Ongoing notes: mid-June, 2021: Dani Spinosa + Cameron Anstee

Oh, I know. Remember when this would have been the time of year when we’d be gearing up for the spring edition of the ottawa small press book fair? I’m hoping we can return to such by the fall, but until then, did you see the interviews I posted with an array of book fair exhibitors? And of course, you should be keeping a regular eye on what is appearing at periodicities: ajournal of poetry and poetics. Further to that, the lifting of current provincial lockdown means I’ve been able to get back into the printers (for the first time since the end of April), so above/ground press titles are beginning to emerge once more. We are slowly beginning to emerge from the dark.

Toronto ON: Toronto poet, editor and publisher Dani Spinosa’s latest is the chapbook-length Visual Poetry for Women, produced as number 8 in Anstruther Press’ “Manifesto Series (2021), a prose manifesto that really furthers and examines some incredible activity not only happening (including Amanda Earl’s remarkable Judith, which I have yet to properly discuss), but being discussed in a larger way for possibly the very first time. Spinosa argues fully for women to “seize the means of literary production,” including digital production, hand-printing and other means of production, editorial and distribution. She argues heavily for seizing one’s own digital space, and in many ways, this work is an updated and forceful counterpoint to Virginia Woolf’s request for a “Room of One’s Own.” As visual poet and producer of visual works by others, this is a matter-of-fact reminder that women need to create their own spaces to work, publish, critique and be seen, instead of simply waiting for someone else to do it for them. This is a glorious manifesto, and I look forward to seeing how readers might respond. As her manifesto opens:

This is not a manifesto urging us to remedy the persistent gender gap in visual poetics. I’ve done that work already. And other, more thorough historians have done that work better. Alex Balgiu and Mónica de la Torre’s Women in Concrete Poetry 1959-1979 is illuminating for the gaps it reveals even in my knowledge. Other writers like Amanda Earl and Jessica Smith have done brilliant work collecting and highlighting more recent work by women and gender non-conforming poets and language artists. That work is important. It serves to remedy several decades of neglect. But I arrive here with a hunger for overwriting, a desire to stop revision, and present instead this voice louder than the story that’s already been told, that’s still telling. I want to carve several new names into the concrete.

Welcome, ladies. Now we’re writing like we own the place.

Ottawa ON: It is lovely to both see that Ottawa poet, editor, publisher (Apt. 9 Press) and critic Cameron Anstee, after a short pause, has begun producing chapbooks again, with his own LINES (St. Andrew Books, June 2021), a collection of nineteen short, sharp poems. The author of a handful of chapbooks over the years, I think this might be the first chapbook of his that has appeared since before the publication of his full-length debut, Book of Annotations (Picton ON: Invisible Publishing, 2018) [see my review of such here], so clearly he’s been slowly, quietly, writing again as well. Produced in a numbered edition of fifty-one copies, LINES furthers Anstee’s exploration into the miniature, exploring the smallest moments and movements, heavily influenced by the work of Nelson Ball, as well as works by jwcurry, Mark Truscott and Stuart Ross. His poems explore structure and landscape, moments and examinations, and writing out only what is essential. It is incredible to realize just how much time one could spend getting lost in his few, perfectly-placed words.

POEM

cover the warm bread
with a small towel

Ongoing notes: mid-January, 2014

In case you haven’t been paying attention, there is constant activity now over at the above/ground press blog, the Chaudiere Books blog and the ottawa poetry newsletter. Haven’t you seen? The new issue of ottawater is due to appear soon, and the next issue of seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics is most likely online in March (featuring new works by Amanda Earl, Brecken Hancock, Jessica Smith and David O’Meara, among others). Plenty of new above/ground press titles are in the works (you should totally subscribe!) by N.W. Lea, Hugh Thomas, m erskine, David Phillips and Camille Martin (with more to come!), and Chaudiere Books works up to an Indiegogo Campaign launch/announcement very soon, as well as an announcement for upcoming 2014 titles!

And Emperor Rose is nearly two months old; sleep has become some kind of fading, faded memory. What is this “sleep” you speak of, there?

Ottawa ON: Since baby keeps us from leaving the house, I only now received a copy of Three Poems (St. Andrew Books, 2013) by Cameron Anstee, which he self-produced in an edition of forty copies “for a reading in The Reading Series (In/Words) at the Clocktower Brew Pub (Ottawa ON) 30 October 2013.” The small publication is exactly what it sets out to be (reminiscent, slightly, of a similarly-built three poem item of John Newlove poems from the 1980s), a sly three-poem treat (or possibly, trick). Unlike his previous poems—long, meditative sequences that held trace echoes of the work of Monty Reid and others—these new works are smaller and far more compact, suggesting that the work he’s done over the past little while on the works of Paris, Ontario poet and publisher Nelson Ball have begun to seep in. While still holding on to the meditative moment, instead of stretching out the singular moment, these new poems of Anstee’s work to make those moments, while still allowing for breathing space between the lines, as compact as possible.

Daylight Savings

the widening

discrepancies

between the

numerous clocks

in our

home

a dissonant

stagger

I’m both optimistic and impatient about the fact that Anstee releases his work slowly, and in such small packages. I’m intrigued to see the sum of what he has accomplished up to this point, in a singular space. Whenever that might be.

Toronto ON/England: The blurb on the back cover of David Herd’s chapbook Outwith (BookThug, 2012), the first in their “New British Poets” series, writes:

NEW BRITISH POETS is a series of chapbooks edited by Stephen Collis and Amy De’Ath that brings work by younger British poets to North American readers. This is post-language poetry that betrays a transatlantic engagement with and response to contemporary North American poetry and poetics, while at the same time carving out strident new paths through current British literature. Don’t know what’s been happening in UK poetry since Prynne? This is the place to start.

I admire the ambition of this emerging series, and can only hope that BookThug continues to engage this way with contemporary British poetry via chapbooks. The first in the series, by Canterbury poet David Herd, presents an intriguing mix of language play and the straight line. I’m always intrigued by the experimental and/or avant-garde poetry of the UK, knowing full well it has an entirely different lineage than anything that has gone on in North America, even if some of the influences might overlap. There are some magnificent pieces in this collection, the first I’ve read by Herd, including the short sequence “3 notes towards a Love Song” that opens: “The world is feral today and still / There is much between us / This dumb old November weather / Consequential, nothing but itself.”

I –

Don’t know if there is a poem here.

With all the beautiful things you

We walk down by the river

In the cold through the Africa rooms of the British Museum

Tell a story of the half-brother who rose up –

I have never seen you angry

I have never seen you drunk.

I have seen you with the waitress

Listened as you ask after my family

Pictured you on the beach waiting for the agencies to show

As the boats come in oblivious to place

Each time asking a different question you saying,

‘Ceux qu’ils restent sont ils pas mes amis.’ (“The hearing”)

The second chapbook in this series is Petrarch (2013) by London poet Tim Atkins, a short collection of expansive poems composed as collage works, with clipped lines and staccato pauses. Presented out of numerical order, each poem is titled with a number, and the results are intriguing, opening with “191,” immediately followed by “325” and “164,” for example. The mix might be straightforward enough, attempting to mix up pieces that might be composed concurrently, so the connections become discordant, therefore highlighting connections and disconnections that might not otherwise have existed. Are the numbers important, irrelevant or entirely the point? Is this work, possibly, part of a much larger discordant work?

164

Oh! Here I am & what is this

Duvet & ketamine   lemons in the North & South Circular

    stars asleep in their beds & the paparazzi

Do not twinkle at the gates   or were they   Cheerios &

    cold milk

Producing a temporary high & then finally   the remorse of

    a lover   human or   other   he said

Feeling a little  light-headed over   multiple copies of

    Wallace

Spilling & losing weight from the fingertips               but

    I Do Not

I got IBS paying off the IRS      perhaps the

Ignis Ignis   on the branch   pecks my wood when life is good

    (perhaps)

I went to the library in order to learn things but   To Kill A

    Mockingbird   taught me

Nothing about how to kill mockingbirds

It is beautiful to look at   beautiful things   & say

Fuck to the revolution      because one has already done it

I got the tiny mumps   instead of   Concupiscent Cups

You never do get all your money back

Ongoing notes: late August, 2013

[a view of the bookshelf closest to my desk] Another summer, nearly over. I’m always reminded of one particular song by Leonard Cohen during this period: “The summer’s almost gone / The winter’s tuning up.”

We pack the apartment, prepare for the new house; prepare for the baby. The next few months will be one of enormous change.

If anyone is willing to help move over a couple of loads of boxes on either September 10^th, 11^th or 12^th during the day, send me a quick email. The more the merrier, and the faster it will go.

Enormous change, and possibly even chaos. I welcome it.

Ottawa ON: I’m fascinated with the occasional items that poet and Apt. 9 Press editor/publisher Cameron Anstee [see my profile on both he and the press here] has been producing over the past couple of years through St. Andrew Books: limited-edition chapbooks of his own writing, predominantly produced to coincide with one of his readings, or some other event. After The Turning of Pages Should Not Be Audible (2011) [see my review of such here] and She May Be Weary (2011), the third of these chapbooks is One Hundred Additional Frightening Things (2013), “Published in an unnumbered edition of 30 copies for a reading at Raw Sugar Café, Ottawa ON, 10 August 2013, with Christine Miscione, Nicholas Papaxanthos, and Michael e. Casteels.” As a poet, Anstee has long favoured the sequence, and most (if not all) of his dozen or so chapbooks are chapbook-length sequences that highlight the breath, the meditative lyric stretch, and a particular cadence of attentiveness to the line. The poem here feels stretched further than what Anstee has composed previously, with distances between the stanza/sections, some of which works brilliantly, and some of which feels as though it doesn’t hold together as tightly as some of his previous works.

water in lungs, everywhere

a knife, removed

the moment before no longer falling

locked at the knees

the same pain just a moment longer each time

any new ache

bones in the fresh air

full anaesthesia

no answer from many doctors

and then -

Taking title and epigraph from Jim Smith’s One Hundred Most Frightening Things (blewointmentpress, 1985) [see Anstee’s discussion on the book and poem here], Anstee’s writing focuses on such small, personal moments, etching and imprinting each word on the page. Given the meticulous care he gives to each phrase, it is difficult to imagine any of this poem drifting away anytime soon. The poem ends:

naked, the first time

naked, this time

writing about sex

how dry my hands already are

I continue to break watches you give to me

it often feels beautiful to live here

Gee, You’re so Beautiful That It’s Starting to Rain

the best parts remain with you

days I can say nothing to

there is a touch that will be our last

Iowa City IO/Wall Walla WA: New from The Catenary Press is American poet Jennifer Moxley’s limited-edition chapbook, FOYER STATES (2013). Produced in a numbered edition of one hundred (I have number seventy-nine), FOYER STATES is a reworking of fragments of The Iliad, focusing on Helen, and her abandoned daughter Hermione, among other characters such as Eurydice and Aristaeus. Through two short sequences, Moxley’s lyric exploration balances a fine measure between formal language and a more experimental lyric, between the old and the new, a balance that not only holds the poem together as a whole, but manages to make the whole sequence thrum with a fresh and renewed energy. Moxley isn’t the first contemporary American poet to explore the story, given Lisa Jarnot’s work on the same a few years back, holding her own lyric line between the ancient and the contemporary. Is this a singular and self-contained work, one wonders, or part of something far larger?

To assuage the hatred of having a mind but understood the privilege.

She listened to fate and saw its face: A woman holding a dying soldier.

A lover, a mother, it makes no difference. The solace of woman’s flesh

Shredded by pointless death. To hide their murderous exploits experts

Punish the girl. Eurydice bitten into lament. It was her fault.

Her unedited sweetness demanded ending. Aristaeus followed suit.

Loveliness, he believed, must be consumed. The thoughts of a man

(was he really a man?) who caused the death of all his bees.

It was Hermione who told us that when in death Eurydice missed

Only the scent of earth’s flowers, had forgotten her husband’s song. (“FOYER STATES”)

Ongoing notes: mid-September, 2011

I can't believe the move is nearly done. A third-floor walk-up (with a lovely back deck) on McLeod Street, in the middle of Ottawa's Centretown. 

The major part of my move was four + a half days with a group of folk (MASSIVE thanks to Marilyn Irwin, jwcurry, Stephen Brockwell, Gwendolyn Guth, Monty Reid, Roland Prevost, Rod Pederson, Brandon McNally, and Brian + Daleigh for their time, energy and enthusiasm) and my father's truck. Then, Christine's movers came, and another day of move happened. We're still unpacking, but I love our new house. Windows! Can you imagine? I now have windows...

Currently working on a number of things, including the date for the fall ottawa small press book fair (check here for info on that and other fairs around Canada). Don't forget the reading I'm doing on the 17^th as the League of Canadian Poets fundraiser, and the Factory Reading Series event on Sept. 23 at the Carleton Tavern.

And keep an eye on the above/ground press blog. There are some interesting titles coming up over the next little bit, some online reprints of recent and not-so-recent “poem” broadsides, and information on 2012 subscription rates. And the Chaudiere Books Decalogue sale is still happening, until the end of the month. Whatta deal.

It's not easy to move 10,000 books and 6,000 comic books. Sigh.

You wouldn't believe the stuff I've discovered I own (predominantly books), some of which I'd forgotten entirely. I own some very, very cool things.

Ottawa ON: Among his recent Apt. 9 Press items, writer and publisher Cameron Anstee also handed over a copy of his self-published The Turning of Pages Should Not Be Audible (Ottawa ON: St. Andrew Books, 2011), a small chapbook produced “in an unnumbered edition of 20 copies for a reading in the In/Words Reading Series at the Clocktower Brew Pub Ottawa ON 27 July 2011.” I've lost track of the small chapbooks Anstee has published over the past few years, but notice that with each one he produces, the poems have quietly deepened, and matured.

the known world ordered into file folders

catalogued and possessed until you arrive with your questions

account for ruining paper, the implicated bibliography,

the love of a thing without tangible application

solemnly, I sign a paper promising best behaviour

while I live, briefly, in the archive

Most of what I've seen of Anstee's poetry has focused on the meditative sequence, poems that accumulate into larger purpose. With its title “drawn from a pamphlet distributed at the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library (University of Toronto) regarding the correct handling of manuscript collections,” Anstee's The Turning of Pages Should Not Be Audible is a thirteen-part sequence written as a poem directly to his partner, Jenn, with some sections composed as letters, and even straight apology, it seems, for the time spent in the office producing books. How does one balance life, love and production?

dear Jenn,

here the final sites for ruin when the weather turns dry

hostas, you say

because this place is mostly shade

if the street cats stay out of the plot

they should be fine next summer

new grass steeps in the dirt

Melbourne, AUS: I'm intrigued by the narrative collisions in Australian poet Michael Farrell's chapbook thempark (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2010). This is something Phil Hall mailed me a few months back, but now, finally moved, I have a chance to start going through it.

brown bookmarks arent an excuse, nor are art jots.

we drive the attendant away with pens. you were at the market.

how often i have thought of you showering,

picking on people, on weekends –

& your partner? is she finally over your moodswings?

there is no homosexual milieu that i know of,

so im a parasite, like in line of beauty.

fitzroy has called at last.

we had to disobey all the signs,

as patriotic as stopping for commonwealthy drunks,

& teenage creeps that touch their blurry others.

so i thought youd like to guess,

from beneath your chemical peel, safe.

the others someone you dont know,

i hate questions except about the country. (“news from the erstwhile”)

According to his bio at the back of the collection, Farrell is the author of the trade collections ode ode (Salt), a raiders guide (Giramondo) and BREAK ME OUCH (3 Deep). The poems in this small collection slip through and against culture, politics and the world, and back into language. After reading through this small collection of poems, I wonder what Farrell might think of the work of Vancouver poet Jeff Derksen?

to be less out there than this,

muppets who dont get to kiss, loaded, racking up timeshares

the metre running for joy.

plenty people broke their necks back then, & doctors werent just

000 away, ernie pockets one of berts

objets dart wishing his pockets bigger, better.

an ipod world, everyones got old favourites even if

they werent born when recorded, & cable golddigger

films structure all ernies thought,

he cant take his grin off. (“tit for tat”)