet and editor Danielle Lafrance, Toronto-based poet and literary critic Dale Martin Smith, American poet, scholar and book-maker Genevieve Kaplan, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic ryan fitzpatrick, American poet and editor Carleen Tibbetts, British Columbia poet nathan dueck, Tiohtiá:ke-based sick slick, poet/critic em/ilie kneifel, writer, translator and lecturer Mark Tardi, New Mexico poet Kōan Anne Brink, Winnipeg poet, editor and critic Melanie Dennis Unrau, Vancouver poet, editor and critic Stephen Collis, poet and social justice coach Aja Couchois Duncan, Colorado poet Sara Renee Marshall, Toronto writer Bahar Orang, Ottawa writer Matthew Firth, Victoria poet Saba Pakdel, Winnipeg poet Julian Day, Ottawa poet, writer and performer nina jane drystek, Comox BC poet Jamie Sharpe, Canadian visual artist and poet Laura Kerr, Quebec City-area poet and translator Simon Brown, Ottawa poet Jennifer Baker, Rwandese Canadian Brooklyn-based writer Victoria Mbabazi, Nova Scotia-based poet and facilitator Nanci Lee, Irish-American poet Nathanael O'Reilly, Canadian poet Tom Prime, Regina-based poet and translator Jérôme Melançon, New York-based poet Emmalea Russo, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic Eric Schmaltz, San Francisco poet Maw Shein Win, Toronto-based writer, playwright and editor Daniel Sarah Karasik, Ottawa poet and editor Dessa Bayrock, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick, poet, writer and editor Jade Wallace, San Francisco-based poet Jennifer Hasegawa, California poet Kyla Houbolt, Toronto poet and editor Emma Rhodes, Canadian-in-Iowa writer Jon Cone, Edmonton/Sicily-based poet, educator, translator, researcher, editor and publisher Adriana Oniță, California-based poet, scholar and teacher Monica Mody, Ottawa poet and editor AJ Dolman, Sudbury poet, critic and fiction writer Kim Fahner, Canadian poet Kemeny Babineau, Indiana poet Nate Logan, Toronto poet and editor Michael Boughn, North Georgia poet and editor Gale Marie Thompson, award-winning poet Ellen Chang-Richardson, Montreal-based poet, professor and scholar of feminist poetics, Jessi MacEachern, Toronto poet and physician Dr. Conor Mc Donnell, San Francisco poet Micah Ballard, Montreal poet Misha Solomon, Ottawa writer and editor Mahaila Smith, American poet and asemic artist Terri Witek, Ottawa-based freelance editor and writer Margo LaPierre, Ottawa poet Helen Robertson, Oakville poet Mandy Sandhu, New Westminster, British Columbia poet Christina Shah, poet, critic, curator and former publisher Geoffrey Young, Calgary poet Anna Veprinska, American expat poet in London Katie Ebbit, Brooklyn poet Nada Gordon, Kingston poet Jason Heroux, Vancouver poet Scott Inniss, Lethbridge-based Brazil-born poet Carlos A. Pittella, Toronto-based Palestinian and Iraqi writer Hajer Mirwali and Calgary artist, poet and musician Kevin Stebner!
 
The whole series can be found online here.

Queen Street Quarterly (1997-2005): interview with Suzanne Zelazo, and bibliography

this interview was conducted over email from December 2020 to February 2021 as part of a project to document literary publishing. see my list of interviews and bibliographies of literary publications past and present here

Suzanne Zelazo is a writer, editor, and educator. She holds a PhD in English with a specialty in female modernism and avant-garde poetry and performance. Her projects seek to integrate creative expression and the body. She is the author two collections of poetry, Lances All Alike and Parlance from Coach House Press, and is editor or co-editor of several books on female artists.

Q: How did Queen Street Quarterly get started?

SZ: I had been volunteering as the photography editor (which was the only position open) at my college literary mag (The Trinity Review). The journal was as formally traditional as the campus. Although I found that limiting, I got to see a little of what went into such an enterprise. Most importantly, I got to see how and where it was printed, which was around the corner at Coach House Press. The singularity of that press with its commitment to the book as an art object was absolutely crucial to how I conceived of the QSQ. What they do as printers made it very clear to me that I wanted to produce a periodical that would showcase the materiality of the text, specifically by including sound and visual poetry. But, as a lover of much lyric work as well, I wanted a venue that would integrate the traditional and the avant garde. I believed and still do in the power of reciprocal exchange between different genres. One way I saw of enabling that was by according the ephemerality that characterizes much experimental work the weighted presence of a proper bound text and to have it appear on zephyr laid paper that would do much to fix the fleeting in place for the benefit of extended engagement. Additionally, I believed the less experimental material in this configuration would take on a different charge featured alongside seemingly incongruous work.

Looking back, part of the impetus to start the QSQ was no doubt youthful arrogance—I did not see any magazines at that time to which I wanted to submit work, or more precisely, which reflected the kind of work I was writing and interested in, so I figured I’d make one.

Q: What were your models when starting out? Were you basing the journal on anything specific, or working more intuitively?

SZ: I wasn’t basing it on anything specific but discovering older copies of Between C and D: Neo-Expressionist Lower East Side Fiction Magazine, edited by Joel Rose and Catherine Texier (1983-1990) made a huge impact on me. I read every one I could get my hands on. Printed and “bound” as it was, or rather, computer-printed accordion-style and packaged in zipped plastic bags, cultivated my understanding of the periodical as art object. The entire print run is stunning and the magazine’s commitment to the avant garde scene was so inspiring to me. Tish was the same for me in terms of prioritizing generic experimentation.

Q: At the time you began the journal, had you been writing for long? Were you attending readings? How were you engaging with your immediate community?

SZ: I wrote poetry at that time for sure, but I was so young! I was very involved in the literary scene in Toronto at that time and I took learning the ins and outs of it very seriously. I went to as many readings and book launches as I could, often hitting more than a few on a single night. The Toronto poetry community in the 1990s was so vibrant and exciting! We had a lot of fun. You were very much a part of that too rob!

Q: It is true. I remember doing a reading with you at the University of Toronto’s Hart House, where I think we might have first met, and I have a recollection of you hanging out with Darren Wershler and Christian Bök. After the reading, Jack Illingsworth solicited you to review for Books in Canada, prompting me to jump in with a “me too!”

I’m wondering: what was the process of putting together those first few issues? Did you have an open call for submissions, or were you soliciting work?

A: I remember that! It was a great night and that crew always made those events celebratory. Jack Illingsworth is wonderful. He has done so much for writing and writers in Canada both behind scenes and in front.

For the inaugural issue of QSQ I solicited work with the generous help of Mike O’Connor of Insomniac Press. I’m not even sure he’d remember this, but he put me in touch with a list of writers I then approached. That gesture—helping a young writer he didn’t know but was introduced to over the phone through a mutual friend—speaks to his kindness and dedication to all things literary, but it also underscores just how important community is to such undertakings. Many people in the community helped make the QSQ what it was. I will never forget that gesture of Mike’s though, and I try to reciprocate in my own engagement with younger writers and the community at large.

Q: That is very cool. I wasn’t aware of any connection between Insomniac and QSQ. How were you first in contact with Mike? Apart from geographic location, I wouldn’t imagine much overlap between the aesthetics of those first years of Insomniac Press and QSQ.

A: It’s true, there is not much of an aesthetic overlap. But, as a Toronto publisher and very lovely guy, Mike is in touch with many writers in the community even beyond the Insomniac authors. A very close friend of mine at the time was also friends with Mike so he put us in touch and then Mike helped me reach out to a list of authors. It was a fortuitous connection for which I am forever grateful.

Q: One element of the journal I immediately admired was that I was able to see work by certain writers that I don’t think I’d actually seen in journals up to that point. What were you working to achieve with your editorial, and how well do you feel you achieved those initial goals?

SZ: Yes, I do think we achieved our goal of publishing new and emerging experimental writers alongside more established writers and more traditional work. Associate editors Stephen Cain and Natalee Caple, and for a time Neil Hennessy, Jay Millar and Karen McCormack, were all instrumental in soliciting cutting-edge work. We often invited contributions from authors without a long publishing history but whose work we admired and knew of from readings or from their own self-publishing ventures.

Q: What was the process of originally involving Stephen Cain and Natalee Caple? The masthead originally has you as editor, but after a couple of issues, a number of people were brought on to assist, including Cain, Caple and Michael Trussler. How did they get involved, and what were their roles?

A: I have always believed in collaboration and it was very important to me that the magazine reflected the very best of what was happening at that moment. To do that I wanted and needed multiple perspectives. Having an editorial board helped ensure that. Natalee, Stephen, and my brother Phil were the longest standing members and their contributions were enormous. Not only did they read and vet submissions, but they also helped identify new work and solicit contributions, as did the shorter-term members. All of them were absolutely crucial to what the magazine became. The process of getting them involved was fairly straightforward. They are all writers and readers I admire and who were doing something different than me and each other. I invited them to join us and they all graciously volunteered their time and beautiful minds.

When Stephen Cain became my then, long-time partner, he also did a lot of behind the scenes practical, administrative work with me. His commitment to the small press, his encyclopedic understanding of its history, his ear for sumptuous sounds, and his belief in the QSQ was critical on so many levels.

Q: What was the response to Queen Street Quarterly? And how do you feel the journal developed as you went along? What do you feel you achieved?

A: The QSQ was very much a writer’s magazine and the response to it reflected that—it was a well-known unknown. Being a “little magazine,” its lack of commercial status made it both accessible and somewhat inaccessible and that was perfect. We wanted to reflect the literary landscape not just the literary market sweethearts (which we did feature as well). An enthusiastic community grew around the QSQ over the years. It became a place of exchange and in so being, a place of creative generativity. In particular it was a community of LANGUAGE poets, concrete poets, intermedia artists—writers working innovatively between genres, including writers of fiction who were testing out new forms. It was an eclectic, inspired, and inspiring community dedicated to the word. Cultivating that community was definitely an aim I feel we achieved.

Q: How did you manage to pay for the journal? Had you funding? Sales? Were you holding launches?

A: As with most small press endeavours, the finances were always lean. The funding structures are such that you can’t apply for provincial or federal arts grants without proof of viability as an enterprise—you need to have put out a certain number of issues to qualify. As a result, (and I would never recommend this to a young publisher!)  I paid for the first few issues with my student loans at the time. After putting out the requisite number of issues to be eligible to apply, we received OAC and Canada Arts Council support which was invaluable. We were distributed by what used to be called the Canadian Magazine Publishers Association (now Magazine’s Canada), so sales plus semi-regular launches brought in some revenue. We also had a loyal list of subscribers. We always just made it. We didn’t have much overhead because it was produced in my various apartments and after hours in the work spaces of our wonderful layout manager Judith Parker, and as mentioned, the editors volunteered their time.

Q: Were there any submissions that surprised you? Any writers you wouldn’t have thought might have submitted anything to you but did? Who were the “discoveries” you feel you were able to make?

A: I was regularly surprised! I wouldn’t want to claim to have discovered any writer, but I loved being able to provide a forum for writers at early stages of their career like Emily Schultz and Seyward Goodhand. I loved publishing the sonic visual work of W. Mark Sutherland and poems by Karen Mac Cormack alongside the stories we got from Andrew Pyper and Russell Smith. I think those kinds of juxtapositions enacted their own kinds of discoveries.

Q: The journal had a remarkable run. In your editor’s note as part of the final issue (Volume 7, No. 4), you wrote: “I began Queen Street Quarterly because I believe in creative action. I wanted to create a place that would unite the many different voices that were and are Canadian literature. At the time most magazines were singular–exclusively traditional and lyric, or exclusively avant-garde and characteristically ephemeral. Having always believed in the capacity for reciprocity between the most seemingly disparate things, I thought it was important to put the street in the museum and the museum in the street–wherein sound scores, concrete poems, and surrealist games in all of their ephemeral brilliance could be preserved, proper bound and anchored in heavy, zephyr laid paper, and where the narrative and the lyric could be un-mired–refreshed by a proximity to newer forms. At the time, nothing existed which fostered such relationships so I, perhaps naively and perhaps arrogantly, took it upon myself to create such a space.” How do you feel about that statement now? What, in the end, was behind the decision to fold the journal?

A: It is always strange to revisit heartfelt statements from one’s past but despite that, I would say the overall message is still apt. It was a very difficult decision to fold the QSQ—I didn’t make it lightly. Behind it was a number of overlapping reasons, the most practical of which was that I was trying to finish my doctoral dissertation. At that time, however, there was a shift in the industry more generally with independent bookstores folding under the weight of big box bookstores. This had many repercussions on writers and publishers who were not mainstream including a sense of malaise and the need for new strategies for engagement and production.

Although I thought about handing over the editorial responsibilities to someone else, I elected to preserve the history of what it was—to bookend the literary energy of a particular time period and make room for new ideas and directions. Indeed, there were a number of cool publishing venues about to emerge like ditch, and The Puritan.

Queen Street Quarterly bibliography:

Volume 1, No. 1. Spring 1997. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil D. Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Contributing Editors: Richard Preiss, Zöe Renard. Layout: Neil McDonald. Contributions by: bill bissett, Richard Preiss, John M. Currid, George G. Murray, Christian Bök, Natalee Caple, David Urban, Lee Gotham, Jill Battson, Diana Tregenkamp, Matt R. Yeldon, Clare Bermingham and Michael Kirkham. Cover photo: shwa.

Volume 1, No. 2. Summer 1997. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Contributing Editors: Natalee Caple, Michael Trussler. Layout: Judith Parker. Contributions by: Matthew Remski, Herb Jackson, Darren Wershler-Henry, Shannon Bramer, Lara Aase, Stan Rogal, Herb Jackson, Hal Niedzviecki, Gordon Marshall, Chris Doda, Stephen Cain, Michelle Berry, George Murray and Priscila Uppal. Cover photo: Laurel Bidwell.

Volume 1, No. 3, Autumn 1997. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Contributing Editors: Natalee Caple, Michael Trussler. Layout: Judith Parker. Contributions by: Lise Downe, John Barlow, Matthew Firth, Jay MillAr, Christian Bök, Alana Wilcox, Nancy Dembowski, Marc Bechara, Gérald Audet, Matt Santateresa, Brian Panhuyzen, Michael Bryson, Christina Francisco, Natalee Caple and Beatriz Milhazes. Cover: Beatriz Milhazes.

Volume 1, No. 4, Winter 1997/Volume 2, No. 1, Spring 1998. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editor: Natalee Caple. Copy Editor: Stephen Cain. Layout: Judith Parker. Public Relations Manager: Wendy Morgan. Contributions by: A.F. Moritz, Mark Sutherland, Paul Dutton, Patrick Friesen, Tatiana Freire-Lizama, Paul Vermeersch, Lindsay Tabah, rob mclennan, Simon Archer, Brooke Clark, Fred Gaysek, Louise Bak, Julie Moos, R.M. Vaughan, Steve Venright, Darren Wershler-Henry, Catherine Jenkins, Tom Raworth, Peter Jaeger, Joāo Agapito, Nihad Hasanovic, Jill Larill and Vern Smith. Cover: Catherine Jenkins.

Volume 2, No. 2, Summer 1998. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editor: Natalee Caple. Copy Editor: Stephen Cain. Layout: Judith Parker. Public Relations Manager: Wendy Morgan. Editorial Intern: James Arthur. Contributions by: Jeff Derksen, Michael Trussler, Peter McPhee, j.a. LoveGrove, Nancy Bullis, Scott Pound, Jesse Huisken, Alexandra Leggat, Janine Guay, Michelle Berry, John Barlow, Sarah Dearing, Jonathan Bennett and Victor Coleman. Cover: Christian McLeod.

Volume 2, No. 3, 1998. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editor: Natalee Caple. Copy Editor: Stephen Cain. Layout: Judith Parker. Public Relations: Wendy Morgan. Contributions by: Peter Jaeger, Tom Orange, Rabindranath Maharaj, Gordon Michael Allen, Michael Kelleher, Helen Tsiriotakis, Beth Learn, Peter Darbyshire, Stephen Cain, Monika Burkhardt, William Howe, Simmone Howell, Ann Shin, Patrick Roscoe and Suzanne Zelazo. Cover: Jennifer Walton.

Volume 2, No. 4/Volume 3, No. 1, Winter/Spring 1999. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Wendy Morgan. Production: Judith Parker. Contributions by: Ken Babstock, John Barlow, Derek Beaulieu, bill bissett, Randy Boyagoda, George Bowering, Graham Foust, Steve Hayward, Jim Larwill, Alexandra Leggat, damian lopes, rob mclennan, Ingo Meller, David O’Meara, Brian Panhuyzen, Matt Santateresa, Royston Tester, Paul Vermeersch, Anne F. Walker and Marnie Woodrow. Cover art: Ingo Meller.

Volume 3, No. 2. Summer 1999. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Wendy Morgan. Production: Judith Parker. Contributions by: Charles Bernstein, Christian Bök, Jordan Broadworth, Holly Borgerson Calder, Frank Davey, Christopher Dewdney, Sky Gilbert, Neil Hennessy, j.a. LoveGrove, Andrew King, Esther Mazakian, Esta Spalding, Kate Sutherland, Sherwin Tija and tmuir. Cover art: Jordan Broadworth.

Volume 3, No. 3. Fall 1999. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Wendy Morgan. Production: Judith Parker. Contributions by: Gary Barwin, Darryl Berger, Tony Burgess, Cora Cluett, Lauren Davis, Beth Follett, Graham Foust, Michael Holmes, Andrew Pyper, Trish Salah, Emily Schultz, W. Mark Sutherland and Carleton Wilson. Cover art: Cora Cluett.

Volume 3, No. 4. Winter 2000. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr. Contributions by: Paul Anderson, Jesse Craig Bellringer, Victor Coleman, Bill Griffiths, Hal Niedzviecki, Karen Mac Cormack, Esther Mazakian, Steve McCaffery, David McGimpsey, Jay MillAr, Mary Nyguist, Robert Priest, Matt Robinson, W. Mark Sutherland, Scott Wallis and Andy Weaver. Cover art: Scott Wallis.

Volume 4, No. 1. Spring 2000. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr. Contributions by: Ken Babstock, Derek Beaulieu, Mike Barnes, Daniel f. Bradley, Kate Brown, Kyle Buckley, Clint Burnham, André Carpentier, Maggie Helwig, M.G. Hesse, bill kennedy, Jonathan Lasker, Erín Moure, Jed Rasula, Stan Rogal, Jeremy Sigler, Marnie Woodrow and Jacob Wren. Cover art: Jonathan Lasker.

Volume 4, No. 2. Summer 2000. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr. Contributions by: James Arthur, Kemeny Babineau, Michelle Berry, George Bowering, Jason Christie, Jeramy Dodds, Maria Gould, Janine Guay, Noah Leznoff, Billy Mavreas, Esther Mazakian, rob mclennan, lucas mulder, Ken Norris, a. rawlings, Karen Rosenberg, Erin Soros, Lori Waxman, Zoe Whittall, Julia Williams and Aaron Williamson. Cover art: Lori Waxman.

Volume 4, No. 3, 2000. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr. Contributions by: Mike Barnes, Jesse Craig Bellringer, Matthew Firth, Stephen Henighan, Paul Kelley, Robert Lake, Howard Lonn, Esther Mazakian, Nichole McGill, Amanda Mekhael, John Riddell, matt robinson, Timothy Rogers, Emily Schultz, Spencer Selby, Lytle Shaw, natalie stephens, Paul Vermeersch and Anne F. Walker. Cover art: Howard Lonn.

Volume 4, No. 4, 2001. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr. Contributions by: Bruce Andrews, derek beaulieu, Caroline Bergvall, Gillian Best, Taylor Brady, John Degen, Chris Doda, Michael Holmes, Adrian Liu, Michael Mahy, Billy Mavreas, jeremy mcleod, Ken Norris, Clemente Padin, Jay Ruzesky, Rick/Simon and Jessica Smith. Cover art: Rick/Simon.

Volume 5, No. 1, Spring 2001. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr and Rick/Simon. Contributions by: Louis Cabri, Margaret Christakos, Jason Christie, Tim Conley, jwcurry, Michael deBeyer, Bill Howell, Jake Kennedy, Robert Lake, Wendy Lu, Rob Read, Michael Redhill, David Rodgers, Stuart Ross and William Woodruff. Cover art: jwcurry.

Volume 5, No. 2, Summer 2001. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr. Contributions by: Josh Auerbach, Mike Barnes, Terrence Chiusano, Margaret Christakos, Kelly Dignan, Jon Paul Fiorentino, Loss Pequeño Glazier, Maria Gould, Ihor Holubizky, Coral Hull, Eva Jacek, G.P. Lainsbury, Donato Mancini, Sharon McCartney, rob mclennan, Blaise Moritz, Ken Norris, Kent Nussey, Jennifer M. Paquette, Alex Pugsley, Jean-Paul Riopelle, matt robinson and Karen Woodman. Cover art: Jean-Paul Riopelle.

Volume 5, No. 3, 2001. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy. Copy Editor: Ava Kwinter. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Rick/Simon. Contributions by: Darryl Berger, Tony Burgess, Bob Cobbing, Stephen Brockwell, Victor Coleman, Tim Conley, Jason Christie, Richard Deming, Jason LeHeup, Shawna Lemay, Gustave Morin, Jessica Smith, W. Mark Sutherland, Royston Tester and J. Ryan Wade. Cover art: Tony Burgess.

Volume 5, No. 4/Vol. 6, No 1, Spring 2002. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy. Copy Editor: Ava Kwinter. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Rick/Simon. Contributions by: Christian Bök, George Bowering, derek beaulieu, daniel f. bradley, kyle buckley, Stephen Cain, Jason Christie, Janieta Eyre, Beth Follett, Susan Glickman, Jesse Huisken, Sarah Hurd, Bill Kennedy jeremy mcleod, David McGimpsey, rob mclennan, Jay MillAr, Gustave Morin, Blaise Moritz, Carol Parikh, Andrew Pyper, Meredith Quartermain, Rob Read, matt robinson, Lytle Shaw, J. Mark Smith, W. Mark Sutherland, Alice Teichert, Betsy Trumpner and Darren Wershler-Henry. Cover art: Jenieta Eyre.

Volume 6, No. 2, Summer 2002. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Rick/Simon. Contributions by: Greg Betts, Geoff Hlibchuk, Michael Holmes, Peter Jaeger, W.B. Keckler, Karen Mac Cormack, Steve McCaffery, Garry Morse, a. rawlings, Steve Savage, Emily Schultz, Natalie Simpson, Chris Turnbull, Martin Turenne and Susana Molinolo. Cover art: Rick/Simon.

Volume 6, No. 3, Fall 2002. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy, Karen Mac Cormack. Production: Judith Parker. Contributions by: Guy R. Beining, Jonathan Bennett, Jason Camlot, Tim Conley, Andréas Embiricos, Grev Evanson, Allen Fisher, Alan halsey, Jesse Huisken, Jesse Lee Jennison, Evan Jones, Sophie Levy, Jay MillAr, Jeff Musgrave and Alex Porco. Cover art: William Wegman.

Volume 6, No. 4, 2003. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy, Karen Mac Cormack. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr and Rick/Simon. Contributions by: Stephen Brockwell, Kyle Buckley, Abigail Child, Adrian Clarke, Tim Conley, John Delacourt, Jill Hartman, Steven Heighton, Paul Hegedus, Kevin Irie, Brian Jungen, Cory Lavender, Donato Mancini, Barry McKinnon, Jeremy McLeod, Geraldine Monk, Gustave Morin, Alex Porco, Nikki Reimer, Trevor Speller, Lesley Trites, Michael Trussler, Reese Warner, Elena Wolff and Karen Yacobucci. Cover art: Brian Jungen.

Volume 7, No. 1, 2003. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Rick/Simon. Contributions by: Gavin Babstock, Elizabeth Ben-Ishai, Caroline Bergvall, Bill Boletis, Stephen Brockwell, Natalee Caple, Tim Conley, Pat Cull, Bill Howell, Jake Kennedy, Larissa Kostoff, Mark Laliberte, Drue Langlois and Michael Dumontier, Pasha Malla, Shelby Matthews, Ken Norris, Tamás Prágai, Alexandra Preto, Stan Rogal, Jessica Smith, Linda Spalding, Tamiae Squibb and Moez Surani. Cover art: Drue Langlois and Michael Dumontier.

Volume 7, No. 2, 2004. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy, Karen Mac Cormack. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr and Rick/Simon. Contributions by: Charles Alexander, Michael deBeyer, Gabe Foreman, Seyward Goodhand, Paul Hegedus, Steven Heighton, Peter Jaeger, Kevin Killian, Derek McCormack, Blaise Moritz, Anne Nettles and Russell Smith. Cover art: Edward Burtynsky.

Volume 7, No. 3, 2004. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy, Karen Mac Cormack. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr and Rick/Simon. Contributions by: Louise Bak, Michael Basinski, derek beaulieu, Charles William Boyes, Jason Christie, Tim Conley, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Kenneth Goldsmith, Sharon Harris, rob mclennan, Jay MillAr, Gustave Morin, Jeff Musgrave, Hugh Thomas, Martin Turenne and Reese Warner. Cover art: Derek Beaulieu.

Volume 7, No. 4, 2005. Editor: Suzanne Zelazo. Associate Editor: Phil Zelazo. Visual Arts Editor: David Moos. Literary Editors: Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennessy, Karen Mac Cormack. Production: Judith Parker. Additional Design: Jay MillAr and Rick/Simon. Contributions by: Douglas Barbour, derek beaulieu, Gregory Betts, Frank Davey, Ray Ellenwood, Paul Hegedus, Ailsa Kay, Blaise Moritz, Sheila E. Murphy, Alessandro Porco, a. rawlings, Emily Schultz, Paul Vermeersch, Anne E. Walker and Bruce Whiteman. Cover art: Rick/Simon.

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Suzanne Zelazo, Lances All Alike

Concussed

Here, the thinking is decorative, breathing out of range in myth. She is the deep blue quiver of its aftermath. Balance the ledger, tally the debt, it’s strobe-lit and coupled. He slips like her hand through a paper mantel, foresees its various symbols. The swerve of too-narrow wrists. Small alcove of sleep where his grace uncoils and her skull cracks golden fever. Reluctant mother tongue, electric. She knew the bruised lilacs on his spine were from hiding—back up against the surge. She approximates the refill. Follow his hands in laying bricks, the perfect grammar of their fortress. Her trances are an affliction, a self-portrait and its silhouette. Shrink the cell, she warns. The flame in his throat, an eviction, a brimming meant for mining. Each morning blurs its translation. Here, she is the wet fold of drowning.

After far too long a wait comes a second trade poetry collection from Toronto poet,editor and critic Suzanne Zelazo [see my 2015 Jacket2 piece on her here]—Lances All Alike (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2018)—following her debut, Parlance (Coach House Books, 2003). Not that she has been idle or absent, having held a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at Ryerson University under Irene Gammel, exploring experimental writers and poets including Mina Loy, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Florine Stettheimer, and co-edited, with Gammel, the critically-acclaimed collections Crystal Flowers: Poetry and a Libretto by Florine Stettheimer (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2010) and Body Sweats : The Uncensored Writings of Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (The MIT Press, 2011). As Parlance emerged from Zelazo’s readings of and research into Virginia Woolf (specifically, To the Lighthouse), Lances All Alike emerges from her work on Loy and Freytag-Loringhoven. As she writes to open her “Notes” at the end of the collection:

In a prescient essay on the artist Joseph Cornell (1903-72) and his assemblage boxes, Mina Loy considers artistic influence a form of collage: ‘This appropriation of others’ handiwork is not pilfering, but lifting out of the past another’s sight tinged with family likeness – aspects added to the original by the altered observation of modern eyes.’ This is the spirit in which I ‘appropriate’ the work of Loy and the Baroness, as well as that of Joyce and Faulkner. Specifically, the collection explores lines of influence and collaboration; I believe that when we read and write, we bring with us the imprint of everything that has ever moved us, thus we do so always as a collaboration.

Collage is very much in play here, and Zelazo’s poems move at a remarkable speed, in large part due to the condensed and specific language, as she writes in the poem “Blue Notes”: “There’s nothing more beautiful / than your eyes closing over our uprising, / finger raised in silence / complicit in the resonance.” Cerebral and sensual, the poems collide, collude and fractal, often moving in multiple directions simultaneously. To highlight her composition of carving and reassembling, the four groupings of poems are numbered excisions: “EXCISION 1: The Bisected Poems of Mina Loy and Baroness Elsa,” EXCISION 2: Engendering Exiles,” “EXCISION 3: Sutured Portraits” and “EXCISION 4: As I Lay Sighing.”

Zelazo’s collage-poems explore the potential collisions and collusions between two wildly individual contemporaries that, supposedly, and bafflingly, might not have interacted during their lifetimes. In an interview posted at Touch the Donkey in 2015 on the project, then still in-progress, Zelazo explained: “The poems are characteristic of what I’ve been working on for a while now— a modernist conversation between the Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven and Mina Loy, and a more general consideration of artistic influence. […]  As in my first book, collage is central, but I think the collection explores voice—the simultaneity of voices—very differently.” It’s curious to see Zelazo’s ongoing exploration of female modernist writers, engaging the intersections between Mina Loy and Baroness Elsa, even as her first collection explored (less blended than this current work, but still seeking points of common entry) the work of Virginia Woolf against an elegy for Zelazo’s late mother. She might be engaging in modernist conversation, but through a postmodern lens, reassembling the narrative through fractal, clipped fragment and deliberate obsfucation, thus opening up the possibility of entirely new directions in the narrative; influenced by, as Sina Queyras suggested in a note on Parlance in 2005, collage-and-chance poets such as Jackson Mac Low. In the same interview, she continued:

For both Loy and the Baroness, collage enabled a dispersal of self, predicated on language as embodiment. Both women daringly redeployed the art form to critique the conventional sexism and pro-war sensibilities which the masculinist avant-garde disseminated. This collection stages an imaginary, sustained conversation between the two poets who in spite of numerous aesthetic resonances and common artist friends (notably, Djuna Barnes and Marcel Duchamp), never engaged with one another. There is no record of any exchanges between the two poets. Their non-relationship thus figures as a curious “absent presence” in modernist cultural history.

Touch the Donkey supplement: new interviews with Zelazo, Hajnoczky, MacLeod, Maguire, Mangold and Trivedi.

Anticipating the release next week of the eighth issue of Touch the Donkey (a small poetry journal), why not check out the interviews that have appeared over the past few weeks with contributors to the seventh issue: Suzanne Zelazo, Helen Hajnoczky, Kathryn MacLeod, Shannon Maguire, Sarah Mangold and Amish Trivedi.

Interviews with contributors to the first six issues, as well, remain online, including: Lola Lemire Tostevin, Aaron Tucker, Kayla Czaga, Jason Christie, Jennifer Kronovet, Jordan Abel, Deborah Poe, Edward Smallfield, ryan fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Robinson, nathan dueck, Paige Taggart, Christine McNair, Stan Rogal, Jessica Smith, Nikki Sheppy, Kirsten Kaschock, Lise Downe, Lisa Jarnot, Chris Turnbull, Gary Barwin, Susan Briante, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, j/j hastain, Catherine Wagner, Susanne Dyckman, Susan Holbrook, Julie Carr, David Peter Clark, Pearl Pirie, Eric Baus, Pattie McCarthy, Camille Martin and Gil McElroy.

The forthcoming eighth issue features new writing by: Mary Kasimor, Billy Mavreas, damian lopes, Pete Smith, Sonnet L’Abbé, Katie L. Price, a rawlings and Gil McElroy. And, once the new issue appears, watch the blog over the subsequent weeks and months for interviews with a variety of the issue's contributors!

And of course, copies of the first seven issues are still very much available. Why not subscribe?

We even have our own Facebook group. You know, it's a lot cheaper than going to the movies.

Suzanne Zelazo: two new poems, at Jacket2

My 13th 'commentary,' "Suzanne Zelazo: two new poems," is now online at Jacket2.

Queen Street Quarterly: final

With the brand-new issue, Volume 7, Number 4, now on the stands, Toronto’s Queen Street Quarterly journal celebrates the end of seven years of publishing. Easily the best little magazine in Canada, where else were you going to find the work of Stephen Cain, John Barlow, Christian Bök, Lise Downe, Steve McCaffery, a. rawlings, jwcurry, Matthew Remski, Nancy Dembowski, Victor Coleman, John Riddell, Gregory Betts and so many others that don’t often publish in the little magazines, with their work alongside that of more magazine-familiar names such as Stephen Brockwell, Jon Paul Fiorentino, derek beaulieu, Michelle Berry, Margaret Christakos, Michael Holmes and Ken Babstock. As the avants at the Kootenay School of Writing and Talonbooks on the west coast have access to The Capilano Review, Queen Street Quarterly filled a void in Toronto for the non-traditional poetic, publishing not just the standard lyric, but visual/concrete work, surrealist writing and writing within the Oulipo. As well, Queen Street Quarterly, although named after a well known Toronto strip, published not just the work of locals, but reached out nationally and internationally, bringing in writers and writing from various other communities (work by Aaron Williamson, Bill Griffiths, Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, Coral Hull and Spencer Selby also appeared in the magazine) to produce a diverse and impressive journal of poetry and fiction that didn’t hold specifically to any one aesthetic. Since the magazine began, others have started moving in that direction, publishing more non-traditional works, such as Calgary magazines filling station and the new dANDelion, and Concordia University’s Matrix magazine.

As editor Suzanne Zelazo writes in her editor’s note:

"I began Queen Street Quarterly because I believe in creative action. I wanted to create a place that would unite the many different voices that were and are Canadian literature. At the time most magazines were singular–exclusively traditional and lyric, or exclusively avant-garde and characteristically ephemeral. Having always believed in the capacity for reciprocity between the most seemingly disparate things, I thought it was important to put the street in the museum and the museum in the street–wherein sound scores, concrete poems, and surrealist games in all of their ephemeral brilliance could be preserved, proper bound and anchored in heavy, zephyr laid paper, and where the narrative and the lyric could be un-mired–refreshed by a proximity to newer forms. At the time, nothing existed which fostered such relationships so I, perhaps naively and perhaps arrogantly, took it upon myself to create such a space."

The editors, Suzanne and Phil Zelazo, David Moos, Stephen Cain, Natalee Caple, Neil Hennesy, Karen Mac Cormack, with production by Judith Parker, Jay MillAr and Rick/Simon, have produced a fine run.

Zelazo ends her note with:

"Saying goodbye to the QSQ, however, is not easy. I have thought hard about leaving behind some explicitly stated and concise description of what the QSQ means, yet, for the past seven years I have never been one to overly specify our mandate–wishing instead that the magazine spoke for itself. I hope here, in hinting at my personal aesthetics, and through the contributions in this final issue, to do the same." Very few magazines, I think, have spoken so well.

The final issue includes work by Paul Hegedus, Ray Ellenwood, a. rawlings, Anne F. Walker, Paul Vermeersch, Alisa Kay, derek beaulieu, Frank Davey, Blaise Moritz, Douglas Barbour and Sheila E. Murphy, Gregory Betts, Alessandro Porco, Emily Schultz and Bruce Whiteman, as well as cover artwork by Coach House’s own Rick/Simon.

Back issues: $5.00 (including postage), 2 for $7.00 (including postage). Send cheques payable to Queen Street Quarterly, box 311, Stn. P, 704 Spadina Avenue, Toronto ON Canada, M5S 2S8. For all other enquiries please email theqsq@hotmail.com