Our Winnipeg:

Okay, so we spent the weekend in Winnipeg, for the sake of Christine's family things. Her mother is from there, so our whole crew, plus Christine's brother and his family, met up with mother-in-law and her two Winnipeg-based sisters, to acknowledge what would have been Christine's grandfather's one hundredth birthday. The last time I was in Winnipeg was for the sake of the ARP launch in 2023, which was plenty fun [see my report on such here], but this trip more for a couple of family events, and the kids seeing cousins. I've been moving around a lot lately, far more than usual, catching a recent week at the Banff Centre [see my report here] and an exciting weekend in Victoria, with three events in two days [see my reports on such here]. Otherwise, our last family trips would be Park Omega in February [a quick overnight, see my report] or that trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland last July, following Rose and her choir around as they performed [see my reports on such here], or even Calgary, the November prior (where Christine and I also read, and Rose had a birthday) [see my report on such here]. There is talk of our household (sans cats) attempting to drive to Halifax later this summer to visit Christine's brother and his family, but nothing is settled quite yet.

We spent the weekend in Winnipeg, landing Friday just before noon, and the young ladies and I left Christine to rest in our hotel room while we ran off to the Assiniboine Park Zoo [our young ladies have requested fewer pictures of them online, by the way], another Robert Kroetsch reference, his poem "The Winnipeg Zoo" [see also: Mile Zero]. Although, if this zoo (established 1904) was always known as the Assiniboine Park Zoo, why did Kroetsch title his poem thus? Was it the presumption that folk beyond the city's boundaries wouldn't have known the reference? Or was he, in New York State, misremembering? Mid-point through the zoo adventure, we met up with Winnipeg poet Melanie Dennis Unrau [see my review of her debut here], which did prompt Rose to complain less about having to be out at all, at a zoo, whatever. Aoife was having a grand time. She wanted to see snakes! She wanted to see polar bears! Melanie showed us the polar bears, who seemed tired, bored. But the heat was some thirty degrees. One barely poked his head up from the pool.

After the zoo, we went off to meet up with Christine, and then with her brother and his family for dinner, before they took the kids to the pool, and I wandered out to a pub night with various Winnipeg writers (Christine had considered joining, but her energy didn't allow for such), including Unrau [pictured], Marjorie Poor, melanie brannagan frederiksen, K.I. Press, Angeline Schellenberg, Julian Day and Kathy Block at a local place called Barn Hammer, which I quite liked. It was good to meet Schellenberg, who I hadn't prior [she had a "Tuesday poem" back in 2022], and I'd forgotten that Poor actually used to work at the late, lamented Heaven Art & Book Cafe, so we hadn't seen each other since the end-of-Heaven party back in, what, June 1999? Apparently Block had attended, during Covid, an online chapbook-making conversation I was invited to do, sponsored through one of the provincial Writers Guilds (Alberta? most likely). And did you know that Unrau has a new chapbook with Gap Riot Press? It is a lovely thing, hoping to get my hands on a copy of my own at some point. It was a grand adventure! Always good to see folk, certainly.

The next morning, a brunch, as our young ladies hung out with their cousins. More time at the pool, in which the young ladies hung out with their cousins [and I began to read the book, above, that Christine found at the Ottawa airport, as we were leaving]. And a bbq at Christine's auntie's house, where the young ladies hung out further with their cousins, a wall of photographs of Christine's grandparents. Christine's brother's family live in Halifax, after all, so we're only able to see them a couple of times a year. And at the bbq, a birthday cake or two for Christine, to mark her own birthday [do you remember the birthday poem I wrote her in 2011?], even wearing the birthday pin that I got her (or was it the one her mother got her? we each picked up the same). 

We visited the graveyard, on Sunday, where mother-in-law's parents lay, and a quick trip to Red River Books (finally) and then the Manitoba Museum before heading back to the airport. So quick! The big ship at the back of the Museum was pretty cool. Go see that!

And did you know that Winnipeg is the Slurpee Capital of the World? I had no idea! Although we did appreciate it, in the thirty-plus degree heat.

Happy Tenth Birthday, Aoife!

Can you believe my small one is already ten? How does that happen? Happy birthday!

 

today is my fifty-sixth birthday,

and I’ve been wearing my ‘birthday boy’ pin since Monday, given I take the whole week.

Here, this annual check-in, to see where I’m at. Where was I last year? Ten years back? Where culture suggests New Year’s as the moment to collect, recollect, I’ve always done on my birthday, these fifty-six years since I first appeared at the former Grace Hospital on Wellington Street West, two blocks or so from the Carleton Tavern.

As some might know, I’ve been in the basement since the last day of August, having spent eighteen months relocating my home office from our main floor (where I’d been since we landed in our Alta Vista house, the same season our Rose was born), so our young ladies didn’t have to share a bedroom anymore. For the first three months, at least, we barely saw either of them, set behind their closed doors, in their spaces. Once made, the move felt immediately more comfortable than I might have imagined, mid-point through an essay on the trauma of the relocation, but then there simply wasn’t, and I went immediately to work (although winter and the spring thaw does make it a bit cool down in the back corner of the basement, but mother-in-law did gift a space heater, which I use when required). A much smaller space, so the bulk of the work of the move was two-fold: carving and curating a particular corner with what I would need, and attempting to not just physically move everything else, but figure out where the hell to put it (that last part is still working itself through).

We also have two new kittens over the past couple of weeks, but you already know that. This, also, a prompt for the young ladies to keep their bedroom doors open. With kittens, we actually see the young ladies more often.

I’ve been working, lately, short essays: focusing on a particular poet, a particular title, as a way through thinking on a particular form. I worked a piece on Kingston poet Joanne Page (and Sadiqa de Meijer and Bronwen Wallace etc), but evolved into a subsequent piece on the prose poem/Anne Carson’s Short Talks (1992); currently working a piece on (a particular version of) the Canadian long poem/Don McKay’s Long Sault (1975). To revisit classic works, specifically across my own reading, to see if there might be something new to learn. Not sure where I might go next (I do have some thoughts—Monty Reid, John Thompson, etc), but think I may better serve the work by focusing purely on one piece at a time. Otherwise, I recently put the project-based poetry manuscript “Fair bodies of unseen prose” to bed [I wrote on such here], having sent it out into the world to a potential publisher. I’ve also been shopping around “the genealogy book” and “the green notebook” for some months now, as well as my Covid-era essay-book, “Lecture for an Empty Room” (I’ve returned to such recently, for the purposes of revisiting/cleaning up that particular manuscript). I keep thinking non-fiction might be where I think best, especially when publishers keep saying how great the writing is in these manuscripts, but then add how they aren’t able to publish them. It makes for a frustrating process.

I’m close to also completing my further project-based poetry manuscript, “dream logic: poems from a Sunday prompt,” working weekly across the length and breadth of 2025, thanks to Benjamin Niespodziany’s “Sunday poem and prompt” substack. I’m announcing a chapbook from the same project via above/ground press a bit later this morning (the press turns thirty-three this summer; can you imagine?), in case such intrigues. I’ve been slowly working on my “Museum of Practical Things” since July [a project I wrote about over here], as well as a collaboration with Jessica Smith—“Lake Ontario.” I had a dream not long ago that she and I each wrote 20-30 page long poems on “Lake Ontario,” prompted in part via Lorine Niedecker’s “Lake Superior,” but this as a counterpoint across an international border with increased tension, thanks to that most ridiculous orange monster over there (when I first met Jessica, circa 2004, she was living in Buffalo, so the argument of us being across the same pond from each other, say). When I offered the prompt, I was very pleased Jessica agreed to work on this, as I’m always wishing to see further work by her. I am slowly inching and centimetreing along my “Lake Ontario.” It moves slower than I would prefer, but it is moving. Naturally, the pull these days is to return to fiction—whether my in-progress novel that sits between my two short story collections—On Beauty (2024) and the as-yet-unpublished “Very suddenly all at once” (or that other novel we don’t really discuss anymore, “Don Quixote”), as well as the potential for further short stories, some two years after that prior collection completed—is strong. But not yet, not yet. Finish one thought before starting another.

Mostly, the past three months (honestly, back to July, but the past few months have really ramped up) have been working on next week’s festival, our sixteenth annual VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival. I’m also working new above/ground press titles by Jennifer Baker and Misha Solomon for such, as well as a very cool reissue by Stephanie Bolster.

Otherwise, I’m reading (twice, it would seem) in Victoria, British Columbia on April 24^th via Planet Earth Poetry, and, while there, even hosting a podcast! Three weeks later, I’ll be a week at Banff Writing Studios as part of the fiftieth anniversary of the writer-in-residence program at the University of Alberta! (I was there as such in 2007-8, don’t forget). A week in the mountains, alongside ryan fitzpatrick, Fred Wah, Margaret Christakos, Daphne Marlatt, J.R. Carpenter, Thomas Wharton, Joshua Whitehead and multiple others (we’re doing at least one online reading as part of same, also; I’m sure closer to the time there will be further information/a link on that sort of thing). Naturally, I’ve already been working to produce new above/ground press chapbooks by fitzpatrick, Carpenter, Marlatt and myself for such, with possible others as well, and even an anthology through above/ground of as many participants as are willing to submit (the process is still very much in-progress). It is very exciting. What else might fifty-six bring?

Oh, and a new poetry title in June! edgeless, appearing with Caitlin Press (which includes both my elegy/sequence for Barry McKinnon, and my half of the call-and-response collaboration with Julie Carr, etc). The cover isn’t up yet (an image by our wee Aoife [above]; I’m curious to see how it comes out in the design), but the pre-order link is there. Just as the book of sequences, Snow day (2025), sits as sidecar between the book of smaller (2022) [see my write-up on such here] and the book of sentences (2025) [see my note on such here], so, too, does the book of sequences, edgeless, sit as sidecar between the book of smaller and the as-yet-unpublished third in this particular trilogy, “Autobiography.” A trilogy of five titles? Oh, how very Douglas Adams of you, sir.

Happy Birthday, Kate!

My eldest child is thirty-five years old today. How does that happen? Happy birthday!

[Kate at Somerset Square Park circa 2001, Centretown, taking the Polaroids we used for the cover of a book i edited for Insomniac Press, side/lines: a new Canadian poetics]

happy birthday, Rose!

someone is twelve today. she got us up before 7am to open her presents, of which she was muchly pleased. we picked up her first record player (with bluetooth + cd player) and accompanying case, and a mound of records (a combination of stuff we know she likes and stuff we might hope she likes).

today is Aoife's ninth birthday,

Happy birthday, Aoife!

Nine. god sakes.

She had a birthday party this past Sunday, during which she and seven of her friends, as well as sister Rose and myself, could not figure out how to escape the escape room (I absolutely hate escape rooms, but that was her request). But the kids had enough fun, and no-one cried or fought or anything so it probably still worked. Once the time ran out we were released for pizza and cake. Everybody loves cake.

today is my fifty-fifth birthday,

Where does the time go? Oh, I don't even ask those questions anymore. Do you remember where I was last year? I've been wearing my 'birthday boy' pin since Monday, given I prefer to take the whole week as 'birthday,' as you already know. My birthday always falls into March Break, so there were only rarely opportunities to acknowledge such with school pals from the farm, especially with mother's ill-health and the usual array of distance and farm work.

When I sent this pic to my brother Darren the other morning, he responded with a face-slap emoji. It matters not! We take the whole week.

What is happening currently? Fifty-five, hm. I care not for the number, but I don't feel much different than five years ago, or twenty-five. Age might be a number, and we all imagine ourselves held at a particular age, with mine being well younger than this. It is a strange thing, certainly.

Our young ladies (Rose has been requesting lately I keep her image off the internet) have been in enough activities over the past few months--Aoife's ukulele lessons, German classes, Embers, ringette practices and games, and Rose's practices and performances through the Anglican Girls' Choir--that they both rebelled against any March Break camps or activities, preferring to simply have a few days they didn't have to do anything or go anywhere. Even still, Rose had a choir practice, and each of them had an afternoon with one of their friends. We also managed a couple of days earlier in the week at the cottage, slipping the bounds of the National Capital Region for Sainte-Adele (we did manage New Year's there, which I seem not to have posted about, as well as Thanksgiving). We went to the cottage, and I sat nearly three days with notebook, and a mound of books I never quite got through as much as I would have hoped. The snow was perfect for building, but Rose wasn't feeling up to it, so we let them lay fallow for a bit. Once they're back at school it will be back at the routine and the running around (multiple days have them either back-to-back or overlapping or simultaneous activities, so I get it).

I've been feeling underwater since November, but I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel, he says, optimisticallly (unless that's simply me having a stroke, which isn't impossible). Next week is VERSeFest, in case you're around (I've been Artistic Director and Board President for over a year now, which I'm still confused by). I'm producing a new chapbook by American poet Eileen Myles for the event, and our schedule is packed with incredible performers. Have you gone through our list yet? The workshops by Myles and Phil Hall might have a space or two left as of today, but who knows. Things fill up fast.

These days, I'm hoping to be circling the ends of the manuscript for "the green notebook" (some two hundred single-spaced manuscript pages, if you can believe it), as well as "the genealogy book" (excerpts of both projects I've been posting for months now over at my substack), two different creative non-fiction/book-length essay projects I've been deep within, for well over a year now (most likely longer than that). I'm not entirely sure where I might send either of these manuscripts, but I am hoping to have something worth sending out around May or June, possibly. I already completed a further manuscript of short stories last year (see one of those stories here, which landed online this week at Leon Literary Review), a process of some seven or so years. The novel-in-progress that plays with certain of the same characters that move through both collections of short stories (begun during that first Covid summer) I've yet to complete, so once those two larger non-fiction projects are completed, I'm hoping I can more seriously work to complete the thing (should I send it to that publisher who turned down my short stories with "we can't sell short stories. let us know if you have a novel"?). It would be good to get that project finished and out, since I've so many further thoughts of what might be fun to work with, work on, etcetera, beyond that. I mean, my novel-in-progress "Don Quixote" was started in 2007, after all. I'm still adding short essays to a slowly-growing manuscript, "reading in the margins : essays on prose writers," the bulk of which I've also been posting to my enormously clever substack. I'm in the midst of at least a further four pieces at the moment.

And poems? Oh, I've been poking at poems for a while now, although far slower than I would prefer. I'm still mid-way through a manuscript of response-poems, some of which has already appeared online; as I've been describing the project:

Fair bodies of unseen prose is an homage text for, around and after American poets Laynie Browne and Rosmarie Waldrop, furthering my exploration around and through the lyric sentence and prose poem. All poem titles (which appear in italics above each brief prose poem) are taken in order from the last line or phrase of each poem in Browne’s In Garments Worn By Lindens (Tender Buttons Press, 2019), itself an homage text to Rosmarie Waldrop, with all of Browne’s titles taken from Waldrop’s Lawn of Excluded Middle (Tender Buttons Press, 1994). As my own sequence progresses, echoes of texts by both poets resound throughout, especially from Browne’s In Garments Worn By Lindens and Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar Press, 2023), Rosmarie Waldrop’s Blindsight (New Directions, 2003) and Gap Gardening: selected poems (New Directions, 2016), and the collection Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France, edited/translated by Norma Cole (Burning Deck, 2000).

In early 2023, I reviewed three recent titles by Laynie Browne, and quickly realized just how much affinity there was between her work and my own, an element of which is certainly due to our shared love of, and deep influence from, the work of Rosmarie Waldrop. Browne and I soon exchanged books, and In Garments Worn By Lindens prompted this response.

I've also been prodding at some longer, extended poems, really gearing up, it would seem, to a manuscript I'm itching to get to (I've been assembling titles and scraps for a few years now, honestly), once the non-fiction projects are completed. As well, there's a further poetry project I've been working on for about nine weeks or so, but it is too early to speak of such a thing as yet. One poem a week, responding to prompts. I'm hoping I can get to a year or more, if possible, get a book out of this thing. We shall see. Beyond that, my poetry collection the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press) is out in mid-October (it has a cover!), a direct follow-up (with cover design echoes) to the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022). Should I let them know I completed a third in the trilogy well over a year ago? Once we're further through the process of this current collection, I'll most likely send that one along. A trilogy of poetry titles, if you can believe it. Separately, Snow day (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025) exists as a kind of side-project simultaneous to the gap between the book of smaller and the book of sentences, with a further manuscript of sequences simultaneous to the gap between the book of sentences and "Autobiography" (the manuscript for that second gap title is currently sitting with a Canadian press for consideration). I also have a forty-ish page essay out soon with Spuyten Duyvil as well, once I've the attention span to sit down with the final manuscript and get that to the publisher, A river runs through it: a writing diary , collaborating with Julie Carr, an essay composed around the call-and-response work we did across early Covid-lockdown, produced as the chapbook river / estuaries (above/ground press, 2023), and since carved up and reworked in our own individual directions. Probably April or May? The only hold-up right now is my own attention span. And then, of course, the manuscript of short short stories I've been poking away at for more than a decade, as a follow-up to The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014). Where would I even send that? I've been posting short excerpts from that manuscript over at my substack for a while as well, if such strikes your interest. Oh, and I'm doing a reading tomorrow in Ottawa with a bunch of folk, if such strikes your fancy. I'm considering it the launch of Snow day, so you should come out to that.

Much as last year this time, I still work to dismantle my home office, for the sake of our young ladies having their own rooms. Rose served me an eviction notice some time ago. This is all taking too long.

happy thirty-fourth birthday, kate!

somehow my eldest daughter, Kate, turns thirty-four today; what? happy birthday!

happy eleventh birthday, Rose!

Happy eleventh birthday to my brilliant, hilarious and ridiculous dervish middle daughter, Rose!

She's requested I refrain from posting recent photos of her on the interwebs, so here is one when she was smaller, visiting me in my home office (which I am currently dismantling, so they can each have their own bedrooms).

today is Aoife's eighth birthday,

Our delightful wee imp turns eight years old today; how did that happen? She had a grand weekend as well, away two nights as part of her Embers camp, and home just in time for a birthday party on Sunday that saw fifteen young ladies run chaos throughout our house. Just what might the future bring?

today is my fifty-fourth birthday,

although, between working on curating next week’s VERSeFest, working copy edits on my upcoming short story collection, On Beauty (scheduled to release in August) and a few other factors (Rose broke her right pinky recently, which meant multiple attempts to find a working x-ray machine across Ottawa’s east end), I’ve barely had any attention span for any actual birthday anythings [where was I last year?]. Enough that I couldn’t even have my usual birthday gathering at the Carleton Tavern this time around (I took too long to get around to booking, and by then, it was too late). But VERSeFest next weekend is going to be amazing. Have you seen the interviews appearing online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics to help promote such?

And you know the above poem from Robert Kroetsch, don’t you? Strange for me to consider that I am now at the age where he was then, part of his Letters to Salonika (Toronto ON: Grand Union Press, 1983) (an edition gifted by dear half-sister a couple of years back), the poem-sequence he wrote about his then-wife, Smaro Kamboureli, being away, while Smaro was away and working on her in the second person (Edmonton ON: longspoon press, 1985). Not a solo birthday, but they leave soon enough: Christine and our young ladies head to hang out with father-in-law and his wife in Boca Raton, Florida for four days, starting Sunday. I remain here, working on festival publicity and other such details. We hadn’t been to father-in-law’s condo there since 2015, attempting an annual February/March trip that we haven’t managed since Aoife was born [see my report on that 2015 trip]. Had a different timing been possible, perhaps. I shall be home.

And, regarding Kroetsch: I’m still amused at the book he wrote about Smaro being away, as Smaro wrote a book about Smaro being away. While Christine was attending her two weeks at Banff Writing Studio in January of last year, I played my version of same, writing a poem sequence via Kroetsch’s own structure of dailyness about Christine being away, which I produced last summer as a chapbook, edgeless : letters, (2023). Be aware that the book she was working to finish during that period (the same project she turned from mound of paper to manuscript during her time at Sage Hill in 2019), Toxemia (Book*hug Press), is out this fall, and already up for pre-order.

Naturally, I’ve been wearing my birthday pin for the week, picking it up off a bookshelf for daily wear this past Sunday. I take the week, after all. I think it’s that March Break holdover, unable to find the birthday acknowledgement my school-peers might have, everyone home when mine would finally come around.

Distracted enough these days, that I’ve so far been unable to even consider a potential birthday poem this year. Might this be the first year I skip? We shall see what next week brings, hoping to get a couple of afternoons in a tavern somewhere, with notebook and pen and mound of books, attempting to catch my breath a bit. Perhaps the option remains. But let’s get through the weekend. Although, really, there have been little to no poems for quite some time, focusing the past eighteen months on larger prose (fiction and non-fiction) projects; still, there were pages upon pages upon sketched-out notebook pages from our Florida jaunt last fall [see my report on such here], but none of which I’ve been (as yet) able to return to. One project prompted by the work of Laynie Browne, another prompted by the work of Barry McKinnon. I keep hoping: soon.

The young ladies this past March Break week in another Forest School day-camp [just like last year, except sans snow], although the finger Rose injured last week apparently a minor break, so Wednesday morning was a second x-ray and a splint, which she must wear for four weeks, followed by a further two weeks of tape. It means the end of those Saturday morning gymnastics classes, unfortunately (those things aren’t cheap, you know).

I work to further dismantle my home office, what I’ve been a month already working on, moving myself into the finished basements. Our young ladies have become too big to share a bedroom anymore. I’ve already moved multiple bookcases and at least fifty to sixty boxes of books out of my office either downstairs or into storage. The fact that neither child has even noticed what I’m doing yet might say something of them, but just as much the state of my office, I suppose. It would be nice to have completed this task by the time they land home. I’m not sure such might be possible, but we shall see. I only started this process on February 6^th.

Birthday, a check-in: in my note last year I mentioned an extended period of breathlessness, currently feeling I’ve been in a version of same since, what, last July? Pushing edits on my short stories, working on my genealogical creative non-fiction project, “the genealogy book” [posting excerpts to substack, naturally], the household taking turns across two weeks with flu at Christmas (every day a new cancellation of social gatherings, and a Christmas dinner at least four days late) and now my copy edits, which are actually due today. On my birthday? Come on.

Hoping once the non-fiction a bit further along or even completed I can return to the novel I began during the onset of Covid; a handful of short stories-in-progress, as well as further essays on fiction writers. At least three poetry projects begun but on hold (as I said), including one that I’ve excerpted for the tenth anniversary issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], which lands in another month. And don’t I have a chapbook soon with Montreal poet James Hawes’ Turret Press? And another full-length poetry title en route as well, recently accepted for most likely 2026 publication (but we aren’t talking about that yet).

today is kate's thirty-third birthday,

My eldest child turns thirty-three years old today! Happy birthday!

Here's a photo we got at the Bay Photo Studio on Rideau Street when she was around seven or so (a photo I have up in my office). I had a coupon for a free 8x10, so thought this would be fun to do as a session. Kate's mother politely declined to participate, and held our coats instead. When my mother heard we were doing photos, she paid for extra copies for herself, although when she finally saw the finished product, she was horrified. I don't think she ever distributed any of her copies.

A few years later, I wanted to do a second session, where Kate and I braid our long hair and dress up as vikings (fur and hats with horns and swords, etcetera), but she responded by immediately getting her hair cut.

Happy Tenth Birthday, Emperor Rose!

 

today is Lady Aoife's seventh birthday,

Seven. God sakes.

[see also:]

[remember that time she was born?]

today is my fifty-third birthday (sigh,

Happy (self) birthday! Over the weekend, I hosted my first in-person birthday gathering since Covid-19 lockdown began. It was an intimate gathering, but a worthy one. Christine re-ordered a variation on the same cake she ordered for my fiftieth, given we had to cancel that party within days of the event, some three years back [see my note on such here]. Might I actually, now, have to admit that I’m in my fifties, and not simply “forty-thirteen”? (I’ve been telling folk that my forties have entered their teen years, after all)

Birthday: a check-in. [see last year’s here; see the year before that] Honestly, I’ve felt breathless since the beginning of the year, pushing to work in numerous directions simultaneously. Christine was poem-ing at Banff Writing Centre for two weeks in January, as well, which had me solo with our young ladies; she worked on the edits for her next-year forthcoming third Book*hug title (a non-fiction blend of prose and poetry), and attempting to feel out the beginnings of what might come next (her fourth book, and third poetry title). On my end, I’ve been pushing on feeling out a book-length essay on literary citizenship, community and reviewing, etcetera, “Lecture for an Empty Room,” having first made scattered notes across those first two years of lockdown. The project was structurally prompted by a series that Wave Books has been publishing the past few years through The Bagley Writing Lecture Series, specifically Joshua Beckman’s 2018 duo Three Talks and The Lives of the Poems (Wave Books). I was seeking a form through which to articulate some thoughts I’ve had kicking around for years, and Beckman’s paired titles (which I’ve found enormously generative and influential since I first encountered them) allowed me the prompting through which to begin. Last fall I even started a substack to help prompt me further through the process (as well as post the occasional other non-fiction entry, including fragments of a fortyish-page essay on collaborating with Denver poet Julie Carr). I’ve already more than a half-dozen entries from the work-in-progress posted through such (among other entries) with another few still in-progress. I am curious to see where the project ends up.

I’ve a novel I started during that first pandemic summer as well, one that furthers a thread or two from a prior manuscript of short stories, itself following a thread from my second published novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press, 2009); might anyone actually follow that particular thread, once all of these pages and pieces are finished and finally published? I’m curious about that, although that level of engagement with each self-contained piece isn’t required. I’ve also been poking at a couple of stories across a further manuscript of short stories, although I haven’t been in any particular rush on that, wishing to at least place that first manuscript before I move too much further into a follow-up (although I think I already have nineteen finished stories and six in-progress in this second manuscript, and thirty-two stories in the prior manuscript).

I’ve been poking, as well, at what might be the ends of a poetry manuscript, “Autobiography,” following a thread that goes back as well, this one to the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022). And did I mention that the manuscript prior to that appears this fall? World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023): I signed a contract not that long ago, although I haven’t really told too many folk about it yet. I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I’ve also been working the past few months on a third ‘best of’ anthology to celebrate thirty years of above/ground press, out this fall with Invisible Publishing to celebrate the third decade’s worth of publishing. Thirty years, as of this July. And today, the third anniversary of the first post over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (I’ll be posting an anniversary editorial over there in an hour or two).

But poems, as I said. I’m circling what might be the ends, but also distracted by other projects the past couple of months. I spent a few weeks attempting a chapbook-length daily sequence of journal poems across the two weeks Christine was away at Banff, taking a following two weeks after she’d returned to get the whole of that sequence polished in a way I was finally pleased with. I liked the idea of playing a bit off Robert Kroetsch’s Letters to Salonika (Grand Union Press, 1983), composed during a period that his wife, Smaro Kamboureli, was away in Greece, visiting home and her mother. As she wrote what became the journal-poem in the second person (Edmonton AB: Longspoon Press, 1985) about being in Greece, Kroetsch wrote his own poems about Smaro being away. Otherwise, the manuscript of “Autobiography” moves, albeit through delay: by holding off, might I therefore extend it? A la Kroetsch himself, a perpetual delay that might allow the manuscript a further, extended life.

[dropping them off Monday morning to begin their week-long March Break forest school daycamp]

And our young ladies, of course. They are smart and clever and ridiculous, of course. I can’t even fathom where most of their thinking comes from, but they are utterly delightful. Rose is in the middle of the Percy Jackson novels at the moment, which she’s really enjoying. Aoife regularly makes slime from a kit she has, and I have discovered that I hate slime (messy, gross, always leaving little bits upon every surface) more than I’ve ever hated anything in my entire life. But she loves it.

Birthday, birthday. What is fifty-three? Gadzooks. Even if I live to one hundred and five (which has been the plan all along), I still have less ahead of me than behind. I’ve so much more to do.

As part of that annual checking-in, I’ve been scratching at a birthday-esque poem over the past few weeks, still feeling it out; here’s where a few of the fragments sit so far:

from : condition report

 

 

 

 

First you feel it. Then you bear             : the ache
of musculature, a tendon pull. Go back, eurythmic,
into ether,
                        certitude. Loud when I             dissonance.

A light falls, clatter. The slightest structure.

 

 

 

 

Could scratch my tibia. The white face, powdered.
Eyebrows                     , grift. They seek

            escape.

 

 

 

 

An ache. Synchronic: one dream

at any               given time.

 

 

 

 

Earth               , to earth. I am scratching this
from anecdotes,
                                    as my desire                 for echo.

What might      this hold. What substance.

 

 

 

 

Amid suspicion, reserve. Happy birthday. An engine
of extrapolation. Mirrors

                                                instances. Repurpose facts
to suit the language. The composition

of dictated terms, whether to capture
or contemplate.

 

 

 

 

To manoeuvre                         beyond fault.

 

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Oh, and be sure to catch me zoom-reading today with Calgary poet Kyle Flemming: noon Pacific time / 3pm Ottawa time: a zoom-reading I’m doing from my house (as Kyle from his) for Vancouver’s Lunch Poems at SFU. Might we see you (virtually) there? And Ottawa’s thirteenth annual poetry festival VERSeFest begins this weekend!

happy thirty-second birthday, kate!

Thirty-two? How did this happen? Happy birthday! Gadzooks!

happy ninth birthday, dear rose!

So, this young lady, my brilliant middle daughter, turned nine today. How did that happen? 

Yesterday, a small birthday party gathering held at an escape room junior something-something in Barrhaven, before we landed at Build-a-Bear at Bayshore (for her requested Birthday Bear), which led to a sidebar of photos with Santa Claus, so that was a whole big day of birthday and adventuring. And I think the young ladies are off for a show today with Gran'pa and Teri?

She's enormously clever and confident, our young lady, with a great combination of ridiculous/sassy and poise, which might just make her more than a wee bit dangerous (which we are completely okay with, by the by). Fiercely loyal with a heart that feels everything, just be careful never to cross her (not recommended).

today our Aoife is six years old,

How did we get here? The young lady (the youngest of my three, as you know) is six years old today. And why do presents have to be opened first thing? (Apparently they've been up since five-something,

 

today is my fifty-second birthday;

My third pandemic-era birthday. How am I feeling? I’m not exactly sure; I’ll admit to feeling an unease about moving in through my fifties (although: aging is far preferable to death; remember, that my long-running plan includes an eventual passing at the age of one hundred and five). And, given my fiftieth was scheduled two days after original pandemic lockdown, I decided some time ago that I would remain in my forties until this whole period passes (it only seems fair), to only enter my fifties once this is over. To enter my fifties, as one might say, “already in-progress.” We are home, we are home, we are forever home. Staycation day #732, by my count, although Christine has begun the occasional day in the lab over the past couple of weeks (including today). The children remain in their e-learning, at least until the end of the school year.

Where was I last year? The year before that? All of that, in the house.

This morning, Christine and the wee girls an array of cards, gifts. Christine always picks me up curlywurlys from the Scottish and Irish Store, as I recall them from my eastern Ontario childhood; why were they easily available then but not now? Had they a different name? Yesterday, a birthday card from my birth mother, and a text from my eldest. This morning, an email from sister, and half-sister. This morning, before I awoke, as Christine attended Aoife, who barfed into her hands and ran to the bathroom (after which, she claimed, she felt far better). And now, as they’ve breakfasted, downstairs with tablets and Netflix. Christine at the lab.

Note the button I wear in the photo: yes, I shall be wearing this all week (had it on since Sunday, already).

Yesterday, I cleaned the house (convincing the young ladies, finally, to work on their room). Worked on some reviews, addressed an above/ground press mailing. Aiming to spend the next few days reading, perhaps working on novel, or poems, or both, given the clearer-space that March Break allows (not having to worry about e-learning schedules or Guides/Sparks or forest school or anything else). The novel I began during the summer of 2020 (that I haven’t look at since November or so), with pandemic in background of a series of character-threads, including the character Alberta, introduced in my second novel, and furthered through a handful of short stories. Where is she now? The novel, Missing Persons, that wrote her teenaged self near a fictional version of Lumsden, Saskatchewan in the 1980s, an array of short stories that have written her at various points throughout the space in-between there and here, and the new novel, now, as she sits in her empty, widowed house, zoom-calling her preschool-age grandson and slowly working her novel. Everything takes so damned long, it would seem.

Today I am at my desk. Yesterday I was at my desk. Most likely dropping off new above/ground press titles off at the printer’s today. Most likely. Most likely also working on final edits for my fall book with Mansfield Press, a suite of pandemic essays composed across those first one hundred days of lock-down, essays in the face of uncertainties. Stuart Ross has done a remarkably thorough and thoughtful edit. Hoping to be able to use, for cover, the photo that Stephen Brockwell took of us, through our living room window.

And poems. Including this one, my annual birthday missive:

Forty-twelfth birthday

1.

Two years ago,

two days                      into original Coronavirus lockdown,
I refused: declared my forties persist

until the world re-opens. And only then
to ease             into my fifties,             already well in-progress

 

2.                                                              

Cobwebs                      , horizontal; the familiarity

of this single room. To hear sound

in relation: parents, children, siblings. Pets. To sleep,
to sleep, and age                      across such spectrum.

The limits                    of this field. How
might my children die? Why                were my parents

not my own? Once more         into the weeds.

  

3.

Birthday, birthday:       what                 do you want of me?
Banal acquiescence                                                                            

of cake, pints, comic books                              ; has nothing changed
across these thirty-odd years? A dreamlike curiosity; held down

with equations. The math        is nigh impossible.

  

4.

My third annual                       isolation birthday. A rehearsal
of inarticulate space,

a glass, reflects. This breath by breath. Half-century, plus. A hand
between palms.

 

 

PS: AND ACCORDING TO CANADA POST, COPIES OF MY NEW POETRY TITLE WITH UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY PRESS (CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER), SHOULD BE LANDING ON MY DOORSTEP TODAY?