Arc walks, 2018 : Hintonburg,

photo pilfered from the internet ; not actually from the event

This is the text of the penultimate of four “Arc Walks” [see links to the whole series--Centretown, Glebe, Hintonburg and the Byward Market--as it appears here, including post-walk texts, notifications on the final walk and links to the poem handouts] I’d been commissioned to do this year, thanks very much to Arc Poetry Magazine and the Community Foundation. The third walk, through Hintonburg, sat in the midst of the wind and the cold and the snow, so the walk ended up being theoretical, held in the upstairs of the Carleton Tavern, as Blaine Marchand pointed in various directions to illustrate different locations (“imagine you are on Wellington Street West right now…). Thanks very much to Blaine Marchand, Anita Lahey, Steve Zytveld, Clare Latremouille, Colin Morton, Craig Poile, Paul Tyler, Stephanie Bolster, Merise Brebner and others who provided some details I might not otherwise have known, and to Marchand and Claire Farley, who were good enough to read (a poem of theirs, alongside a poem by, respectively, Diana Brebner and Anita Lahey). And to the small, shivering crowd! The final walk will be on December 8th in the Byward Market; keep an eye on my link here for confirmation on where we shall be meeting to begin that one.

WALK THREE:

One might say that Hintonburg has had infestations of poets for years, living lives of quiet desperation, even amid increasing gentrification. One of Michael Dennis’ first apartments in Ottawa during the early 1980s was on Spadina Avenue, as was poet Wanda O’Connor’s last apartment, circa 2006, where she held poetry salons in her apartment’s unfinished attic. O’Connor authored a handful of self-published poetry chapbooks as well as a title through above/ground press before heading to Montreal to participate in Concorida’s Creative Writing Program. Marianne Bluger (1945-2005) lived on Clarendon Avenue, in a house since torn down and replaced, as Blaine Marchand says, “by a monstrosity.” During her medical studies in Montreal, Bluger took poetry classes with the poet Louis Dudek. She eventually moved to Ottawa where she raised two children as a single mother, and published numerous books of poetry, including Summer Grass (Brick Books, 1992), Tamarack & Clearcut (Carleton University Press, 1996), Scissor, Paper, Woman (Penumbra Press, 2000) and the posthumous Nude with Scar (Penumbra Press, 2006). More recently, poet and editor Pearl Pirie also lived relatively close, spending half a decade at 202 Hinton Avenue North until 2017, when she and her husband Brian, a performer in multiple of jwcurry’s Messagio Galore sound ensembles, relocated across the river into rural Quebec, to a house they built themselves. Jean Van Loon, who, until recently, was director of The TREE Reading Series, and is the author of Building on River (Cormorant Books, 2018), a poetry debut focused on and around Ottawa’s J.R. Booth, lives on Mayfair Avenue. Blaine Marchand, discussed during both my Centretown and Glebe walks, lives on Warren Avenue, and has, as he says, for 36 years.

FIRST STOP: 1242 Wellington Street West: Our first official stop is the site of the former Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeeshop (1997-2012). As well as being a focal point for numerous literary readings and events, Collected Works hosted a series of writing workshops conducted by local writers, including multiple sessions run by the poet Diana Brebner (1956-2001). Brebner was an incredibly supportive mentor to younger writers, including myself, when we would meet for coffee in the Glebe circa 1993-95, and talk about poetry and exchange tales of our children. She lived just north of the Civic Hospital, at 21 Sims, with her huband and two daughters from October 1992 to February 1999, before she briefly relocated to Sherbrooke Avenue, and finally to an apartment building at 420 Parkdale, right next to the old fire hall, where she lived until she succumbed to cancer in 2001.

Brebner, a proponent of the sonnet during a particularly fallow period for the form, won the CBC Poetry Contest in 1992, and published three trade poetry collections with Netherlandic Press: Radiant Life Forms (1990), The Golden Lotus (1993) and Flora & Fauna (1996). Stephanie Bolster, a poet Brebner had mentored during their shared Ottawa time, edited Brebner’s posthumous The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems (2004) for McGill-Queen’s Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series. Here’s a poem from her second collection, The Golden Lotus:

The Perfect Garden

for Blaine

Nothing grows in asphalt. But here I 

am trying to grow something, as well

as nothing. Each year some hibiscus

appears, either side of my doorway:

blood-red soldiers, or are they angels?

And the violets, quietly given to my

little daughter, by her dying friend

(a woman of my present age) three years

past. They appear in cinder-blocks

again, and again. Some things will not

forget how they came up from emptiness:

bluebells (called weeds and torn up), lily-

-of-the-valley (between concrete wall

And asphalt plane) green asymptotes

never quite giving up the ghost, never

blue morning-glory on the Frost fence,

and Siberian irises up against the invisible

walls, and old lilac invading the thick

black lie which says: death, which

says: nothing is perfect, or even close.

After Brebner became too ill to continue, the workshops were run by a couple of different poets, including Bolster, before I started conducting my own workshop sessions, which ran throughout the remainder of the store’s existence. After the store closed, I continued running poetry workshops upstairs at the Carleton Tavern, before shifting to our house on Alta Vista Drive. Over the years, participants in the poetry workshops included numerous writers who have since gone on to impressive publishing cvs, including Una McDonnell, Anita Lahey and S. Lesley Buxton, all of whom met in Diana Brebner’s workshops. Poets in my own sessions, which still occur occasionally, have included Pearl Pirie, Sandra Ridley, Amanda Earl, Marcus McCann, Frances Boyle, Suzannah Showler, Roland Prevost, Claire Farley, Nina Jane Drystek, Chris Johnston, natalie hanna and Catriona Wright. Former bookstore owners Craig Poile and Christopher Smith still live in the neighbourhood, on Hamilton Avenue North, and Poile, a poet, playwright and theatre producer, won both the Archibald Lampman Award and the Ottawa Book Award for his second full-length poetry collection, True Concessions (Goose Lane, 2009).

In 2002, Arc Poetry Magazine founded The Diana Brebner Prize. Awarded each year for the best poem written by a National Capital Region poet not yet been published in book form, winners over the years have included Conyer Clayton, Claire Farley, Sneha Madhavan-Reese, Anne Marie Todkill, Marilyn Irwin, Lauren Turner, Jenny Haysom, Robyn Jeffrey, Frances Boyle, Rhonda Douglas, Sylvia Adams, Michael Blouin and Mary Trafford, many of whom have gone on to produce first full-length books.

Collected Works is also where I first met my dear wife, Christine McNair, when she participated in one of my poetry workshops during the summer of 2008. After moving from Toronto earlier that spring, she first came through the store for the sake of the Canadian Author’s Association, which were hosting gatherings within the space. Since those days, she has gone on to publish two poetry collections, including her second, Charm (Book*hug, 2017), which recently won the Archibald Lampman Award, an annual prize for the best book of poetry by an Ottawa-area resident.

SECOND STOP: Wellington Street West and Huron: Paul Tyler, author of the Archibald Lampman-winning poetry debut, A Short History of Forgetting (Gaspereau Press, 2010), lived at 73 Huron from 2004 to 2012 before relocating to the Glebe. During some of the same years, from 2003 to 2008 or so, he was also on the Arc Poetry Magazine editorial board, before spending a few years as a member of their “advisory board.” Another writer on the same street during that period was poet and editor Anita Lahey, who lived on Huron Avenue before relocating briefly to Fairmount Avenue. While in Ottawa, she published two poetry collections—Out to Dry in Cape Breton (2006), nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the Ottawa Book Award, and Spinning Side Kick (2011)—both of which were published by Véhicule Press’ Signal Editions imprint. In 2004, Lahey inherited the mantle of editor for Arc Poetry Magazine from Rita Donovan and longtime editor John Barton, a position she held until 2011, when she left Ottawa to head east, and eventually west. She currently lives in Victoria, B.C., where she continues her work as a poet, journalist and editor, having published a third book, The Mystery Shopping Cart: Essays on Poetry and Culture (Palimpsest Press, 2013). More recently, she changed positions from assistant editor to series editor for Best Canadian Poetry, an annual anthology produced the past decade-plus by Tightrope Books, scheduled to shift to Biblioasis as of 2019. During Lahey’s tenure at Arc, assisted in large part by Reviews Editor Matthew Holmes, the magazine saw numerous expansions, including one of format, as well as the Arc Poetry Annual and the Arc Poet-in-Residence program, making Arc the only Canadian literary journal to host a virtual residency. From her debut, Out to Dry in Cape Breton, composed during her Ottawa period, comes a poem on The Prince of Wales Bridge, a bridge that has also been a favourite of Ottawa poet, publisher, collector and bpNichol bibliographer jwcurry. A bit east of where we are now, The Prince of Wales Bridge is an abandoned rail bridge on the Ottawa River, just north of the boundaries of the repurposed O-Train line. Constructed in 1880 as one of the few crossings of the Ottawa River into Quebec, it connects the south channel of the Ottawa River to Lemieux Island before crossing the northern channel into Gatineau. In February of this year, according to the Ottawa Citizen, the Canadian Transportation Agency ruled that the City of Ottawa “must restore the Prince of Wales Bridge and the railway that approaches it in the next 12 months or formally discontinue the operations [.]” The City is, of course, fighting the decision, saying that the timeline is impossible.

ABANDONED RAILWAY BRIDGE

OVER THE OTTAWA

Everything is designed to remind us of our smallness. We walk

to prove it doesn’t matter, trespass on the CPR line, tromp

into its black-trellised hovering on narrow planks god-knows

how old. Metal arms criss-cross, criss-cross; their taunting,

their gaps. The river tarries beneath puckered skin. There is no alone,

not here. November hurls itself at us, elbows and knees drawn. Pigeons

fuss and coo; clouds stare back; somewhere is a man who fitted rocks

into pillars, laid rails, hammered steel and died. There were men in canoes

who didn’t stand a chance. They whisper back and forth. The dead

want peace, but only sometimes. Kids have been here wielding

cans of paint, accusations: How could you want more than this? Their uneven

letters lie whitely, backed gainst flagging sun. A scrubby shore

calls to one you left behind. Midway, the rope, lashed to a jutting

beam. Twenty feet of braided yellow fixed to the sky, fretting

over water. Evidence of swimmers, or worse. Someone climbed

and clung to tie that far-off end. The sky sweeps the river

roughly, without pity. The question is whether to exist in two

places or one. Keep keeping all you’ve amassed or fling it off

this old bridge. Teeter on rotting boards, tethered by hope.

Or tautly arc into glory and back, glory and back, each triumph

less graspable than the last, until, wind-whipped, with calloused

palms, you yo-yo about, doodling on little sheets of air. In wonder

resides no footing; kicking won’t get you home. You’re bound

to blackening yellow, nighttime’s impressive arrivals, the immoveable

bridge with its slime-plastered legs. Ward off, longly and without

sound, that sweaty, red-palmed slippage as you undulate

with memories of height, the wooden, underfoot sureness that was.

THIRD STOP: 1233 Wellington Street West: Poet and fiction writer Elisabeth Harvor lived for years in an apartment building across from the Rosemount Library, before relocating to one of the condos above the Great Canadian Theatre Company. A poet, short story writer and novelist, she was the first and seemingly last writer in residence through Carleton University’s English Department in 1993, a position the Department shared with the Ottawa Public Library. She won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best book of poetry by a Canadian writer for her 1992 collection, A Fortress of Chairs (Vehicule Press), was nominated for a Governor General’s Award for her short story collection Let Me Be the One (1996), and her first novel, Excessive Joy Injures the Heart (Penguin, 2010), was chosen one of the ten best books of the year by The Toronto Star. That same year, she also won the Alden Nowlan Award. In 2003, she won the Marian Engel Award, and in 2004 The Malahat Review’s Novella Prize. In 2015, she placed second in Prairie Fire’s fiction prize. Her most recent poetry title is her third, An Open Door in the Landscape (2010).

FOURTH STOP: 1084 Wellington Street West: From 2011 to 2012, The Dusty Owl Reading Series was held at the Elmdale Tavern, surrounded by a plethora of rock memorabilia and posters from decades of musical performances. Originally built in 1909 as a general store, the tavern was purchased and repurposed as the Elmdale Oyster House and Tavern in the fall of 2012, becoming part of a handful of Whalesbone Oyster Houses in Ottawa.

Cathy hosting ; photo by Pearl Pirie

Dusty Owl was founded by Steve Zytveld, who had emerged from the Carleton Literary Society at Carleton University, a group that brought Michael Ondaatje to read on campus in March, 1995. Zytveld and his wife Cathy Macdonald-Zytveld ran Dusty Owl as a reading series hosting featured readers and an extensive open set, providing a home to poets, fiction writers, spoken word performers and musicians, and even hosted a series of benefits for the food bank, as well as at least one performance (where everyone who showed up was given a role) of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream. To get a sense of the tone of the series, I might mention that there was much giggling, for example, whenever the stage direction “Enter Bottom” was read aloud. Dusty Owl also produced a series of chapbooks in the mid-2000s, curated by Dusty Owl associate Kate Hunt, including titles by myself, Roland Prevost, DeAnne Smith (who has since made a name for herself as a stand-up comedian, writer and performer) and novelist L. Brent Robillard. I long described Dusty Owl as “not the best reading series in town, but certainly the most fun.” Dusty Owl could boast an incredibly welcoming, lively and casual atmosphere, especially as Zytveld would often host sporting vintage aviator pilot goggles, referring to these as his “poetry goggles.”

Originally held at the former Café Wim (537 Sussex Drive, the current home of Social) from 1996 to 1999, The Dusty Owl Reading Series reemerged in Centretown from 2004 to 2010. When Zytveld was forced to step back to begin a Masters of Divinity Degree at St. Paul University in 2011, Macdonald-Zytveld took over the series, and for a brief period, readings were co-hosted by myself and held upstairs at the Carleton Tavern before relocating here, where Zytveld managed to appear on occasion to host. Once the Elmdale was purchased to be repurposed, Dusty Owl lost another home, and went on haitus.

FIFTH STOP: 188 Armstrong Avenue: Clare Latremouille lived here from 2001 to 2015, during the time when Ottawa publisher Chaudiere Books published her first novel, The Desmond Road Book of the Dead (2006), as part of their debut quartet of literary titles. Referring to herself as a “displaced British Columbian,” she returned to Ottawa in the late 1990s after a decade out west, including some time in Vancouver, as well as her hometown of Kamloops. She has published poetry in numerous anthologies, including Written in the Skin (Insomniac Press, 1998) and Shadowy Technicians: New Ottawa Poets (Broken Jaw Press, 2000), and even published a small chapbook with above/ground press: I will write a poem for you. Now: (1995). I first met Latremouille in as a teenager, attending Glengarry District High School in Alexandria, Ontario, as a small handful of us poked at writing poems and short stories, even going so far as to start producing a small literary journal through our English teacher. Some of our classmates published within the pages of our Zine included Ottawa musician Chris Page, known since as frontman to bands such as Camp Radio, Expanda Fuzz and The Stand GT, as well as four solo albums, and playwright, theatre director and Concordia professor Louis Patrick Leroux, who not only founded Ottawa’s Théâtre la Catapulte in the 1990s, but had twenty-three of his plays produced by the time he was twenty-three years old. It was actually through Leroux that Stephanie Bolster first came to Ottawa in 1995, after first meeting each other at the Banff Writing Studio in 1994. They now live in Montreal with their two daughters.

A decade or so after our high school years, Latremouille was a founding member of The Peter F. Yacht Club, an informal writer’s group I first organized in the late 1990s as a conversation between those of us who were writing and submitting and reading. During those first few years, it was far more of a social gathering, not evolving into an occasional journal until 2003, with early members including b stephen harding, Latremouille, Stephen Brockwell, Anita Dolman, James Moran, jwcurry, Jennifer Mulligan and Laurie Fuhr. Since then, issues have been intermittent, but continue, with an issue produced annually as a handout as part of VERSeFest. Since 2015, Latremouille and her family have lived on a large wooded property in North Glengarry.

SIXTH STOP: 220 Armstrong Avenue: Dennis Tourbin (1946-1998) was a lively and engaged poet, painter, performance artist, writer and art and poetry-magazine publisher. As I mentioned during my first walk, Dennis Tourbin was one of a handful of writers to emerge in Ottawa from Peterborough in the early 1980s, alongside Michael Dennis and the late Riley Tench. Further Peterborough writers from the same period, including Maggie Helwig and Yann Martel, headed west, to Toronto and Saskatchewan, respectively. One of the founders of St. Catharines, Ontario’s Niagara Artists’ Center, Dennis Tourbin left Peterborough for Ottawa in 1983, where he eventually became Director of Gallery 101 (during a period that included Rob Manery and Louis Cabri’s The Transparency Machine poetry and performance series), and published a collection of fiction, The Port Dalhousie Stories (1987) through Coach House Press, as well as multiple poetry titles with small and micro presses, including two poetry chapbooks (including one posthumously) with above/ground press. Predominantly known as a painter, he was larger-than-life, uniquely colourful and engaged with the world around him, connecting a series of literary and artistic communities throughout Ottawa and beyond.

Tourbin spent decades focused on and fascinated with the 1970 October Crisis, producing numerous watercolours, artist books, word paintings, performance art, and videos incorporating headlines and imagery from a sequence of events still seen as politically charged. As The Canadian Encyclopedia writes: “The October Crisis began 5 October 1970 with the kidnapping of James Cross, the British trade commissioner in Montréal, by members of the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ). It rapidly devolved into the most serious terrorist act carried out on Canadian soil after another official, Minister of Immigration and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte, was kidnapped and killed. The crisis shook the career of recently elected Liberal Premier Robert Bourassa, who solicited federal help along with Montréal Mayor Jean Drapeau. This help would lead to the only invocation of the War Measures Act during peacetime in Canadian history.” National Gallery director Shirley Thomson famously cancelled a long-awaited solo exhibition of black-ink drawings on the October Crisis by Tourbin in 1995, due to the pending referendum in Quebec, a decision that was loudly and publicly condemned by the arts community in Ottawa and beyond. Scheduled to be paired with an exhibition of his large-scale paintings on the same subject at the Ottawa Art Gallery, an exhibition which went ahead as planned, the outcry at the cancellation helped turn Tourbin, as Paul Gessell wrote, “into a national star.” Seven years later, Thomson was quoted as saying: “I think I will never know if I made the right decision or not.”

Fascinated by how image could be shaped and presented, one could say that bulk of his work engaged with how media, whether television or newspapers, helps to create, and not simply replicate, reality. Here is a poem from his posthumous THE STREAM and other poems (above/ground press, 2014), a chapbook produced to coincide with a retrospective of his work at the Carleton University Art Gallery.

Real Television

I don’t want movies.

I don’t want life.

I want real wind

to determine

the wonder of

the next sentence.

Sentence,

not a criminal sentence,

a natural, natural

sentence.

I want life

not movies.

I want life to tell me…

I want to swim

in pools of aqua

coloured water,

lights flashing,

dreams of Olympic glory.

One step closer to,

one step closer to

the wonder

of a time

changed by plazas

and shopping malls.

I want to swim in dreams,

in night life,

night time, darkness…

I want to swim.

I want to live.

I want television

to be the only thing

in my life.

SEVENTH STOP: Parkdale Park: In June 2015, a collaboration of a handful of Ottawa-area writers organizations, including The Ottawa Independent Writers, l’Association desauteures et auteurs de l’Ontario français, the Capital Crime Writers, the Ottawa Science Fiction Society and the Ottawa Storytellers collaborated to organize the first annual Prose in the Park as a single all-day outdoor book fair featuring readings and panels. ​The festival has been held every year since, with the exception of 2018, but promises to return for June 2019. Not only held as an event for both French and English publishers, writers and panels, Prose in the Park provides a marked difference from events such as the Ottawa International Writers Festival or the ottawa small press book fair for its focus on genre publishers and writers, as well as self-published authors.

EIGHTH STOP: The Carleton Tavern has been home to literary activity going back years, including my own Factory Reading Series for the past eighteen years or so (a reading series I founded in Centretown back in January, 1993), as well as the semi-annual readings as part of the ottawa small press book fair. Other events have been held here as well, including the aforementioned stretch of readings hosted by the Dusty Owl Reading Series, and individual readings hosted by Brick Books, all of which occurred on the second floor, as well as years’ worth of local theatre on the main floor. For years, my poetry workshops at Collected Works would regularly retire here, post-workshop, for libations and conversation, which I suggest that we do as well.

Arc Poetry Annual 2012: prize poems & bookish brawls

“Poet vs. Poet,” as we’ve dubbed this year’s Annual, seems an appropriate theme for me to find myself enmeshed in at this time. This is to be my last issue as editor of Arc after seven years in the post—seven demanding, fulfilling years that amount to my literary education. Before falling into this role—“fall” is the most accurate way I can think to describe how it happened—I did not think deeply about the competitive aspects of poetic life. I preferred to view the writing of poetry as a singular engagement with one’s world: a private effort undertaken in the hopes of honing a creation worthy of sharing with a reader (or a few), should such opportunity arise. (Anita Lahey, “The poet versus who or what?”)

I’m not entirely sure the difference between a journal that moved from two to three issues a year, or a journal with two issues a year that also issues an “annual” between, especially since the distance between issues seem to be increasing. With their 2012 annual issue, Arc Poetry Magazine, subtitled “Prize poems & bookish brawls,” also marks Anita Lahey’s final as editor after seven years, replaced by incoming editor Katia Grubisic, a Montreal poet and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems (Montreal QC: Signal/Vehicule Press, 2009). Alongside the announcements and publications of their 15^th annual “Poem of the Year” competition and 10^th annual “Diana Brebner Prize” (won by Jenny Haysom, by the by), the issue includes a “Gallery of Prize Emponyms,” various essays and interviews/conversations, “How Poems Work,” a selection of “Editors’ Choices,” and, of course, poems. Who can keep track of it all? In her “Steel toes and stilettos,” self-described “succeeding editor” Katia Grubisic writes:

This Arc considers poetry contests, competitors, laureates, and what those caprine trophies have morphed into today. Fittingly, this is the so-called Kanita issue, part cyborg, part gentle editorial transition. Big shoes to fill—33 years of steel toes and stilettos. More important is the path: knowing where we have come from, yes, as Machado wrote, shaping the path as we walk it. Of yellow brick or diverging in a yellow wood, small steps as it rises to meet us—here is the awe, the boldness, the fortuitous encounters. We want it to be good, we want you to read it, we want it to change our lives.

The Arc Poet vs. Poet Annual raises more questions than it answers, with interviews and essays that mull over contest ethics, slash through shark-infested waters and value the ineffable; reviews of those who wear our versey garlands; new poetry that strifes; and Arc’s own contest winners—come walk with us, we’ll show you where to land the blows.

Obviously, not lacking in confidence, this issue is one of competition, “Poet vs. Poet,” as well as one of transition, overlapping editorial concerns, perhaps, between the outgoing and incoming, and seeing just how compatible the new blood sits inside the already-existing body. Is this competition, or transfusion? As Aislinn Hunter writes in her essay, “On the impossibility of competition in poetry”:

As poets we understand competition: there are only so many pages in the literary magazine, so many books published, space for reviews, dollars for grants, so many spots on the shortlist—and only one winner (or two if the jury is hung). Certainly the idea of competition and its de facto presence in literary culture is widely evident. It may begin in the creative-writing classroom (oriented, despite its desire not to be, on grades), or in the form of back-page contests advertised in magazines; it might rear its head annually in Canada Council grant tussles, or be broadcast into our kitchens. Competition in the literary sphere is so ubiquitous that, in 2002, when Tim Bowling edited a series of interviews between poets in Where the Words Come From, he requested that each interviewer ask, amongst their own queries, “is competition healthy or unhealthy for a poet?”

The particular kind of competition Hunter discusses is certainly an aspect of literary culture, but I’m not sure it’s ubiquitous; Bowling suggesting the question doesn’t argue it so. Still, competition takes a wide array of forms, and one of the prevailing aspects of “competition,” whether self or with others, is the push for improvement through comparison, which can be enormously healthy, as opposed to the potential for self-abuse that comes with frustration over prize-monies and increased attention. The conversation is a worthy one, and the “Gallery of Prize Emponyms” highlights but a small selection of poetry-specific prizes across various parts of Canada (oddly, the Griffin Poetry Prize, is a curious absence), including Acorn-Plantos Award, Nick Blatchford Contest, Diana Brebner Prize, Bliss Carman Award, A.M. Klein Prize, Archibald Lampman Award, Pat Lowther Memorial Award, P.K. Page Founders’ Award, E.J. Pratt Poetry Award, Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award. Other awards that could easily have been added to the list include the BC Book Prizes, Bywords.ca’s John Newlove Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and Concordia's Irving Layton Award, among others.

Still, with the amount of talk on poetry in this issue, some of which is quite compelling (the conversation between Monty Reid and Nadine McInnis, for example, as well as the piece by Jeramy Dodds), why does so little of the actual poetry in this issue actually strike?

House of Fame

After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea.

- 1 Samuel 24:14

How do we move from eros to

caritas? By being sartorially

correct, by wearing a penguin

suit to accept the prize? By

doing somersaults? John Keats died

of an open window, Rainer

Maria Rilke of a poisoned

thorn, John Milton of staring

too long. Virginia Woolf died of

a sea wreck, Jane Austen of a

bad egg-salad sandwich. Sylvia

Plath of a fallen soufflé. Like

kittens to milt, lapping it up,

like waves to brackish water, like

highlanders to their brose,

even educated fleas do it. (Mary Kathryn Arnold)

One feature of the issue I particularly enjoyed was the “Sonnet vs. sonnet” conversation between poets Stephen Brockwell and Peter Norman, referencing and discussing sonnets generally, and their frustratingly-out-of-print collaborative chapbook, Wild Clover Honey and The Beehive: 28 Sonnets on the Sonnet (2004). Frustrating, because this small and brilliant publication, written as an argument/essay on sonnets in sonnet form, infamously launched at the Ottawa International Writers Festival, has possibly now been read about more than it has actually been read. As Peter Norman begins their conversation:

Peter Norman: Here’s how I remember the genesis of our battle: On a searing summer day in 2003, my wife and I were strolling in downtown Ottawa. We spotted you and rob mclennan enjoying a beer on the patio of a pub, so we pulled up a couple of chairs. Conversation turned to sonnets. Like Chris Jennings, whose polemic on the subject in Arc recently provoked discussion among us meter geeks, you were no longer sure the form had much value.

Stephen Brockwell: We were at D’Arcy McGee’s on Sparks Street. I think my sonnet objections were a ruse to seize your attention. I was trying to out-nerd you. I did—and still do—wonder about how such imported forms fit with our byte-sized cultural microverse. And I have to prod the earnest man at every opportunity because an earnest fella is lurking in me somewhere.

PN: So I guess you probably already knew I had a longstanding sonnet fetish. I liked writing sonnets. The restrictions acted like a sculptor’s tools, uncovering shapes inside the raw material.

SB: I think you know I agree with you on the sculptor’s tools. Hear, hear. To what end? What business does the hoity-toity sonnet have swiffering up our messy culture? (I need an emoticon here to wink.)

PN: Well, the question riled me at the time. I was a novice poet, having just launched my first chapbook. You were well established, a few books under your belt. I admired your writing and was excited by the ideas you’d expressed in conversation. (We’d recently discovered that we had both written, without any knowledge of each other’s doing so, poems about Pythagoras ordering his pupil killed for mathematical heresy. Mine was a sonnet; yours was not.) It would be daunting to face you in a war of wits.

10th Annual Diana Brebner Prize for Poetry‏

Dear Ottawa friends and colleagues,

We are approaching the deadline for Arc Poetry Magazine's 10th Annual Diana Brebner Prize for Poetry [named to honour the most beloved and much talented late Ottawa poet and mentor to many, Diana Brebner]. Entrants must live in the National Capital Region and not yet be published in book form. Submissions must be postmarked by March 1, 2011. See guidelines at: http://www.arcpoetry.ca/2010/08/16/diana-brebner-prize/.

We're also bringing forward the poems by some past winners of this prize on our website. Check out last year's winning poem: http://www.arcpoetry.ca/2011/02/18/brebner-2010-prize-winning-poem-lee-krasners-grey-period-by-robyn-jeffrey/

Please forward this on to anyone you think might be interested. And if you send in your own work, the best of luck!

Anita Lahey, Editor
Arc Poetry Magazine
arcpoetry.ca
editor@arcpoetry.ca

12 or 20 (small press) questions: Anita Lahey on ARC magazine

Arc Poetry Magazine was founded in Ottawa, Canada in 1978 by the Arc Poetry Society to nurture and promote the composition and appreciation of poetry in Canada. In its uninterrupted 32 years of publication—it is the longest-running, uninterrupted poetry publication in the country—the magazine has remained steadfast in this purpose. It gives out several annual prizes and awards, and can be found online at arcpoetry.ca

Anita Lahey is the author of the poetry collection Out to Dry in Cape Breton (Vehicule Press, 2006), which was nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the Ottawa Book Award. She has been involved with Arc since 2001 and has served as editor since 2005. She is also a journalist who has written on a wide range of topics for publications such as The Walrus, Cottage Life, Maisonneuve, Canadian Geographic, Chatelaine, the Ottawa Citizen, Quill & Quire, and several others. She lives in Montreal.

1 – When did ARC magazine first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?

Arc was founded in 1978 by three English professors at Carleton University, including the poet Christopher Levenson, who remained as editor of the magazine for many years after its association with Carleton ceased. Since its early days it has been independent from any larger organization such as a university or writers’ guild. In issue 2, an editorial stated the magazine had no manifesto: “Our only commitment is to good poetry and to good criticism, wherever we can find it.” Though many editors have taken the helm, including John Bell and Mark Frutkin, John Barton and Rita Donovan, myself and Matthew Holmes, and though a long list of Ottawa writers & literary folk have served on the editorial board (including David Staines, Colin Morton, Sandra Nicholls, John Buschek, Susan McMaster, Barbara Myers, Paul Tyler, Sandra Ridley), this has not changed—we at Arc are steadfastly anti-manifesto (though that in itself might be seen as a manifesto). Currently our board includes Rob Winger, Rhonda Douglas, Shane Rhodes, Grant Wilkins and several others. My own goal as editor of Arc is to contain within its pages, alongside strong new poetry, a lively conversation about poetry—I want Arc to be a locus for that often fractious but often enlightening conversation among poets and readers of poetry in Canada. What I have learned editing Arc I could spend a whole week talking about, but one thing in particular is that the poets function as a kind of small town—a community that is spread out in tendrils over the entire country. There is no province or territory from which we don’t receive submissions, and our contributors, be they poets, critics, essayists or all three, live in farflung locales all over the map. There is something remarkable about finding oneself part of this half-hidden world, and engaging with it, and always finding new lines and branches to follow. It is a privilege and an adventure.

2 – What first brought you to publishing?

Writing. I studied magazine journalism at Ryerson in Toronto, and have worked in various capacities as a writer or editor ever since.

3 – How do you approach the idea of taking over, and even altering a publishing mandate that pre-dates your own tenure as editor? Is this intimidating at all, or exciting, or both? How do you approach continuity?

In my case I became involved with Arc because I liked the magazine—I read it and tried to publish my work in it (my first published poem appeared in Arc before I knew anyone involved with the magazine)—so continuity of sensibility existed. I did not step in to alter the mandate or drastically change the magazine. Even the redesign that happened after I became editor with Matthew Holmes became reviews editor—we worked for a couple of years as a kind of co-editorship until he moved away and got a full-time job (and a family!)—was something the former editors were thinking about and wanting to do; this was not a radical shift. Changes have happened based on discussions around the table with the editorial board, different ideas people put forward, and probably to some extent my own personality and the journalistic experience I bring, my sense of what a magazine is as a whole. It’s gradual and organic. I think Arc with me has increased its essay quotient considerably—I like, as I said above, for the magazine to be engaging in, and in some sense even leading or trying to set a tone, for discussion about poetry and poetics in Canada at this time. Some might say doing that takes space away from being able to publish a few more new poems, and it does, but to me it’s a worthwhile and even an important trade-off. I like to put things in context, and as a reader to see things in context, and this has led us to do some explorations into issues and themes such as Canada’s “forgotten and neglected poets,” about whom we did a special issue, and the question of ego and poetry, which led to our “anonymous” issue. It is also why we have more little features in the magazine surrounding the new poetry and criticism, such as the Arc Dozens essay, the letters, and even a regular editor’s note. For me it also needs to be fun, so we try not to take everything too seriously: while we conduct very earnest investigations into the state of poetry, we try to be playful about it.

4 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?

Small publishers are like the training ground and apprenticeship for writers and editors. They are also the places where any kind of discussion can happen, where work can be tried out and shared, without concern over popular appeal—in essence where writers at any level can be free to follow their noses. In that sense, we are the incubators of art and ideas. We support, we encourage, and we provide a space, again, in which to play. A society needs these spaces, because it is here where the ideas that will later spread more widely take root, where many the writers who will later speak to the masses hone their craft and their skills, and also where the writers who may never speak to the masses, but who still speak in important and necessary ways, can exercise their voices and by doing so influence and enrich our world and our lives,.

5 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?

We provide a forum for discussion and criticism of contemporary Canadian poetry that is more broad and in-depth than I see elsewhere. Each issue of Arc contains a couple of dozen brief reviews of recent collections as well as 1-4 longer reviews—nowhere else is there this much room for informed and thoughtful discussion of new poetry being published in the country. We set a tone (I hope) of openness and exploration—others do this too for literature in general, but in a purely poetic context I think we are unique. Aside from supporting the creation of new work—which we do not just by publishing and offering prizes but also through our Poet-in-Residence program, which nurtures emerging writers who show promise and also gives room for a more established poet to work on a new project—we revisit and examine what is already before us and with us, in ways that matter the poets writing today: through our How Poems Work column and through such projects as the aforementioned “Forgotten and Neglected issue, and our more recent issue examining the legacy of John Thompson and the rise in popularity of the ghazal form since his death. We also try to push the boundaries of the poetry community and invite others in—this by such initiatives as in our recent How Poems Work Annual, in which we invited readers from all walks of life to comment on the poems being featured and discussed.

6 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new issues out into the world?


I’m not sure whether you mean issues of a magazine—or issues, as in, topics for discussion. If the former, I don’t know. We sell in stores, we have subscribers, we host readings and launches, we take part in Word on the Street and other book fairs, and even sometimes more general arts fairs, such as the Artspark event in the Ottawa neighbourhood of Hintonburg every May. Here we run an Arc Poetry Factory, at which people can “order” a poem from a member of Arc or an Arc associate, who is sitting at a typewriter ready to write on the spot. (We use this as a fundraiser for a local schools organization, and it is extremely popular, and again, a kind of outreach beyond our typical audience.)

7 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?

I am as involved as I need to be, by which I mean to say, some pieces are very well realized and only need a light touch, while others require more revision and rethinking—a deeper intervention from an editor. I am talking about prose. Most longer pieces require more editorial involvement, which is normal: it is the rare writer who doesn’t need an editor (as someone who is often on the other side of this relationship, I am often wary if an editor doesn’t wade in, for an outside eye and fresh perspective is helpful and in many cases even necessary). As for poems, I only ever offer minor suggestions for changes, if any; in general, the poetry we accept is selected because we like it as it is.

8 – How does ARC get distributed? What are your usual print runs?

As mentioned above, Arc is distributed through mailed subscriptions, sold on newsstands, (Magazines Canada distributes us to newsstands, as they do most small publications in the country), and sold at special events such as launches and festivals.

9 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?

Working with a team is important because everyone has different strengths and different ideas, and because hearing and considering a diversity of viewpoints—while this sometimes presents challenges—is important. A one-person operation risks being narrow in scope. We have an editorial board of 8, all of whom are involved to some extent in selection of content. Everyone reads submissions and we have editorial meetings where we discuss poems that are in contention for acceptance. Among this crew is a poetry editor and a reviews editor, both of whom help a little more with the process (the poetry editor is someone I consult with regularly, and the reviews editor does some of the assigning of reviews and also some of the initial editing). We have a board member who assists with copy editing, an art director who takes part in art selection and is very involved in our production process, a layout designer who formats all the content, and a managing editor who runs the show—by which I mean everything that doesn’t involve editing itself, from paying the bills to grant applications to managing submissions and distributing mail. Having this crew involved with all these practical matters (which wasn’t always the case at Arc) helps the editor be able to focus on editorial matters which is very difficult to do when one is busy writing cheques and managing budgets and that sort of thing.

10 – How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?

I have always shifted back and forth between the two sides of the writing business, so I’m not sure I can answer that—it’s almost too meshed to be able to parse. But when I’m working as a writer, I know, for example, that if I don’t hear from an editor for a spell it may have to do with their production cycle, rather than meaning they’ve forgotten I exist. The other thing I would say is that, for me, it’s tough to do both simultaneously. When I’m working as an editor, and feeling responsible for a host of different tasks, it’s hard to carve out the mental space necessary to write. In my case. For others, it might not be so difficult.

11 – How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?

I would never publish my own poetry. No editor of Arc can be published in the magazine, in fact. Prose is another matter. We are all sometimes prose contributors to the magazine; this is appropriate and even desired, because in that case we are sharing our knowledge and perspective on poetic subjects with Arc’s readers, as any of our other contributors do.

12 – How do you see ARC continuing to evolve?

I hope we will continue to host a lively and meaningful and topical discussion of poetry and poetics, and that we will find more and better ways to do this, and to expand out to a broader audience. We will also continue to further develop our educational & support activities, by maintaining our Poet-in-Residence program, which is in its pilot year and which continues into a second year in 2010-2011, and by doing more activities such as supplying lesson plans for teachers of poetry and writing with issues of the magazine (we did this first with the 2010 Arc Annual).




13 – What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?


I am frustrated by the federal government’s decision to cut its support of small publications—very frustrated. We are not money pits—the funding we received from Heritage Canada was minimal, but extremely useful: as a small operation we are able to accomplish a lot with a small amount of money. And we are indeed incubators of culture: our impact cannot be measured in numbers. Their quantitative approach to cultural endeavour is baffling. I am proud of our Forgotten and Neglected issue, of the fascinating discussion contained within our How Poems Work Annual (in which, for example, a chocolatier contends with a poem by bp nichol), and of our creation of a virtual Poet-in-Residence, the first of its kind in the country, who can provide guidance and feedback to promising poets anywhere. I can’t comment on what people may have overlooked; I have no idea!

14 – Who were your early publishing models when starting out?


15 – How does ARC work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see ARC in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?

I think I have mainly answered this above. But to add to that, we are currently in an active partnership with The New Quarterly on a joint issue (scheduled for summer 2011) on science and literature. This issue will be called “Quarc” and we are very excited about it. We are also, for our upcoming Annual, which will focus on poetry that uses visual art as its inspiration (we’re calling it the Poet as Art Thief issue), conducting an experiment involving 10 Ottawa poets and artists, and working with the National Gallery of Canada on some aspect of the issue. All of this is important—readings, launches, cross-magazine and cross-disciplinary experiments. When you make something, you share it: and then you let people respond to it, and this has an impact on what you make next time. This is how a magazine has a relationship with its community and its readers, and why magazines matter at all.

16 – Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?

We hold an Ottawa reading/launch for each issue of Arc, and sometimes extra launches in different cities, such as Montreal or Vancouver, if there are lots of contributors to be found in one place.




17 – How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?

Arc’s website features its own content (ongoing How Poems Work column, for example) as well as samples from each issue. We are currently engaged in a revamping of the site that will allow us to use it to more fully complement and build on the print issue, with different kinds of content, including interviews and readings.

18 – Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?

We take submissions from September to May every year. We want poetry that knocks our socks off, and we recognize that there are all manner of ways and means that this can be done. Indeed this variety excites us. There is nothing we aren’t looking for—except perhaps submissions from people who don’t read or like the magazine, or who haven’t read and followed our submission guidelines, which can be found on our website at arcpoetry.ca

19 – Tell me about your most recent issue, and why it's special.

Our most recent issue, Arc 63 (winter 2010), features a great essay by Ottawa poet Barbara Myers about ending a poem—reading poems endings and writing them, and what “closure” really means in poetry. It also features a list of 12 his favourite poems by Don Coles, and why he likes them—a marvellous tour of poets through the ages, from Tomas Transtromer to A.E. Housmann to Douglas LePan—and an in-depth feature review on one of the most celebrated Canadian poets of this generation, Karen Solie. As for poetry, there are some fascinating scientific experiments by Nova Scotia poet Sean Howard; some rich sensual offerings by PEI’s Anne Compton, new work by Daryl Hine and John Barton, two of the country’s most accomplished gay poets (though of different generations); and an Arc debut by Susan Brennan, a Canadian ex-pat in the U.S. who writes in a fast-paced, urgent, surreal, fearless, “look at me when I’m talking to you” kind of voice, using language that fairly drips from the page. One of her poems from this issue is also featured on our “arc card,” a postcard inserted into each issue with original artwork inspired by the poem on the back. In this case, Brennan’s “The Artificial Fern’s Lament” inspired a wonderfully creepy creation by Halifax’s Melissa Marr.

12 or 20 (small press) questions;