You
might have noticed I’ve been sketching out short reviews of a variety of items
gathered at Toronto’s Meet the Presses [see my most recent post on such here], but a week later, we had our own fair as
well, the twenty-fourth anniversary of the semi-annual ottawa small press book fair (and, given it wasn’t actually
semi-annual until the third event, it
means I’ve now organized forty-seven of these events, forty-six of them solo). What
the? If you wish to keep informed on the next fair, most likely in later June, I would recommend joining the Facebook group.
Kingston ON: From Puddles of Sky Press
comes the wee chapbook To My Beloved Puppy (2018), by Brady Kumpf, described in the author biography at the back
of the collection as “a 14 year old who loves his dog, living in Toronto,
Ontario. He enjoys video games and wearing bow ties.” A very charming small
collection, it is made up of eight short untitled poems that include “To my
beloved puppy / You soon settled in / And went flippin’ insane / To this day /
You are still on a leash [.]” The poems are brief, and relatively straightforward,
but offer intriguing insight, striking lines and occasional wisdom, such as the
short couplet that ends the collection, writing:
To my beloved puppy
You are a Daisy in a
field of weeds
Ottawa ON: I was pleased to see
the existence of the Sawdust Reading Series 4th Anniversary
Collection 2017-2018 (2018) from natalie hanna’s battleaxe, an anthology
celebrating an ongoing reading series organized by Jennifer Pederson, hanna and Liam Burke. The anthology features work (as one might suspect) by featured
readers throughout that particular year’s worth of monthly readings, as well as their contest winners (submitted poems are entered into a contest, to read
alongside the curated readers at the following month’s event; contests are
judged by the prior feature)), and include a wealth of writers and spoken word
performers, from emerging to established (most of whom are Ottawa situated): Apollo the Child, Barâa Arar, Manahil Bandukwala, Mike Blouin, Frances Boyle, Ayesha
Chatterjee, Conyer Clayton, Anita Dolman, Allie Duff, Sanita Fejzić, Avonlea Fotheringham, Sarah Kabamba, Margo Lapierre, Nathanaël Larochette, Alastair
Larwill, Namitha Rathinapillai, Shane Rhodes, Sandra Ridley, Jean Van Loon and
Fatima Zahra.
The day
after
Too much sky. Too much. A few
leaves in a corner, insouciant
as a painting. Be careful
what you wish for. There is
always a price. No grief can turn it
back now, the careless lust
that caused this gentle,
ungendered thing,
dead, yet still greenly,
evenly breathing. (Ayesha Chatterjee)
One
element that Sawdust has been attentive to, along with engaging with numerous
emerging authors, is their ability to engage with a far more diverse group of
writers than most, part of a larger and really interesting shift across Ottawa’s
literature (it’s about damned time, really). Some of the highlights in this
short anthology include the poems by Ridley, Boyle, Kabamba, Lapierre and Chatterjee
as well as this striking piece by Ottawa community organizer, writer and The Watering Hole podcast co-host Barâa Arar:
in the
sun
you know only how to hesitate how to fill blank
spaces with ums and bad sports analogies how to pretend to fill suits how to be
who you thought you would be at 27 I know only how to be head first how to be
fast and too much how to be caught in the rain in this poetry in this love this
is not something beautiful this is something else something that creeps up
behind you out of left field keeps you on your toes we find ourselves at brunch
in the sun or at parks in the sun eating gelato from waffle cones we paid too
much for speaking of something and everything and nothing this is not something
extraordinary this is boring this is routine this is too many almosts not
enough curveballs to keep you on your toes so you hesitate and fill the blank
spaces with ums and bad poetry you fell head first too fast and too slow all at
once
this is not something beautiful but this this is something
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