my interview with David O'Meara, English-language Poet Laureate, City of Ottawa,

My interview with David O'Meara, recently announced at the English-language poet laureate for the City of Ottawa, is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. Both Ottawa laureates, English and French, will be giving their first official reading as Poets Laureate as part of the John Newlove Awards and Ottawa Poets Laureate event through the Ottawa International Writers Festival, Club Saw, 67 Nicholas Street, Ottawa on Tuesday, October 1, 2024 at 6:30pm. This event will be free to the public. And don't forget that Christine McNair will be launching her hybrid memoir, Toxemia (Toronto ON: Bookhug Press, 2024)  at the event immediately following!

VERSeFest 2024 : a report from the ground,

Our fourteenth annual poetry festival, VERSeFest: Ottawa's International Poetry Festival, happened last weekend, four venues across four nights, with more than two dozen poets [including Monty Reid, left, being introduced by Jennifer Baker], and was a resounding success, I don't mind saying. The festival got knocked around a bit across the Covid-era, so this is the first festival with myself as Artistic Director, with a brand-new board of directors for VERSe Ottawa, the organization that looks after the whole thing. And did you hear that three of our four nights held capacity crowds? Every night held incredible readings, without a low point across the board (although there were frustrations about accessibility across a venue or two).

Thursday, March 21, 2024: Avant-Garde Bar, 7pm
Anita Lahey, Monty Reid, Marjorie Silverman, Laila Malik
    hosted by Jennifer Baker / Arc Poetry Magazine,
Daniel Groleau Landry, nina jane drystek + MayaSpoken
    hosted by Allison Armstrong

Opening night held some strong readings, with returned-to-Ottawa poet Anita Lahey reading from her latest collection, offering an Ottawa poem or two. Ottawa poet Marjorie Silverman [above] not only offered a reading from her debut, and a Billings Bridge Mall poem, but her debut as a reader at VERSeFest! Laila Malik [left], another poetry and VERSeFest debut [see the recent interview here], startled the crowd with the strength of her reading (it is such a good book). And Monty Reid, longtime Artistic Director, anchored the whole first set with his own debut reading at VERSeFest (if you're staff or on the board you can't be scheduled, so we had to wait until he left, don't you know).

As part of the second set: it was good to hear new work from returning VERSeFest performer Daniel Groleau Landry; nina jane drystek did some very cool looped sound work (I know nina is shopping a full-length manuscript; once that is out, it is going to be incredible); and MayaSpoken is simply remarkable.

Friday, March 22, 2024 : Happy Goat, Laurel, door 7/reading 8pm
Amanda Earl, DS Stymeist, IAN MARTIN, Mary Lee Bragg
    hosted by Stephen Brockwell
Susan McMaster, Sneha Madhavan-Reese, Shane Rhodes
    hosted by rob mclennan

Amanda Earl, of course, is a stellar reader, and her new book is grand. DS Stymeist [above], also read from a new book, and, akin to Monty Reid, was also debuting as a VERSeFest reader, having spent time as President of the VERSe Ottawa board (and thus, unable to read until after he stepped down). MaryLee Bragg read from her own newly-published book, but the highlight of the entire event (sorry, everyone else) had to be Ottawa poet IAN MARTIN [left] (yes, the upper case is deliberate), who really did provide surreal humour and a quiet, odd warmth through their set. You should be paying attention.

The second set held a reading by the very sparkly Ottawa poet Susan McMaster, who has a new book as well. Sneha Madhavan-Reese provided a sharp and curled straight-lined performance for her latest title (which I've been hearing some very good things about). Hopefully this isn't Shane Rhodes' [left] final Ottawa performance before he and his family move to Australia later on this year (you knew about that, didn't you?). I've really been enjoying his settler-work, playing off the novel (and subsequent film) that provided him his name. (Don't go, Shane! Shane, don't go!)

Saturday, March 23, 2024 : Redbird, 8pm
Stephen Brockwell, Jaclyn Piudik, Chris Turnbull, Derek Webster
    hosted by rob mclennan
Sandra Ridley, David O’Meara, Madeleine Stratford
    hosted by Zishad Lak

Board member (and Ottawa poet) Stephen Brockwell [above] provided a shorter set as last-minute fill-in, reading for Mark Goldstein, who wasn't able to make the event (he's doing fine, but just couldn't make it). Chris Turnbull [see the recent interview here] opened her reading, launching her latest book, with some poems by Phil Hall, to acknowledge the new book Goldstein edited and published, celebrating Hall and his work. It was interesting to hear Jaclyn Piudik [left] read, a poet I've only started reading lately. She has a new book as well, and made a point of opening with some poems by Mark Goldstein. And Derek Webster was just great. He read a poem that played off the work of Al Purdy. Who wouldn't love that?

Sandra Ridley [left; see the recent interview here], launching her latest from Bookhug Press, was her usual evocative, coiled calm, enough to quiet any room. Working in both English and French (as well as translation, Madeleine Stratford's performance had a liveliness and humour across hushed tones. And Ottawa poet David O'Meara, another former VERSeFest Artistic Director (before Monty), reading a handful of new poems, was the anchor that held all in place.

Sunday, March 24, 2024: Spark Beer, door 7pm/8pm
AJ Dolman, Myriam Legault-Beauregard, Nduka Otiono,
    hosted by Madeleine Stratford
Rhonda Douglas, Jason Christie, Klara du Plessis + Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi,
    hosted by rob mclennan

Our closing night! It was great to hear Ottawa poet AJ Dolman [above; see the recent interview here] launching their long-awaited debut full-length collection, a box of which landed in just enough time to catch our event (there will be a proper, full launch coming up). And great to hear poet and Carleton University prof Nduka Otiono [left] for the first time! He had a critical selected poems not long back from Wilfrid Laurier University Press that was quite interesting. And lovely to catch a reading blending English and French from poet Myriam Legault-Beauregard from her new book, already leaning into a second printing!

Rhonda Douglas was good enough to provide a short opener of new poems (and curious for me to realize I've known her longer than I've known anyone else around here, having participated in a poetry workshop at the University of Ottawa alongside her and Joseph Dandurand, among others, during 1992-3). It was very nice to celebrate Ottawa poet Jason Christie's [left; see the recent interview here] last fall bpNichol Chapbook Award win through his reading, both from the award-winning chapbook as well as through a handful of new poems. I would think he's but the second Ottawa-based bpNichol winner, after Chuqiao Yang (I presume we'll have more, soon enough). And then, Montreal-based Klara du Plessis [see the recent interview here] and Toronto-based Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi [see the recent interview here] closed out the event, and the festival, through a stellar collaborative set, which included their own individual works, as well as them reading from their recently-published book-length collaboration. There's an incredible amount of activity going on with those two, both individually and combined, that is worth paying attention to. Wow.

You probably also saw the new issue of The Peter F Yacht Club that was launched as part of the festival, holding poems by numerous of our readers and performers? I also had copies of the soon-to-release tenth anniversary issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], given there were poems within by Amanda Earl and Conyer Clayton. We also had a basket of books leftover from our fundraiser, offering for the sake of donations (although it took two days, unfortunately, to discover that the QR codes we printed didn't actually work).

Given our hugely successful fundraiser, it didn't seem right to ticket all of the events, so three of our four nights were unticketed (honestly, so much of the fundraiser, whether time, books, chapbooks or cash came from at least half that crowd), but there were plenty of folk donating, still, across those four days, which is hugely appreciated by everyone on the board. Thank you so much to The City of Ottawa, Arc Poetry Magazine and The League of Canadian Poets for their ongoing support, and to Spark Beer, RedBird [left], The Happy Goat and Avant-Garde Bar for allowing us the use of their spaces. As many of you know, events such as these don’t occur in a vacuum, and I must thank the help of our current VERSe Ottawa board: Allison Armstrong, Frances Boyle, Stephen Brockwell, Éric Charlebois, David Currie (who really went above and beyond across the course of this entire thing, so thank you) and Zishad Lak for their ongoing and essential work. And Helen Robertson, who ran our book table! Helen is a delight. Of course, an essential thank you to outgoing director Avonlea Fotheringham for keeping the festival alive across the Covid Era, and Rod Pederson, who began this festival in the first place.

[left: Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi, Chuqiao Yang + Cameron Anstee mid-break, Closing Night] With our rebuilding year, this was a smaller and more Ottawa-localized festival than prior years (unable to cover hotels and travel, for example), so we are hoping to do another version of this in the fall ("fall into versefest," or something akin to that), as well as hopefully announce our next round of poets laureate at the same time. With luck, we can return next spring with a fully-rebuilt festival! And in case you are wishing to donate, you can catch the donate page on our website. Maybe we'll see you at our next event! Otherwise, you know you should be checking out www.bywords.ca for all Ottawa-area literary events, yes? Monthly calendar! New poems!

Open Book : Ottawa finally gets a city Poet Laureate (again)

My article, "Ottawa finally gets a city Poet Laureate (again)," is now up at Open Book! In which I discuss a bit of history of Ottawa's Poet Laureate (we most likely had the first in the country), and the recent announcement that we are getting the position again, for the first time in nearly thirty years, thanks to VERSe Ottawa and the City of Ottawa...

Ploughshares : an interview with Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke

[photo credit: Harvard University]

I'm a monthly blogger over at the Ploughshares blog! And my eighth post is now up: an interview with Canada's 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate, George Elliott Clarke.

You can see links to all of my Ploughshares posts here, including an interview with editor/critic Erin Wunker, Arc Poetry Magazine Poetry Editor Rhonda Douglas, an interview with editor/publisher Leigh Nash on Invisible Publishing, an interview Cobourg, Ontario poet, editor, fiction writer and small press publisher Stuart Ross, an interview with Toronto novelist Ken Sparling, an interview with award-winning Kingston writer Diane Schoemperlen and an interview with award-winning Toronto poet Soraya Peerbaye.

Ongoing notes: mid-June, 2015

I’ve a new broadsheet out today! You should come by the ottawa small press fairtoday and swing by Marilyn Irwin’s shreeking violet table and pick up a copy. I mean, we’ll see you there, right?

(Do I even still write poems? I can’t recall. Where do I even find the time?)

And of course, the big Chaudiere Books 2015 spring poetry launch is on Thursday at Raw Sugar Café! William Hawkins (Cameron Anstee reading for him, given a recent illness) and N.W. Lea, with a special acoustic set by Jesse Patrick Ferguson.

Philadelphia PA: I’m always happy to hear about new (or at least, new to me) presses, so was thrilled to receive a copy of Rosmarie Waldrop’s gorgeous new chapbook, IN PIECES (Philadelphia PA: O’CLOCK PRESS, 2015).

6 | SUNSET THEORY

To feel an idea is different. And rare. A private fluency of figment and frontier. A splinter in the sky. Let’s not get sentimantic. The word “reality” is a word. Atoms are unpredictable, a warp in a continuous field, a gamble against the powers of disorder. But grammar can unpack a sentence it has taken you so long to understate. What open window? What thin but penetrating light?

Waldrop’s stunning sixteen-part essay-sequence proves, yet again, that some writers (not nearly enough) continue to improve, even after decades of publishing. IN PIECES manages to cohere in multiple directions, contemplating language, poetry, sex and the poetic line, allowing the most incredible connections through the almost-collage of thought, sound and sentence.

Toronto ON: In Rachel Rose’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at CanLit (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2015), the Vancouver poet (and current city Poet Laureate) plays off Wallace Stevens’ infamous early 20th century poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” a poem that has been riffed and repeated and pilfered by dozens upon dozens of poets for decades (my favourite has to be Robert Kroetsch, who composed his “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Lemon”). As her poem opens:

Let’s say it, then. Let’s make it explicit. Let’s lick the clit

            of it. Let’s fornicate it.

The way you fuck and the way you write are exactly the

            same. Isn’t it a relief to have it out in the air? Not a

            metaphor, but a critical difference, a preference, not a

            simile, but a simulation, a seduction of the ideal reader

            with a piece about some pieces.

and some of us fake it

and get away with it

and some of us are very quiet

and regret it

and most of us are insecure about it

and some of us do it in public

and some of us are very private

and some like to experiment

and most of us do it the same way over and over

Rose’s poems is saucy and revelatory, expanding Stevens’ original short haiku-like passages into a rush of longer sentences that have the force and weight of water, and revel in a particular kind of seductive play that also pushes to explore, criticize and indict a level of complacency in Canadian poetry. We need more poems (and criticism) that call us on our shit. As she writes:

            You love the serious, heterosexual guy you’d go fishing

                        with. Because women can’t be men and Chinese can’t

                        be guys and homosexuals can’t be the best and you only

                        teach the best. It’s a math proof and the answer equals

                        you. Because it’s all about love, true love, those whom

                        you truly, truly love.

            Isn’t that unfortunate? Isn’t that serious? Because the best

                        by any other name is still you, squared.

Profile of Damian Lopes, Poet Laureate of the City of Barrie, with a few questions

My profile of Damian Lopes, Poet Laureate of the City of Barrie, with a few questions, is now online at Open Book: Ontario.

Patrick White (September 15, 1948-March 1, 2014)

The third and (so far) final Poet Laureate of Ottawa (1987-1990), Patrick White, has died after an extended battle with cancer. This note appeared yesterday from Patrick's daughter, Jody:

Hello All... By the time most of you see this message, my father Patrick will have left us and finally be out of pain. As you all know, from the moment he found out he had cancer, he fought it. He never wavered and I truly believe his final goal was to make his last poetry reading in Ottawa last week, and he made it. His true passion in life was his painting and his poetry, and I would like to be able to say something moving and poetic, but unfortunately, it was not a gift that was passed on to me. So, let me thank you instead, on his behalf, for the support, the encouragement, the kind words, and for being there. Always. Whenever he needed you.
A celebration of Patrick's life is in the very early planning stages. This information will be passed on as soon as there is more info to give.
* ** *** ** *
In recent times, Patrick lived in Perth, Ontario. Many of us came to know him as Poet Laureate of Ottawa (1987-1990).

A bio for a 2011 reading he did for Ottawa's AB Series reads:

Patrick White is former Poet Laureate of Ottawa. He is the author of eight books of poetry: Poems (Soft Press), God in the Rafters (Borealis), Stations (Commoner’s Books), Homage to Victor Jara (Steel Rail Press), Seventeen Odes (Fiddlehead Books), Orpheus on Highbeam (Anthos Books), Habitable Planets, New and Selected Poems (Cormorant Books), and The Benjamin Chee Chee Elegies (General Store Publishing).

Winner of the Archibald Lampman Award, Canadian Literature Award, Benny Nicholas Award for Creative Writing, he was also a runner-up for the Milton Acorn People’s Poet Award. He is founding editor and publisher of Anthos, a Journal of the Arts, Anthos Books, and producer-host of Radio Anthos, a popular literary radio show.

George Woodcock wrote of his Selected Poems in the Ottawa Citizen: "He promises to be one our best and best respected poets." Sharon Drache, in the Kingston Whig Standard: "He might well win the Nobel Prize one day in his own inimitable way." And Orbis (London, England), has said of his work: "His images are strong, lyrical, moving. He dares and achieves."

Some have suggested that he was best known as Poet Laureate, but he contributed a great deal as a literary provocateur, including as founding editor/publisher of Ottawa poetry publisher Anthos Books and Anthos Magazine throughout the 1970s and into the 80s (publishing early collections by a number of Ottawa writers), as well as long-time host of Anthos Radio at CKCU. He was also well known in and around Ottawa for his own poetry collections, before disappearing from local literary life to Perth, Ontario in 1990. His ninth poetry collection, RedShift (ekstasis editions, 2013), was launched barely two weeks before he died, at Beechwood Books on February 16, 2014.

Medallions of Belief, Fred Wah

QUINHAI POEM

Spectrum total mix

Less dit interest

Sigma los/las

Blanco Rouseau

Three rivers why

Why & Me

Cell off please

This Great Hall

Mysterioso l’aureal

Yellow from 2800

War Award

A Wall

In his new chapbook Medallions of Belief (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2012), Vancouver poet and current Parliamentary Poet Laureate Fred Wah turns the response thread of his writing to the occasional, and collecting a small handful of occasional poems. As well as composing poems for a series of occasions, the chapbook was produced for one, a workshop Wah ran in Toronto this past March, as part of the Toronto New School of Writing, as the brief “Note” at the back of the publication reports:

Medallions of Belief is a chapbook configured on the occasion of a workshop for the Toronto New School Writing titled “How to Write a Poem for the Queen.” The poems are selected from past publications as well as unpublished and newer poems. The poem “The Snowflake Age” was written at the request of the House of Commons and the Senate for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. […] This is a workshop on the Occasional Poem. Much maligned and frequently scorned by poet laureates, the poetics of the occasional poem invite an intriguing spectrum of considerations. Can a “poem in honour of” engage a similar discourse to the poem simply written “For”? And what sorts of intention function to generate the immense range of occasional poetry (W.H. Auden’s“Under Which Lyre: A Reactionary Tract for the Times,” Robert Creeley’s “So There,” bpNichol’s “Sketch For A Botanical Drawing For Thomas A. Clark,” Roy Miki’s “Nagasaki Day for Baco O,” or current British Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “Rings” for the royal wedding last spring).

The question is an interesting one. George Bowering, as Canada’s first Parliamentary Poet Laureate, famously deflected all requests for poems but one, from a Little League baseball team, and a showcase of poems written upon request by laureates might not necessarily produce a showcase of worthy writing. In Medallions of Belief, Wah writes his occasions such as “IN THE MAIL WITH YOUR LETTER IS A / PACKAGE OF COUPONS” for Tom Wayman, and “PARAPOTIC SINK” for George Bowering (riffing off Bowering’s “Do Sink” and it’s own influence). One of the strengths in this collection of two dozen poems comes from the variety of movement, the variety of rhythms and forms throughout, in poems on the occasions of his daughters, a birthday, Queen Elizabeth II, travel, and even a couple of pieces from the ongoing “Music at the Heart of Thinking” series.

This whole collection seems to be built not only of occasions, but responses, prompting the question: is an occasion simply a trigger, and the poem of the occasion simply a response? One could argue that every poem is a response to something else, every piece of art a response, translating the world in whatever large or small way. One word responds to another word, one colour responds to the one that came before. Is this too simple, too easy? Is a poem for/from the Queen any different than one that responds to another poem? I am wishing I could have been at that workshop, or perhaps, Wah might write an essay of sorts to discuss the idea further. As Wah writes to begin his poem “The Snowflake Age”: “She said looking through the monarchy of pronouns / Her halftone face profiles the moment[.]”

           WAITING FOR SASKATCHEWAN

and the origins grandparents countries placed converged

europe asia railroads carpenters nailed grain elevators

Swift Current my grandmother her house

he built on the street

and him his cafes namely the “Elite” on Center

looked straight ahead Saskatchewan points to it

Erickson Wah Trimble houses train station tracks

arrowed into downtown fine clay dirt prairies wind waiting

for Saskatchewan to appear for me again over the edge

horses led to the huge sky the weight and colour of it

over the mountains as if the mass owed me such appearance

against the hard edge of it sits on my forehead

as the most political place I know these places these strips

laid beyond horizon for eyesight the city so I won’t have to go

near it as origin town flatness appears later in my stomach why

why on earth would they land in such a place

mass of Pleistocene

sediment plate wedge

arrow sky beak horizon still waiting for that

I want it back, wait in this snowblown winter night

for that latitude of itself its own largeness

my body to get complete

it still owes me, it does

Vancouver poet Fred Wah is named the new Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada

On Tuesday, Saskatchewan-born Vancouver resident and longtime poet Fred Wah (photo credit: Marty Gervais) was announced as the fifth Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada, after former poets laureate Pierre DesRuisseaux (2009-2011), John Steffler (2006-2008), Pauline Michel (2004-2006) and George Bowering (2002-2004). Congratulations Fred! I wonder, after numerous groups complaining about the lack of a new writer in the position for months, did the announcement have anything to do with the Globe & Mail adding their voice to the storm a week or so back? Wonderful! Does this mean we might actually see him around Ottawa, at some point?

Fred Wah's bio, from the Parliamentary Poet Laureate website:
 
Fred Wah was born in 1939 in Swift Current, Saskatchewan to parents of Swedish and Chinese origin. He grew up in the West Kootenays in rural B.C. where his parents owned or ran several Chinese-Canadian cafés. Wah studied Music and English at U.B.C. (BA 1962) and took an MA in Linguistics and Literature at SUNY Buffalo in 1967. From 1967-1989, he taught at Selkirk College and David Thompson University Centre, Nelson while living in South Slocan, raising a family (with teacher and literary critic Pauline Butling), and writing more than a dozen books of poetry. They moved to Calgary in 1989, where he taught English and Creative Writing until his retirement in 2003. Currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary, he divides his time between Vancouver and a seasonal home near Nelson.

Wah began publishing poetry in the 1960’s as part of an international avant-garde movement located in Vancouver. His early poetry is improvisational and experimental, based partly on his interest in jazz. Yet it is also deeply rooted in the geography of the Nelson area, as his first seven titles show: Lardeau, Mountain, Among, Tree, Earth, Pictograms from the Interior of B.C., and Loki is Buried at Smoky Creek. In the 1980’s Wah’s focus shifted to his mixed-race history in Breathin’ My Name with a Sigh and Waiting for Saskatchewan. With the publication of Diamond Grill (1996), a biofiction based on his experiences working in his father’s café, Wah emerged as a central figure in race writing in Canada and abroad. His collection of critical essays, Faking it: Poetis and Hybridity further elaborates his long-standing interest in mixed-genre texts and racialized poetics.

Wah has received major literary awards in three genres: Waiting for Saskatchewan won the Governor General’s award, So Far won Alberta’s Stephanson Award, and is a door won the Dorothy Livesay prize for poetry; Diamond Grill received Alberta’s Howard O’Hagan Award for short fiction; and his essay collection, Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity won the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary Criticism in English Canada.

Wah has given thousands of hours of volunteer work as an editor or contributing editor of small, grass-roots magazines and presses that are the life-blood of Canada’s thriving literary culture. Starting with Tish: A Poetry Newsletter (1961-1963) he has been involved with numerous magazines, including Sum, Open Letter, Swift Current (with Frank Davey, Canada’s first electronic literary newsletter) and West Coast Line. He was Poetry Editor for The Literary Review of Canada (2003-2005). Wah’s community work has also been extensive. He regularly organized readings and workshops at Selkirk College and David Thomson University Centre in the Kootenays. In Calgary he played a key role in starting and developing the Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers Program. Since moving to Vancouver in 2003, he has been engaged with the Kootenay School of Writing. He has been writer-in-residence and has taught writing workshops across the country. He served as President of the Writers Union of Canada (2001-02) and worked on its acial Minorities and Social Justice Committees for several years.

Wah is well known both in Canada and abroad. His work has been widely anthologized and he has been invited to many international literary festivals to give readings and talks. In 2002-2003, he was selected for a Canada-Mexico cultural-exchange with residencies at Banff and Merida, Mexico. He is currently on faculty for the Banff Centre for the Arts “In(ter)ventions: Literary Practice at the Edge” program.

His recent publications include two collections of poetry, Sentenced to Light (2008) and is a door (2009). A selected poetry edited by Louis Cabri, The False Laws of Narrative, was published in 2009 by Wilfrid Laurier University’s poetry monograph series.

vote for rob as this year's poet laureate of the blogosphere (what, again?);

Again, the poet laureate of the blogosphere contest has begun, and it's up to you to vote. Since this is the third time I've been up for it, I'm less excited about another round of potentially not winning (as Bugs Bunny cries, always the bridesmaid, and never the bride), so not really sure what to think about it all. Still, here's the posting from the site (to vote, to go the link, including further links to all the individual nominees);

Voting Begins For For The 2011 Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere ®

Nominations have ended, I have looked at every nomination that was presented and found the following poet bloggers all to be eligible to become the 2011 Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere ®, a laureateship in name only but an honor to those who are nominated and the one who will finally be chosen by his or her fans and followers, who I hope will take the time to look around at my own poetry and the works of hundreds of other poets before they leave this site. Below is a list of the poets with names hyperlinked to their blogs. Below that is the form you can use to cast your ballots and make the final call.

The Nominees Are:

*Adam Dustus
*Brian Miller
*Fireblossom, aka Shay Caroline
*Gabriel Gadfly
*Jessie Carty
*Joanne Marie Firth
*Jo Janoski
*Leslie Aka Moondustwriter
*Maria Padhila
*MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick
*Natasha Head
* Neva Flores
*Robert Cameron Hazelton
*Rob Mclennan (why do they insist on upper-casing?)
*Sara Diane Doyle
*Shân Ellis
*Shirley Allard
*Walt Wojtanik
*William Manson

And with that part done I give you the poll which will close on April 29th at a time of my choosing. If you can't decide you may chose more than one. The winner will be announced on April 30th, again, at a time of my choosing.

"Ottawa dithers on poet laureate," The Ottawa Citizen

[photo: the brilliant, wise and talented Sandra Ridley at the second night of VERSeFest, last night] 

Peter Simpson in The Ottawa Citizen wrote an interesting article on the idea of an Ottawa poet laureate, and even quoted an article I wrote on same about four years ago, here. Really, why is it that everyone has them now, and we had them (in Canada) first, somehow ending up with the only (seemingly) geography now without?

vote for the 2010 poet laureate of the blogosphere;

I've been up for such before, even before I knew it existed, & very nearly won; this year I know about it, & am intrigued to see how the whole thing plays out (vote early, vote often, etc). Does that make it better or worse, participating, pushing? Should I just quietly leave alone, & let the universe unfold as it should?

Vancouver poet laureate Brad Cran’s Olympic Response;

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Kudos, sir. A must-read.