Ongoing notes: early June, 2011

House-sitting in Old Ottawa South again, this week. See, here I am, writing away at the Starbucks (I know, I know...).

Have you been catching all these interviews on Kevin Spenst's website? Recent ones include Stan Rogal and Ken Norris, and then there's this less-than-recent interview with Phil Hall; apparently he has a new book, Kildeer, out with BookThug I'd love to get my hands on, as well as the new Rae Armantrout (see Amy King's recent interview with her, here). And don't forget that the Niagara Literary Arts Festival, simply because I'm finally home from such, is still actually going on. And have you seen the Trillum shortlist, including Ken Sparling's Book [see my review of such here]? About damned time.

Keep your eye on: the literary component of WESTFEST, as I read fiction alongside Jon Paul Fiorentino, Gabriela Goliger and others on June 11; a reading I'm doing at mother tongue books with Pearl Pirie and Monty Reid on June 16; the Toronto Small Press Fair I'll have a table at on June 19^th; the ottawa small press book fair, June 25, with pre-reading the night before at the Carleton Tavern. Where will you be for all of this? At all those places, I'd hope. I'm even doing a reading in Perth on August 12 with Christine McNair, if you can wait that long.

Vancouver BC: Presented as a talk on a series of readings is Vancouver writer Michael Turner's pamphlet Three Readings: Camera, Tape and Sound (Kathy Acker, Steve McCaffery/bpNichol, and Kevin Davies, as introduced by George Bowering) (Wednesday, January 12, 2011) as part of Western Front's “Past is Prologue” series, “an ongoing research project considering the Western Front Media Archive.”

The literary reading is a relatively recent phenomenon. Implying a written text, it is closer to Gutenberg than the pre-contact conveyance of Salish myths and legends or the Homeric tradition of poetic oration. Words spoken from a page, as opposed to those that come remembered.

As a reader and a writer I have participated in hundreds of literary readings. Sometimes I look forward to them; other times they fill me with dread. In preparing my visit to the Western Front Media archive, I chose to focus on the collection's literary program, curious to see if the documentation of readings at a centre known for interdisciplinarity differs from those at a literary festival or a writers' club.

What follows are three instances where a reading and its documentation combine to form a third event. The first focuses on the camera; the second on the videotape; the third on the relationship between what is seen and what is heard.

The fact itself that such is happening is astounding enough, as so many artist-run centres seem to be unaware of what exactly they're sitting on, given such staff turnover over the years. In Ottawa alone, I've witnessed both Saw Gallery/Video and Gallery 101 participating in such purges of their archives, as the first sold off, among other items, three first edition copies of Michael Ondaatje's Governor-General's Award-winning The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) for fifty cents each (a book that, at the time, went for roughly $700 on Abe.com). Gallery 101, on the other hand, simply handed items out or left them on the curb to be collected, for their lack of space.

We now have decades worth of artist-run centres and literary readings in Canada; one can only admire Turner and Western Front, infamous for various literary readings over the years, including a large Talonbooks poetry launch in 1980, enormously for attempting to not only keep the records, but critically explore those same archives. In the first section, “Camera,” Turner explores a reading by Kathy Acker on February 2, 1977 from what would become The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec by Henri Toulouse Lautrec (1978). The second, “Tape,” writes of The Four Horsemen reading on November 21, 1977, and the third, “Sound,” explores a benefit reading for MacLeod's Books on October 22, 1983, focusing specifically on the segment by Kevin Davies.

The relationship between McCaffery and Nichol's performance and the deficiencies of the tape is uncanny, with the initial buckle acting as both muse and omen, or a transformational device that sets the stage for what is to come. Prefacing their performance is a story Nichol told at the conclusion of his Martyrology reading. When asked why his poem contained so many references to God, Nichol replied: “I decided a long time ago that anything that came into the poem I would leave in the poem. So I suppose that's in the way of explanation, not an apology.” What came into the documentation of McCaffery and Nichol's poem was just that.

One can only hope that this project continues, and possibly makes its way into some further printed documents, whether as an online archive of texts, and/or even a book-length study of the literary activity at The Western Front. If we don't understand just what it is we've done, what's the point of doing any more?

While a literature exists on the documentation of performance art (the performance document as object and the anxieties that result), I have found nothing on literary readings and their relationship to the (video) camera. One explanation could be the predictability of the format: the author, attached to the podium, reading from a text as if it were a script, one the audience might well be familiar with. A format such as this has little need of a camera operator; one merely presses “record.”

England: I recently received a small assortment of chapbooks by smallminded books, produced and curated by Stride editor/publisher Rupert Loydell, barely large enough to notice.

Nightclub

The Abyss: an apology for god's nightclub.

A calumny, a glorious denunciation of its

permutation on a kerygma: incomprehensible octagon.

In retrospect, it was always dark as anthracite,

propelled to decipher its reversion to

permutations.

So a penultimate home –

penultimate glorious calumny –

now The Anthracite nightclub. (Mike Ferguson)

Putting large poems in tiny spaces, I now own the splay and splendour of Peter Finch's The Insufficiency of Christian Teaching On the Subject of Common Emotional Problems (2011), the odd and sharp containments of Mike Ferguson's Found In Dissonance (2011), the wordplay of Richard Kostelanetz's Doublefulcra 2 (2011) and the wonderment of John Levy's Imagine A Whale (2011).

My

thoughts, she replied, are

like looking at a moving

whale with a magnifying

glass. (John Levy)

I can't find any real internet reference to these small items, although a review of one of Levy's previous in the same series exists here. These small, odd chapbooks remind in part of the Poems-For-All series out of California, tiny booklets small enough to leave in the most unlikely places, created as much for the sake of discovering new poetry audiences as astounding longtime readers. Just how long has he been making these, and how are they distributed?

Philadelphia PA: Recently in the mail, I received the most lovely letterpress object, Agnes Fox Press' sold out and numbered edition of fifty (I have number 19), Philadelphia poet Hailey Higdon's I WRESTLE HOME THE PAPERS (May, 2010). Produced as a five-page accordion strip, her meditation begins:

I wrestle home the papers.

I do.

Your divorced tendencies make you.

They make you.

He says: like baking cookies

you already put in the sugar

you can't get it out now

you have to throw away the whole batch

This is such a lovely piece, and I'm tempted to quote the entirety of such, being that it's short enough, but I won't, allowing it some future space to breathe on its own; considering they went out of print so quickly, might Agnes Fox Press produce another run? I'm caught by the thoughtfulll sadness of this small piece, encountering tweaks of loss, absence, blame, through the suggestion of divorce papers, and the possibility that eventually the feelings of loss will be gone, and the possibilities that this might, in fact, be entirely worse. Higdon, a pre-kindergarten teacher and poet living in Philly, is also the author of the poetry blog Palinode Project, as well as the Agnes Fox Press chapbook How To Grow Almost Everything (February, 2011), which I haven't yet seen. I am intrigued by what else she is capable of.

is it because I stopped meditating?

is that why I feel so asleep all the time?

why do

I have the urge to press my face against babies?

be near their heads and smell them?

this is a shape

I draw it with my fingers

12 or 20 questions (second series) with Eleni Zisimatos

Eleni Zisimatos writes and edits in her hometown of Montreal, QC. She was short-listed for the National Magazine Awards, The Robert Kroetsch Award, The Santa Fe Writer's Project and the Irving Layton Awards for poetry and fiction. She is Co-editor-in-Chief of the poetry magazine, Vallum: New International Poetics. www.vallummag.com.

1 - How did your first chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

I published my first chapbook when I was doing my MA in poetry at Concordia. It was an exciting time and my will to write was strong. It was a good chapbook, a long narrative poem, "Artemis and Return." I read it now and wonder where some of the energy it holds has gone. My writing now is not as intense. I seem to have a more Zen-like, relaxed approach now.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I have always been torn between poetry and fiction. I write both but I think I am a better poet. I'm not that good at long, descriptive passages. I was mostly sucked into poetry whilst doing a Modern poetry course at St. Francis Xavier University, with Doug Smith. I went to an amazing reading there by David Donnell and was hooked for life. But I also went to a reading by Timothy Findley around the same time, and languished over great fiction-writing abilities. I still have a signed copy of The Wars, by Findley. So...

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I was never a journal-writing, note-taking kind of poet. My writing is all fuelled by past experiences locked in my mind/body that spill out quickly almost like an alchemical process. I won't say I go into a 'trance' or anything, but it is kind of different from day-to-day experience. I do revise but not extensively.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I have honestly tried to have a beginning and an end in sight before I start on the first poem, but, alas, I can't ever see the end beforehand. Maybe this is another reason I am less good at fiction. I can't seem to be able to make an outline of a complete story. I just kind of write, with no set particular direction, and progress with short pieces towards a whole. Interestingly, I write about 5-6 poems in one sitting and, when I read them after, I find there is amazing unity and cohesion between the poems. Not only in style and tone, but also in imagery and thought. I haven't written too many books yet, but the one that was short-listed for the Robert Kroetsch Award, Signs, was made up of a conglomeration of short pieces. They cohered nicely into a pretty good manuscript. I have tried writing single, 'independent' poems, to be collected eventually into a book, but I like this less than the more perpetual, organic flow of parts and sections, words and images.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I like readings, but I find I get nervous and don't have a great flair for chit-chat and anecdote while on stage. I get all serious and this is sometimes a downer for an audience. Although people like good poetry, and I think my poetry is good, they also like some levity and breaks between poems. But I still read at the Yellow Door and the Visual Arts Centre in Montreal and have read at Mother Tongue in Ottawa. It is fun. I plan to get out a lot more and loosen up a bit.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

It's funny because a lot of my education (after I switched out of Organic chemistry in my 3rd year of my BA) has been in Classical and Medieval poetry and writing. Although I love this kind of work, ironically my writing often tends to be more avant-garde, more in the style of Anne Carson and John Ashbery. But I am a lover of poetry and can appreciate most styles. I even still appreciate science, egads. I love philosophy too. The old questions about love, death, the meaning of life, etc..are still relevant today and I think people still want to delve into deeper things like that, even in an age of surfaces. I am trying to be less pessimistic and more mystical in my writing. I love Rumi, for instance, but can't seem to be able to get rid of the 'edge.'

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Writing is always political, so writers ought to reflect on such things. The personal, mystical experience is my main 'like', but in a way, I prefer the Modernists of the 20th C and their style of writing. Even if a poet is not being directly, openly political, political concerns can be embedded within the fabric of their writing. Even writing about mystical love infers the absence of love and charity in the world and its leaders. So the work becomes political anyway on a deeper level. Does this make sense? Hope so.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I haven't worked with a lot of editors, so I can't say. Some poems of mine that have been accepted by magazines, a few times were revised by editors. I didn't mind the edits. I am flexible about my writing. It can morph into different things, kind of like the passage of time and life. It's an organic process, not fixed by ego.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

The best piece of advice I've heard is to read a lot, and I do. It's good to know about other people's work etc.. But also life experience is very important. It's not all about the mind, but the body too.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I just write randomly at different times. Maybe I should be more structured. This is probably why I don't have a lot of books published yet!

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

When I get stalled, I just leave my writing for a while. Completely forget about it. Then after a while, I'm back! And it's usually better writing.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Well, do you mean my childhood home or my home now? My childhood home was 100% Greek, so I guess stuffed green peppers and tomatoes baking in the oven covers it. My current home, well, I guess Tibetan incense.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Every little thing that one has experienced in their life is locked in the body and there is memory of it. Experiences you have forgotten inform your work. Experiences one is experiencing now are also useful, but I think that deeper influences from the past create works of art. Personally, I am not really influenced by specific things like music or nature. I don't like looking at an art object and writing a poem about it, for instance. But I do often use inter-textuality when I write, particularly with older poets like Dante etc..

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

As I mentioned before, classical, medieval, philosophical and religious writings are central to my work, even though the finished product of my work has no resemblance at all to these writers and writings.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I don't know.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I guess I would be an artist. I love painting and drawing. I am pretty good at cartoon-like stuff. I would have liked to create animated children's films too.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

That hidden 'manic' spirit! It chose me, not the other way around.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Scivias, by Hildegard of Bingen was very interesting. I've been on a movie strike for the past 5 years (not to worry, I'm coming out of it--) so I'm not up to date.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I am 'planning' my next move. I will promise to complete a new manuscript this year if it kills me. So, right now, I'm just busy editing other people's work for Vallum Magazine, my other occupation, which I love.

Thanks for the interview rob; it was fun!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Outlaws & Outsiders at Westfest Lit‏

Westfest Lit has a totally new feel this year. For one thing, the event is moving indoors -- to one of Ottawa's cooler restos, Juniper. Because of the quieter indoor venue, we've been able to mess with the format a little. This year's reading will be framed as writers in dialogue, loosely based on the theme Outsiders & Outlaws.

Westfest Lit
Saturday, June 11, 3pm
Juniper, 245 Richmond Rd
Hosted by Lucy van Oldenbarneveld
westfest.ca

Conversation #1: Outlaws
Gabriella Goliger & Patrizia Gentile
Goliger's latest novel (Girl Unwrapped) is set in post-war Montreal, as the novel's protagonist struggles to understand her surging lesbian sexuality, religion and society's attitudes. Gentile's latest book (The Canadian War on Queers), cowritten with Gary Kinsman, is a deeply researched look at the ways the government oppressed gays and lesbians across the country, with a focus on the civil service and the military.

Conversation #2: Outsiders
Jon Paul Fiorentino & rob mclennan
Fiorentino's novel Stripmalling is about outsiders, the economically and socially marginalized, youth, and stark realities of making minimum wage in Winnipeg. Incorporating letters, found material and elements of the graphic novel, Fiorentino's writing enacts the outsidership he writes about. The same can be said of rob mclennan's two novels, White and Missing Persons. Whether tackling the disaffection of the middle class in a fictionalized 1970s Niagara Falls or a working class farming life, gaps in memory and belonging show that we are all, in a sense, outsiders in our own lives.

A manifesto on the poetics of C.

for her birthday,

Oh beauty who fell asleep

on your birthday,

we swipe at you.

-- Rae Armantrout

1.

lived, a day

wrapped in absence of air,

we stopped to offer, twigs

and light,

wet pools of paper,

soft vehicles of travel,

some say the tributaries reach,

reach up,

a taste for mindfulness

and edge,

2.

what any bird

would trust,

a shining resource

some things are brutal,

incomplete,

are hard to speaking,

speak,

length,

a force of nature,

3.

an orchid bears one flower,

bears,

an earthly house,

words: a hard taste,

tempted,

mind the dedication,

slipped, a slip in,

hidden,

4.

the pace of silence,

slowed to crawl,

could singe

and shrivel,

a portrait made

is not what’s kept

parted, drawn

a laundry, white room

, curly hair

brush: relentless

, counting strokes

5.

layering, a tendril

, tidepool

deepest blue,

6.

a bell, rings

long, and

often questioned,

in full view,

your technicalities

wrote out sentences,

corrected buttonholes,

the leathery strap,

a carcass heavy

as a book,

7.

twinned, partitioned,

morning-wide,

relatively small,

and singled,

Pims, held point,

cotton shirts,

and finished,

estimations flutter,

natural,

a paper cup,

8.

, the city well

has run dry,

sparked

from metaphor,

portrait of

your dinner,

flared, a tempo,

not a statement,

definition,

9.

past lives

so frequently recalled,

present a field,

proposal of

cupcakes,

curiously dismissed,

the sake of argument,

like one

silk stocking,

, present

10.

who are you

, really

littered resemblance,

an emblem of

your swooning door,

another birthday,

emotional worlds,

the trickery of logic,

let who you are

, come

Ongoing notes: the dusie kollectiv,

Here are some brief reviews of more of recent chapbooks received as part of the “dusie 5 kollectiv” [see my three notes on such here, here and here].

San Francisco CA: I'm enjoying the wonderment of Bay Area poet Sarah Anne Cox's MEDEA 10-18 (2011), following up her dusie 4 kollectiv offering, MEDEA 1-9 (2010). The character Medea, in Greek myth, of course, is the wife of Jason and mother of his two children. Abandoned by Jason for another woman, Medea's story centres around seeking revenge on her errant, former husband, a story that Sarah Anne Cox slips in, around and through in peripheral and direct ways, twirling lyric around the narrative structure in a sequence of poems. Might Cox be slowly composing and releasing this sequence only in association with dusie? I'm intrigued by the slowness, but wondering how many years must we wait for a larger, longer and possibly complete manuscript? There's a part of me, though, that doesn't mind waiting to see what might come of this, next.

11

Let yourself slide into the lines, slip in unnoticed

and live there in the dirt and coarse gravel beach

once we stepped off the boat it was difficult to

get back on, we did see the ships coming, laden

we lived among wealth and so the items

arrived for trade. sometimes I'd walk to the beach

where the ships pulled up to see if I was there,

some part of me, some eastern black sea part

but all those red faced men dissemble calling

themselves from

no where. from the future.

I've been looking her name up, and keep finding scatterings of listings, including for trade poetry collections Arrival (Krupskaya, 2002) and, possibly, Parcel (O Books, 2007), but uncertainties abide. Where might all her poems be, and will perhaps some even manage to cross a border or two?

12

To get to the beginning you must go backward.

You must file an affidavit of intent

You must pull up the claims in newspaper reports

You must listen patiently to every version

You must be prepared to argue anything.

You must stop cradling the baby and let him go

You must stop cradling the baby and murder

Minneapolis MN: I have to admit, it was the title of Elisabeth Workman'sMaybe Malibu, Maybe Beowulf (2011) that really reached out and grabbed me, forcing me to sit down with this (compared to many other of the dusie 5 kollectiv chapbooks) relatively straightforward-looking pink chapbook (see a review someone wrote of a previous of her dusie chaps here). Are all of her titles this good? Moving through her collection, poems include “HARDCORE BRADY BUNCH ASEXUAL REPRODUCTION,” “HOW NOW MUFF-FED RUMPUS,” “THE CANADIAN TUXEDO IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION” and “THE UNSPOKEN REVERENCE THAT IS DWARF QUEEFING,” so I'd have to say unequivicoally yes. Yes they are.

A DICK DESTINY

The difference is “a factually correct object.”

I may be missing a subtlety here but it is Toledo

and we are rotating in a rolodex of wuv

in a hot air balloon over Sarajevo

something like another monolithic Post-it Note against the firmament

the message cut into tiny pieces with a steak knife

spoon-fed to the mouths of cows at the expense of

another quality docudrama

a probe, a hole, a “Burger King.”

I do like the near-electric movement of some of Workman's lines, the sing and the pop of her turns and snappy breaks (one online source I found refers to her as a “Flarf poet”), weaving in cultural references, all in a way that reminds me of Canadian poet Marcus McCann, weaving language play with irreverent pop-culture stings. Where might I find more, I wonder?

San Francisco CA: I've been reading the work of Bay Area poet, editor and critic Sarah Rosenthal for a few months now, so was quite pleased to see her small and graceful dusie offering, The Animal (2011), including text by Rosenthal and images by Amy Fung-yi Lee. What is this book, The Animal? She writes a narrator with possibly her own name, having conversations with birds, blurring the line between what is animal and what just might be human, and wondering exactly what the difference is. Constructed with hand-sewn dos-à-dos binding, the chapbook includes lyric and prose poems, a fragmented collation that may or may not be part of a larger project, writing:

The animal is

hungry in winter

after wars

Stories are made

from footage

as if this

and that animal

cared, broke bread

or bones together

The narrator

states the happily

ever after tale

Forget the narrator.

The choices are

vegetable, mineral,

or animal

Rosenthal, through books such as Manhatten (2009), seems interested in the book as unit of composition, writing out longer sequences that collage themselves into being, and into a kind of structural and thematic unity, and The Animal seems no different, while still allowing enough vibrancy and space to perhaps grow much larger.

Dear X,

You're real, but I can't come meet you because I'm sitting in a bar looking out through a picture window at orange geese with red beaks. The color must be natural but it's easy to suspect something's amiss and think Agent Orange and Red Dye Number Something. The geese have landed and are facing their leader who's honking directions at them and then they'll take off again.

This is a dream idea of geese infused with lack of expertise. Agent Orange wasn't orange.

I'm sitting at a Lazy Susan table thinking if it were filled with food and there were a family, how perfect to spin and share. But this place is deserted except for a couple of waitresses, one of whom just served me a beer, dark and rich like a piece of the most wholesome bread. I drank most of it immediately and as you know I can't handle alcohol. So we'll see. This place used to be a top establishment but the guys who recently acquired it have let it go to hell, keep a minimum crew and just squeeze whatever they can out of it. At least they can't ruin beer, or the solid, oak wood of the tables and bar. The geese took off at some point in this writing. They were a surprise in three dimensions, tinted with fear. By the way—they weren't outside plate glass. They were right here.

I love you,

S

fwd; The Puritan launches issue #13!

Dear Writers, Publishers, Editors, and Friends,

Celebrations! Issue 13: Spring 2011 of The Puritan has arrived on your Internet doorstep. Head on over to the site to check our current issue -- www.puritan-magazine.com.

There you'll find new fiction by Nancy Jo Cullen and Su Croll ...

New poetry by Stephen Brockwell, John Barton, Suzannah Showler, Jaime Forsythe, Rich Ives, Heather Davidson, Kristen Orser, and from a student still in high school (a first for The Puritan!), Tabitha Sayegh ...

And make sure you check out E Martin Nolan's in depth interview with Ken Babstock, his accompanying review of Babstock's latest collection, Methodist Hatchet, and Andrew MacDonald's short conversation with 2011 Commonwealth Prize winner for Best First Book, Katrina Barton Best.

Help us spread the word about the journal by posting the link to your profile, chatting it up on Twitter, and exploring the nooks and crannies of our website. It means the world to us!

And finally, we're always looking for work to fill our next edition -- Issue 14: Summer 2011. Send us original fiction, poetry, interviews, reviews, and essays by July 1st. Just follow our easy-to-navigate submissions manager on our website to do so. Generous bounties will reward your published writing!

Thanks again for your readership, and thank you sincerely to all who submitted work.

Yours respectfully,

The Puritan Editorial Team

--

The Puritan: Frontiers of New English
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
www.puritan-magazine.com
puritanmagazine@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/thepuritan
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2240060756

fwd; Call for submissions: Open Letter issue on Gail Scott

Open Letter is seeking submissions for a special issue dedicated to the writing of Gail Scott. This issue invites writers and critics to engage with any aspect of Scott’s work. Possible topics may include (but are certainly not limited to):

*Prosaics and the importance of the ordinary or everyday
*Montréal architecture / text architecture
*Political and cultural grammars of Scott’s writing
*Rituals of contact and contamination
*Reassessments of Scott’s early writing
*Cross-continent connections
*Unruly ventures in literary / cinematic genres: travel writing, detective fiction, noir
*Surrealism
*Hauntology
*Flies on the wall and other forms of posthuman cognition
*Modes of (self)surveillance; systems of observation
*Alternative genealogies
*Scott’s contributions to theories of queer narrative, translation, feminist poetics

Please send intentions / ideas to lianne.moyes@umontreal.ca

Complete work is requested by September 15, 2011.

the end of history: George Edward John Kibble Page (1886-1960)

A photograph of my mother’s paternal grandfather, George Edward John Kibble Page in his uniform, who sang in the choir and played tuba in Cobourg’s Kilty Band. In April, 2011, I had an opportunity to drive into Cobourg, Ontario for the first time, and visit his gravesite, just beside the white chapel on the hill, exactly as Aunt Pam described. George with his wife, Annie Fairman Friend. Their son Donald listed underneath them in stone, who died during World War Two flight training, just off the coast of Wales, by Angles. Great Uncle Donald, a gunner and radio operator, flying low across the water, my mother once told, a cliff that came too quickly to avoid. Who never actually saw battle, perhaps. Of the four children they had, another, baby Frederick, died of rheubella, not even out of diapers. We couldn’t find his stone, somewhere else in the field, unknown. Behind the Page stone, one for their daughter, Olive May, my grandfather’s remaining sibling, citing name and open date, and her husband, who died in 1997. In the shadow of the chapel, in the shadow of his in-laws, looking down. Protecting. Much of the rest of the line buried in Ottawa, Pinecrest, far away from these 1812 fields.

Searching through information online, Christine discovers a genealogy by Olive’s granddaughter, Amanda, eight years my junior. Amanda, mother of three, and a registered nurses in the Toronto area. Page upon page of Page family, with details I had not previously known, details I couldn’t imagine. Three further generations, for example, an unbelievable wealth. I knew of the parents of my great-grandfather, George Edward John Kibble Page, but here a list for grandparents as well, the “sailor/mariner” Edward George Page (c. March-April, 1835 – c. Dec 1890-March 1891) and Rachel Hughes (c. 1838-1839 – c. December 1909-March 1910), who stayed behind in England, with a list of not one child but eight: George, Sarah Ann, Stephen R., John William, James E., Albert A., Charles L. and William A.

How to comprehend this gift of new family? This wealth, wondering now if there other branches, further, still active. Are there still traces back home in Ramsgate? Is there anything left? And what was it they were leaving behind? By 1907, Cobourg, Ontario was already a shade of a shadow, its peak nearly a half-century gone. By that point, Ramsgate the same, what Wikipedia calls “one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century,” and where St. Augustine had visited some fifteen centuries before. Ancient Hraefn's gate or Raven's cliff gap, eventually becoming Ramisgate or Remmesgate by 1225, and Ramesgate by 1357. Old seaside town. Where the boats and the ships and the port, leaving. The only Royal Harbour in the United Kingdom, linked by rail in 1901 to Margate and Broadstairs. That this rail might have killed it. This port.

Behind Edward George, third of five children born to Stephen Page (December 30, 1803 – c. June-September 1873) and Anne Fowler (c. April 1800-March 1801 – after 1881). Ending my line of Georges, a line now at both ends, broken. Stephen, fourth of six children born to Edward Page (c. 1775 – after 1811) and Hannah Gibbons (c. 1775 – after 1811). All of Ramsgate, all of Kent, all of England, born and raised and bred and buried. Resting comfortable, generations, possibly still.

Susan Howe in That This (2011), writing:

That this book is a history of
a shadow that is a shadow of

Me mystically one in another
another another to subserve. 

In searching, finding sometimes the limitations of ourselves. Where we stretch out and begin, where we also end. Seeking out our own shadows, perhaps. Unafraid.

Edward Page of St. Lawrence, Ramsgate, Kent, England. My great-great-great-great-great grandfather. Blowing my mind. It is so good to meet you.

Ongoing notes: the dusie kollectiv,

Here are some brief reviews of more of recent chapbooks received as part of the “dusie 5 kollectiv” [see my first two notes on such here and here].

Chicago IL: For the few years I've been aware of his work, I've been taken by some of the trade poetry collections of Chicago poet and publisher William Allegrezza, who, according to the back of his dusie offering, Marquee (2011), “has books forthcoming with Salt Publishing, The University of New Orleans Press, and Furniture Press.” Envy, those. Allegrezza's poems, here, are predominantly constructed of statements, sentences and queries that flow across a few different structures, from the halting-straight to scattered across the page. For those who don't know about his work, Allegrezza is one of the more interesting and persistent poets over the past decade in Chicago. In this collection of short poems, what, exactly, does the marquee tell?

the red notebook

if you start to believe this—

what this? the smell of stale

air, the burning eyes?—,

you should, perhaps,

if you did, begin to move

through office alleys,

the birds silent—the starlings

having shaken space away—

you should see the signs

cold with wind and

rhapsodize about leaves

turning in violent

circuitry spreading on our

young memories and

think about the same bridges,

stretches, and pine trees

you knew when young.

Brooklyn NY: Who is this Krystal Languell, author of many lost cause creatures could form a very sad list (2011)[see Allegrezza's review of same here]? According to the bio at the back of her small chapbook, she is “the founding editor of Bone Bouquet and a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative.” How can I still be amazed that there are so many interesting poets I haven’t previously heard about? It even says she is “poetry editor for Noemi Press,” another discovery.

His non-anatomical heart? Oh I don’t give a shit.

Wants to get through it unscathed. Friend of poetry. Ten-plus.

A straight white man can’t get a dollar out of me—you say

you don’t like pain? The trouble with your defense

is I’m working class, too. Get in line and take a number.

Many of the sentences that make up her many lost cause creatures could form a very sad list collide, crash headlong into each other, creating the most jarring and magnificent breaks. Languell’s short sequence of compact stanzas collage and even confuse their way into impact, discovering and creating meanings through the combinations.

A slow talker says, “Where are the bodegas? In Brooklyn

you can go to a bodega and get a Snapple.” Indisputable

& at the flea market you can buy milkman receipts from 1907

& personal correspondence. The din in my museum

overpowers what’s outside the window—it’s old noise, vintage.

I’m curious as to where she might have picked up or picked out some of these phrases; is this a collage of her own words with others slipped in? It’s as though Languell has picked from the language and the fragments of stories surrounding her immediate world, writing a poem out of the simple collapsing of her entire world into short, sharp sentences. Is this a collection of stories, a poem, or a very sad list? I think it’s all of that, and perhaps, none of the above, at once. Either way, I wonder, is this part of something larger she is collecting?

when you call on the poor to make donations

when you feel like a shelter dog

when I hear the word culture I reach for my checkbook

when I get my period on the way

to ship a dead woman’s things home

Lafayette CO/LO: Part of the entertainment of receiving so many chapbooks from writers around the world has not only been for the variety of writing, but the variety of production and format. From poets j/j hastain and Marthe Reed come the collaborative post-cards :: Lafayette á Lafayette (Nous-zōt Press, 2011), a collection of pieces by two poets responding to each other. As Reed writes in her “Post-face” at the end of her section:

Out of the blue, the best of blue skies, last February, I received an email from j/j hastain responding to my first little book, tender box, a wunderkammer. A kind of grace, and the opening of dear friendship. The discovery that we both live in Lafayette – one in Colorado and one in Louisiana – became a structure – an imperative? – for writing poem-cards to one another, inspired also by j/j’s unbound chapbook of poem-cards for Dusie 4. envisioning our collaboration as an extension of the Dusie community, each month we sent one another a hand-made card, occasions for dialog – a process of learning one another’s voice(s), impulses, languages. j/j’s work speaks to me of the body and embodiment, of the passage between correspondence, a friendship formed along the pulses of poetry and communion.

These are poems that respond to and play off of each other, each poet reflecting back what it is that they see, and perhaps adding to it.

all none every

absolutely disposable

when s/he hits the page it will

burn away

the body exceeds its content (Marthe Reed)

There is something wonderful about the play between the two of these, barely opened up, it might appear, through nearly a dozen poems each. hastain’s initial responses to Reed react far more abstractly, taking her references and pulling them apart, writing a clarity of purpose:

humans are congealed desire in

desperate pursuit of form

And I am hoping, might this be some kind of ongoing collaboration, akin to, perhaps, the ongoing collaboration between Canadian poet Douglas Barbour and American poet Sheila E. Murphy, the first part of such appearing as Continuations (Edmonton AB: University of Alberta Press, 2006)? If Barbour and Murphy are any example, it is possible to bridge long distances through the poem. As hastain’s own “Post-face” reads:

From inhabiting the lonely site of an only internal sky—from what was such immense effort to thread the days, then—came this presence. And from it: how make speak in world compel such speechless? I knew by the warmth of Marthe’s responses to my gestures toward her and her work, that there could be fluency—but how to record the progresses collaboratively? What tongue of connectivity? How would I mark the sweet undulations of what (for me) had once been either a private or public (performance-based) body of grief? I am saying how make shared by two? I am saying how make collaboratively heal-ful bridge? I think that I have been part of a miracle here with Marthe. A progressive, porous progression. A possibility made more possible through extension wherein the refracted views I share, are received and reflected back. This process increasing lubrications between gesture in planarity and the heart-felt, galactic compulsions of memoir/memory.