Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part two, : Jordan Davis + Ethan Rein Vilu,

[Grant Wilkins; see part one here] Be aware the next ottawa small press book fair is November 14 at Tom Brown Arena, yes? Even though I haven’t properly announced it, I’m already getting vendors. And don’t forget that myself and above/ground press will be attending the Fisher Library Small Press Fair in Toronto on September 19, yes?

Grand Lake NB/Teaneck NY: Further from russell carisse’s sider0xylon press is the small chapbook SORRY, GOD by New Jersey poet and editor Jordan Davis, a poet I’d very much like to see further from [see my review of Davis’ latest full-length collection here]. SORRY, GOD is a chapbook made up of sixteen short, accumulated and untitled poem-fragments, a long poem composed via one step against another in sequence. “If you think about the future / everything gets worse but,” he writes, early on in the sequence, “if you think about other people / you have a chance / of not being the reason / everything gets worse [.]” The title suggests a kind of lyric act of contrition, yet the piece opens more into a suggestion of how to approach being an interacting with the world in a positive and constructive way, instead of simply being the problem, as it were. As the sequence opens:

How does it even happen
I was right there
paying attention, even!
and right in my blind spot — 

complete understanding
blipped out of existence —

[Christian McPherson, author]

Ottawa ON/Calgary AB: It is good to see new work from Calgary poet and editor Ethan Rein Vilu, THE LONESOME GLORY (Ottawa ON: Horsebroke Press, 2026), an assemblage of what appear as sonnet-variants, following chapbooks DRAWINGS FROM BEFORE THE RED YEAR (Anstruther Press, 2024) [see my review of such here] and A DECISION RE: ZURICH (The Blasted Tree, 2020). The seventeen poems that make up THE LONESOME GLORY speak on horseraces, offering specific lyrics on “Kentucky Derby, 2003” to “Starlet Stakes, 2022,” the Belmont Cup and “Yearling Sale, 1954,” writing in and around poems set within that particular world, but from different temporal points, which becomes curious in itself. Why so much movement across time? The poems bounce around perspectives of not a singular event but a larger, ongoing culture, which is curious to see. “For some,” the poem “Kentucky Derby, 2003,” begins, “it was an eden pierced / by world-weariness.” Vilu writes of horseracing in ways transcendent and intimate, mundane and glorified. While the moments that Vilu writes are interesting, I’m uncertain how these moments connect to each other, beyond elements of structure, and the loose content of horseracing. What is the purpose to this assemblage, what is the structure? There are moments I wish the narrative was less straight and more nuanced, more subtle, such as the poem “Starlet Stakes, 2022,” that closes:

She was denied her fairy-tale ending,
and yet her brave narrative prevails.
the race possessed the rhythm
of a legend—an arc unwinding
deep across the Orange County sky.

 

[Jay MillAr, Book*hug Press] 

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part one: Bardia Sinaee + George Bowering,

Another fair has come and gone! Thanks to everyone who participated, from exhibitors to volunteers to readers to audience! And did you see I made shortbread? Be sure to save the date for this November, when the fair will turn thirty-one years old. That’s pretty exciting, yes? I’m already working on dates for June and November 2026 (which feels a million years away, I know). And of course, see my reviews from last fall’s thirtieth anniversary ottawa small press fair here (parts one, two, three), or last fall’s Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Small Press Market (parts one, two, three, four) or even my notes from last spring’s ottawa small press book fair (parts one, two, three). So much small and micro press activity! Here are the first of my notes from what I picked up this time around:

Ottawa ON: The latest from Ottawa poet Bardia Sinaee, author of Intruder (Anansi, 2021) [see my review of such here], is the chapbook Flinch (2025), a title, according to the colophon, “was co-published by Skunkworks and Horsebroke Press [a press run by Ottawa poet Jeff Blackman] in Ottawa in May 2025 and distributed as issue 33 of These Days Zine.” There’s almost a wistful distance, a wistful quality, to these poems, offering a bit of distance across first-person observations so deeply personal, even intimate. “I can’t / remember why / I walked into / this room,” the poem “Still Life” begins, “with its / packed-away smell / & painting / of a water mill [.]” There’s such a lovely and delicate nuance to these short musings, these short narratives, one that holds an edge but not by displaying that edge; one that provides a clarity beyond clarity, and into a far deeper understanding of beauty, and life, such as the last three stanzas of the two-page final poem in the collection, “Love Poem,” that reads: “I don’t / miss the cancer / or the ward / but the time / we snuck into // the shower / we thought / would be our / last together / I loved shampooing / your hair // it was like / breathing / under water [.]”

Household items

after receiving the literary prize
I upgraded to ocean-friendly tuna
I finally cleaned the microwave
then thinking better of it
ordered a new microwave 

spruce tips in antique pinch bowls
reed diffusers in lavender oil
I curated the air
carrying on like I had always
known refinement 

we are instructed to do the negative
the positive is already
within us, wrote Kafka
who would have liked
to be a loaf of hard bread 

that’s why I keep my mind
smooth as a pearl
grown from a splinter
a poem is not a wild animal
roving the page 

a poem is not a journey
it is always already here
anyone can access it
with only a few household items
& ten thousand dollars

Phil Hall, Canadian poet

Vancouver BC/Cobourg ON: From Stuart Ross’ Proper Tales Press comes an odd assortment of poems from Vancouver writer and troublemaker George Bowering, the chapbook Phil Hall (2025), a collection with a photograph of Perth, Ontario writer and editor Phil Hall by Paul Elter on the front and back cover, as well as within, although the poems in this collection may or may not have anything to do with that particular Phil Hall. These are poems by Canadian poet George Bowering that reference Canadian poet Phil Hall, playing with a slightly fictional Phil Hall that may or may not resemble the actual writer. As the opening piece, “Notes on the Life of the Canadian Poet Phil Hall” begins: “Phil Hall once took a jar of sand from a beach on the west coast of Costa Rica to Chad and emptied it into the Sahara. A companion reported him as saying, ‘Find that, you arseholes.’” These pieces are delightfully odd, with narratives running from the entirely plausible into the completely implausible, running a fine line between the two until, of course, Bowering takes the whole surrealist play up a level. With poem-titles including such as “Phil Hall and the Chickadee,” “Phil Hall and My Mother,” “Phil Hall’s Macaw” and “The Mallade of Phil Hall,” this is a delightfully odd and entertaining small collection, one I entirely recommend you pick up a copy of. Although, I probably should have asked: What does Canadian poet Phil Hall think of all of this?

Phil’s Fiction

Over a warm October week in Oliver I wrote a terrific love poem to my wife, who was visiting friends in Cumberland.
            Then one afternoon it rained, so there was no orchard work, so Phil Hall sat down for an hour and wrote what I knew was a better poem for her.
            They were nice about it. They sent me a postcard from Cumberland.
            I decided to quit poetry and wrote a story about lost love and orchard work.
            Phil wrote a story while having lunch with some of my Vancouver friends. It won a prize in a Victoria literary magazine.
            Over seven years I wrote a novel about a matricide in Vancouver. It made the short list in a national creative writing contest. Phil came in the winner. And wrote three other books on the short list under pen names.
            They sent me a nice postcard from Ottawa.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

lay on the floor
under a table

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

this dirty foul smoke
and dangerous wax
                            affirms

all the charred days
bring back
                            my thirst

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

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

jwcurry, Room 3O2 Books

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

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

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

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

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