Fewer & Further Press: Monk, Duggan and Szymaszek

I recently received a package of chapbooks from a press I hadn’t previously heard of, Fewer & Further Press of Wendell MA, with titles including Andrew Mister’s Hotels (2007), Clark Coolidge’s Counting On Planet Zero (2007), Shannon Tharp’s Determined by Aperture (2008), Arlo Quint’s Drawn In (2009), Geraldine Monk’s SKYSCRAPERS (2010), John Godfrey’s Singles and Fives (2011), Laurie Duggan’s Allotments (2011) and Stacy Szymaszek’s austerity measures (2012).  Going through these chapbooks, Fewer & Further Press appears to favour the sequence, and has a reach far further than the continental United States, publishing poets from the United States, Europe and Australia.

Today

sky vacant          prosaic

after drenching and departures

almost carved in a tree

‘we’re out of control’

cold tea and a quick meal disastrously

decorates book cover

(smears of crime move with wild-fire spread)

puzzles testing resilience to facts

keeping out fear

                            rudimentary horns may

sprout from rocks

(theatrics breaking out of bounds)

almost wrote on the wall

‘we’re straining the day out’ (“CS,” Geraldine Monk)

A reissue of a chapbook originally produced by U.K. publisher Galloping Dog Press in 1986, Geraldine Monk’s SKYSCRAPERS is a sequence of short poems built on clouds, each with a two-letter title, from “CI” to “CS” to “AS” to “NS.” Through ten poems, Monk stretches the fluidity of cloud-poems, using the space and the stretch of the open page in lines that float apart, dissolve and cloud together, in the most tenuous of connections. Each poem opens its first stanza by naming a type of cloud, and later, opens a stanza at mid-point with “Today.” Writing a sequence of binaries, each first half writes a descriptive of cloud, and the second, grounds the poem temporally on the ground.

Allotment #3

halfway round the world

friends assemble an exhibition

of our former lives:

Coalcliff circa 1980;

photos of us, younger,

me washing dishes before the louvres,

out of my depth in a ‘career move’

that didn’t come off: scriptwriter

with skills for neither plot nor dialogue;

a house on sinking land,

(warped corner of the living room) (Laurie Duggan, Allotments)

Twenty-nine in number, Australian poet Duggan’s Allotments appear as fragments of something larger, less than stand-alone poems. What is Duggan working up to, his slow way towards? They read like small observational pieces, but with a slight skid towards abstract, leaving a door open where others might close. His poems read deceptively straightforward, even the ones that might be no more than they appear.

Sears Tower

harbinger for

trip over

useless crutches

at Holy Hill

we left nothing

flew East

with one

carry on (austerity measures, Stacy Szymaszek)

The most striking of the small selection of chapbooks, Szymaszek’s austerity measures works as a poem, as well as a sequence, building up an accumulation of sharp, short pieces into something absolutely devastating. At one point, the poem reads “slow down,” and it nearly feels redundant, as though the entire piece requires the reader to slow, absorb with attention, to really comprehend what the poem is doing. Creeleyesqe in the adherence to short lines and small moments, she even quotes him, slyly, within the bounds of her extended piece. Some sections appear self-contained, and others, points along a further, lyrical line.

when memory attacks

bring breath back

one thousand times (austerity measures, Stacy Szymaszek)

Profile of serif of nottingham editions, with a few questions

My profile of Gary Barwin's small press, serif of nottingham editions, is now online at Open Book: Ontario.

new from above/ground press: new titles by McElroy, Wilkinson, Hajnoczky + Dennis,

Twentieth

Gil McElroy

$4

See link here for more information

A Little Slash at the Meadow

Joshua Marie Wilkinson

$4

See link here for more information

The Double Bind Dictionary

Helen Hajnoczky

$4

See link here for more information

THE COMPLEMENT AND ANTAGONIST

OF BLACK (OR, THE DEFINITION OF ALL

VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS)

Amy Dennis

$4

See link here for more information

published in Ottawa by above/ground press

February 2013

(with a list of titles produced in January here)
(backdated 20th anniversary/2013 subscriptions still available!)
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Andrew Szymanski

I was born and raised in Ottawa, ON, spent five years in Waterloo, ON (where I did my undergrad in English Lit), and have been living in Montreal (where I did my Master’s in Lit/Creative Writing) for four years now.  Montreal is home for now.  The Barista and I is my first book.  It’s a book of short stories.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Well, this is my first book.  It hasn’t changed my life in the slightest and I don’t anticipate it changing it in any pronounced way.  Nevertheless, there’s a feeling of validation.  And also finality—it’s kind of unerasable now.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I didn’t exactly.  I started writing journal entry-like one-pagers when I was a late teen.  These evolved (or devolved) into shitty prose poems and little vignettes.

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?
Sometimes, it takes several days or longer to wrestle my mind into submitting to write.  I’m not a note guy.  I typically write one sentence at a time and I don’t usually know where the story’s going.  I tried notes for a while but got bored trying to draft stories that I knew the ending to.  I write in spurts, starts & stops—I usually get a first draft out pretty quickly (if it gets that far—I have a lot of material that limps out of the starting gate).  The final drafts, I like to think, are much tighter… But I do have a bit of a maintain-the-initial-feeling-that-made-you-write-this chip on my shoulder.

4 - Where does a story 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?
Begins with me tiptoeing to the computer frightened.  I start from the beginning and get ideas as I go… If I were to write a book, it’d be an accident (though this is slightly disingenuous b/c I’ve ditched at least three drafts of 10-20 grand that I intended to be a novel).  I do hope this happens soon.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don’t particularly like readings that much—going to them or participating.  But my feedback from readings has been tremendously positive—I doubt I’d have a book out or be doing this interview if it weren’t for a few great public reading experiences.  Nevertheless, short answer: public answers don’t have anything to do with my creative process, no. 

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?
Not really, no.  If I’m trying to answer any questions, it’s the old unanswerables, like “What’s the point of this/anything?”  I think the current questions are the same as ever.

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?
I don’t see the writer as having any responsibility.  To me, he only has a role in the sense that he writes, instead of crunching numbers or hitting golf balls (but he can do those other things, too).

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both.  Writing for me is a lot of navel-gazing, and it’s hard to be objective after staring at the old navel for so long. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“Fake it till you make it,” maybe.

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?
Inadvisedly, I keep a wildly inconsistent writing routine.  I have periods of being prolific and periods where I think I’d like to become a professional golfer or a carpenter.  A typical day begins with me hustling to get to work on time, or waking up in the afternoon if it’s the weekend.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Historically, if I’m not writing, it means that I’m probably not as miserable as I could be.  I just trust that my misery will return.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
If it’s my home, maybe a foot odour.  My parents’ though, turkey.

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?
Sure.  Music, for sure.  Movies, sure.  David Lynch sometimes pokes around my mental landscape.  Photography, painting...  Nature, sure.  Can’t discard nature. 

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
These aren’t necessarily always my favourites but: Salinger, Bolaño, DFW, cummings, Bernhard, Hemingway…

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Find a way to live freer and less encumbered, mostly.  Get a tattoo.

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’d like to be a pro athlete—maybe a basketball player or a golfer.  Maybe a stand-up comic.  (Though I wish I had the impulse to help people—like a doctor). 

Since I am far from sustaining myself financially with writing, I will say, the sad truth is I would have ended up working in an office as an editor (what I do currently).

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
A sadness and a romanticism and an attempt at immortality.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Last great book: Humboldt’s Gift by Bellow.  Last great film: The 400 Blows by Truffaut (though I even more recently watched Magic Mike, and I thought it was almost great—best I’ve seen of 2012).

19 - What are you currently working on?
Fiction and poetry.  Staying the course.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: late February, 2013

You probably already know that we were in Boca Raton, Florida recently [see my report on such here], but here’s another photograph from such. Our final morning on the beach, in the midst of a spitting rain, and high waves from the wind. Someone suggested that this might be a perfect cover for a Victorian-era novel. Wuthering Heights in South Florida?

Our pals William Hawkins and Greg “Ritalin” Frankson are receiving the first ever VERSeOttawa Hall of Honour Awards at a ceremony as part of the third annual VERSeFest, March 17, 2013. Congratulations to you both!

Oh Canadians, why do you send me so few chapbooks?

Atlanta; Philadelphia; Northampton; Jerusalem; Madison; New York: The only problem with a collective, is that you can’t tell where they’re situated. Perhaps this is their selling point. From the Agnes Fox Collective comes the short chapbook Luminous Terrene (January, 2013) by Matthew Gagnon. I’m taken already with any work that begins with a quote by French writer Emmanuel Hocquard. This ten page poem is composed as a generative abstract: generous, open, subtle and remarkable. This poem withholds more than it contains, and surprises as much as it reveals. I am intrigued by this work, and wonder if this is a single piece, or part of something larger.

            A gyre of minerals is visible from the outcrop, but can we really say we’d rally behind the visible?

            I won’t be extracted from a custom or assembled into the fold of a wave.

            A flock of fish is breathing on dry land. There’s nothing modern about the way we cook fish.

            An aggregate of water over a film of water. Do we tread the water’s timetable, survey the riptide’s antimony?

            Read the night as if the night is read, and in stoking the night, order it: punctuated.

            Fastened to the umbrage of what’s missing, my memory’s adrift in a receding tidemark.

Milwaukee MI: From plumberries press I received a couple of chapbooks, including Connor Strathman’s Some Were Awake (2011), chelsea tadeyeske and edwin r. perry’s suddenly you’re naked and wandering through pasturage, on the farthest point of the peninsula, they say, the form has failed. you’ve left so many of your things, left for more favorable destinations. (2011), cynthia spencer’s In what sequence will my parts exit (2011) and chelsea tadeyeske’s HEELDRAGGER (2012), as well as the fifth issue of Humble Humdrum Cotton Frock (summer 2012).

THE ONE ABOUT PUBLIC SPEAKING

A moron walks into a bar. He clinks a butterknife against a glass to get the room’s attention. He carries a butterknife always, in a special handmade holster. Night is the most mysterious time of day, he says. It’s 11:30 a.m. Like I said, he’s a moron. Stupid women are at least attractive; this guy’s only funny on accident. You would not exchange the word “love” for “power” in the adage “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all,” but the moron would. Somebody told him that “verb” means “word” and he interpreted this too broadly. Luckily, the moron lacks all capacity for embarrassment. You have to learn shame, along with algebra and how to hug. The moron loosens his tie. He’s on his way to a funeral. (kathleen rooney and elisa gabbert, Humble Humdrum Cotton Frock)

There is something about the simple yet attractive design and production that appeals, and some of the work as well, despite being highly uneven. Even in the collaborative poem by kathleen rooney and elisa gabbert, there are some striking lines and images, in a piece that otherwise could use some editing, and time. There is something reminiscent here of Carleton University’s In/Words [see my recent article on them here], of a group of young writers producing and encouraging and publishing, a number of which just aren’t there yet, but are awfully close. Not there yet, but worth watching, to see for when they do.

The smell of the street

is now dusted in static

Salt lips and naked leaf

buoying in the sprung wind

court of lightning window

            you lick your teeth

shows the image

of towels hung

on the ledges

Give me a heart of cloth

and a limit of tin

to protect it from the rain (Connor Strathman, Some Were Awake)