Ongoing notes: late February, 2026: Roberto Harrison, Abigail Garrison + Hugh Thomas,

By now you’ve heard that VERSeFest is coming up in a few weeks, yes? And hosting poetry workshops with Calgary poet Sheri-D Wilson and Toronto poet Paul Vermeersch! Spaces are still available! You should sign up to those. And did you hear I’ve a new poetry collection out later this spring?

MI/Kingston NY: From Milwaukee poet and editor Roberto Harrison (and the first publication of his I’ve seen) comes Posthuman Native: The Orchid (Kingston NY: Spiral Editions, 2025), an assemblage of poems each composed with lines that accumulate, stacked like cord wood. “a stretch of the body / ghosts matter in the light / of the shadows,” begins the poem “end mark for recursion,” “we / signal the afternoon / without a place to be outright / we make noise in the river / wood is out everywhere / in stacks of keys.” Through a heft of lyric, Harrison ebbs and flows through the query: what does it mean to be post-human? There’s a pacing, rhythm to these pieces that reads pulsed, almost unrelenting; a collage of layered lines that really shine across the lyric. And in the centre of the collection, eight full-colour collages that burst through. Each poem is thick, both in density and size, each of the eighteen poems assembled here far too large to large to include here (although there is a shorter one in Spanish, which does intrigue). There’s an urgency to Harrison’s poems, one fueled by a fierce intelligence and ongoing meditation on who we are and have become, and where, instead, we should be. We should, we could, be so much better. As the first half of the poem “patterns speaking,” reads:

what has made me move
to allow the streams to feel like blood
flown for the birds, for the hummingbird
night? my bodies stand to allow
discussion of the number, my bodies
remain outside in the afterimage
of darkness, when I speak, there is
another to stand within, there is another
to remain outside in the water. of all
the above ground monuments, I do not
have a single white flag for surrender, I
do not know what the symbol is to return
again, to the faltering display of human
arrogance, my revolver does not turn
and I do not become like the river
that we know. I do not become
like the fine gold that another planet
makes us move around in, in the exception
to winter I become again what I am not.

America, somewhere: A further title produced by b l u s h produced “in an undisclosed number of copies) in their “illicit zines” series is FUGUE (summer 2025) by Abigail Garrison, an individual described online as “a poet and artist living in Mexico City.” FUGUE is composed as a sequence of fifteen numbered short bursts of first-person molologue/meditation, slowly moving and stretching across and within a particular held moment. “the barrel forms / a perfect circle” Garrison writes, to open poem “vii,” “pacing back / the quest / crossing the / fragrant / churchyard / I go / uphill / uphill / desert clouds / buffer in / fabulous / mirage rippling / distant / like the sea [.]” There is a distance the poem, the narrator and narration, reaches for, but one that can’t ever be reached, purposefully stretching to see what might lay behind the horizon of the next moment. The lyric holds pause, slow and deliberate, even purposeful, in its meandering. Or, as the first poem in the sequence reads:

uninspired except for
objects I keep
candlesticks
linen sheets
silver rings
in a dish
in a dish
memory cards
moonstone
a desert wind blows across
my field of vision
tousled
night after night
I come to town
in red silk shorts

Cobourg ON/Montreal QC: From perennial favourite Hugh Thomas comes the new translation They Want to Steal My Name by Henri Michaux (Cobourg ON: Proper Tales Press, 2025). For some years now, Montreal-based Thomas has been working translations of poems from languages he doesn’t read or understand, utilizing the source material as a kind of jumping-off point into something entirely new and original, playing a surrealism of mistranslated poems across a small array of chapbooks (including some through above/ground). Although, given how long Thomas has lived in Montreal, this does read a straighter (relatively) series of translations, offering a new line of thinking across work already working a surrealism by the late Henri Michaux (1899-1984), a writer, poet, and visual artist of Belgian origin who lived much of his adult life in Paris. The poems here have the flavour of certain titles produced over the years by La Presse (a press I haven’t heard of in some time, are they even still around?). The poems are built with a prose structure but lyric line, one infused with a curious blend of elements, both straight and surreal simultaneously (with shades of Stuart Ross, also). I would hope that Thomas continues on this particular trajectory, I would love to see these pieces find a home in a full collection.

They want to steal my name

As I was shaving this morning, stretching out and lifting my lips a little to get a tauter surface, affording a good resistance to the razor, what do I see? Three gold teeth! I, who have never been to the dentist!

Ha! Ha!

And why?

Why? To make me doubt myself, and then to take my name of Barnabas from me. Oh, they’re pulling hard on the other side, they’re pulling and pulling.

But I am also ready, and I hang on to it. “Barnabas,” “Barnabas,” I say, softly but firmly, and on their side, all their efforts are reduced to nothing.

Ongoing notes: early January, 2026: Jed Munson, Nick Hedtke + Leilei Chen,

New year, new beginnings. Our small one changed her hair, for example. She now has bangs. I think she looks like Betty from the Archie Comics, or, as spouse suggests, Tina Yothers’ character from those early days of Family Ties (1982-1989). Whatever happens, Aoife is ready to face the day.

Behind on my chapbook reviewing (as I am behind on all things—behind on more things than can be dreamed of, in your philosophy), so attempting to catch up a bit, here.

Brooklyn NY: I hadn’t heard anything from or by American poet Jed Munson since producing a chapbook of theirs a couple of years back, so it was good to get my hands on Vision Sans Seraphim (Brooklyn NY: Beautiful Days Press, 2025), produced as “Beautiful Days Press #11,” although there have apparently been some other titles I’ve missed as well, including the prose collection Commentary on the Birds (Rescue Press, 2023), and chapbooks Portrait with Parkinson’s (Oxeye Press, 2023) and Minesweeper (New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM, 2023), as well as his prior chapbook, Newsflash Under Fire, Over the Shoulder (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021). Clearly I am quite behind.

O, I heard the choir’s
          down
a voice again
a visa

bounced
or the voice stopped wanting to 

dream this dream. The pews are filled
with benchwarmers, O 

it’s easy
to go out as a heat
            into any old wind (“Centers”)

Composing an exploratory lyric across love, interiority and elements of faith, Vision San Seraphim is a collection set as three sections, each titled “O”—the first two as clusters of extended lyrics, and closing with the title poem. Munson’s poems are stretched, fragmented and gestural, as each poem-section, as most poems or poem-fragments begin with a gesture, an aside, perhaps, that opening “O.” “O, I don’t know this instrument,” the opening poem, “Centers,” begins, “but I’ve been playing it all morning.” There’s such lovely pacing on these pages, in these lines, one that I wouldn’t mind hearing read/performed, how the gestures of the lyric are clearly set on each page. “O I’m no Lazarus. // I’m just kicking // severed fish tails into / the rails just trying to // slip one through the rails [.]”

America, somewhere: I’m intrigued by Nick Hedtke’s chapbook, THE YEARS, produced “in an undisclosed number of copies” by b l u s h in summer 2025, as part of their “i l l i c i t  z i n e s” series. Beyond the fact that author and publisher both reside in the United States, I can’t seem to find anything any more specific than that, which is fine enough, sure. These thirteen poems are interesting for their pacing, their purposeful movement, offering point, point and then point. With titles including “Recurring Themes,” “John Invents Black & Blue,” “Learning to Fly,” “Album of the Year” and “The Frontier Period,” there’s an intriguing element of how Hedtke utilizes these titles as umbrellas or tethers, providing a kind of anchor across the narrative of each piece, some of which he is also completely allowed to ignore. “the music is fading // but still inspiring,” the poem “Blood Fest 2009” writes, “the way we move // these night moves [.]” Or the poem “Animal Sounds,” that begins: “people were asking if I was okay // that’s the power of blood // I used to have long hair // that’s the feeling of sadness // under a camouflage tent [.]” Hedtke’s directions are both straightforward and slightly curved, providing an almost-surrealism, or even a hint of something else, other. There’s so much else composed in the spaces around these short lines.

American Awesome

I had classic experiences 

my shirt off in bed

hanging off the bed a little bit 

if you put every painting on earth side by side

that would be cool 

like loving an animal in the woods you’ll never see

maximum heart

like a brand-new color

Edmonton AB: One of the latest titles by relatively new Edmonton chapbook publisher Agatha Press is Edmonton poet, translator and professor Leilei Chen’s latest, i give birth to my body (2025), a gracefully-produced title in an edition of one hundred copies. As the author’s foreword begins: “the verses here are the traces of a creative mind, of a chronically ailing body exacerbated by long covid. brain fog. fatigue. palpitation. headache. depression. for one day they’re part of me like a conjoined twin. for another they hit hard like a storm in deep mountains. poetry hums and sings. it comes and stays. spontaneously. i feel its healing power, my heart big with gratitude.” The poems here are concise, working slowly and purposefully through a way to reclaim agency. “this rejuvenating form breaks / free from shackles to save its warm heart,” the title poem closes, “to learn the baby steps of walk / with light strides and a tall spine / striving one day to stand on a cloud / a sailing boat on blue water [.]” Chen’s poems are delicate, finely-honed, moving carefully into and across a territory of reclaiming space, some of which hold elements of the moment, the koan, with other stretches pushing at the boundaries of possibility. These are poems that both take and hold time.

different reactions

trauma is common
our reactions are different 

some hide in the cave and turn dark
pity themselves and resent the world 

some learn its workings and grow wise
create poetry and inspire others

Ongoing notes: late January, 2020: Machado, Tyc

Don’t forget that the spring edition of the ottawa small press book fair has been scheduled for June 27th! The best of the small press in Ottawa, twice a year since 1994!

Charlottesville VA: Aditi Machado’s latest is the chapbook-length poem Rhapsody (2020), beautifully produced by hand by Brian Teare’s Albion Books, as the second title in series seven. Currently the Visiting Poet-in-Residence at Washington University in Saint Louis, Machado [see her ’12 or 20 questions’ interview here] is the author of the poetry collections Some Beheadings (Nightboat Books, 2017) [see my review of such here] and the forthcoming Emporium (Nightboat Books, 2020), as well as a translation from the French of Farid Tali’s novella Prosopopoeia (Action Books, 2016).

Let us exercise our vocal cords.

Let us draw them out

limbs.

Let us say there is always a longer or shorter

tress, always congruities, blissful, bitter

rhythms, sprung onions splitting, violins in

harmony that is harmonic, chaos that is chaotic,

in sense that is sensible, in here it inheres, out there

rapid rabbits. Let us labor under these notions

as under the cantus planus factory whine.

Let us stumble around, humming, stumbling, humming.

Then something in the shape of leaves,

something in the touching of ‘red.’

The poem Rhapsody explores a wonderfully playful, thoughtful and sing-song meditation on flora, fauna, myths and ordinary speech through the lyric, and the lyric fragment, in a way she describes certain poems from her debut collection in “A conversation between  poet-grammarians” with Serena Chopra published at Jacket2: “the subject feeling itself out in language.” What I have been enjoying about this small poem, this small collection, is exactly that: how she slowly draws out her thoughts, and her sentences, one thought immediately following another. At times, she moves in different directions, but ever forward, as she writes: “Some systems proffer / all vowels alliterate and in all / prose a prosody.” The effect is stunning. Machado’s canvas is large, and complex, and I could easily see this as part of a larger book-length structure, whether set within the context of other poems, or, itself, as a book-length “Rhapsody.”

Brooklyn NY: Lately I’ve been going through two different titles by Brooklyn, New York poet and artist Cat Tyc, her CONSUMES ME (Brooklyn NY: Belladonna*, 2017), produced as #222 in the Belladonna* Chaplet Series, and I Am Because My Little Dog Knows Me (b l u s h, November 2019). I’m fascinated by Tyc’s sweeps of lyric prose, existing somewhere in an odd space between fiction and poetry, documentary and memoir. Unlike Machado, Tyc’s narrative sweeps aren’t propelled via the intricately-linked fragment but an extended rush of accumulated sentences.

That word, imagination, always connects me to the naïve, so I think this is why my first draft of an animal came out kind of cartoonish. Like a street artist drawing at a tourist attraction.

I imagined a cat of human size wearing a button down shirt, gingham, and khaki pants. A belt and the shirt tucked in like a very old man.

So, that is exactly who I meet when I finish climbing down the hole but we both know that it is not right. He is not the animal I am looking for.

He tells me, “I am only a figment of your imagination.” Then looks down at himself, shrugs and said, “Not bad.”

Then he led me down a hallway where behind every corner was a dog.

Every dog I ever cared for when I used to work as a dog walker.

And then there is the door at the end of the corridor and I know before I open it that I will see my dog, Thurston.

But this feels too obvious. (I Am Because My Little Dog Knows Me)