See my first post on what I collected at the fair, here; and my second post here. And I am totally going to keep pushing these two other upcoming fairs: Meet the Presses in Toronto on November 16th and the 25th anniversary event for our own ottawa small press book fair on November 23rd (and pre-fair reading the night prior). I will see you at one of these events, at least, right? I mean: how can you resist such small press marvelousness?
Toronto ON: I’m intrigued by the
earnestness and the directness of the lyric narratives that make up Toronto
poet and editor Terese Mason Pierre’s debut chapbook, Surface Area (Anstruther Press, 2019). There is a meditative calm in
Pierre’s lyrics, one that is inquisitive, careful and considered, such as the
poem “Cold Feet,” that begins: “Three in the morning, I am / awake under cloth
and commitment [.]” Her poems work to articulate and unpack complicated
emotions, whether the small moments of awareness before a partner wakes, or in
the midst of family during a funeral. As she writes to end the poem “Swell”: “I’m
learning to like when my hair / gets in my eyes when our skin // swells. I’m
trying to be a person / who can be built from sand.”
Lines
You know where you’re going,
but this city is unfamiliar to me.
Every story you tell has its own
highways and cul-de-sacs,
leading to laughs you cut short,
a brief peer over the hedge
to the green on the other side,
or a welcome overstayed
on purpose. It is irrational
to envy the time before I existed.
In the attic of your childhood home,
I see you in the orange glow
of a lack of someone to please.
I put my hand over yours
as you hold a photo. I do not
recognize any of the thousand words.
Peterborough/Toronto
ON:
Subtitled “found poetry constructed from psychic scam junk mail addressed to
previous tenants” is Peterborough poet and fiction writer Katherine Heigh’s
latest, the chapbook To the People Who used to Live Here (Gap Riot Press, 2019). The author of the chapbook PTBO NSA (Peterborough ON: bird, buried
press, 2019) [see my review of such here], Heigh has now produced two chapbooks
constructed out of found materials, shifting and collaging, although this
particular project feels less a straightforward “found” than her debut; perhaps
this assemblage is more prompted and propelled by found materials than
specifically constructed by them. Either way, the poems are curious short
bursts of lyric narrative—with intriguing line breaks and cadence—that explore
how one finds place in the world. Her rhythms are hypnotic, and her short
narratives are fascinating. I would be interested to see how these poems, structurally,
differ from her short prose.
Grandmother
Moon Calls
She is offering all this to you, a Golden
Legacy
specifically
intended for you. Providence has replied to
resurrection of the ancestral.
It’s quite natural. Please receive what must be
long
to you.
Going to bathe in an ocean of multiple and
infinite
joys
isn’t that life-changing. Your name appeared in
the
last lunar phase.
Say goodbye to your desires.
At the end of this, you can no longer be a
person.
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