Valentine’s Day, 2021: nina jane drystek, Nicholas Power + Julian Day,

Why yes, I did hand-make Valentine’s Day cards for our ridiculous wee monsters. Last week Rose produced some pouches out of paper and (mounds of) tape for them to collect Valentine’s Day cards, so I had to do something. I am hoping that, if nothing else, they are amused by my attempts (I can’t even remember the last time I used a glue-stick).

Obviously, I also picked up huge chocolate items for them, in case the cards don’t work out.

Ottawa ON: nina jane drystek recently gifted a copy of her small chapbook microcosm (& co. collective, 2017), a small sequence of untitled pieces akin to the loose structure of the English-language haibun, a form that was working through a handful of Ottawa poets around that time (such as Chris Johnson’s above/ground press title): a prose stanza followed by a denser lyric chorus:

Hands on my father’s shoulders I take in cliffs that meet the ocean, roads into secret keeping mountains, billboards Viva Fidel. Viva Cuba libre. Billboards of Che Nos dejo su ejemplo. Spraypaint on rocks Hasta la victoria siempre. As we slide towards Santiago.

 

 

humans with the right sense, the right emotions and
the right sensibilities

drystek, who shortlisted for the 2020 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, has been simultaneously producing a great deal of work and keeping herself just underneath the radar for some time. microcosm reads as notes from a trip, although the interiority of travel, and not a physical description. microcosm reads as curious notes sketched on and around how this trip affects the body and her thinking; on how memory, including physical memory, is affected and triggered. I like the flow of her lyric, the rush of these seemingly self-contained prose-pieces that accumulate into something else, something further.

Down Bronson in the afternoon I balanced on my handlebars of my first love, my hair flying in her face as we heated fate and my heart was blind sided. Down the canal I hug the corners at night. In the day I race, pass, pass, cut across neighbourhoods to one river, another; the ease of it. Until wet dirt sweeps out from under me, embeds in me. Down its frame are scratches from bike locks, down my legs are scratches from pedals and pavement. Road, path, metal, skin, bones; the beat of a breath.

 

 

                        if the machine produces tranquility it is right

Toronto ON: The latest from Toronto poet Nicholas Power is ordinary clothes: a Tao in a Time of Covid (Gesture Press, 2020), a sequence of eighty-one short meditative lyric bursts.

ONE

I am here
on the longest day of the year
reflecting on
one hundred and three days of pandemic

I am without desire
open to mystery

at the same time
desiring ten thousand manifestations
of nameless Tao

An interesting factor that has been emerging has been seeing how a variety of writers and artists have been responding to the past year. I know a variety of writers who have been unable to write, a variety of writers unable to respond directly to much of anything, and others who have attempted, in their own ways, to respond to the ongoing pandemic and lock-downs directly. Over the first couple of months of same, I regularly explored The Yale Review’s “Pandemic Files,” and even wrote my own suite of pandemic essays, “essays in the face of uncertainties.” And of course, you’ve already seen Zadie Smith’s pandemic-response, Intimations: Six Essays (2020), yes?

For his part, Power seems to compose his sequence of lyric mantras as a way to establish (or re-establish) ground; to self-protect from these ongoing crises through ongoing contemplation. As he writes as part of “SIXTY-FOUR”: “grow closer to your own nature / by loving what is [.]” When all else seems chaos, become, one might say, calm.

FORTY-EIGHT

let things take their natural course
don’t push the river

a disturbance in the field
distorts the wave action

interference in the flow
and the pulse is hard to read

I want to feel the beat of
my internal pressure

then learn to dance
to that rhythm

Winnipeg MB/Toronto ON: You might have seen Winnipeg poet Julian Day’s poems in a variety of venues over the past few months, and now we’ve his chapbook-length debut, Late Summer Flowers (Anstruther Press, 2021). Late Summer Flowers is an assemblage of ten first-person lyrics shaped around southern Saskatchewan, specifically the Qu’Appelle Valley. His are poems of lyric observation, of description; writing out poems-as-short-scenes, and attuned to the smallest difference, whether a shift in the air or the fluttering of a bird’s wings. “here time wanders,” he writes, as part of “Field Notes, Cypress Hills,” “finding its form // in coyotes / hawk-flight / fire roads [.]”

Saskatchewan

The middle of the west, an easy trapezoid,
derided by the uninitiated as a long drive, the gap
between Calgary and Winnipeg; a province of winter
rye and wheat, a place you left
but never plan to leave. There’s beauty
in its show of what’s wide open,
whether the sky or the sharptail’s refusal of it;
and to truly understand, head south out of Saskatoon,
so that as you dip through the dry valleys
your unsettled heart begins to fall away.

Keep driving. Take the turnoff to Cypress Hills,
and once the farmland ends
you’ll see cliffs and ridgelines, stands of poplar,
and it’s here, they say, that the glaciers stopped
briefly, exhausted, to survey their work;
and where you too, looking out from your car,
will make a slow retreat southward,
the landscape revealed, its details sharpening,
until like the glaciers, you’re finally impelled
to pause.

 

Ongoing notes: Meet the Presses’ Indie Literary Market

Once again, I made my way to Toronto for the annual Indie Literary Market, hosted by the Meet the Presses collective, where they announced the winner of this year’s bpNichol Chapbook Award (Sonnet L’Abbé, in case you hadn’t heard). above/ground press, at least, had two titles on the shortlist this time around, which was pretty cool (and both titles are still available, naturally, although copies of the Saklikar title are beginning to thin out).

Toronto: I was intrigued by the recent handful of chapbooks produced by Gap Riot Press, a recently-founded chapbook publisher run by Kate Siklosi (who has her own first chapbook forthcoming with above/ground press) and Dani Spinosa [see their recent “12 or 20 (small press) questions” interview here]: Priscila Uppal’s What Linda Said (2017), Adeena Karasick’s Salomé: Woman of Valor (2017), Margaret Christakos’ SOCIAL MEDEA vs VIRTUAL MEDUSA (2017) and canisia lubrin's augur (2017). lubrins’ latest follows quickly on the heels of her first trade collection, newly out with Wolsak and Wynn, and is constructed out of two extended lyrics – “Museum” and “Ledger” – with a shorter lyric, “like a lantern trapping light,” nearly as a coda to the short collection.

Not everyone can endure what salt becomes in water,

revered for its flight-performance of

preservation, its form-fractured afterlives,

            the armature of memory, the fungus between toe

and carnival-hued shellac,

            the stubborn things that must be cut away “(Museum”)

I like the matter-of-factness of her lyric, the pervasive lines that strike and speak directly to the heart of things, shifting quickly into an abstract that reads as magical, even dream-like. There is almost a tone of fantasy to her lines; one realizes, quickly, that the facts of her poems don’t need to have occurred to be, in some ways, entirely true. As she asks: “who is depending on me / to get safely home?”

[Kate Siklosi talking to Nicholas Power, as Dani Spinosa looks away]

Kingston ON: I’ve always been envious of the small chapbooks produced through Michael e. Casteel’s Puddles of Sky Press, and one of his latest is his own Lagoon. Still. Lagoon. (100 copies; November 2017). I’m rather taken by Casteels’ odd, short mix of lyrics and prose poems, some of which veer into the territory of postcard fiction. The subtle mix of form, coupled with a strain of surrealism and sly humour, is one that has long been one of the strengths of his work.

Slumberous

Later, I lay on my cot in the cabin in the woods listening to coyotes crying on the far side of the frozen lake. My dog was asleep on the bearskin rug, and the fire crackled steadily in the woodstove. I fell asleep while writing, and dreamed I was driving a herd of wild horses across the surface of the moon.

Casteels’ short poems exist as self-contained pieces, even the curious three-poem sequence “Rules of Thumb.” The difference between the poems, structurally, is both intriguing and subtle, and numerous of the poems mention either driving, altered states (hangovers, sleepiness, etc) or both, and I wonder about how the two threads here might intermingle.

12 or 20 (small press) questions with Nicholas Power on Gesture Press

Gesture Press started in June 1983 and continues to be part of Meet the Presses which originated in the 80s as a monthly gathering of small literary presses in downtown Toronto. Out of that developed the annual Toronto Small Press Book Fair and continues now as Meet the Presses in the form of Indie Literary Markets.

Nicholas Power is a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective, and has performed with the sound poetry ensemble Alexander’s Dark Band. His collection of poetry, Melancholy Scientist, is just out from Tekst Editions. His No Poems were published in Paris by Battered Press. He has several books with his own Gesture Press including Writing on Water, Swing Rhythms and The Steady Pull of a Curious Dog. His poems from the manuscript Dancing with Gravity are in issues of Draft, Rampike and www.ottawater.ca.

1 – When did Gesture Press first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?
Gesture Press started in June 1983 with the printing of a four page series of poems (Indirect Narration) based on a Latin Grammar book.

One of the original goals was to ‘seize the means of production’. In other words, you weren’t going to wait for someone else to decide if your work was publishable. Aesthetically, it meant that each ‘book’ would be close in time but also in form to the work being printed. Each Gesture Press production has been unique in the way it’s printed or bound or sized. We’ve done broadsides, postcards, chapbooks and a perfectbound book. (In 1989 we did a chapbook with a reflecting mylar sheet tipped in to read John Riddell’s reverse-printed Traces (if you bought a copy without the mylar let me know, I still have some))

I’d say I’m more focused on my own writing now so the publishing that I do – the Writing on Water series of leaflets, Swing Rhythms – is to have work to distribute at readings or to interested people.

2 – What first brought you to publishing?
I’d gotten a Gestetner duplicating (mimeograph) machine free from a theatre that had switched to photocopying. It was electric but I found that I had better control if I hand cranked the roller. I typed or cut the stencils then hooked it on to a roller and wet ink would come through the stencil onto whatever paper I put through the machine. Gesture as a choice of name for the Press came from the root of Gestetner.

I was already part of a large writer’s circle that included several small press publishers – Underwhich Editions, Proper Tales, Curvd H&z.

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small press publishing?
I think publishing is continuous with the process of writing. I have an idea not just of the individual poem but the physical way in which it is produced. Having direct access or the willingness to get involved at that point makes the process more interesting. It also makes the act of publishing more collaborative. I heard Mark Laba read the Mack Bolan Poems and I knew they had to be published to look like pulp fiction.  We got in trouble with Mack Bolan’s original publisher because Michael Reinhart’s cover for our chapbook was such good a spoof of their adventure fiction (Mark Laba, with Bolan’s muscles, in round-rimmed glasses holding a giant fountain pen like a machine gun). I got to know Blaine Speigel’s work as a photographer. I put his multiple exposures together with Sheila Murphy’s writing. I published a steve smith/jwcurry collaboration; a jwcurry/George Swede poem sequence. They all came out of the energy and momentum of seeing and hearing work that you wanted to see out there - Carlyle Baker, Gary Barwin, Daniel Bradley, Randall Brock, Lillian Necakov, Julia Steinecke, Yves Troendle, Eddy Yanofsky. 

4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?   
I did a book of poems to go with a Fringe Festival show in 2011. The show itself was all text from poems I had written. So the chapbook was a record of those performances and the development of the script. In 1992 we did a Live Magazine with Katy Chan and Clint Burnham when they were running the Mental Radio magazine and reading series. That was a whole night of Gesture Press readers, music and visuals. I published Michael Brodribb’s long poem based on his father’s letters in the form of a war-time letter with the appropriate postage and stamped by the censor. 

5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?
Meet the Presses – a literary market we hold often here in Toronto; any opportunity for direct selling – mostly readings. I always carry chapbooks with me and pull them out (like a good ‘chapman’) when it’s opportune.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
I like to get involved in the work as an editor, to get as close to the writer’s intentions as possible, and that can include clarifying individual words and repositioning lines. I share my responses with the writer and if it helps shape the work that is ultimately their decision. I’ve suggested titles for a couple of the books I’ve published.

7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?
100 – 200 copies is a big Gesture Press print run. Pure Mental Breath by Sheila Murphy was 500 at Coach House Printing.  I’ve gone back and reprinted a line in the mind a couple of times.

8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
Over the years Gesture Press has been a one-person operation and the ebb and flow of the press’s output and approaches have almost entirely been dependent on the vicissitudes of my life. I put the press on hold for several years when I was raising my son, working full-time and trying to get some of my own writing going.

I used a designer (Virginia Morin for Pure Mental Breath); I’ve had several cover artists (Lillian Necakov for a journey toward the end in the shape of air) (Nicola Wojewoda for In Separate Rooms)

I was part of a collaborative reading with jwcurry and Steve Venright that became an envelope full of work where we published each other – transforming the pieces in the process. That was a great way to work but it was specific to that occasion.

Chris Warren and I did a very selective anthology of writers coming out of the York creative writing program. (Ten Tandem via York)  It was a good approach to that kind of publication. I liked the back and forth about who and what to put in. Stuart Ross did the cover.

I worked with the artist Camilla Burgess on a book of poems and drawings (The Steady Pull of a Curious Dog) that was a collaboration from the start.

9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
Definitely. I think because I’ve been interested in poems in a series – and looked for suitable ones to publish in Gesture Press - that has been an area of interest in my own writing. I write occasional and individual poems but I’ve worked at several series. In that sense, you’re composing for the book.

10– How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?
Since the beginning I’ve published my own work through Gesture Press. I’ve also submitted manuscripts for publication elsewhere. [a modest device] came out with The Writing Space, No Poems with Battered Press and Melancholy Scientist recently with Tekst Editioins.

11– How do you see Gesture Press evolving?
The shift that’s already taken place was in 1988. I stopped using the Gestetner and began using photocopiers and printers. Currently Gesture Press functions as part of my own writing process and is not generally open for submissions. I did publish two samplers last year to focus on the unpublished writing of Christina Baillie (Scrutables) and Joan Guenther (meaning only air flows).

12– What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?
Eddy Yanofsky’s book In Separate Rooms (published in 1990) helped Eddy win the Gwendolyn MacEwen award. Mark Laba won what is now the bpNichol chapbook award with his Mack Bolan Poems. Mainly I’m proud of how Gesture Press supported the work of writers who have kept on writing. Having to deal with the distribution has never been my strong point but I’ve enjoyed the camaraderie of doing the small press book fairs and Indie Literary events.

13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?
bp Nichol and bill bissett were working in what’s referred to as ‘dirty mimeo’. I consciously produced Randall Brock’s solid blue (1985) as an homage to that kind of production. jwcurry was my first contact and very much a continuing influence and a collaborator. I was in conversation with and collaborating with Stuart Ross at Proper Tales Press and we gathered many other presses into our monthly Meet the Presses and then The Toronto Small Press Book Fairs in the 80’s. 

14– How does Gesture Press work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Gesture Press in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?
I work with other artists (Get Happy was a Fringe production of music, dance, poetry that included a chapbook.)(The Steady Pull of a Curious Dog was in collaboration with the artist Camilla Burgess) and writers (reeds and their shadows was in tandem with Christina Baillie).

Gesture Press is part of Meet the Presses which is a collective of writer/publishers who organize independent literary markets.

15– Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?
Not currently, but we’re fortunate to have lots of venues in Toronto.

16– How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?
I have a site where I post up poems:    www.gesturepress.wordpress.com

17– Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?
Not at this time

18– Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
reeds and their shadows (Christina Baillie and Nicholas Power) is made up of parallel transiterations from Japanese tankas. I enjoyed the composition process and coming up with a small press (i.e. inexpensive) way to publish 36 poems on 3 sheets of 8½ by 14 with some colour and a Japanese-style binding. It grew out of a series of ephemeral pamphlets of my transiterations – writing on water.

Both Scrutables (Christina Baillie) and meaning only air flows (Joan Guenther) were published last year on the occasion of a Meet the Presses variety night. My intention was to introduce these mature writers to other publishers through ‘samplers’ of their work. ½

[Nicholas Power reads at the pre-ottawa small press fair event on June 6; and he brings Gesture Press to the ottawa small press book fair the following morning]

12 or 20 (small press) questions;

The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, June 6, 2014: Reed, Menear, Eaton, Power + Saklikar

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series

pre-small press book fair reading

featuring readings by:

Marthe Reed (NY State)

David Menear (Toronto/Montreal)

Chris Eaton (Toronto)

Nicholas Power (Toronto)

+ Renée Sarojini Saklikar (Vancouver) [pictured]

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan

Friday, June 6, 2014;

doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm

The Carleton Tavern,

223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

as a preview for the following day’s ottawa small press book fair!

for bios and links check here