SOME : fifth issue,

 

place can over there  and I’ll drop the tree upon it
while over there fetch bbq sauce packets in glovebox

offset on white crescent of bucket’s innard part
between plastic lip and hump of mushroom silhouetted
to take spinning half cut up hwy to sell the PG
creep who refused to leave the mountain who after
an agreement in good faith reneged hence
the loaner red semi driven w scant warning
over his tents, baskets, dog, kitchen things,
against bucket innard eyelid shape
extends flickering shadow of a ribbon of piss (Hamish Ballantyne, “from Hansom”)

I like what Vancouver poet Rob Manery has been doing with his print journal SOME [see my review of the second issue here] and the fifth issue, dated Summer 2022, recently landed on my doorstep, featuring work by Hamish Ballantyne, Clint Burnham, Jeff Derksen, Lary Timewell and an excerpt of a collaborative work-in-progress between Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Chris Turnbull. There is something really valuable about any journal or publisher able to publish work by writers who don’t seem to publish that often in journals, if at all (Lary Timewell, for example), as well as being open to work that might be seen as too long or too experimental for even journals interested in that kind of work. Hamish Ballantyne [see my review of his latest here] is working a larger project through a sequence of fragments, each small section simultaneously offering another and a further perspective. “practice breeds a / constellation of attendant / practices each indivisible / from the instants of their expression,” he writes, further in the excerpt included here, “Later we / if we can find each other in town / decide what they all meant […].”

The intricate and precise layering of Gardiner and Turnbull’s collaborative “MESH” is stunning, offering folds of text wrapped across each other. They’ve a further collaboration in the October issue of Touch the Donkey I look forward to exploring as part of our interview. And as far as Timewell is concerned, it is well beyond the time when someone should be publishing a book by this poet; I know there’s an enormous amount of uncollected work he’s been sitting on, and he certainly deserves far better attention than he’s seen so far. His “Eight Poems” in this issue offer echoes and roots of his 1970s and 80s Vancouver KSW language-origins, but with an engagement in the interpersonal that runs across the foundation of his entire work.

reminiscent of natural animal pleasures

it’s not escapades in cascades
it’s not business as usual
it’s not an unlivable wager
it’s not captivated or decorated
it’s not spurts of pleasant to recall
it’s not learning to be a good loser
it’s not you never loved anyone but yourself
it’s neither happiness not lacking in happiness
it’s not at hand it’s not out of reach
it’s not the blue funk of a sports slump
it’s not favour me won’t you with just one more smile
it’s not picking the lock in your daydreams
it’s more like thinking sweet things of others even as you slowly die
it’s more like it’s nothing like that at all
it’s more like as probably many of you will already know
it’s more like i suppose you have all heard the incriminating rumours of
it’s more (isn’t it?) like your so-called life

There is an approach to accumulated language and political writing that both Burnham and Derksen engage with that sits in a similar realm to other current and former Kootenay School of Writing practitioners; their work reminds of a similar flavour to that of Winnipeg-based poet Colin Smith, for example [see my review of his latest here]. For those aware of any of his numerous collections, Derksen’s four poems here offer elements of both the familiar and the unfamiliar, including a prose piece, “On a Generation that Squandered its Future” (I can’t remember the last time I saw a Jeff Derksen poem set in prose” that begins: “I was working in a gas station, a greenhouse, in delivery, in gardening, / in editing, in teaching, in administration. The weather has a new name and it / is no longer Elizabeth.” The shift in patter, patterns, is curious, while still retaining the accumulative effect of the long thread, writing language across issues of labour and capitalism. Burnham’s piece is an extended poem with a curious title, “letter from Mount Pleasant to Manhattan (on Kevin Davies’s The Golden Age of Paraphernalia, Edge Books, 2008),” suggesting an enormous amount going on through this particular poem, accumulating some fifty to sixty stanzas of piled phrases collaged together to form something far larger, and far more complex. “before her if I have to spell,” he writes, early on in the poem, “it out for you thereby taking // the pamphlet from the / Western Front listing two / dozen Chinese restaurants / nearby now, twenty-odd / years later, I wonder / what the German / sisters are doing now are / they still perpetual / students or did they finish // their degrees and training, / work for a while in the Harz / mountain village their / family originated from […].” There are a lot of directions to grasp this poem, less threads than individual points, and it makes me curious to see this particular Kevin Davies title to get a better sense of how Derksen might be responding to that particular work. Further on, writing: “[…] who // remembers Lorem ipsum, / clip art, clip joints, I’ll / give you a clip on / the ear the / sound of small bits of / gravel and grit under / tires turning (but not rolling, if / you catch my drift) […].” Alternately, the first section of Derksen’s “Anonymous Fanon Poems,” reads:

That which is choking
you is also choking me

but its tight mesh
the police
the army
the state

is not from you

nor others
under a blight

and I will lose it last
following first after

you lose it

I don’t know who carries copies (ie: stores, etcetera), but the colophon writes that correspondence can be direct to: somepoetrymagazine@gmail.com and that “Subscriptions are $24 for two issues. Single issues are $12. E-transfers are welcome.” Also: note that the reading/launch listed here is in Vancouver, British Columbia.

the twelfth issue of seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics is now online!

FEATURING:

Joe Blades

Afterword, from Tribeca: Twentieth Anniversary Edition

Natalee Caple

Afterword, from The Appetites of Tiny Hands: Twentieth Anniversary Edition

Doyali Islam

Interview with Gil McElroy: Conspiracy & Community

Lee Parpart

Review: Kaveh Akbar, Calling a Wolf a Wolf

Lee Parpart

Interview with Kaveh Akbar

Stacy Szymaszek

from A Year from Today

Lary Timewell

Poems

TWELFTH ISSUE : WINTER 2018

http://www.ottawater.com/seventeenseconds/

rob mclennan: editor

mdesnoyers : design & (re)compiler

roland prevost: founding managing editor

rob + Stephen read in Vancouver : a (brief) report,

Last week, Stephen Brockwell (with recent Mansfield Press title in-hand) and I spent less than thirty hours in Vancouver for the sake of a reading as part of the Lunch Poems at SFU series, lovingly hosted by series co-curator, poet (and above/ground press author) Renée Sarojini Saklikar. On Wednesday morning, my alarm went off at 5:30am for a 7:15am flight, and we went directly from landing in Vancouver (10am local time) to our reading downtown. Madness!

I was quite taken with both venue and crowd, and was finally able to meet lary bremner, a Vancouver poet and former Tsunami Editions editor/publisher (as well as above/ground press author) that has returned to Canada (after twenty-plus years in Japan) since I was last out west. Other luminaries at our reading included Renee Rodin, Fred Wah and Pauline Butling, Michael Barnholden, Nathaniel G. Moore, Carol Reid, Stephen Collis (who has a second above/ground press title announcing in March, following this one from last year), Kevin Spenst, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Warren Fulton and Rolf Maurer. What an event! And we even sold books! And I gained a new above/ground press subscriber! It was nice to be able to launch my new poetry title, A perimeter (New Star) with editor/publisher Rolf in the crowd as well, so I could attempt to properly thank him. I read the entirety of the title poem, which apparently was recorded, so at some point you might even be able to hear the reading, as well as subsequent post-reading questions-and-answers.

Renée was even good enough to take us for lunch, immediately following the reading. Apparently this is a tradition for their series. After that, Rolf and Renée insisted we be introduced to a bookstore that has opened since I've been in town, The Paper Hound (which I would highly recommend, for both new and used titles). I picked up a couple items, including Maggie Nelson's Bluets (Wave, 2009).

Given ours was a noon reading, and we were in town so briefly, we met up for drinks with a few folk later that evening. I attempted a later-afternoon nap, but just couldn't manage it, instead hanging quietly around the hotel room with notebook and books for a rare period of quiet reading and scribbling. [the photo might give a sense of the sleep-deprived haze I was in the midst of] Given the babies, that is quite a rarity these days. lary was incredibly generous in gifting us small handfuls of older publications, which we joyfully scooped up, including one of George Bowering's old Beaver Kosmos titles, Warren Tallman's THREE ESSAYS ON CREELEY (1973), something I've long wished to get my hands upon.

We couldn't believe: January, and there were people milling about in the outdoor pool of the hotel, directly below our window. Oh Vancouver, we enjoyed not having to wear all of our heavy gear and sweaters. But the rain.

Meeting up for drinks, we were able to interact with Donato Mancini, Mercedes Eng (I was able to pick up a copy of the new edition of her book! note that she is giving away a pdf of the new edition on her website), Peter and Meredith Quartermain, Diane Tucker, lary bremner, Heather Haley and Rolf Maurer. A grand time! And, apparently Donato and Mercy both have forthcoming titles with Talonbooks? By the time Donato and I ended the evening and I made my way back to the hotel, I think I'd actually been twenty-three hours awake.

The following morning, Stephen had meetings, so I quietly made my way to Macleod Books after an hour or so scratching out poem-drafts amid breakfast and books and newspaper. And postcards sent home to the children. In the bookstore, I met a young staff person who recognized me, and offered regret at missing our event (I handed him chapbooks, naturally). I told him it could be another five years!

Awaiting Stephen post-meeting (given check-out was at noon), I spent some three hours in the hotel lobby reading Maggie Nelson (a book I'll discuss in a day or two). Oh, the glory of solitude and extended silence. Reading.

Before leaving the next day, we had a quick dinner at the airport, where I made Stephen pose with his best "Henry Rollins" look (he has a poem in his new collection referencing being mistaken for a variety of people, including Rollins). We were meant to fly out around 5:20pm (Vancouver time), but of course, we were delayed on the ground some forty minutes or so due to mechanical issues. Without checked bags, we went straight from landed airplane to cabs, and I was in bed by 3am, exhausted.

new from above/ground press: mclennan, Bolster, Smith, Tate, timewell, Saklikar + Mangold,

KING KONG
rob mclennan
$4
See link here for more information

Three Bloody Words : 20th anniversary edition w/ a new afterword by the author
Stephanie Bolster
$5
See link here for more information

A New Love/ An Aching Stone
Pete Smith
$4

See link here for more information

Vesper Vigil
Bronwen Tate
$4
See link here for more information

Odds Are
lary timewell
$4
See link here for more information

After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees—
Renée Sarojini Saklikar
$4
See link here for more information

A Copyist, an Astronomer, and a Calendar Expert
Sarah Mangold
$4
See link here for more information

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material; including the recent backlist/rarities lists of some twenty-three years of titles!

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March-May 2016
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

Forthcoming chapbooks by Stephen Collis, Lesley Yalen, Geoffrey Young, John Barton, Neil Flowers and Braydon Beaulieu, as well as issue #10 of Touch the Donkey!

Evening Will Come : Canadian Feature, ed. rob mclennan

The "Canadian Feature" I've edited for the May 2015 issue of Evening Will Come is now online, featuring poetic statements by derek beaulieu, Amanda Earl, Helen Hajnoczky, Peter Jaeger, Gil McElroy, Erín Moure, Nikki Reimer, Natalie Simpson and lary timewell, as well as a brief introduction by yours truly.

Thanks so much to Afton Wilky and Joshua Marie Wilkinson for the opportunity!

"lary timewell: two new poems," Jacket2

My fifteenth 'commentary,' "lary timewell: two new poems," is now online at Jacket2.

The Capilano Review 3.23: Languages

1

WE LAY

already deep in the macchia, when you

finally edged into view.

Nevertheless, we could not

darken out to you:

ruled by

lightduress.

2

WHO FOUGHT FOR YOU?

The lark-figured

stone from the fallow.

No tone, only that mortalbrightness carried

within.

The height

whirls itself

out, more violently still

than you. (“from Schwarzmaut (Blacktoll) by Paul Celan,” Mark Goldstein)

As Jenny Penberthy writes in the “Editor’s Note” for the new issue of The Capilano Review, the “Languages” issue (May 2014) is filled with “Multilingual poetry, ‘the clockwork discourse of Doctor Who,’ the language of invertebrates, the Red River Twang, Chiac, the language of the Psalms, html, and much more. An extraordinary variety of voices and languages is embedded in these pages, each piece a response to TCR’s call for ‘translations of new or old texts, re-translations, comparative translations, experimental translation, language/s behaving in unexpected ways, multilingual writing, older Englishes, mimicry, mis-translation, fumblings between languages, faux-translation, trans-translation, the ‘languages’ of different genres and the interplay between them.’” One of the most striking sections in the issue has to be by Christian Bök, another interplay on bpNichol’s infamous Translating Translating Apollinaire as “Translating Translating Apollinaire (Gallifreyan),” raising the bar on a piece that Darren Wershler once translated into Klingon. Through his sequence of circular visuals, Bök translates bpNichol’s piece into “the clockwork discourse” of Gallifrayan, the language of the Time Lords in Doctor Who. There are some other lovely interplays throughout the issue, some by writers emerging as some of our most challenging and engaged, from Jordan Abel to Oana Avasilichioaei to Liz Howard to Sarah Dowling, as well as more established poets such as Colin Browne, Nicole Brossard, Erín Moure, George Stanley, Rachel Zolf, Peter Culley, Steve McCaffery, Ted Byrne and Stephen Collis. Collis’ contribution to the issue is a translation of Empedocles' Fragment 17. As he includes in his short piece on the translation:

I began translating Empedocles when, after publishing too many books too quickly, I didn’t know what to write, and didn’t want to write anything really. Translation, especially the slowness of translating ancient Greek, seemed the ideal stop-gap—the ideal way of feeding my compulsion, while in some sense avoiding writing. A means of resistance. A brake.        

            Empedocles had been an interest since I re-read the Presocratics while working on a book about change. That dialectic—it struck me as a dialectic—of Love and Strife, of attraction and repulsion, union and division, stuck with me. Everything now especially seems such a tug of war—the things I want to join, defend, and hold together—those things I want to resist, cut loose, disperse forever. To at once love and struggle against a humanity bent on the beauty of creation and the ugliness of destruction. To find these human attributes incommensurable and yet indissoluble. Walter Benjamin: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” How to resolve this? I fear we cannot.

Part of the appeal of The Capilano Review is how each issue works to engage with the visual arts as well as writing. Allyson Clay, who provided the cover art, has a sequence of paintings reproduced in the issue, “Groundsplatpink,” which she writes of to introduce her section: “My recent body of paintings, collectively titled Groundsplatpink (2013/14), stems from my longtime fascination with how paintings, particularly abstract paintings, are written about and described. Such descriptions are ubiquitous in art history texts and catalogue essays dealing with modern and contemporary painting. Books about painting tend to concentrate on surface treatments. (Interesting writing about painting can also be found occasionally in ‘how to’ books on painting.)” Really, there’s an enormous amount of worthy material in this issue, and far too much to write about in a single posting, from the synaesthesia works by Nyla Matuk, visual works by Margeaux Williamson, Michael Turner’s essay, “Text-based Public Art Works in Vancouver,” and Colin Browne’s exploration of Apollinaire’s Vancouver. Well known as being a translator as well as one of our finest poets and thinkers, Moure, for example, includes “A tale of a translation in process: François Turcot’s Mon dinosaur,” composing an essay as a sequence of journal entries:

I’m almost halfway through a first draft of Montrealer François Turcot’s fourth book of poems, a homage to a father, his father, and a co-presence with the final days of co-being with his father. And, après, a meditation on his absence. It is a Book of Hours, lost by the father and rewritten by the son. The book accompanies me eerily in these first months that follow my own father’s finale, in Edmonton.

Here, almost halfway: what does it mean to be almost halfway? Time’s membrane?

As well as a piece by Brossard, there are three translations of her works, by Amy Butcher, Karen Ocaña and Lary Timewell, who writes:

love cobbles its unreal span, a fragile above

among animals amongst words among doves

in the present continuous we wake, are awoken

repossessed of now as our own, the body s/urges

all possible plurality, ecstatic narrative of

the continuum caresses, (each)

tendril-exfoliate, (each) root of (each)world

knows this a confoundment / an exhuberance

babies boom all day, full-bodied from the hip, become

‘boys & girls’ rolling out from (onto) flat tradition script

to be ‘just & fair’ in the ‘near & far’, lost

realms & sentiments & solitudes require

vertiginous words & animal names, energies given that

in dreams from genre & gender escape