Friday, June 19, 2015

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part three,



[Hugh Barclay, with his Thee Hellbox Press] Another listing of titles picked up at our most recent fair! See part one here and part two here, obviously. How much is too much? (We might need to build more shelves)

Ottawa ON: It’s nice to see a new small press offering from Toronto poet (and longtime editor of the Surrealist Poets Gardening Association) Lillian Nećakov, her chapbook The Lake Contains an Emergency Room (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, 2015).

The Lake Contains an Emergency Room

There are pacifists and mongrels sitting here
there is no window to look out of
you hold a small puddle of blood up against your cheek
outside, I imagine the clouds are blue
we have been waiting hours
it has been 16 years
we wait our turn
you can no longer hold a pencil
the doctor looks like a rooster
night is finished
there is no smell to pain
the needlework is shoddy
the door remembers us.

There is an odd humour and compelling candor to the surrealism of Lillian Nećakov, one that seems very human in nature, exploring the surrealism of such tangible subjects as gardening, the nature of origins, making soup, or a stroll through the park.

Step Away

Let’s return to an empty chair
or we could weed the garden
something to silence the haunting
a thing to teach us to carve bone
un-mouth the meanness
un-speak the dark promises
murmuring over our lakes

let’s return tonight
to our child’s skin
selfish, shirtless
bruised
let’s rage against the tongue
stich together
all our dead relatives
and linger
regretless
on the wind.

Ottawa ON: After an extended period working on a variety of other projects [see my recent Jacket2 piece on him here], jwcurry has been publishing again recently, with some recent oddbits including the collaborative (and hand printed) tchts (jwcurry and Rachel Zavitz) produced as CURVD H&Z 474 (31 oct 2014).

shadow planet
smithereens
at impact

The small collaboration between curry and Zavitz is one of but a long line of collaboration he’s been doing with multiple writers over the years. There is something about this short sequence of three-line stanzas that have the tautness of (English-language) haiku combined with an incredible precision that presents the illusion of a single (as opposed to double) hand present in every line. To order a copy, or inquire about other publications, write him c/o his new address: #302-28 Ladouceur Avenue, Ottawa ON K1Y 2T1

Another recent publication is the gestetnered INDUSTRIAL SABOTAGE #64, as jwcurry writes in the colophon, “the ‘selfstarterkid’ issue,’ the first to appear (after a long hiatus: #63, Messagio Amor Some More, was issued 13 april 2008),” featuring writing by a host of regular and irregular contributors to curry’s wealth of publications: Michael e. Casteels, M.R. Appell, P. Cob_, Lenore Cochrane, Jon Cone, Judith Copithorne, Marilyn Irwin, Lance LaRocque, Billy Little, bpNichol, Jim Smith, Hugh Thomas and Rachel Zavitz. One thing I’ve always admired about curry is his patience, fully aware that he has said that for his letterpress printing, he has to like a poem to produce it not once, but up to one or two hundred times (which makes one wonder how many published pieces would actually survive the same criteria, even from their own authors).

Apple

apple,
so to say, never again
uneaten

someone gave me a bump on the head (Hugh Thomas)

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