Touch the Donkey : new interviews with Michael Harman, Terri Witek and Laynie Browne,

Anticipating the release next week of the TENTH ANNIVERSARY forty-first issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], why not check out the interviews that have appeared over the past few weeks with contributors to the fortieth issue: Michael Harman, Terri Witek and Laynie Browne.

Interviews with contributors to the first thirty-nine issues (more than two hundred and fifty interviews to date) remain online, including: Noah Berlatsky, Robyn Schelenz, Andy Weaver, Dessa Bayrock, Anselm Berrigan, Alana Solin, Michael Betancourt, Monty Reid, Heather Cadsby, R Kolewe, Samuel Amadon, Meghan Kemp-Gee, Miranda Mellis, kevin mcpherson eckhoff and Kimberley Dyck, Junie Désil, Micah Ballard, Devon Rae, Barbara Tomash, Ben Meyerson, Pam Brown, Shane Kowalski, Kathy Lou Schultz, Hilary Clark, Ted Byrne, Garrett Caples, Brenda Coultas, Sheila Murphy, Chris Turnbull and Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Stuart Ross, Leah Sandals, Tamara Best, Nathan Austin, Jade Wallace, Monica Mody, Barry McKinnon, Katie Naughton, Cecilia Stuart, Benjamin Niespodziany, Jérôme Melançon, Margo LaPierre, Sarah Pinder, Genevieve Kaplan, Maw Shein Win, Carrie Hunter, Lillian Nećakov, Nate Logan, Hugh Thomas, Emily Brandt, David Buuck, Jessi MacEachern, Sue Bracken, Melissa Eleftherion, Valerie Witte, Brandon Brown, Yoyo Comay, Stephen Brockwell, Jack Jung, Amanda Auerbach, IAN MARTIN, Paige Carabello, Emma Tilley, Dana Teen Lomax, Cat Tyc, Michael Turner, Sarah Alcaide-Escue, Colby Clair Stolson, Tom Prime, Bill Carty, Christina Vega-Westhoff, Robert Hogg, Simina Banu, MLA Chernoff, Geoffrey Olsen, Douglas Barbour, Hamish Ballantyne, JoAnna Novak, Allyson Paty, Lisa Fishman, Kate Feld, Isabel Sobral Campos, Jay MillAr, Lisa Samuels, Prathna Lor, George Bowering, natalie hanna, Jill Magi, Amelia Does, Orchid Tierney, katie o’brien, Lily Brown, Tessa Bolsover, émilie kneifel, Hasan Namir, Khashayar Mohammadi, Naomi Cohn, Tom Snarsky, Guy Birchard, Mark Cunningham, Lydia Unsworth, Zane Koss, Nicole Raziya Fong, Ben Robinson, Asher Ghaffar, Clara Daneri, Ava Hofmann, Robert R. Thurman, Alyse Knorr, Denise Newman, Shelly Harder, Franco Cortese, Dale Tracy, Biswamit Dwibedy, Emily Izsak, Aja Couchois Duncan, José Felipe Alvergue, Conyer Clayton, Roxanna Bennett, Julia Drescher, Michael Cavuto, Michael Sikkema, Bronwen Tate, Emilia Nielsen, Hailey Higdon, Trish Salah, Adam Strauss, Katy Lederer, Taryn Hubbard, Michael Boughn, David Dowker, Marie Larson, Lauren Haldeman, Kate Siklosi, robert majzels, Michael Robins, Rae Armantrout, Stephanie Strickland, Ken Hunt, Rob Manery, Ryan Eckes, Stephen Cain, Dani Spinosa, Samuel Ace, Howie Good, Rusty Morrison, Allison Cardon, Jon Boisvert, Laura Theobald, Suzanne Wise, Sean Braune, Dale Smith, Valerie Coulton, Phil Hall, Sarah MacDonell, Janet Kaplan, Kyle Flemmer, Julia Polyck-O’Neill, A.M. O’Malley, Catriona Strang, Anthony Etherin, Claire Lacey, Sacha Archer, Michael e. Casteels, Harold Abramowitz, Cindy Savett, Tessy Ward, Christine Stewart, David James Miller, Jonathan Ball, Cody-Rose Clevidence, mwpm, Andrew McEwan, Brynne Rebele-Henry, Joseph Mosconi, Douglas Barbour and Sheila Murphy, Oliver Cusimano, Sue Landers, Marthe Reed, Colin Smith, Nathaniel G. Moore, David Buuck, Kate Greenstreet, Kate Hargreaves, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Erín Moure, Sarah Swan, Buck Downs, Kemeny Babineau, Ryan Murphy, Norma Cole, Lea Graham, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Oana Avasilichioaei, Meredith Quartermain, Amanda Earl, Luke Kennard, Shane Rhodes, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Sarah Cook, François Turcot, Gregory Betts, Eric Schmaltz, Paul Zits, Laura Sims, Stephen Collis, Mary Kasimor, Billy Mavreas, damian lopes, Pete Smith, Sonnet L’Abbé, Katie L. Price, a rawlings, Suzanne Zelazo, Helen Hajnoczky, Kathryn MacLeod, Shannon Maguire, Sarah Mangold, Amish Trivedi, Lola Lemire Tostevin, Aaron Tucker, Kayla Czaga, Jason Christie, Jennifer Kronovet, Jordan Abel, Deborah Poe, Edward Smallfield, ryan fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Robinson, nathan dueck, Paige Taggart, Christine McNair, Stan Rogal, Jessica Smith, Nikki Sheppy, Kirsten Kaschock, Lise Downe, Lisa Jarnot, Chris Turnbull, Gary Barwin, Susan Briante, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, j/j hastain, Catherine Wagner, Susanne Dyckman, Susan Holbrook, Julie Carr, David Peter Clark, Pearl Pirie, Eric Baus, Pattie McCarthy, Camille Martin and Gil McElroy.

The forthcoming forty-first issue features new writing by: rob mclennan, Gil McElroy, ryan fitzpatrick, John Barlow, Amanda Earl, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Conyer Clayton, Julie Carr and Pattie McCarthy!

And of course, copies of the first thirty-nine issues are still very much available. Why not subscribe? Included, as well, as part of the above/ground press annual subscription! Which you should get right now for 2024!

and don't forget the Touch the Donkey TENTH ANNIVERSARY SALE, available until the end of April!

We even have our own Facebook group. It’s remarkably easy.

Ongoing notes: mid-December 2018

[our wee one, not feeling well]

I’ve only been attempting to sketch out some further non-book fair related chapbook reviews for a few months now (why am I so behind on everything?), so here we go, finally:

Somewhere across the border: I’ve long been an admirer of the work of American poet Hailey Higdon (including producing a chapbook of hers, and even including her work in the recent above/ground press 25th anniversary broadside project), so seeing a new title of hers from dancing girl press, a press I very much admire, is simply glorious: A Wild Performance (2018). Higdon’s work, from the small handful of chapbook-length titles I’ve seen to date (Ihave yet to see a copy of her debut full-length collection) explores the extended lyric sequence through fragment and the small moment:

two women walk into a town, foundational

to the existence of the town as interesting

they thought            we need the witness

of neighbors                we don’t know

who are neighbors, who

are just friends             here is not a place for inside behavior

but outside doesn’t seem

much better

As the acknowledgments offer, “This poem was created during a residency at Wellspring House in Ashfield, Massachusetts” and could be exactly as straightforward as it suggests, opening with “Two women walk into a town.” I like the sketched-out quality of this, the quick take and the sudden turns, and the deceptive simplicities that contain such great multitudes. Higdon is easily one of my favourite (or should I say: favorite) American poets working right now, and more readers should be paying attention to her work.

everywhere I go

they are waiting           as an American I want to talk about myself

go in and out of getting prayer, suggesting light

exposure          about myself I spoiled with competition

a country so green we all wanted it

then to have that particular experience of being talked

out of the conversation

Toronto ON: Given I am so behind on everything, it should come as no surprise that I’m occasionally discovering titles on my desk I didn’t realize I had, including Michael Harman’s chapbook Brittlestars (2017) from the combined Michael Boughn/Victor Coleman publishing venture shuffaloff / Eternal Network. Given there isn’t any author biography included with the work, and Google searches (sorry, Bing, no one uses you) seem less than helpful, so one is left with but the text to determine anything (which some might argue is the only way to really approach a work). Who is Michael Harman? Does it matter? Not really, in a certain way, but I sure would like to know. Brittlestars is a playful, precise and mature work, made up of three extended sequences—“Part 1: Bathysphere,” “Part 2: Heart” and “Part 3: Houseplants”—composed very much in the vein of “language poetry,” allowing sound and rhythm to bounce around with an incredible precision, writing out an extended poem that is meant to be heard as much as read. But I ask, again: who is Michael Harman? As the poem begins:

1 (Dandayamana-dhanurasana)

designate space

to access cerebral cortex

voice a nudging marbles

down a notebook spine

remember Potter’s patronus?

a purple reddish

starfish det-

aches offshoot morphemes

with nocked legs

in taut bows,

body now distal

as arms, arrows,

tug skin seams

a world dubbed

then re-dubbed

a “knot in motion,”

ecosystem

our tutelary practice

notebook swaths/swans

circulate organs

and lungs’ breath churns

October coloured vortex

as angels entice            all        capacities

their wildest range

so you can really sit

(where Julien says

the pocket’s time-feel

is at its fattest