Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part one: Rose Maloukis, Ksenija Spasić + Kristjana Gunnars,

By now you know we’ve come and gone through the 30^th anniversary edition of the ottawa small press book fair [see my notes from the spring 2024 fair here and here, by the way], which was the largest (by a third or so) to date of our semi-annual event, which is quite remarkable. And all the vendors I heard from said it was the best in sales they’d ever had! So that is deeply exciting. And did you see this report Amanda Earl made after the event?

Be aware that our next two dates are already booked and confirmed! Saturday June 21, 2025 and Saturday November 22, 2025, again at Tom Brown Arena, just west of Ottawa’s downtown core. If you lose track of those dates, you can always check here, of course. And make sure to keep track of theoccasional posts at the (ottawa) small press almanac, our small collective of Ottawa-based small publishers, yes?

myself, Stuart Ross (Proper Tales Press) + Cameron Anstee (Apt. 9 Press)

Montreal QC: I’m a bit behind, clearly, in my reading of Montreal poet and visual artist Rose Maloukis’ work, only now catching her chapbook Offcuts (Montreal QC: Turret House Press, 2023), a follow-up to, among other titles, Cloud Game with Plums (above/ground press, 2020). Her chapbook-length sequence “Offcuts” suggests an element of collage, of stitching lines and sentences together, each page a self-contained burst of phrases held together with precise intent. “one / thousand / would that be / enough to send / into the world / to say,” she writes, early on in the sequence, “here / look at these / and just for / a moment / yield [.]” There is a curious way that Maloukis works her own ekphrasis, engaging through text her own ongoing visual practice, allowing the one side of her creative work to reveal itself through another form, akin to a kind of commentary or poetics of her visual art.

to save my life for eleven days
I made drawings
                            my body
                            smoked
the novelty

lay on the floor
under a table

burnt ultra-thin candles
not to flame the paper
                            only to mark
                            with soot

this dirty foul smoke
and dangerous wax
                            affirms

all the charred days
bring back
                            my thirst

Ottawa ON: I was intrigued to see that Jeff Blackman’s Horsebroke Press has expanded to include single-author chapbooks, with the new title, the beautiful the bearable by poet Ksenija Spasić (November 2024) appearing, according to the colophon, as “These Days #29.” There isn’t an author biography included for Spasić, although a quick online search reveals the Moscow-born author currently lives in Montreal, after studying at both the University of Toronto and Concordia University. Has she published anywhere else? Either way, the beautiful the bearable is a chapbook about family and war, offering ten first-person poems documenting response, aftermath and how one can never fully escape. Referencing The Complete Works of Primo Levi (2015) by the Jewish-Italian chemist, writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi (1919-1987), Spasić offers: “Levi writes madness, / but describes method / orderliness, the gears that make it go. / Like transposing the patterns of life/ to give intelligible form / to death.”

There are small gems within these poems, some of which really strike, and make me curious about what else she might be writing or working on. “Into these words,” she writes, to close the poem “Ritual,” “I take a part to flee the whole, / perform the ritual / that shrinks a shoreline or a man / into the beautiful, / the bearable.”

jwcurry, Room 3O2 Books

Toronto ON/Vancouver BC: I’m frustrated to only now discover (via our small press fair “free stuff” table) Canadian poet and artist Kristjana Gunnars’ chapbook sequence At Home in the Mountains: A Report on Knowledge in Twenty Parts (Toronto ON: Junction Books, 2019) [catch the essay I did on her fiction a while back here]. As she writes at the offset: “I want to acknowledge the University of Alberta Department of English and Film Studies for hosting the writer-in-residence anniversary event in 2016, which became a precursor to these poems.” This is wonderful to hear, but frustrating, as I had also been part of that event, and had even produced a new chapbook of poems by Gunnars as part of it (and a further one since). I had no idea this existed! As Gunnars writes as part of her “PRELUDE AND INTRODUCTION” to the collection:

            Because I have fused the traditional poetry manuscript with the more academic or literary essay, with the attendant paraphernalia, I am thinking of this work as “essay-poetry.” Mixing genres can be illustrative of a way of thinking that is not strictly “according to rule” and doing so often opens up avenues otherwise left untouched. We are not living in the age of Rumi, or in the age of the chanting of lyrics, unless they come to us as musical presentations. We live in a textual age, brought on by the uses of the computer with all its tentacles. We are now used to seeing “hypertexts” and feeling comfortable with many layers of text and information coming to us at once. I have simply followed an inclination brought on by contemporary technology in creating the present manuscript, and I feel I am able to imply a great deal more this way, and allow some of the voices I have left out of the poems to enter the field.

A sequence of twenty poems, Gunnars moves through and across prose poems to the more traditional lyric mode, offering a sequence of meditations on writing, thinking, living and solitude. “and yet the life of everyday is nice; food and drink,” she writes, to open the poem “LOVE’S INEBRIATION,” “walking, sleeping, talking, regular life, as we know it; / how nice also for Milarepa when he returned home from the mystical heights / and the villagers spread for him a feast of food and happiness— [.]” I complain of a lack, and yet, if I could figure out where I put my copy of her more recent collection, Ruins of the Heart: Six Longpoems (Brooklyn NY: Angelico Press, 2022) [see my review of such here], this particular poem-sequence is most likely and completely included in there as well. Is my attention really that fractured?

without a word, without even a thought. I am trying to decipher
the botanical prints leaning against the wall, the faded cardboard
and singed edges of our hearts—the ones we have tried to read
like maps or graphs or mathematical formulas, our long-lost

perspective that hangs by a thread, and how we cannot say
the words. how speechless we are, how mute, how afraid we seem
of the possibility it will all be destroyed again: as it will, as it will

some recent adventuring : someone editions (Toronto) + drift/line (Kingston) (and Calgary tonight, fyi

Oh, adventuring. Christine and I are reading in Calgary tonight as part of the single onion series, at Shelf Life Books, but you probably already know that. We've been wandering around, there and here, over the past little bit to help promote our new books: her hybrid/memoir Toxemia (Toronto ON: Book*hug Press, 2024) [see my essay on such here] and my On Beauty: stories, (University of Alberta Press, 2024). You should pick up copies if you haven't already! I mean, they would make great holiday gifts, I would think.

You probably already know I was interviewed by Alan Neal over at CBC Radio about On Beauty: I was admittedly startled by how good an interviewer he is, although I probably shouldn't be. He's been doing this a long time. It was such a good interview (and you can listen to such here). And I even wore my CBC t-shirt! Out of respect, naturally.

On Friday, November 8 I did a short reading as part of a launch over at someone editions on Dundas Street West in Toronto. Given Christine had done a Toronto Book*hug launch the prior Monday, and a Hamilton launch the night before (she had been in the area across that whole week), we managed to figure out overnight childcare so I could leave the kids in Ottawa and meet up with her in Toronto (nights out without tasks or readings seem to be a rarity for us, so we took it upon us to enjoy the small space), and drive home the following morning. We were there to help someone editions launch a series of publications in their French Letter Society project, curated by Beatriz Hausner, which including a beautifully designed letterpress publication with a small poem of mine (part of my work-in-progress "Fair bodies of unseen prose," by the way) alongside artwork/design by Someone editions printer/designer/founder Deborah Barnett (who had produced, moons back, a prior letterpress object with poems by myself and Nathanael G. Moore, actually). There was a young Toronto poet, Agata Mociani, who also had work in the series, so it was good to be introduced to her, and her work. Saskatchewan poet Mari-Lou Rowley also had a poem produced in the series, but she wasn't able to attend.

Deborah had requested I land early, to sign all the copies of the publication (I think I'd signed half the run before I was even offered a glass of wine, which was probably wise). I probably signed them all properly, I'm sure. I mean, I wouldn't do anything ridiculous as part of such a project as that. Would I?

We got to hang out with Beatriz and Deborah and meet Agata; we met "writer, researcher and book artist" James Nowak (who passed along a chapbook he'd produced), and hang out for a good long stretch with writer (and Guernica Editions founder) Antonio D'Alfonso! There were a couple of other folk as well, but I'm terrible at catching names. Either way, it was a worthy event (and you should pick up copies of these publications)

Be aware that Someone does absolutely beautiful work. You should go by their space to see some of the things they've produced.

me an' Deborah Barnett

On Sunday, November 17, Christine and I did a reading together in Kingston, alongside Kingston poet Allison Chisholm, as part of Wanda Praamsma's Drift/Line Series (the last of the 2024 season), with a musical set by Kingston musician Megan Hamilton. Allison mentioned upon stage that she'd manage to forget her glasses at home, so I made a point to only take blurry photos of her (out of respect, of course). Her reading was great! Such small, careful, delicate poems (although she should have read longer). I'm hoping there might be a further book on the horizon at some point, soon. [see my review of her debut here]

Christine was, of course, remarkable. You really need to hear her read from this hybrid/memoir collection [you can catch the video recording of her incredible performance as part of the Ottawa launch here via the Ottawa International Writers Festival, in case such intrigues]. It was lovely to be hosted by (and hang out a bit with) Wanda! And it was great to see local folk, including poets Jason Heroux (above/ground is soon producing a collaborative chapbook between him and Dag T. Straumsvag), Armand Garnet Ruffo (reading soon at VERSeFest, you know) and Eric Folsom (whom I have now known for thirty years! he was good enough to pass along a recent chapbook of his I hadn't yet seen). It was a packed (admittedly small) house! A lovely time had by all. Although, exhausted by adventuring (and the prior day's ottawa small press book fair), we crashed pretty early, and drove immediately home the following morning (where I delivered Christine back to work around noon). A day and a half or so of regular, before we're all back up into it. Calgary! Might we see you tonight?

happy eleventh birthday, Rose!

Happy eleventh birthday to my brilliant, hilarious and ridiculous dervish middle daughter, Rose!

She's requested I refrain from posting recent photos of her on the interwebs, so here is one when she was smaller, visiting me in my home office (which I am currently dismantling, so they can each have their own bedrooms).

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Zoë Richards

Zoë Richards is an author and writer, having written for national magazines for many years. She is represented by Clare Coombes of The Liverpool Literary Agency. Her debut novel, Garden of Her Heart, published by UCLan Publishing, is a heartwarming story about recovery, community and purpose.

Zoë is an experienced speaker, panel facilitator, and interviewer with experience on radio, including as a pundit on BBC Radio Merseyside for many years, and through being the host of the Write, Damn It! Podcast. She is also experienced at running workshops on topics such as creative writing, putting yourself out there as an author, handling imposter syndrome, and dealing with writing demons to get the writing done.

With over 30 years of working on mindset, and as a teacher of coaching for more than 25 years, Zoë coaches writers in dealing with imposter syndrome, helping them to overcome their demons and blocks, and get the writing done. Much of what she uses on mindset comes from lived experience, as she is a suicide survivor, and it is through her recovery that Zoë learned the power of the mind, and a positive approach to life.

During her career, Zoë worked for the NHS for many years where she managed projects across a range of health services including those for children and young people with special educational needs.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Writing Garden of Her Heart, which has a theme of recovery along with community and purpose, helped me deal with things going on in my own life, such as being a carer for my mum and also for my husband, and working through my own mental health issues. It has, quite literally, changed my life as I find I'm now more chilled than I was before writing it. I guess you could say it was cathartic. My latest novel, which is a standalone sequel, was something I needed to finish as I was dealing with my mum's cancer diagnosis and then her death 6 weeks later. So another cathartic process but for different reasons. In that respect, although there's less of me in this second novel that I've literally just sent off to the publisher, the writing process still do me a lot of good.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

I've written a lot of non-fiction for work, so writing fiction has always been a release for me. However I've written poetry or sorts all my life - in fact, I wrote a poem for Garden of Her Heart, and it appears twice.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I plot the boundaries of a novel, and play around with who the characters are, what the setting is, and what the key plot points are, all before I write anything. As a result, although it's not a detailed plot, I know where the story is going, and so it doesn't take me long to write a first draft. I can write that in 3-4 months, and then I spend about 2 months editing it. I've just spent a weekend away at a writing retreat where I was able to workshop book 3, another sequel to Garden of Her Heart, over 4 days, and I'm aiming to have the first draft completed in under 3 months. I think my career of writing huge reports to deadlines must help me with focus and delivery.

4 - Where does work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I work on a book rather than short pieces, though I do have a notebook that I call 'Where Ideas Go To Grow', which has notes on ideas that I can use for short stories or to combine into something bigger. So far I've used bits from this notebook for scenes, but nothing more than that.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I love doing readings - though not too long, and that's from personal experience of listening to too many readings from writers who don't know how to inject any energy to what they're reading. It's an art form to be able to do a good reading, and I've benefitted from being able to practice with my writing tribe, getting feedback on how to energise a reading. I combine my readings with background about the inspirations and themes of the novel, so that people have a greater understanding of the 500 or so words that I read. I also find that reading out loud helps us to hear what works and what doesn't in our writing, so even if I'm on my own, I will read my work out loud.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

On a personal, writerly level, I'm currently working on understanding what my voice is, as people say it's distinct but I don't know what it is yet. A friend recently said that it's akin to our personality - others might know and understand my personality better than I do myself, and voice is like that. In terms of concepts within my writing, I'm interested in the masks we were and why we wear them. This could relate to mental health, where you can find people hide what is going on for them until they are in crisis, or to neurodiversity where women, for example, mask their ND traits, just as much as it can be about how we play at being different people in different situations.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

We have many roles – to entertain, to get people thinking, to help people know they’re not alone or to feel seen, and probably many more. One role that is important to me as a writer is to handle representation with sensitivity whilst also not shying away from the issues that need to be covered. For example, in Garden of Her Heart my main character was brought up with coercive control. My editor wanted me to change something about the relationship she had with her parents, and because of my lived experience I knew I couldn't do that - I have to be true to the real experience of coercive control. As a result, I have been contacted by readers who tell me they feel seen, and I think that's part of my role in my writing.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I love working with my agent first for an editorial pass, as she is also an editor, and then with my editor at my publisher. Their perspectives help me to lift the novel to a better place, strengthening my writing. Both are the kinds of editor who suggest rather than dictate, leaving the final decisions and the rewrites of scenes to me, which means that the novel is still my voice. It's hugely beneficial, and I truly think it's a shame that editors don't get their names alongside the author's, as it's definitely teamwork.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

I was told by an author at a book event to finish writing in the middle of a chapter, or at least part way into a chapter, as it helps you start up again the next day. I can report, it works! When I don't do this, I can struggle to get going the next day, and worse still if I can't write for whatever reason for a few consecutive days.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I retired from employed work at Easter, but before then I would get up early and write for an hour before breakfast - that could be 5:30am or 6am. Now, my routine is that every day's a writing day, even if I only write 10 words. And those 10 words might be a quick pass over a section I've already written - I'd not quite call this an edit, but it's a pass over it to make sure it makes sense. I'm finding that now I'm a full-time writer, routine can be my enemy, because it's easy to create rules that I can only write if the set up is right. In fact, I can write anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Any time I get stuck I go for a walk - preferably out in nature. My brain starts ticking over and ideas start to flow. I'll often plant a question as I start my walk, and leave it to my sub-conscious to do its thing. I'll also read and chat to friends. The one thing I can say that dulls any inspiration is social media.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

I'm not a fragrance person. However I live near the coast (about a mile from the sea) and we have very fresh air here. So if I go into a city, like when I visit London, I love to get into a park for a bit so that I can enjoy slightly fresher air than you get on the crowded, pollution-soaked streets.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Always nature, and I also love visiting our local art gallery in Liverpool - The Walker Art Gallery - and seeing what stories there are in paintings. As well as that, I go into cafés and let myself be inspired by people interacting with each other. I love observing real life, and that’s probably my greatest influence.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I don't know that I can pick a single writer, but I do find that my writing benefits from reading works that are considerably better than my own, so that I can learn from how they craft a sentence. If I had to pick any writer, though, I'd choose Elizabeth Gilbert or Brené Brown, and happily listen to their books on audio again and again. I also listen to the radio as you never know what you will learn and how you might use that in the future.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I don't have much left on my list, as I did 50 things in my 50s. I always wanted to go to Iceland to see the aurora borealis, and then when I was in The Lake District earlier this year I was fortunate to see the most spectacular display. I'm pretty fearless, and if I come up with something I want to do, I now just get on with it.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I'd love to be an actress - in fact, I've always wanted to be an actress who writes. And if I didn't write novels, I'd love to be able to write a screenplay.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

Nothing made me write - it's more a case of I can't stop myself.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

The last great book I read would be Prima Facie by Suzie Miller - and I saw the film of the play recently too, with Jodie Comer. Wow! Just Wow! It ought to be compulsory viewing for men, and for anyone in the legal profession. Due to my husband's health, we don't watch many films as he can't concentrate that long, but a TV series I absolutely love is Slow Horses. That's really clever writing, and so well acted, particularly Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I've just handed in book 2 which is a standalone sequel to Garden of Her Heart. I think my publishers like the title, and if so, that will be called Tell It To The Bees. And to stop myself constantly checking emails to find out what my publisher thinks, I'm working on book 3 which is a Christmas novella in the series. After that, I have a historical crime novel I'd like to get back to, but as I write uplifting bookclub fiction for my publisher, I might need to carve out some time for working on that.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics

Recently on periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics: new poetry by brandy ryan, Nicholas Power (for John Barlow), D.A. Lockhart, Czandra/Sandra Stephenson (for John Barlow), Jane Shi, Catriona Strang, Joanne Arnott (for John Barlow), Lillian Nećakov (for John Barlow), Craig Carpenter (for Roy Miki), Mari-Lou Rowley, Yaxkin Melchy Ramos (translated by Ryan Greene), Penn Kemp, Gary Barwin, Martin Corless-Smith, ryan fitzpatrick, Aakriti Kuntal and Scott Ferry, Charlie Petch, Jason Heroux and Dag T. Straumsvåg ; reviews of work by Katie Naughton (by Geoffrey Nilson), Christine McNair (by Kim Fahner), Susan Rich (by Kim Fahner), Klara du Plessis (by Alan Read), Isabelle Courteau (by Jérôme Melançon), Agnes Walsh (by Kim Fahner), Joyelle McSweeney (by rob mclennan), Dyane Léger (by Jérôme Melançon) and Hollay Ghadery (by Kim Fahner) ; rob mclennan interviews Alice Burdick (with a further interview with Manahil Bandukwala to post in about thirty minutes or so, both of which relate to this month's VERSeFEST mini-festival), Joelle Barron in conversation with Jes Battis ; Stan Rogal interviews rob mclennan ; Michael Sikkema interviews Eric Lindley and Joe Milazzo ; Michael Sikkema interviews Adam Stutz ; rob mclennan interviews David O'Meara ; J-T Kelly interviews Buck Downs ; Stan Rogal interviews Stuart Ross ; 

Conal Smiley, Mckenzie Strath, Ian FitzGerald, Vik Shirley, Scott Inniss and Gil McElroy each write on their recent above/ground press chapbooks ; Residency Reports by Anna Quon, Leah Horlick (from the Calgary Distinguished Writers’ Program), K.I. Press (Banff's Summer Residency Program) and Cassidy McFadzean (Sheridan College's CW&P Writer-in-Residence) ; nathan dueck on Sarah Klassen ; a sequence of review-essays by Kevin Spenst ; Blaine Marchand on Catherine Ahearn, Ottawa's (and Canada's) first municipal poet laureate ; rob mclennan on John Barlow ; Karen Shenfeld on Goran Simic ; Phinder Dulai on Roy Miki ; Notes from the Field by Winston Lê ; Kate Rogers on Poetry of Witness ; Thom Eichelberger-Young on Joan Retallack ;

folio : Three from Viscera: Eight Voices from Poland, edited by Mark Tardi, with statements and poems by Maria Cyranowicz (translated from the Polish by Małgorzata Myk), Hanna Janczak (translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Szuster-Tardi) and Anna Adamowicz (translated from the Polish by Lynn Suh); Anne K Yoder: on MEEKLING PRESS ; Briony Collins on Atomic Bohemian ; Mary Meriam on Headmistress Press ; David Wojciechowski on Postcard ; Rob MacDonald on Sixth Finch Books ; allison calvern on Robert Gibbs ; further pieces in Stan Rogal's ongoing REPORT FROM THE DEAD POETS’ SOCIETY ; "Process Notes," curated by Maw Shein Win, by Kathleen McClung, David Koehn, Chris Stroffolino, Terry Tierney and Blas Falconer  ;

with forthcoming poems, essays and reviews by: Jérôme Melançon, Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, daniel barbiero, Kim Fahner, J-T Kelly, Brook Houglum and Kevin Spenst (among plenty of others)

and a reminder: periodicities is open to submissions of previously unpublished poetry-related reviews, interviews and essays. We are also seeking pieces (essays/interviews etc) on the Canadian long poem! please send submissions as .doc with author biography to periodicityjournal (at) gmail.com

For the time being, submissions of previously unpublished poetry will be by solicitation-only, with the exception of translated works (which you should very much send along! please send translations!).

ALSO: periodicities is seeking essays in its #FirstRealPoets series, a series originally prompted by Canadian poet Zane Koss, who wrote on first encountering Stuart Ross. Who was the first real poet you ever encountered in the flesh? How did that encounter shape your approach to poetry? How does that poet make poetry a possibility for people who might not otherwise see themselves as poets? We hope to read essays about real poets' poets. The poets who might not get the critical recognition they deserve but are nonetheless important community-creating figures who welcome and encourage new voices.

ALSO: periodicities is seeking essays in its #reconsiderations series; essays on a particular older book by another poet, a series originally prompted by Ken Norris, who wrote a piece on Michael Ondaatje's Rat Jelly.

periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics,
founded March 2020
edited and lovingly maintained by rob mclennan
built as a curious extension of above/ground press (b. July 9, 1993

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Alex Cuff

Alex Cuff is learning to metabolize grief into a presence that keeps her in relationship to herself and community. A public school educator, and an editor of the Brooklyn-based poetry magazine No, Dear, she is the author of Family, a Natural Wonder (Reality Beach) and I Try Out A Sentence to See Whether I Believe (Ghost Proposal). Her first full-length collection, Common Amnesias, was published by Ugly Duckling Presse on May Day in 2024. She lives in Flatbush, Lenapehoking, with her partner, and feline extended family: Karl, Kuma and Medb.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
When I first encountered this question my instinctual response was, it didn’t change my life. I’m referring to my first book since it’s the most recent first for me. But over the past couple months that the book has been out, and having read from it several times, I’m realizing that I do feel a shift, a subtle change in life, with regard to my relationship to myself as a writer. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the publication of Common Amnesias has given me a sense of accomplishment. I received an email from Dan Owens of Ugly Duckling Presse letting me know they wanted to publish the book just after a field trip with high school students to the Whitney to see no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria. It was December 23rd and had just begun to snow, and I was walking the High Line to visit my partner at work. I was used to so much rejection by then and had sort of steeled my heart in a way that I hadn’t expected to have room for the small joy of a YES. Between that moment and the publication in May 2024, the shine of the yes flickered but the shift was that no matter how awful anything writing-related seemed, I knew that an intelligent & generous group of people were taking care of a collection of my poems and preparing them into a beautiful object that I could share with friends. At the moment of answering this question–5 months from publication–I feel a sense of gratitude. I’m a person with many unfinished projects and I’m still amazed that I wrote poems, organized them into a manuscript, shared them with other people and asked for feedback, and sent them out to many presses and contests. The other shift that I didn’t expect is a deepened intimacy with the body of poems. A sense of relief that came with the acceptance of the book for publication was a feeling of getting to cut the umbilical cord from these fucking poems I’ve been looking at for a long time. But now that I’m reading from the book, and having to select which poems to read in a given amount of time in a particular sequence to an audience who has heard or not heard the poems has forced us—me and the poems--to say heyyyy more often than I expected. And reading the same poems again and again with different people receiving them, and different types of responses, has helped me gain some tenderness and perspective toward poems I thought I was tired of. It’s hard to say how my most recent work compares to previous because much writing that made it into Common Amnesias has been written over the past ten years ago. I think I’ll need a lot more distance from my writing to be able to look back and know what has changed.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I think that keeping a journal led me to poetry. I started keeping a journal when I was 8 years old – I only know this because I still have the journal–and journaling has been the most consistent writing I’ve done in the almost forty years since. I think that the type of writing that is journaling for me–jotting down notes and fragments–most lends itself to becoming the form of writing that we call poetry. I don’t remember reading any poetry before college though I’m sure I did in high school. I do recall I appreciating what felt like opacity in poems I first encountered. First perhaps because it matched how I felt moving through the world—a sort of heaviness and confusion—but also because it was a genre where adults seems to say it was okay to not understand, and I encountered not understanding many things I read, but poetry was like something it was okay to say we didn’t get.

I’ve never had any desire to write fiction. I enjoy reading it but would never have the stamina, or the planning capability or interest that goes into what I imagine a fiction writer needs to do, to create fiction. I don’t know if I can hold onto a beginning, middle and end at the same time in my head. I have written non-fiction – a couple of essays about teaching that I worked on with the support of an amazing editor and writer, Matthew Burgess, and both were painful experiences that I could not have done without an editor. I simply would have talked myself out of the necessity of the piece. The stamina I have is to return to what’s been written as opposed to the stamina to write one sentence after another sentence and have them together move towards some meaning.

I relate 100% to how Tonya Lailey answered this same question for you: “And I’ve also always been a day dreamer, space-cadet as we called it when I was a kid. I think poetry is kinder to dreamers than fiction might be.”

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Nothing writing wise ever comes quickly for me. There are two poems that I can think of that remain close to their first drafts. One is a poem titled “Noun Noun” which is basically a transcription of a series of text messages between me and my dad. The other is titled “Desire” half of which is a recounting of giving myself an enema, and the other half is a list of catalog items I read about while encountering the aftermath of the enema. I journaled about the experience afterwards and that’s basically the poem.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I dreamt once that a friend, the painter Jamie Chan, told me that if one can create the perfect sculpture then there’s no reason to write poems. I don’t agree with this because I don’t know if I can separate the process of sculpting or writing poems from the more or less finished piece that a reader experiences. But I like thinking of poems as sculptures and in that analogy, my process is less like creating a sculpture from a mass of material, and more like piecing found objects together into some sort of whole that constellates like a group of magnets that snap together once they are placed in each other’s orbit. I’m definitely, in your words, “an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project.” There is a project I’m working on now in which the idea precedes the writing, which is new for me, and I’m understanding that even in that case, the writing is stringy and fragmented and has not yet found its form.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I appreciate this question because I’ve never thought of public readings as either part of or counter to my creative process. While public readings definitely cause a good bit of anxiety for me, which at the time leading up to the reading absolutely feels counter-everything, I have to say that reading end up nurturing my creative process because they help bring to focus which poems feel most necessary to share in a particular time and place. Preparing for any reading ends up inscribing the sounds and articulations of the poems into my body. I get super nervous at readings and rely on muscle memory to deliver the poems – if the poems aren’t embodied, my brain will be elsewhere during the reading and I get lost in the language. Additionally, I inevitably end up continuing to revise the poems that I practice for a reading – even poems from Common Amnesias have changed over the past few months of reading from the book.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
This is a difficult question for me because I really do not think of my writing as trying to answer questions. My relationship to writing is so fraught that it’s hard for me to zoom out to that level of thinking! I feel like this is a bad answer though. So hmm what is immediately present for me when I sit down to write a line, or revisit some lines I have written, is the question of whether I can communicate tenderness and thinking at the same time--the poignant feeling I walk through the world with, one that makes it both gorgeous and terrible to be in a body, in a way that others can relate to, and in a way that isn’t unbearably cliché. I am also curious about the question of whether the speaker of any poem I write can be separate me as an author, from my own subjectivity.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think there’s space for all sorts of writers having different roles in the larger culture. I’m grateful for the writers thinkers artists activists journalists who are currently putting energy into bringing attention the genocide in Palestine, and organizing to change systems that normalize genocide and war. I know there are particular people who identify as writers (as they should!) but I also think it is difficult to distinguish the writer from anyone else who is creating and communicating in our world. But yes to people who write and create: wake us up, make us feel, help us think, make us realize that we aren’t alone. I can’t speak for others but in this moment I am believing that my role (as a writer, as a teacher, as a friend, and community member) is to stop dissociating long enough to overcome fear and lethargy in order to act in a way that interrupts the harm caused by systems that only give a shit about wealth + power + land accumulation.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential! I think collaboration in general to be essential, and in the few times I’ve worked with an editor, my writing got a push that I don’t think I could have achieved on my own. I’m grateful to Kyra Simone and Lee Norton from UDP for their editorial guidance over the few months of preparing Common Amnesias for publication—from the macro level of structure, to a few lines or words that I can spiral for hours wondering if I should cut. And for the years before that, many friends had read through the manuscript and contributed to its evolution. Nope I couldn’t imagine being a writer without editors!

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I’ll never forget taking a workshop with Isaac Jarnot–we must have been reading excerpts from The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson–and I introduced the poem I had written and was gonna share as having been written “after Charles Olson’s Maximus to Himself”–a poem I fell in love with upon first reading and still am enchanted by–and Isaac said fuck Olson. And I was like yeah!? Yeah! And I guess the advice I turned that experience into is that my poems don’t have to be like the poems I love of other poets. Or, that if I try to make my poems act like other poet’s poems, I could be strangling them to death. Also in a conversation with Jesse Pearson on the Apology podcast, CAConrad says something along the lines of dropping everything when they hear a poem arrive that needs to be written down. That’s advice I want to one day follow. Currently, I’m more like Mitch Hedberg’s joke: “I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny.”

I also hold near, “trust the people and the people become trustworthy” from adrienne maree brown’s book Emergent Strategy. There’s so much mistrust and cynicism in our world and I know this has seeped into me, and I know that for me, mistrust means no community and no community is death. So I practice extending it to others, knowing that it is a practice to extend to myself as well—of trusting myself—and this feels very connected to writing and staying with the process.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
It’s rare for me to wake up without being totally soaked in dream images. A typical non-work day begins with coffee asap and then I sit at my kitchen window and write my dreams down. The only other writing routine I consistently keep is journaling in the morning. I do this on the bus to work or at one of the windows in my apartment if I’m not rushing off to work. My partner knows to not strike up conversation during these early moments. Really the only other times I tend to writing, to poetry!, is when I’m enrolled in a writing workshop. So I try to do that yearly.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Once I had a dream featuring a scroll unrolling to reveal yards and yards of text. About 95% of the text was in an unremarkable font, but every now and then I’d see a word or phrase glowing yellow as if it was burned into the scroll and glowing like coals. In the dream, I realized that my unconscious was revealing my writing process to me. The scroll represented all of my language – not necessarily everything that I'd written down, but all of the language that lives through me and in me and arrives through dreams. What I learned was that my writing process isn’t linear at all and in some ways, I need to trust that it is accumulative if I keep jotting it down when I can. So when I’m stuck, if I have energy, I search past scrolls aka google docs. Otherwise I move on with my day.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The ocean. A Catholic church. A pizza place.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I don’t think there’s anything that doesn’t influence my work. But I don’t work with a particular form to inspire writing. At this point, I’d say dreams and relationships with other humans have most influenced the poems I’ve written.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
This question is what makes me feel like a fake writer. I started reading contemporary poetry around age thirty so since then I’ve felt like I’m in catch up mode so I there are few books I’ve read more than once. Every writer I read and love, every book or poem, gets filed into my waxy brain as important. I will say though that Dorothy Allison was the first writer I recall reading and thinking about the person behind the book. I thought they were so brave to be writing about shame.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I think it would be cool to write a long poem or a chapbook over the course of a couple weeks. My writing practice is so sporadic and collage-like that I can’t imagine showing up to the same piece of writing daily for several weeks and have it like a dysfunctional family stick together in one poem.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
My occupation really is more educator than a writer. I spend way more time in my life as a teacher of reading and writing than as a writer of poems. But my alternative callings are: herbalist, caretaker at an animal sanctuary, farmer, seamstress, arborist, paid non-competitive swimmer, film-maker (once there is technology that allows us to download our dreams into film).

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
LOL I do almost everything else instead of writing on a daily basis.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
This is a hard question but I’ll do it. Not that I believe in a strong line between what we call genres but…for non-fiction, Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger. For poetry, Saretta Morgan’s Alt Nature. For fiction, Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino. I just rewatched all of the Alien films so gotta say Alien.

19 - What are you currently working on?
Answering these questions!

Bigger picture: A few years ago I dreamt that I was in a basement rummaging through stacks and piles looking for anything of value, and I found a desk I knew to be my uncle’s, and I found a stack of poems he’d written and realized, in the dream, that he had been a poet. A few weeks later IRL my partner and I were helping my parents clean out their basement and I found a suitcase full of hundreds of letters that this uncle had written to my grandmother while he was in seminary, studying to become a Catholic priest, in Rome, Italy, during the early 1960s. I’ve been working with those letters on and off for the past couple of years. In fact I’m waiting for emily brandt to host another Docupoetics workshop so that I can get back to that project.

I also have so many dreams written down and have been inspired to shape years of dreams into a book along the lines of Castles in the Air by Ayane Kawata and The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void by Jackie Wang. I’d love to collaborate on this with a visual artist!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes, mid-November 2024: Margo LaPierre, Geoffrey Young + Clint Burnham,

You are coming out to the 30^TH ANNIVERSARY of the ottawa small press book fair today, yes? And you heard that Christine and I are reading in Kingston tomorrow night, and Calgary next week? Check the link here for various reading details and updates.

Toronto/Ottawa ON: Oh, it is good to see a new chapbook by Ottawa poet Margo LaPierre, In Violet (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2024), following a small handful of publications, including chapbooks, both solo and collaborative, and a full-length poetry collection (the author biography on her website does mention both a collection of short stories and a novel in-progress). An assemblage of ten poems, In Violet gives the impression of a catch-all, as the author explores elements of structure and visual form, attempting to stretch out the possibilities of what poems might do, seek or look like. Working through trauma and its aftermath, writing memory, recollection, placement, rage and symphony, her lyric narratives extend out as a series of points that accumulate, moment to moment, that allow for a visual field of space across the page. “Hysteresis is the name / for a system of stress,” she writes, to open the poem “Hysteresis,” “in an organism          or an object / when effects of / the stressor / lag [.]”

Surf Lessons

It was a sprouted need, this plant with teeth,
true Venus. Fuck the rage that eats us.

This is a healing spell: bream green,
and foam dries in lipped petals

delicate as the conversations
with the ones we’ve hurt.

Great Barrington MA: Another chapbook by legendary poet, artist, curator and former publisher (The Figures) Geoffrey Young [see my interview with him here] is always a delight, so I’m pleased to see a copy of his LOOK WHO’S TALKING (Great Barrington MA: ALL SALES FINAL, 2024), a title that features art by Mel Bochner. Young has long favoured variations on the sonnet as his preferred lyric structure, offering a straightforwardness comparable to Canadian poet Ken Norris [see my latest review of his work here], if I may, for that straight line capable of bending or twisting when required. The straightforward manner provides, as well, a deceptiveness, almost a sheen, hiding deeper elements underneath in twists and twangs, a New England parlance of lyric with Berkeley underlay. “Is a pleasure to be indulged in,” he writes, to close the poem “LONG’S DRUGSTORE,” “When the nothingness of normality grabs you.” He writes of memory, offering reference layered upon reference, playing expectation against itself and you, the reader. “The pope when he blesses the poor. / I’d rather be a sea-bird anyway,” he writes, to close “WHAT GOES INTO THE SHREDDER IS YOUR BUSINESS,” “Squawking meaningless gibberish / Because we both know // That everything depends upon landing / On the beach for a nice long walk.”

DO THE THING

These days
the momentous minutiae
of life and events
distract me from all

the stuff I must get done.
so if I don’t do the thing
I think needs doing
at the exact moment

I think of it
or very shortly thereafter,
within ten seconds, say,
I might as well

forget it
because I already have.

Vancouver BC/Cobourg ON: I’m amused and intrigued by this reprint that Stuart Ross produced earlier this year through his Proper Tales Press, Vancouver poet Clint Burnham’s TED BERRIGAN AND STUART ROSS (2024), a title originally “printed in a manuscript edition of 10 / August 9, 1993.” I would be curious to have seen a new write-up by the author as to what the story was surrounding this small manuscript that opens with glowing letters from Ontario Arts Council/Conseil des arts de l’Ontario and Thomas Fisher Rare Books Collection, Robarts Library, University of Toronto, offering glowing critiques on the project, on the merits of “the works of the eminent Canadian writer Stuart Ross.”

As the letter purportedly from the Ontario Arts Council writes: “In accordance with your wishes, we have also evaluated the important role that Mr. Ross has played as a small press publisher and self-publisher. It is now our conclusion that the major arts funding groups of the world have been wrong to focus almost exclusively on mainstream and for-profit publishers: henceforth, the Ontario Arts Council will focus exclusively on small press publishing and self-publishing; the five trillion dollar grant annually allocated to Mc[C]lelland and Stewart will also forthwith be turned over to Mr. Ross.” If only that had been so.

HOW TED BERRIGAN WOULD’VE
WRITTEN THIS POEM

First all, you’d have to include whether
he wrote it
in Chicago
or NYC

Maybe he just got some grand and
went to a cheque-cashing agency
so he’d have the money
to carry around

Sartre liked to do that, too

carry money around, I mean

and then there’d be the
obligatory reference

to a friend
he likes, in the

poem, a writer, perhaps

and, Hey! it’s that simple

This is a delightfully odd little collection (I say little because the collection includes five short poems and these two letters), as the best collections are, I must say. What was the original prompt for these pieces? Were these pieces in homage, attempting to echo the work of Ted Berrigan (1934-1983) and Stuart Ross by a then thirty-one year old Toronto-based Burnham? Writing a reference to the “Canadian / Forces / Base / Cold / Lake” in his poem “THE RED WAGGON,” as Burnham writes: “and at least / one famous / Canadian writer / used to teach / junior high / there at / Athabasca / j.h., / where I went / and outside it / I heard some / one / say goldbricking / bake in [.]”

Mercedes Eng, Cop City Swagger

 

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills but am not surprised when a mayoral
candidate says that 100 new police will make The City

            safe

I am taking crazy pills and I live in a brown body so I know 100 new
cops will not make The City

            safe

because people of colour with mental illnesses are not safe from the
police who hurt and kill us, who do not leave us

intact, unharmed, in good health, still alive

The latest from Vancouver poet and curator Mercedes Eng is Cop City Swagger (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2024), following my yt mama (Talonbooks, 2020) [see my review of such here], Prison Industrial Complex Explodes (Talonbooks, 2017) [see my review of such here] and Mercenary English (Vancouver BC: CUE Books, 2013; Talonbooks, 2019) [see my review of such here], furthering her ongoing trajectory of poetic investigations of racism and colonialism in Canada. Eng spotlights a blend of archival and first-person commentaries on police action, police violence, in and across Vancouver, and the foundations of violence that extend out from the office of the mayor. Set in nine poem-sections—“Core Values,” “Corporate Values,” “Coporate Values,” “Tent City Citizens’ Safety,” “Public School Safety,” “Public Safety Budget,” “Workplace Safety,” “Indigenous Women, Girls, Nonbinary, and / Two Spirit Peoples’ Safety” and “Chinatown Public Safety”—Eng composes a book-length suite of critiques on perpetual state violence on and across vulnerable communities, and the very question of who and what, exactly, is being served. “I take the alley,” she writes, as part of the second sequence, “which I shouldn’t. It’s one of the last public spaces people who use drugs have left and I am taking up room. Several people are using, a woman’s hand is swollen from an abscess, and little hunks of meat are littered on the ground. In Chinatown there are several butcher shops as well as dumpster foragers so refuse spilled in the alleyways is common but I see red meat cleaving from bone and cartilage for days. When I get to the church the police tape is gone and I can see blood on the sidewalk cracks.”

In sharp bursts of prose lyric, Eng employs elements of the long poem into precise action, perhaps not far from what Dorothy Livesay originally intended for the “documentary long poem,” a form she employed across her own blend of politics and poetics. Eng writes an extended lyric through the official records and official responses of the mayor and the police chief, articulating a lyric from the ground level of police violence, not in a way of glorifying, but to document what she sees. Hers is a direct and urgent lyric, composed through archive, gesture and appeal through class and poverty, and the ongoing assaults upon both. Offering this “Content Note” at the offset, she writes:

This book is about the police which means this book is about violence. This book is about the Vancouver Police Department’s violence against women. Black and Indigenous People and People of Colour, people who are mentally ill, and people who are unhoused and low-income. Readers will encounter evidence of the VPD’s excessive, sometimes deadly, use of force, racism and racial profiling, sexual assault, extortion, harassment of female civilians and officers, which led an officer to suicide, and their continuous failure of duty of care in regard to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Nonbinary, and Two Spirit People.