Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part four : Grant Wilkins + Salma Hussain,

[see the first part of these notes here; see the second part of these notes here; see the third part of these notes here] And you already know about the dates of our next three fairs, yes? Saturday, November 22, 2025 (thirty-first anniversary event!), Saturday, June 20, 2026 and Saturday, November 14, 2026 (thirty-second anniversary event!), all at our usual (new) location of Tom Brown Arena. Strange to be booked that far ahead, but there you go. As ever, check for updates here when there are any (although if you already know the dates, I’m not sure what further updates you’d need, beyond the pre-fair reading announcements, which would only happen a couple of weeks before each fair).

ottawa small press book fair co-founder James Spyker + Ottawa poet Grant Wilkins

Montreal QC/Ottawa ON: It is always good to see new work from Ottawa poet and performer Grant Wilkins [catch a recent essay he wrote on his work here], and his latest chapbook (and to my immediate knowledge, his first non-above/ground press chapbook, beyond the privately printed hardcover The Kamouraska Codex: A Preliminary Translation with Commentary that he self-produced in 2019 in an edition of fifteen copies) is the chapbook-length sequence LEGENDARY THINGS (in which Phyllis Webb sings Motörhead to Basho) (Montreal QC: Turret House Press, 2025), a sequence “variously gathered, sifted, nicked or otherwise drawn” from Webb’s The Vision Tree (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 1982), Basho’s On Love and Barley – Haiku of Basho (Penguin Books, 1985) “and the lyrics of various songs by Motörhead (Lemmy Kilnister et al.).” “That weather-beaten skeleton / at the secret heart of your poem / has nowhere to hide,” he writes, to open the second page of the sequence. Half a page down, offering: “Laying there drunk on the cobblestones / I studied your graceful script / Sans serif and righteously stoned [.]”

There is something quite fascinating in the way Wilkins approaches his recombinations, finding new threads through not only the source material he selects, but the collision of what might otherwise seem contradictory sources, from “The echoes of music and poetry / are shredded by summer’s end / and the bombs going off at night” to “I’ve lost my passion / for burning skies / and riders wearing black [.]” There are other poets working creative work through similar processes of recombination, providing both original works and threads of critical response to their source materials, including a couple of recent titles such as Edmonton writer and critic Joel Katelnikoff’s Recombinant Theory (Calgary AB: University of Calgary Press, 2024) [see my review of such here] and Toronto poet R. Kolewe A Net of Momentary Sapphire (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2023) [see my review of such here], not to mention Philadelphia poet and critic Laynie Browne’s ongoing work [see an interview I did with her on such here; see my review of her latest here]. Wilkins is doing some interesting things, and I very much hope he keeps going. I want to see what he does next.

Ottawa poet (and Brick Books tabler) Manahil Bandukwala and Ottawa poet Mahaila Smith

London/Toronto ON: Okay, so Baseline Press wasn’t actually at the small press fair this time around, but this chapbook landed in the mail around about the same time (and they’ve been at fairs before, so it still totally counts). The latest from the press is What if Maybe and other poems (July 2025) by Toronto-based writer Salma Hussain, a poet and fiction writer, author of the debut young adult novel The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan (Tundra/Random House, 2022). A sleek collection of nine poems, the pieces in What if Maybe and other poems follow a trajectory of the narrative, first-person lyric, but one that holds to smallness, to precision; one that speaks in points of light across distances, step upon step upon step. “Math was not math     until / the Greeks saw the value in how the Arabs used zero,” she writes, to open the poem “THE VALUE OF ZERO,” “They needed zero / for calculating prayer times / for weighing za’ka:t dues / for shirking interest // but also / they were counting stars / mapping patterns in the light beyond their grasp [.]”

I’m curious, intrigued, even, about Hussain’s lyric precisions, and would be interested to see what she might do in the space of a full-length collection. Her lines pull the stretch between small and expansive, often simultaneously, in interesting ways. There’s a fine line between her poem’s ungencies and propulsion, and the ability to hold to the moment, to stand peacefully and utterly still. Or, the first two stanzas of the poem “SCREAMSONG,” that begin:

Belligerent with the nurses I pulled
the feeding tube out of my nose
like a birthday party magician    pulling out yards of silky red ribbon
from an upturned top hat 

The white coats recommend a two-week residential stay
at a physio rehab clinic    but I insisted I be sent back home
I felt then and I know today that I have two little daughters who unknowingly
unwittingly are the only gurus I need(ed) for my healing
We signed a mountain of release forms
liability waivers    other papers
and my trembling husband bit his lip    his tongue the entire drive home

12 or 20 (second series) questions for Danielle Devereaux

Danielle Devereaux's [photo credit: Leona Rockwood] poetry collection The Chrome Chair was published in April 2024 by Riddlefence Debuts. Her chapbook, Cardiogram, was published by Baseline Press (2011). Quelle Affaire, a poem in the chapbook, has been turned into a short film by filmmaker Ruth Lawrence. Danielle's poetry has appeared in Riddle Fence, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Newfoundland Quarterly and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011. She lives in St. John's NL, with her partner, two cats, and two kids, the eldest of which is currently petitioning hard for a blue-tongued skink; as of July 2024 no skink has been added to the household.

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?
Cardiogram, my first chapbook, was published by Baseline Press in 2011 as part of Baseline's inaugural press run. The Chrome Chair, my first full-length collection, was published with Riddlefence as part of its inaugural run as a book publishing imprint, which is kind of a funny coincidence. How did the first publication change my life? I guess it put me out in the world as a poet in a way that I'd not been very public about prior to that. In some ways it feels like publishing The Chrome Chair will have a similar effect. With Cardiogram there were a couple of launches in Ontario, where Baseline Press is based, and I was invited to read at a couple of festivals in Newfoundland and all of that was quite fun and exciting, and then I got very quiet with my writing again. 2011 was quite a while ago (!) so it feels like publishing The Chrome Chair will put me out in the world as a poet again, and perhaps more so since it's a full-length collection this time. Hopefully, it will be well-received and I'll have the opportunity to do some readings with the full collection in hand.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I did a creative writing poetry course as part of my BA in English (a million years ago), just to try something different. It was the first time I participated in a workshop style class and honestly, it was just a lot of fun. The course was taught by Marilyn Bowering; I'm pretty sure she was at Memorial University as writer-in-residence at the time. The difference between the poems I submitted to get into the course and the poems that I was writing at the end of it was pretty big -- a very steep learning curve! With poetry, as with all writing I guess, but particularly with poetry, it's a bit like playing with building blocks, but the blocks are words. Maybe that feels more apparent in poetry because the physical form of the poem is also a part of it (e.g. 4 stanzas of 4 lines or whatever) and I guess I like that piece of it. There's something kind of tidy about setting down words in the form of a poem, even if the words in the poem might take you all over the place. Not that I'm a tidy person, quite the opposite, unfortunately, but there's something satisfying about applying order to a mess of words. Also, the first book of poetry I remember reading is Roald Dahls' Dirty Beasts, which is quite funny and dark and kind of wacky, as is a lot of his work. I know Dahl is a problematic figure for a variety of reasons, but I think reading that particular book of his as a kid gave me the freedom to see poetry as a way to have fun with words, even when you're trying to get at or understand something serious or dark. Short answer: writing poems is fun.

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?
It takes a while for me to start any particular project (writing projects and other types of projects too). I procrastinate. Usually too much. As for the drafts, there have been times when a poem has arrived quickly, percolating in my head for a day or two and arriving on the page quite close to its final shape, and times when the first draft is such a mess I feel like I can't string two words together, let alone write a 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?
This particular manuscript started as a pile of poems, and I don't think I spent too much time wondering what was going to become of them in the end. The second half of The Chrome Chair does have a theme -- the life and work of Rachel Carson -- so I was thinking of that as a series of poems. I began the Rachel Carson poems in a creative writing poetry class that I did with Mary Dalton (I was hooked on Memorial University's creative writing classes for a time). In that class Mary had us write and craft our own chapbooks, which was a really lovely, hands-on creative process. I'm not sure if everyone's chapbook had a theme, but I wanted a theme for my chapbook and I had written a couple of Rachel Carson poems, so I decided to try to write more.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love going to readings. Hearing other people read often makes me want to go home and write. As for doing readings myself, I enjoy it, but it also makes me extremely nervous. Like I can't eat properly for a couple of days before the reading and then when I get to the venue my stomach feels like it might fall out on the floor kind of nervous. I have to prepare and practice what I'm going to say or else I'll either babble on forever or draw a complete blank. But at the same time, it is fun to read my work out loud and witness people's reactions to it, and if the reading goes well and people connect with the work, that connection feels great. It's too bad about my nerves being shot and my wreck of a gut though.

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?
I guess it depends on the project. I don't think I necessarily start out with any theoretical concerns or questions, or not any that I can identify from the get-go. For this particular book I think there are some questions but I'm not sure if I'm answering or asking them, maybe a bit of both. I guess some of these questions would be: what role does gender play in the ways we experience the world? Who gets to become a pop culture icon and who does not? What difference does place, gender, time make? Something about cultural identity narratives...But I don't think I really sat down with the intention of asking or answering any of those questions in the poems, they just happen to be questions that interest me and so they show up in my writing. The current questions? I'm not sure I can even go there. So much about our current world is sad and horrible, maybe it always has been, but these days we can see all that horror and sadness on all our screens in real time every second of the day... I don't know -- how to still see the beauty (because there is still much beauty too), celebrate the beauty without denying the sadness and horror? How to hang on to hope?  

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 writing, or perhaps more specifically the written word, whether that be poetry or fiction or nonfiction, does have the ability to spark connections. When you read a work and it makes you feel something, makes the gears in your brain spin or your heart jump, that's a connection, an "ah yes, I am more than a cog in the wheel of the capitalist patriarchy" kind of moment. I do think these types of connections are important. And pretty wild when you think about the fact that they can take place across time, culture, race, gender, etc. I don't think it's only writing that does that, lots of art forms do, but maybe that's the role of the writer -- to spark connections, or one of the roles anyway.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love working with an editor! Having another set of eyes on work that my eyes can hardly bear to look at anymore is definitely essential.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
You know how people say if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right? Well, I found the following rebuttal helpful in the face of trying to actually finish and let go of this manuscript: if something is worth doing, it's worth doing to the best of your ability at this particular juncture, in the time you have available to you right now. It's never going to be perfect -- the conditions under which you're writing, nor the manuscript, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Maybe if I'd done more courses, if I'd read more books, if I'd waited for a variety of circumstances to be different, this book would be better, but that could've gone on forever, and none of us get forever.

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 don't have a writing routine, which I tend to see as one of my personal flaws. I've never been very good at prioritizing my writing and now that I have two little kids it's pretty easy to let their care and happiness (and my bill-paying day job) take priority. I've been lucky enough to do a couple of stints at the Banff Writing Studio (pre-kiddos), which was amazing and super productive. But my life isn't really set up to spend the majority of my days writing in a hotel room while someone else does all the cooking and makes my bed while I'm out hiking! At present I don't actually have a room of my own to write in, I'm hoping some simple home renos will fix that sooner rather than later and then maybe I'll sort out some semblance of a routine? A gal can dream anyway.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
If I'm not writing at all, binge-reading, like just reading and reading and reading, usually makes me want to write. Sometimes I re-read books that I know I love, sometimes I go looking for something new. If I am writing, but the writing is stuck and just feels bad, going for a long walk alone often helps.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Blasty boughs, lilacs, wild roses and toast (but not all at once).

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?
Conversations, or more specifically the turns of phrase people use in conversation, pop culture and the news (when I can stomach it) have all had an influence on my work up to this point.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Mary Dalton has been very important to my work as a mentor, friend and poet. I love Karen Solie's poetry and Sue Goyette's work; there are so many poets in Canada to admire! I like reading Irish writers too -- Anne Enright, Elaine Feeney, Louise Kennedy. In terms of The Chrome Chair, Stephanie Bolster's collection White Stone: The Alice Poems, which is about Alice Liddle of Alice in Wonderland fame, was definitely part of my inspiration to write Rachel Carson poems. Originally I thought I'd do a whole book of Rachel Carson poems; Bolster's collection is a whole book of Alice poems, but that's not what happened. The Chrome Chair is divided into two sections and the second second section focuses on Carson. Figuring out how to combine the Rachel Carson poems with the non-Rachel Carson poems was a challenge, but my editor, Sandra Ridley was really helpful with that (Sandra is awesome).

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I'd love to go to Iceland. Iceland is sometimes spoken about here as the kind of country Newfoundland could've been if we'd become independent instead of joining Canada. I'm not sure if that's true, but I'd still love to see it for myself.

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 sometimes wish I'd done something more practical and/or helpful, like medicine or nursing: "Here, let me reset that bone/stitch up that wound for you!" Those would be good skills to have. But I don't know if I'd have been good at any of that. I thought I wanted to be an academic for a while, I started but did not complete a PhD in communication studies. Quitting the PhD was a difficult decision, but I don't regret it. Narrating audio books seems like it'd be a good gig. It'd be fun to give that a try.  

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don't think I ever really set out to be a writer, or anything else in particular. I've never been very good at long term planning or goal-setting, it's been more of a "let's try this and see what happens" approach to things, so I'm lucky and I feel grateful that it's worked out that I get to do this, to publish a book of poems.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I'll give you two books because I mostly watch kids movies these days and I'm not sure Paddington 2 is really what you're looking for (though I honestly cannot wait for Paddington 3 to come out). The End of the World is a Cul-de-Sac -- isn't that an awesome title? -- a short story collection by the Irish writer Louise Kennedy. It's one of those books that's so good it hurts. And I just finished Vigil, a collection of linked short stories by local writer Susie Taylor, which I read all in one gulp. Also heart-breakingly good and set in contemporary outport Newfoundland.

19- What are you currently working on?
After I signed off on the absolute final, no more changes could possibly be made, page proofs of The Chrome Chair I felt wrung out, like I'd never write another word. I'd been working on the manuscript that became The Chrome Chair off and on for about 17 years and I thought I'd be nothing but relieved to be done with it, and I am happy with how it turned out, but also it feels a bit weird, lonely even, not to have a bunch of poems hanging over my head, so maybe that means I need to find a new writing project. TBD.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with M.W. Jaeggle

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, M.W. Jaeggle is the author of three chapbooks, Janus on the Pacific, The Night of the Crash, and Choreography for a Falling Blouse. He lives in Buffalo, New York, where he is a PhD student in the Department of English at SUNY Buffalo. Wrack Line is his first book of poetry.

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?

It feels more accurate to credit Wrack Line with confirming the various ways I experience the world than with precipitating a momentous change. I will continue to pay attention to the sensuous qualities of words, continue to place emotion in service of the natural world, and continue to try to put the work before the ego—and I can point to the book as confirming my sense that these things are pretty good ways of being in the world.

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

One of the very few benefits of learning to read and write late in childhood is being able to draw upon distinct memories of struggling with words. I remember slowly pronouncing a certain word, dragging my thumb across its letters so as not to be overwhelmed by the thing in its entirety. I remember the joys and frustrations of reading those first words, and later of stringing them into sentences of my own. Poetry came first, and continues to come first, because my early difficulties with language taught me to be patient and approach words as a tenuous meeting of sound and sense.

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 cannot say how long it takes to start a creative project because I don’t know when any of mine have really started. I don’t keep track of when one idea gives way to another or when the words hit the page. It takes some time, that’s all I can say.

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 don’t typically write a poem with a predetermined sense of how it will fit within a larger project. I try to stay open for as long as possible.

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

Reading poetry in front of others is great on the condition that everyone in attendance is a willing participant. I will never again read in a pub while the Habs-Leafs game is playing on the TV.

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?

In 2016, as part of his commencement speech to graduates of Simon Fraser University and as part of his acceptance of an honorary doctorate from the university, the poet Robert Bringhurst said something to the effect that in order for one to respect the earth one had to think like an ecosystem. Think like an ecosystem is the closest thing I have to a theoretical concern.

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?

To make the case for more humane and ecologically attentive values than the ones that characterize our neoliberal moment. To develop words, phrases, and sentences commensurate with our encounters with the nonhuman world. To exercise a claim on the imaginations of others.

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

It’s absolutely essential to have that outside perspective. If I have ever faced difficulty during the editing process, it’s always proved worthwhile in retrospect.

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

Get some air.

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 don’t have a writing routine. I steal the time to write from other tasks.

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

I go for a walk. I listen to music. I get in touch with friends. I give it some time.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Smoked salmon.

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?

Fine art and the natural world influence my work just as much as books.  

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

There are too many writers to list here. Most of them belong to an earlier generation.

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

Grow my own vegetables.

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?

A Zen monastic—more of a calling than an occupation, I suppose.

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

It’s portable and low-tech. All you need is a few inexpensive instruments, some solitude, and some time.

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

Hugh MacDiarmid’s A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle.

Terrence Mallick’s Days of Heaven.

19 - What are you currently working on?

Too many things—all of which resemble people in that they don’t like to be talked about when they’re not present.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: early October 2020: Claire Farley and Natalie Hanna

Have you seen all the items above/ground press has been making lately? I mean, if you were going to subscribe, I think this would be the time. And who doesn’t love receiving mail? Especially during these times. And you've seen all the pieces posting up at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, also, yes? So much is happening! And the final issue of ottawater (months late, I know) is even en route. Promise!

Toronto/Ottawa ON: I’ve been eager to see Ottawa poet (and Canthius co-founder/editor) Claire Farley’s poems collected into a chapbook for some time, so seeing a copy of her Bait & Switch (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2020) really is a highlight of these dark times. Farley’s lyrics capture small narrative moments, pared down from stories into sketches, seeking out elements that might otherwise have been overlooked. “The parking attendant drinks 7-UP,” she writes, as part of “LABOUR DAY,” “& I wonder about writing places / where people get paid fairly or unfairly / in faded sweatshirts / like my dad wears to fix his car [.]” Her poems push through and past the first-person narrative impulse as a means to an end, seeking out what survives, and what might just pass by. “Lately you say / we’re a heap of lives / to use & shore up,” she writes, as part of “TOFINO POEM.” She writes of stillness, silence and of being. There are occasional echoes of Lorine Niedecker through Farley’s articulation of rural landscapes: up against the water, against the stone. “I’d wait for silence / lung & gill // as if silence waited / to be filled,” she writes, to close the title poem. There is also something in the way Farley articulates differences and connections between individuals, and “borders,” as she discusses in her 2017 “Author Note” over at The Town Crier, an idea that is wrought, through its very nature, with complication and political implication. There are borders some might be able to cross, which are impossible for others. I look forward to seeing how her poems, and her thinking, develops; there is so much, there, just underneath the surface.

SPRAWL

Not the grid to dépanneur & back
but the long way        every step a pre-mourning

Once woods were barred in driveways
we searched suburbs in December

for your car displaced in the parking ban
We missed Christmas dinner & ate

in the brightest Tim Horton’s
I’d ever seen

London/Ottawa ON: The author of nearly a dozen poetry chapbooks (including three from above/ground press), Ottawa poet, lawyer, reading series organizer, editor and publisher Natalie Hanna’s latest is infinite redress (London ON: Baseline Press, 2020). Hanna has come quite a long way over the past decade, from her involvement in the Sawdust Reading Series, as a board member of Arc Poetry Magazine and achieving “honourable mention” for one of her poems from the 2019 Diana Brebner Prize. Her poems have always been composed with a great deal of heart and careful attention, but her last few chapbooks have included an increasing attention to the small moment, density of language and a language of trauma, as she writes in the first section of the sequence “house”: “do you hear the thunder of / the breaking afternoon storm / in your sleep? // you don’t move / as the ground shakes [.]” The chapbook is constructed (at least, in the table of contents) in four seasonal sections—“SUMMER,” AUTUMN,” “WINTER” and “SPRING”—and opens with the short piece “conversation with mavreas,” a poem that references the Montreal poet and illustrator Billy Mavreas:

billy, you said the human project
was failing at directing its attention
to the proper place 

i said i had no faith
in the human project

but it’s much larger than that, you said
stretching your arms, your fingers
into space/time 

but i am short, i said

i am short and faithless

Given the collection is dedicated “For all who walk in grief,” it is quite an opener, setting a tone that works through trauma and the betrayals of the body, a myriad of death and loss, and a final invocation for and to Billy Mavreas, which I will let you discover on your own. Her heart is ferocious, and feels everything, even as she works to comprehend how the body learns, and what one might do with those lessons; working to dismantle the trauma and betrayals of illness, injury and grief, so as to better understand their effects. In the poem “house,” she writes: “everything is pompeii // we dare not move // you cannot hear / our last air / escaping [.]” She works against the seeming infinity of illness and injury, so as to possibly set right. And then there is this, the second section of the seven-part sequence “things pulled from the earth,” that reads:

why do we so love the bodies of things
pulled from the earth? she could have just kept us
and our tired secrets 

even the god-kings inside their tombs
couldn’t teach us to die
without fear of being uprooted 

what kind of life springs from death?
could we be spartoi, from a fierce dragon?
how many times must you kill and sow us
to soften the rage?

 

Meet the Presses’ Indie Market (part five,

[Stuart Ross at his two-cornered Proper Tales Press + Anvil Press tables, being both "ace" and "trendy"]

See my first post here! And my second post here! And my third post here! And my fourth post here! And my posts on the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Small Press Market here! And my second post from the 25th anniversary of the ottawa small press book fair! And more yelling about chapbooks!

Hamilton/London ON: It would seem that, furthering the work they accomplished in their recently-published collaborative trade poetry collection, A CEMETERY FOR HOLES, poems by Tom Prime and Gary Barwin (Gordon Hill Press, 2019) [see my review of such here], Gary Barwin and Tom Prime are still pushing ahead with their collaborative efforts, with the chapbooks Throat Fixtures {an Almanack of Dazzle} (2019) and Birds are the birthmarks of flight: A Manifesto. (2019), both appearing from Barwin’s serif of nottingham. These two chapbooks, each constructed as a single poem-sequence, both read as very different in tone and flavour from Barwin and Prime’s collaborative full-length work, and I’d be curious to hear how their process of writing collaboratively may have evolved since those first few poems, and even up to and beyond that first, full-length collection. What is curious, as well, each poem/chapbook suggest the possibility of the opening sections of much larger, longer manuscripts, although they could both, just as easily, be part of an eventual single collection. The first chapbook, Throat Fixtures {an Almanack of Dazzle}, is composed as a prose-quartet of short pieces, each of which opens with an image (assembled, in part, via collage), and seems to pilfer an antiquated language, allowing it a certain kind of tone, a certain kind of lyrical heft. As the second section, “{Sec2ndo},” opens:

I DO NOT DISDAIN but I dowel. A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Certes, most Reapers receive so much plimsoll tiptapping on the mortal floor as may make worthy the gaseous (0.934%—9340 ppmv) tincture of their perusal, if not too greatcoat or too busy mandraking their small lease. The confrontation concerning the imbroglio of what is here offered to their burdened lexical centipedes; and if the last prove too severe, as I have often been torrid with lichens of a wavelength from 10 nm to 400 nm, a neophyte serving all centipedes equally and on murders of cloud. The Reaper will append the simplest conversation in line as the greengrocer’s to one both laminate and profound.

While the first chapbook has a weight to it, the second, Birds are the birthmarks of flight: A Manifesto., feels lighter in tone; but still holds the attention as both a real and faux-manifesto, as the writing both illuminates and obscures the writing even as it floats through and across a delightful surrealism. As the first section reads:

All birds must wear smoke and be bleak after no more than 12 cloud deadlines. This reinforces their humor and gives them comedy wings in a soft land where the impression of flight is diminished. Younger woodlands need to use 10 birds to process the childminding of eggs wrapped in balaclavas of shadow. This reminds us of the ongoing process where the sky is a cleft oyster, the moon a fluke pearl, and which focuses on the cleaving palate of the watershed and blotch from blotch, blotch from blotch, blotch from blotch. Since the 1970s the feathered truth of a billion birds has disappeared. This is also a start.

London ON: London, Ontario poet Emily Lu’s chapbook debut is Night Leaves Nothing New (Baseline Press, 2019), a collection of eleven poems that appear, on first glance, to be relatively straightforward lyric poems, but are anything but. I am finding myself very taken with Lu’s line breaks, the bends in her narrative through-lines and thought, and her attention to small details. These poems really are delightful, and I am happily startled by them. What else can I tell you?

EARLY SEASON

This ending between your arms & drowning.

Its shape & contour seeping through the train

platform. Don’t worry, I was dreaming

into public. The dream expanding empty

city corridors. Passenger-side, I encountered

ten thousand refracting fish & their march through

stale houses. I was Typhlosion running

naked through an early season. Peach petals

in your hair last February while we skated

on domed lake-ice trembling

for fear of overstep & no bystanders

& dying. Don’t worry. A thorough kiss

still contains loneliness. A love

creasing, another mountainline.

Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Small Press Market (part one,

Thanks to Kate Siklosi, I recently participated in the first ever small press fair organized through TIFA (the Toronto International Festival of Authors, an event formerly known as IFOA: International Festival of Authors), carting an assemblage of new and recent above/ground press items to fill an entire table at Harbourfront Centre (they even provided tablecloths! Classy). It was a grand event! There were nearly a dozen exhibitors, lovingly curated by poet, editor and Gap Riot Press co-publisher Kate Siklosi, including Baseline Press, Simulacrum Press, Invisible Publishing, Augur Magazine, serif of nottingham, Anstruther Press and Proper Tales Press. After our small fair, I was even able to on-stage participate in a panel discussion on small and smaller press that Siklosi moderated, alongside Dani Spinosa, Stuart Ross and Terese Mason Pierre.

There are two further fairs over the next few weeks, in case anyone is so inclined: Meet the Presses in Toronto on November 16^th (which I am most likely attending, dependent upon Christine’s health and energy) and the 25^th anniversary event for our own ottawa small press book fair on November 23rd (and pre-fair reading the night prior, at the Carleton Tavern by the Parkdale Market). Might we see you at any of these?

Here are a couple of items I picked up during that TIFA event:

London ON/Vancouver BC: I picked up a copy of the eagerly-awaited chapbook debut by the remarkable Vancouver poet, editor, interviewer, writer and critic Isabella Wang, On Forgetting a Language (Baseline Press, 2019). I even managed to snag one of the final copies of the first edition (produced in an edition of eighty copies, the chapbook has already gone into a second printing). Composed, as she writes in the acknowledgments at the back of the collection, “in my last year of high school, from September 2017 to August 2018” (yes, the author has yet to turn twenty years old; deal with it), the poems in On Forgetting a Language present a clear, narrative lyric, one that shows an impressive confidence and capability.

You thought you’d be happy

now that you are doing fine.

This past summer in bed

you pictured yourself falling

out of an open window

to nowhere—your first summer

spent away from home.

She said she wouldn’t watch you

throw your future away,

waste seventeen years of

thankless upbringing

on the impracticalities of writing.

If you are going to do it, she says,

leave. So you did.

And anyway, she tells you,

you’ll never find work as a writer. (“MOTHER EXPLAINS MEN”)

What becomes curious through the process of this collection is in being already aware of a small handful of her poems composed since the pieces presented here, and her writing is already quickly improving in leaps and bounds (there was a ghazal she wrote a while back that I was particularly taken with, for example). If you aren’t paying attention to and supporting the work of Isabella Wang, you won’t have the opportunity to delight in the strength and the vibrancy of her writing, and a curiosity exploding in every direction that has already accomplished a great deal.

Cobourg/London ON: As part of Proper Tales Press’ 40th anniversary year comes London, Ontario writer Amelia Does’ latest, AMSTERDAM: THE ABBA VERSION (2019). Does is a new author to the Proper Tales roster (see her essay on the press’ anniversary here), but has self-published three prior titles as well.

HANGING MOON

Me with you

in the fields

dark clouds

hanging moon

there is a bird

in your hair

you do not

believe it

There is an odd straightforwardness to this collection that is delightfully bent, and often moving in more than one direction simultaneously. Her poems move easily from the short lyric to the short prose poem, each propelled by a particular kind of narrative that might bend or twist, or break off at the end.

TRUE TALE OF TWINS AT THE WEDDING

A set of short, long-bearded, alcoholic twin brothers lived in my building. Well, one did and the others elsewhere. I heard tales of their ramblings. Once they were invited to a wedding in a small rural hotel. They started the evening drunk, before the reception. Soon one fell over. The other dripped with beer.

Soon they were forced to leave, and placed in a hotel room next to the banquet hall. Soon they got angry, and started to toss bottles. Soon one broke through the wall, back into the party, with a table let; the other, a chair.

Toronto ON: From Gap Riot Press comes MLA Chernoff’s latest title, the joyfully confident TERSE THIRTY AND OTHER KISSES (2019), following on the heels of their debut, detet this (Hybrid Heaven, 2018). The poems here are wild, deliberately pilfering, breaking apart and reassembling Charles Olson’s work as their own, existing as both satire and savage critique, composing something new out of the old. There are some incredibly vibrant fireworks across the full spectrum of Chernoff’s performative lyrics, one that exists as a response to a prior work, and a poetics that was seen, for a very long time, as radically new and different. Chernoff responds to this work in a new way, easily, seeking out their own position and newness in such an overworked and overwrought space as literature and poetics, and they may just have found it.

Pometics are not manifested into manifesting toes: we don’t want Nietzsche’s Warhammer 40K collection; we don’t want Kant’s hands because they’re so dry from Purelling themselves all the dang time that they don’t even exist and it just sounds like a bit too much unpaid emotional labour for our liking; we don’t want Hegel’s dirty feet because wow just wash ‘em urself, mate; most of all, we only kinda want Marx riding a donkey at some Occupy event in ’08, but mostly, we desire the donkey’s life story and a few hyperlinks to some hot pics that the donkey feels comfortable sharing with us in encrypted group chat after the revolution: it’s neither a utopia nor a Cocteau Twins-scord Fruitopia commercial—perhaps heaven and Las Vegas.

In short, don’t offer more breathy men, give us the pometics of taking pride in the self-satisfying narcissism of loving but not knowing of emotionally encountering the All through the boing boing circuit of erotically encountering the All through the boing boing circuit of desire kissing illegibility at the margins of too many books we have gifted each other but never cared to gloss because being roommates is more than enough and we’re scared and you’re scared of forgetting to remember and remembering to forget; that is to say, enacting anxieties and anxieties in action.