Colonoscopy post:

I had one of those earlier this week. Precautionary, I was told. Being thorough. A camera higher up inside than I could have imagined. And yes, as unpleasant as it was, the preparation – drinking four litres of Peglyte on an otherwise empty stomach – was far worse (fruit flavoured? What would it have tasted like regular? That must have been some very gross fruit). Everything = ugh.

Doctors are good. Precautions are good. One wishes to remain healthy.

Incredible thanks, of course, to mother-in-law for taking Rose to school and watching Aoife, and Christine’s cousin Paul McNair for accompanying me on said hospital excursion.

As I write this (Monday afternoon), things are still a haze, but I thought it worth repeating that infamous poem by the late Daniel Jones, “Things I Have Put Into My Asshole,” a poem that appeared in his poetry collection The Brave Never Write Poetry. Originally produced by Coach House Press in 1985, the book was later reissued by Coach House Books in 2011 (is it worth seeing if there’s enough work for a larger Jones volume, perhaps?), which makes this formerly-lost classic still in print. I had the thought of this poem (a piece that had been plastered around Toronto for years by Nicky Drumbolis, jwcurry and others after he died) mid-point through Monday’s procedure.

In the end, it might have been my only solace.

Things I Have Put Into My Asshole

Saliva & semen & butter & baby oil,

tongues & thumbs & fingers of women,

the cock of an old man,

the cock of a Mexican boy,

the cock of my sister’s boyfriend,

my hand,

candles & felt marking pens,

cucumbers & carrots,

Sandra’s mother’s vibrator,

the intersection of Bathurst & Queen,

Honest Ed’s Warehouse,

Hamilton Ontario,

& just today the CN Tower:

I came all over Bay Street,

as the world’s highest disco

rotated upon my prostate.

YOU ARE FREE NOW TORONTONIANS!

It lies limp on the frozen surface

of Lake Ontario.

You can barely see the tungsten bulbs

through the film of K-Y jelly.

GO FREE TORONTONIANS!

The small sacrifice

of a very large asshole.

Mark McCawley (January 1964 - April 19, 2016)

Edmonton poet, fiction writer, reviewer, editor, and micro-press publisher Mark McCawley has died.

[A 2008 photo of McCawley (in the background) from my Factory (West) Reading Series; see the post it came from here] An enthusiast for what he referred to as “transgressive, urban post-realist writing,” he founded Greensleeve Editions in 1988, a press that produced over fifty chapbook titles, including works by writers such as Janice Williamson, Daniel Jones, Neil Scotten, Ken Rivard, Richard Stevenson, Andrew Thompson, sd edwards, Faye Francis, Michael C. McPherson, Giovanni Testa, Beth Jankola, Shannon Sampert, alan demeule, James Thurgood, Carolyn Zonailo and Stephen Morrissey. According to one bio, “From 1986 to 1993, Mark taught poetry and fiction as a creative writing instructor for Continuing Education (now Metro College).” Since 1993, he’d edited and published the litzine, Urban Graffiti, a print journal that shifted to online publication in May, 2011 with issue 11. Well-known as both curmudgeon and contrarian, McCawley railed against monotony in literary writing and culture, and was a fierce and loyal supporter of a number of writers across Canada, from Amanda Earl, Stuart Ross, Liz Worth and Thea Bowering to Matthew Firth, Catherine Owen and Julie McArthur, among so many, many others, whether through Greensleeve Editions and Urban Graffiti, through numerous interviews he’d conducted, and reviews posted via his Fresh Raw Cuts. His dedication to the late Daniel Jones, for example, meant that he worked to keep Jones’ work in constant print, as Nathaniel G. Moore revealed in an article for Poetry is Dead:

Yet other work still remains in limited edition quantities. Mark McCawley, editor of Edmonton’s Greensleeve Editions and the underground literary journal Urban Graffiti, published Jones just before his death and kept the letters the late writer sent him. “I published a chapbook of Jones’, The Job After The One Before, in 1990. Ever since, I have endeavored to keep the chapbook in print, re-printing whenever necessary.”

His own fiction and poetry appeared widely in Canada in magazines and in the anthologies Burning Ambitions: The Anthology of Short-Shorts, edited by Debbie James (Toronto ON: Rush Hour Revisions, 1998) and Grunt & Groan: The New Fiction Anthology of Work and Sex, edited by Matthew Firth and Max Maccari (Toronto ON: Boheme Press, 2002). He himself was the author of nearly a dozen chapbooks of poetry and fiction, including Fragile Harvest - Fragile Lives (Greensleeve Editions, 1988), The Deadman’s Dance (Greensleeve Editions, 1989), Last Minute Instructions (Toronto: Unfinished Monument Press, 1989), Voices from earth: selected poems/ with R. Kurt (Calgary: Prairie Journal Press, 1990), Scars and Other Signatures : prose poems (Greensleeve Editions, 1991), Thorns Without the Rose: fictions & prose poems (Greensleeve Editions, 1991), Stories for People with Brief Attention Spans : fictions (Greensleeve Editions, 1992), Just Another Asshole : short stories (Greensleeve Editions, 1994), Collateral Damage (Montreal: Coracle Press, 2008) and Sick Lazy Fuck (Ottawa: Black Bile Press, 2008). As Black Bile Press editor/publisher Matthew Firth, a long-time friend of McCawley, once said of him: “His own writing is straight-shooting, pulls no punches, honest and drenched in authentic experience.”

Far more active over the past decade or so than he’d been during the early 2000s, he blogged regularly for Sensitive Skin, posted music podcasts (here and here), provided essential critical and personal support to numerous writers, regularly started arguments and kicked against the pricks. I know he had a series of ongoing, and rather serious, health issues, some of which were due to his two-decade battle with chronic pain (and a medical system that often managed to make things worse) stemming from an accident.

During my year as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta (2007-8), we hung out a couple of times, and he even participated in a reading through my Edmonton reading series, The Factory (West) Reading Series. He was gruff, grumpy and engaged, and even startled that anyone wished to speak to him about writing, having been dismissed enough times that he’d begun to expect it. During our first coffee afternoon at The Garneau Pub [see the post I wrote after we hung out here], he complained of being kicked out of the English Department at the University of Alberta during his student days. When I pointed out that, since I was picking up the tab, technically that same department was buying his coffee, he lightened, and laughed. We’d kept in touch pretty regularly since, trading emails and a variety of links, and he was kind enough to review a number of above/ground press items, as well as conduct the occasional interview for ottawater (including one he did with Christine McNair)

I shall miss his complaints, criticisms and contributions, all of which were offered with enthusiasm.

He is survived by his son, Devin McCawley

Some further Mark McCawley links worth paying attention to:

http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.ca/2012/04/poetry-month-2012-mark-mccawley-heroine.html

http://12or20questions.blogspot.ca/2007/12/12-or-20-questions-with-mark-mccawley.html

http://robmclennan.blogspot.ca/2010/04/12-or-20-small-press-questions-mark.html

http://www.brokenpencil.com/columns/deleted-zines-7

https://devilhousepress.com/index.php?BLOGTitle=Mark+McCawley

http://www.thereviewreview.net/interviews/%E2%80%9C-ongoing-experiment-anarchist-publishing%E2%80%9D-chat-m

Edmonton’s Mark McCawley, Urban Graffiti and greensleeve editions

I met up with Edmonton writer and publisher Mark McCawley [see his recent 12 or 20 interview here], and traded a pile of his publications over the years with some of mine. His is a name I’ve heard for years, usually associated with other post-realist working class fiction Canadian writers such as Matthew Firth, Daniel Jones or even Grant Shipway (think, too, of the anthology Hal Niedzvieki edited for McClelland and Stewart in 1998, Concrete Forest: The New Fiction of Urban Canada). An active poet and fiction writer, he edits and publishes chapbooks through his greensleeve editions, as well as the litzine URBAN GRAFFITI , all of which have been on hiatus for the past couple of years. Some of what he gave me included chapbooks of his own work, The Length of Distance (greensleeve publishing, 1989), the deadman’s dance (greensleeve editions, 1989), Last Minute Instructions (Toronto ON: Unfinished Monument Press, 1989), Thorns Without the Rose and Other Stories (greensleeve editions, 1991) and Voices From Earth, Selected Poems by Ronald Kurt and Mark McCawley (Calgary AB: The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature, Number 13, 1990), as well as a whole stack of work by others he’s been producing in Alberta for nearly twenty years:

Neil Scotten, Blue (greensleeve editions, 1990)
Ken Rivard, Working Stiffs (greensleeve editions, 1990)
Richard Stevenson, DICK AND JANE HAVE SEX (greensleeve editions, 1990)
Andrew Thompson, sd edwards and Faye Francis’ collaborative Everybody Does It! (greensleeve editions, 1990)
Michael C. McPherson, A Backward Climb Up The Stairs, four fictions (greensleeve editions, 1991)
Giovanni Testa, inscapes (greensleeve editions, 1991)
Beth Jankola, One Sided Journey Through Politics (greensleeve editions, 1991)
Janice Williamson, excerpts from the journals of Alberta Borges (greensleeve editions, 1991)
Beth Jankola, Voices in the Night (greensleeve editions, 1992)
Shannon Sampert, Secret Sisterhood (greensleeve editions, 1992)
alan demeule, Flesh Temple (Edmonton AB: perimeter press, 1992)
Daniel Jones, The Job After the One Before, Stories (greensleeve editions, second revised edition, 1993)
James Thurgood, Icemen Stoneghosts (greensleeve editions, 1993)
Carolyn Zonailo, Letters of the Alphabet (greensleeve editions, 1992)
Stephen Morrissey, The Divining Rod (greensleeve editions, 1993)
Beth Jankola, The Sunflower Poems (greensleeve editions, 1994)

Conspiracy Northwest, ed. McCawley (greensleeve publishing, 1989), Aaron Bushkowsky, Beth Goobie, Margaret Greene, Barry Hammond, Ronald Kurt, John Lane, Mark McCawley, Ky Perraun
Keeper of the Conscience: an anthology of social/political poetry, eds. Ronald Kurt and Mark McCawley (greensleeve publishing, 1990), Mark McCawley, Chris Faiers, Allan Sarafino, Katherine Kostyniuk, Ronald Kurt, Clifton Whiten, Alan Demeule, Jones and Joan Brown.

URBAN GRAFFITI #2 (July 1994), #3 (February 1995), #7 (Autumn 1999), #8 (February 2001) and #9 (September 2002).

McCawley emerged during the 1980s, a period when parts of Canada were rife with young and younger writers starting to produce their own works, including Joe Blades starting his Broken Jaw Press for chapbooks and, later, trade books in Halifax (since moved to Fredericton). Toronto being Toronto, they had a slew of small and smaller publishers emerge during the same period, including Stuart Ross (Proper Tales Press), Daniel Jones (Streetcar Editions), jwcurry (1cent), Kevin Connolly (Pink Dog/WHAT Magazine) and Gary Barwin (Serif of Nottingham), among others (what else might have been happening in other corners?).

Alberta Uncovers a Humanist Plot

Hang up the telephones of small men. A radical fringe
group of intellectuals form a liberal humanist splinter
group to protest tower shortages. Transmission lines
tremble with memos; baseball memories shimmer short
stops. Miami Man holes up in his provincial office
facing north to the river. Passionate outbursts from
smokers plot to overthrow the government, rail against
“those corrosive artsy crafty lefties.” The word sailboat
blinks off/on in small circles before their eyes. (Alberta
and Frank caucus and muse: “Will spring nourish this
insurrection or find it nodding off in March?” (Janice Williamson, excerpts from the journals of Alberta Borges)

It many ways, it’s amazing that this guy could have fallen off the radar the way he has; there are probably very few publications by the late small press legend Daniel Jones still available, including his mind-blowing poetry collection The Brave Never Write Poetry (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1985), but for this small publication by McCawley, and a trade collection produced a number of years ago by The Mercury Press. What other chapbooks (and there were a few) are even still out there?

THE LENGTH OF DISTANCE

Nineteen minutes and twenty-one miles
out of Edmonton, tracks begin to click
like a primitive clock, counting distance
between switching yards and abandoned stations,
click, click, a perpetual morse code.
In picture windows prairie pauses,
each view exacting as the last
with only the occasional sun sight
to remind us of motion.

Remembering once when origins
and destinations didn’t matter, only
the space between here and there
and time passing in backwater towns,
travels of legendary drifters
who rode the rails like buffalo
into an uneasy extinction.

We chase the sun all day
towards a horizon we hope to find
darkened by mountains and granite slabs
still stained with human blood,
measuring the length of distance
by the weight of silver wheels
pounding ground’s bleached geography.

If we’d listen, we’d hear
decades grind beneath boxcars,
the strain and pull
as the engine heaves ahead,
its destination a future
we may or may not traverse.

For now, we jolt and shudder
uncomfortable companions to coal and cattle,
crisscrossing this checkered prairie quilt
of canola, barley and wheat. (Mark McCawley, The Length of Distance)

To find out about available chapbooks and prices (he says he has masters to most if not all of these, so he can theoretically have everything in print) contact him directly at: mccawley64@hotmail.com