As
you most likely know, we recently held our latest edition of the semi-annual ottawa small press fair, and I returned home with nearly as much as I left with
(of course). Given such, here are a couple of items I picked up at our recent
fair.
Cobourg/Toronto ON: I am curious about Those problems (Proper Tales Press,
2016), the “first book in English” by Toronto/Buenos Aires poet, translator and
journalist Sarah Moses. I’m (obviously) aware of editor/publisher Ross’
interest in a variety of flavours of surrealism, but Moses’ work feels
different, working a relatively straight narrative that, before you realize,
has already turned and twirled out behind you.
His words
He is in love with his words. With the words he
choses and how he combines them and what the combinations mean to him and what
he hopes they mean to others. Lying awake late at night, he thinks about them,
obsesses over them. He feels they hold great, mysterious truths about the
world. He is driven to share these truths and, during the day, on street
corners and park benches, he says his words out loud to mothers pushing
strollers and lawyers on lunch breaks and joggers in spandex. When they walk
by, he takes his words, rolls them around his mouth, and then spits them out
carefully as though they were precious pearls he could string together with his
lips.
There
is something in Moses’ work that is reminiscent, also, of Inger Wold Lund’s
first English-language publication, Leaving Leaving Behind Behind (Brooklyn NY: Ugly Duckling Press, 2015) [see my review of such here]. There are some really lovely and wonderful pieces in
here, some of which appeared in her Spanish-language title as they say (Buenos
Aires, Argentina: Socios Fundadores, 2016). Might a full-length English volume
be far behind? I can certainly hope.
Nothing is
required of you
Well, maybe a few things. Good neighbourliness,
for example. By this I mean that you take care of the fairy ring and webbing on
your property. That you take care not to throw household items, such as
spatulas or other kitchen implements, on mine. Take care of your front porch
and your gutters, especially after a downpour, especially in early June, when
the downpours are frequent and forceful. The hedges, don’t forget to trim them.
Make sure to keep your budgerigars well fed and in good spirits. If you borrow
my unicycle without my knowing, as I know you have done, please take care to
use gloves. Take care to cooperate with the forces of eternal law. When you
engage in wireless communication, both within your home and without it, do so
with care. If you are outdoors, with something to say, take especial care when you
say it: project your voice, choose the appropriate words, and be sure to
enunciate.
Kingston/Ottawa ON: I find writer Sacha Archer’s new chapbook, Dishwashing Event
Part Two: Ontario (Puddles of Sky, 2016) a rather odd and intriguing
project. Following his earlier chapbook, Dishwashing Event, Part One: Tianjin, China (Calgary AB: No Press, 2016), he writes
that the poems that make up this small collection “are the linguistic offshoot
of my daily dishwashing.” He continues:
A speech recognition program translated,
transformed the noise of my dishwashing into words recorded by the speech
recognition program into a document in Microsoft Word. Each poem records one
day’s bout of washing. When I was finished scrubbing and rinsing the dishes (a
banal and even burdensome chore), the dishware was found clean and stacked in
the dishrack, while in the vicinity a poem had accumulated, had accrued. And an
event had ended. What was formerly a banal and even burdensome chore in an
ordinary kitchen, had been transformed by the presence of a listening, a
gathering in of (potentially) my every move and grunt, the running water of the
tap, the friction of my body and dishes, dishes and other surfaces, (a siren in
the distance?). Standing in a transformed event zone, it was to feel how
different the same could be.
I
find the poems inside intriguing, for their shape, sound, visuals and even the
larger project, but the tone in which he writes about the daily task of
dishwashing a bit strange—a “banal and even burdensome chore”—as though there
is something unpleasant about one of the most basic of daily tasks, and even
removing the meditative and even honourable considerations of daily household
tasks. How do such essential daily requirements become so troublesome, and how
does, as he suggests, the turning of such into poetry somehow salvage from
difficulty? How are the poems “above” such “mundane” work?
And in two and
then an if each each in in the day it
must touch to come to rest each day in
and of and the each day to day to day in this case as if it just to each
of the end of an to talk to the De
to the to do and to 1010 in an of and tend to an to
an an if in fact to 10 to do
just that if to do to an and to fifth
And
I would like to see more from Jessica Rowlands, who supplies “the concrete
poetry which appears on the cover and throughout the book.” I would very much
like to see more. Please.
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