report from the mansfield launch, toronto: mclennan, brockwell, dennis etc

This past Monday night in Toronto, Mansfield Press hosted an evening of book launches, including five poetry titles—Amy Dennis' The Sleep Orchard [see my review of such here], Anton Pooles' Ghost Walk, Candace de Taeye's Pronounced / Workable, Corrado Paina's Changing Residence: New and Selected Poems and Stephen Brockwell's Immune to the Sacred [see my review of such here]—as well as my suite of pandemic essays, covering the first one hundred days of original Covid-19 lockdown, essays in the face of uncertainties [I also have copies available, if anyone is so inclined]. It was a very good night! Although the lighting was odd, and more than a wee bit distracting (it kept changing colours, which meant the lighting shifted, and we all each stumbled a bit during our individual sets, finding difficulty with seeing properly). And yes, most if not all of the crowd were masked (unmasking only to read, obviously). And our dear publisher, Denis, was even good enough to post a small report on the event, as well as a lovely post referencing me, my book, and some of my own ongoing reviewing and interviewing work.

Everyone gave stellar readings, naturally. It was particularly interesting, as I hadn't actually heard most of these writers read, so that was good. And there were plenty of folk there I hadn't seen in some time, from Stephen Cain and Sharon Harris, Andy Weaver, Jennifer LoveGrove, Phlip Arima, Carol Harvey Steski and Catherine Graham! Stephen and I travelled to Toronto by train, only staying overnight, but managing to catch a good amount of breath after a flurry of other recent activities and events. Oh, and we saw Mark Goldstein prior to the event, who was unable to come through, but at least we managed to get a good update on his doings. And I got to hang out with Jennifer LoveGrove after! I can't even remember the last time I got to do that. It was curious to realize that the upstairs space of the venue was actually where I'd launched with Mansfield prior, back in 2019, for A halt, which is empty, launching alongside Tim Conley and others. Doesn't that seem like forever ago?

Jennifer LoveGrove

And I even manged to convince Stephen to play pinball with me! Right at the end of the evening, last to leave (naturally). Oh, and did I mention we saw David O'Meara on the train ride back home the next morning?

essays in the face of uncertainties : now available!

My suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties, is now available from Mansfield Press! I am extremely pleased to see publication of this wee book. Do you remember when I was posting weekly excerpts of the then-work-in-progress across those first few months of original Covid-19 lockdown? Huge thanks to Denis De Klerck (this is my second Mansfield title, by the by, after my 2019 poetry collection A halt, which is empty, which I still have copies of, as well), and to Stuart Ross, who worked on the manuscript as my editor (I would recommend him highly for any and all of your editorial needs). And of course, thanks to Sir Stephen Brockwell for permission to use his photograph on the cover. As the press release for the book offers:

This suite of pandemic essays exist within those first one hundred days of original lockdown, marking time through moments, anxieties and the elasticity of time itself. What are days, weeks, months? In this stunning collection of deeply personal essays, Ottawa writer rob mclennan wanders through literature, parenting, family, the constant barrage of cable news and the slow loss of his widower father across the swirling, simultaneous anxieties and uncertainties of an increasing sense of isolation.

I have a stack of copies on-hand, if anyone is interested ; if such appeals, send $18 (via email or paypal to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com) ; obviously adding $5 for postage for Canadian orders; for orders to the United States, add $11 (for anything beyond that, send me an email and we can figure out postage); for current above/ground press subscribers, I’m basically already mailing you envelopes regularly, so I would only charge Canadians $3 for postage, and Americans $6 (that make sense?)

Or: if you live close enough, I could simply drop a copy off in your mailbox (or you come by here, I suppose); naturally, I’ll certainly have copies this weekend at the ottawa small press book fair (Saturday from noon to 5pm, Jack Purcell Community Centre, 2^nd floor; Elgin Street). I also have copies, still, of my spring poetry title, the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022) for $20 (same postal rates as above), although if you might be open to ordering both (and/or my other Mansfield title, as well), I think I could knock $5 off the total price. Otherwise, either send myself or the publisher a note for a media/review copy, and be aware that I’m rather good at answering interview questions.

The book even has some lovely blurbs! Really, I couldn’t ask for much better than this.

mclennan’s writing is clear and haunting. This is a book that will stay with you for years to come.

Anne Thériault

The short lyric essays that comprise this book in one long meditative stream are indeed written in the face of uncertainties: not knowing where the pandemic of 2020 and on will lead us or how it will change us. The narrator/author stays home with his wife and two daughters while the map of the fallen to Covid expands and the numbers mount. In the face of the terrifying reality of death and political neglect, we are ensconced in the peaceful home of a small family that continues to work and play in isolation. mclennan writes with great elegance and compassion, and his expansive reading of books and authors from all over the world is brought into his narrative with great skill and ease. As a result, we find ourselves at the centre of a very large world of writers talking to each other across the globe and we see clearly that in this lockdown we are not alone. We never were alone. This book is a beautiful companion for our time and a very absorbing narrative that is hard to put down once you begin. 

                        Kristjana Gunnars

 

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press fair,

[Denis de Klerck of Mansfield Press and Stuart Ross of Proper Tales Press]

As you most likely know, we recently held our latest edition of the semi-annual ottawa small press fair, and I returned home with nearly as much as I left with (of course). Given such, here are a couple of items I picked up at our recent fair.

Oh, and you’ve seen my notes on what I picked up at the Meet the Presses event over the prior weekend, yes?

Cobourg/Toronto ON: I am curious about Those problems (Proper Tales Press, 2016), the “first book in English” by Toronto/Buenos Aires poet, translator and journalist Sarah Moses. I’m (obviously) aware of editor/publisher Ross’ interest in a variety of flavours of surrealism, but Moses’ work feels different, working a relatively straight narrative that, before you realize, has already turned and twirled out behind you.

His words

He is in love with his words. With the words he choses and how he combines them and what the combinations mean to him and what he hopes they mean to others. Lying awake late at night, he thinks about them, obsesses over them. He feels they hold great, mysterious truths about the world. He is driven to share these truths and, during the day, on street corners and park benches, he says his words out loud to mothers pushing strollers and lawyers on lunch breaks and joggers in spandex. When they walk by, he takes his words, rolls them around his mouth, and then spits them out carefully as though they were precious pearls he could string together with his lips.

There is something in Moses’ work that is reminiscent, also, of Inger Wold Lund’s first English-language publication, Leaving Leaving Behind Behind (Brooklyn NY: Ugly Duckling Press, 2015) [see my review of such here]. There are some really lovely and wonderful pieces in here, some of which appeared in her Spanish-language title as they say (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Socios Fundadores, 2016). Might a full-length English volume be far behind? I can certainly hope.

Nothing is required of you

Well, maybe a few things. Good neighbourliness, for example. By this I mean that you take care of the fairy ring and webbing on your property. That you take care not to throw household items, such as spatulas or other kitchen implements, on mine. Take care of your front porch and your gutters, especially after a downpour, especially in early June, when the downpours are frequent and forceful. The hedges, don’t forget to trim them. Make sure to keep your budgerigars well fed and in good spirits. If you borrow my unicycle without my knowing, as I know you have done, please take care to use gloves. Take care to cooperate with the forces of eternal law. When you engage in wireless communication, both within your home and without it, do so with care. If you are outdoors, with something to say, take especial care when you say it: project your voice, choose the appropriate words, and be sure to enunciate.

Kingston/Ottawa ON: I find writer Sacha Archer’s new chapbook, Dishwashing Event Part Two: Ontario (Puddles of Sky, 2016) a rather odd and intriguing project. Following his earlier chapbook, Dishwashing Event, Part One: Tianjin, China (Calgary AB: No Press, 2016), he writes that the poems that make up this small collection “are the linguistic offshoot of my daily dishwashing.” He continues:

A speech recognition program translated, transformed the noise of my dishwashing into words recorded by the speech recognition program into a document in Microsoft Word. Each poem records one day’s bout of washing. When I was finished scrubbing and rinsing the dishes (a banal and even burdensome chore), the dishware was found clean and stacked in the dishrack, while in the vicinity a poem had accumulated, had accrued. And an event had ended. What was formerly a banal and even burdensome chore in an ordinary kitchen, had been transformed by the presence of a listening, a gathering in of (potentially) my every move and grunt, the running water of the tap, the friction of my body and dishes, dishes and other surfaces, (a siren in the distance?). Standing in a transformed event zone, it was to feel how different the same could be.

I find the poems inside intriguing, for their shape, sound, visuals and even the larger project, but the tone in which he writes about the daily task of dishwashing a bit strange—a “banal and even burdensome chore”—as though there is something unpleasant about one of the most basic of daily tasks, and even removing the meditative and even honourable considerations of daily household tasks. How do such essential daily requirements become so troublesome, and how does, as he suggests, the turning of such into poetry somehow salvage from difficulty? How are the poems “above” such “mundane” work?

And in two and then  an if each each in in the day  it  must touch to come to rest each day in  and of and the each day to day to day in this case as if it just to each of the end of an      to talk to the De to the      to do and      to 1010 in an of and tend to an       to      an an if in fact to 10   to do just that if      to do to an    and to fifth

And I would like to see more from Jessica Rowlands, who supplies “the concrete poetry which appears on the cover and throughout the book.” I would very much like to see more. Please.