[the immediate view
from my table, with Paul Dutton preparing his table in the far background]
See parts one here and two here and three here. And, also, my ongoing notes on the fall edition of the ottawa small press book fair.
Curious
that I chose, semi-randomly, to review two small press literary journals in
this post. Both include poems by Emily Izsak and Victor Coleman, from his “People
Who Died” project. What are the odds?
Cobourg ON: Recently, Cobourg writer, editor and publisher Stuart Ross [see my recent Ploughshares interview with him here] has been talking about his
plans to produce a sequence of new poetry journals, each with only one issue to
their name. The latest of which is The Northern
Testicle Review #1, which Ross describes as “featuring work by over 25
amazing poets from Canada, the U.S., Norway, Argentina, and South Korea. It’s ‘Issue
#1 — The Final Issue!’ And it’s produced in a format I’ve never used before:
letter-size sheets stapled down the left side into cardstock covers. As for the
title, it’s a response to New Orleans poet Joel Dailey’s mag The Southern Testicle Review, which contained
some of my work.”
ON THE
OCCASION OF MY
SECOND
TIME CONCUSSED
Tradulent prevadores
preek plassully
frin meg rumb.
Struggly crancies
crill crevulent
gron heb hungk.
Ravended shteeps
shtog arn dovelled
Shteeps.
Queek, Queek.
Pronk, Pronk.
Pronk, Pronk.
Ogglygy. (Jason Camlot)
The
issue contains poems by a whole slew of poets, including Alice Burdick, Jason
Camlot, Allison Chisholm, Victor Coleman, Joel Dailey, Laura Farina, Mallory
Feuer, debby florence, Jaime Forsythe, Loren Goodman, Richard Huttel, Emily
Izsak, Mark Laba, Benny Langedyk, Lance La Rocque, Claire MacDonald, Kathryn
Mockler, Sarah Moses, Leigh Nash, Nicholas Power, Tom Prime, Nikki Reimer,
Laurie Siblock, Dag Straumsvåg and Hugh Thomas. Really, the appeal of any
publication edited by Stuart Ross is twofold: knowing that there is going to be
a list of ‘usual suspects,’ which happen to be a series of poets doing strong
work (Burdick, Laba, Huttel, La Rocque, Nash, Power, Thomas, etcetera) as well
as an intriguing series of new poets. Ross is a generous and varied reader of
literature, and you might never know just who you might be introduced, or even
re-introduced to by picking up one of his journals. The real fun is wondering
what the next journal might just be called.
Papaveroideae
calling
from realms of isolated wind and chatter
trill of the absolute desert
piles of schizo zirconias upturned in
fields and no pupils in sight
how lavish the feast
of memory
how crude
the starved echo of
a frost-tolerant safe
it’s snowing on shut lashes
the birds are electric the wires are ashes
hark! fuzzy void of love-blip
lone shiver of losing
don’t hang up
goodness loitering paces and jags
a hiccup in the hollows
a boot on the line
I do not recognize the voice
on the other end
some silence of poppies (Claire MacDonald)
Toronto ON: I’ve been a fan of COUGH magazine for a while now, the
official/unofficial occasional journal of the “bpNichol Lane Writers Group,” edited
and produced by a different member of their informal group with each issue. The
ninth issue, guest-edited by Brock Hessel, includes work by James Irwin, David
Bateman, Brad Shubat, T.A. James, Victor Coleman, Emily Izsak, Michael Boughn,
Michael Harman, Oliver Cusimano and Android Spit. I’m not sure who did the
artwork on the cover and throughout, but would suspect the editor, given he is
listed as “editor/artist” in the colophon; a safe supposition, I would think. The
artwork is odd, jarring and lively in a rather interesting way. Part of the
enjoyment of COUGH comes from both the mix of styles and the roughness to some
of the work, including work by more experienced writers such as Coleman and Boughn
alongside work by, for example, Cusimano and Bateman. There is always such a
lively energy to the issues they produce, and while everything might not be
perfect-polished, it seems entirely not the point. One of my ongoing favourites
of the group has to be Toronto poet Emily Izsak [see her “Tuesday poem” up at dusie here], who now has a first trade collection forthcoming from Signature
Editions in spring:
Mar. 8th
74 to Union Station 07:32
The bone parade
nonstop and hypnotic
injury en route
to holistic carriage
Quixotic language
warlike in direction
flares up
in habitual trickery
A hand in the bird
is worth two in the bush
Truth recumbent
on holey anatomy
A spoof on the lube
that got us into
this tunnel in
the first place (Emily Izsak)
After
going through her chapbook [see my review of such here], I’m curious to see what
she can do in a larger space (I think she is a poet that is going places). Otherwise,
there are more than a couple of further highlights to the issue – including Android
Spit (a piece I would love to hear performed publicly) and Michael Harman – but
the Oliver Cusimano poems really jumped out at me as well [looking forward to
including his work in an upcoming issue of Touch the Donkey]:
#1
Invading oneself takes imagination
engaged by other houses to drag
across garden expanse as many heads
of state in denial as it can to
really spin down its clock tower in the
fashion described massively & stored at
owned facilities, or another version
what route below has hardly any response
pleasure dissolves freeze it exerts anyway
before flower turns on its euphorizing
scent displayed further in the locked heart
on open views as one’s self becomes by and
therefore for itself analogized
pēdals uncapping from automatic thigh. (Oliver
Cusimano)
1 comment:
Interesting comments on COUGH. Emily Izsak is a very interesting young writer. I think she's one of the best under 30 poets going. And I've known Oliver Cusimano for a long time but haven't seen any of his newer work. I think this poem you've reprinted is the best of his I've ever read.
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