myself and Mark Goldstein, Wellington Street West, Ottawa

That nice Mark Goldstein was in town on Sunday for the sake of a reading at The Dusty Owl Reading Series. Pearl Pirie took this photo as we walked to dinner, reminiscent (as Phil Hall said at the time) this photo of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson (along with Ruth Witt-Diament) at San Francisco State University in 1958 (see Ron Silliman's post with same photo here).

new from above/ground press: Christine McNair and rob mclennan collaborative chapbook launch,

Christine McNair and I launch our above/ground press chapbook, Prelude: selections from a collaboration (2012) this coming Sunday, as part of their joint reading at Ottawa's Dusty Owl Reading Series. Might we see you there?

See here for the piece I wrote on our collaboration-in-progress.

For information on the chapbook, including ordering information, check the above/ground press link, here.

Christine McNair and rob mclennan at The Dusty Owl Reading Series, July 15, 2012: the pre-wedding reading!

The pre-wedding reading!


Christine McNair and rob mclennan read together at The Dusty Owl Reading Series on Sunday, July 15, 2012, 3:00 PM, at their regular, monthly home at The Elmdale House, 1084 Wellington St. W, Ottawa.


The Dusty Owl Reading Series includes an open set and featured reader(s). Free admission.

Christine McNair has been published in Descant, CV2, Prairie Fire, Arc, ditchpoetry.com, Poetry is Dead, ottawater, the Bywords Quarterly Journal, and sundry other places. She won second prize (poetry) in the Atlantic Canadian Writing Competition, an honourable mention in the Eden Mills Literary Competition and was shortlisted for the 2011 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her first book, Conflict, appeared with BookThug in May, 2012, and a chapbook, Notes from a cartywheel, appeared in 2011 with AngelHousePress. She works as a book doctor in Ottawa.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections Songs for little sleep, (Obvious Epiphanies, 2012), grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2012), A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011) and kate street (Moira, 2011), and a second novel, missing persons (2009), as well as the travel volume, Ottawa: The Unknown City (2008). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Christine and rob will each be reading individual sets, and then a combined set, premiering a collaborative work-in-progress manuscript of poems. And don't forget the SOCIAL on June 21!

http://halvard-johnson.blogspot.com/2011/11/photo-of-christine-by-rob-photo-of-rob.html

http://www.openbookontario.com/news/sainte_ad%C3%A8le_redux

http://southerlyjournal.com.au/2011/11/28/collaboration-best-with-a-little-stir/

[rob and Christine also read in St. Catharine's on June 15]

Dusty Owl Reading Series Coordinator:
Steven Zytveld (613) 230-7710

Media Coordinator:
Catherine MacDonald-Zytveld (613)-230-7710
or media@dustyowl.com

http://www.dustyowl.com/

THE DUSTY OWL FAMILY REUNION! May 22, 2011;

The Dusty Owl Family Reunion
lovingly hosted by Steve "Dusty Owl" Zytveld

Sunday, May 22, 2011
2pm-5pm
The Elmdale House Tavern
1084 Wellington Street West

Time flies when you’re having fun. Way back in the 90’s we started this little poetry reading series at Café Wim. And here we are 15 years later.

On Sunday, May 22nd The Dusty Owl Reading Series will be celebrating its 15th anniversary. It’s a little thing we’re calling our Family Reunion, featuring many of the people who have graced our various stages over the years. Poets, slam artists, and musicians… oh my!

readings by:
Monty Reid, poet
Jessica Ruano, spoken word poet
rob mclennan, writer
Mary Lee Bragg, novelist
Kate Hunt, writer
Gary Dimmock, investigative reporter
Rob Friday, poet
Jim Larwill, poet
Sandra Ridley, poet
Greg 'Ritalin' Frankson, spoken word poet
Christine McNair, poet
Phil Jenkins, historian
Copper Conundrum (Kevin, Mathews, Rusty Prisk, Danielle Gregoire), spoken word troup

+ music by Phil Jenkins

The Dusty Owl Reading Series
2pm with featured performer(s) and open stage by 3;
...Admission is free. Donations will be lovingly accepted.

For more information please contact: Steve Zytveld and/or Catherine MacDonald-Zytveld, Reading Series Coordinator + Media Coordinator Tel: (613) 230-7710

The Dusty Owl Reading Series: May 8 (Brown, Lavery + Zytveld)

The Dusty Owl Reading Series

Sunday, May 8, 2011

at The Carleton Tavern, 5pm

featuring Ottawa poet Ronnie R. Brown

with a musical set by John Lavery

+ Phillip Victor Bova

and the triumphant return of Steve "Dusty Owl" Zytveld!

Ottawa writer, Ronnie R. Brown, holds a B.A. and M.A. from Concordia University, where she received both the Board of Governors' Medal and Graduate Students' Prize for poetry. Brown has also has taught at both Concordia and Carleton Universities.

Widely published in magazines and anthologies in Canada and abroad., a staged adaptation of her work, ON FALLING BODIES, was presented at the Atelier of Ottawa's NAC. The producer/host of radio programs for both Ottawa University radio stations, Brown also produced and co-hosted SPARKS II (CHEZ 106 FM) for almost a decade.

Short-listed three times for the CBC Literary awards, her work has been recognized by numerous literary competitions including the Ray Burrell Award; The Leacock Poetry Award and The Acorn-Livesay Anthology Award. Brown's fifth collection, NIGHT ECHOES (Black Moss, 2006), was short-listed for the Acorn-Plantos Peoples' Poetry Award, a prize her fourth collection, STATES OF MATTER (Black Moss, 2005) won.

Released in late 2010, ROCKING ON THE EDGE (Black Moss Press) is Brown's sixth collection of poetry. In this collection, Brown's trade-mark style of micro-fictional poetry, focuses in on people on the edge. Zeroing in on the oft-neglected "blue collar" world, these poems combine to offer the reader a dark ride. More raw and direct than ever before, these pieces are particularly relevant in today's edgy world and Brown's presentation (which merges the best of page and stage poetry) will, indeed, "rock you."

And our very own Steve Zytveld, finally finished his school term, will be around to host; come celebrate the successful completion of another school year with old Dusty Steve;

The Dusty Owl Reading Series

5pm with featured performer(s) and open stage by 6;
Admission is free. Donations will be lovingly accepted.

For more information please contact: Steve Zytveld and/or Catherine
MacDonald-Zytveld, Reading Series Coordinator + Media Coordinator
Tel: (613) 230-7710

E-mail: steve@dustyowl.com E-mail: media@dustyowl.com

The Dusty Owl Reading Series: April 3 + 17

The Dusty Owl Reading Series – New Poetry, New Music, New Culture, New Possibilities

www.dustyowl.com

and note temporary venue change; the readings are currently being held at The Carleton Tavern,

233 Armstrong (at Parkdale), upstairs;

3 April – Gabriella Goliger & Blaine Marchand

Gabriella Goliger’s widely acclaimed new novel, Girl Unwrapped, is a coming-of-age story set in 1960s Montreal. It tells of Toni Goldblatt's awakening to taboo desire, which conflicts with the expectations of her Holocaust-scarred parents and with the conservative mores of her times. Goliger's first book, Song of Ascent, won the 2001 Upper Canada Writer's Craft Award. She was co-winner of the 1997 Journey Prize for short fiction, was a finalist for this prize in 1995 and won the Prism International award in 1993. She has also been published in a number of journals and anthologies including Best New American Voices 2000 and Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada.

Her educational credentials include a B.A. from McGill University and an M.A. in English literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in Italy, Gabriella grew up in Montreal and has also lived in Israel, the Eastern Arctic, Victoria, B.C. and Ottawa, Ontario, her home for the past 30 years.

The author of eight books, six of which are poetry, Blaine Marchand’s most recent books are Aperature (poems, prose and photos of Afghanistan, 2008), and The Craving of Knives (2009). A young adult novel, African Adventure (translated as Aventure africaine) was published in 1990. His work  has been published in Canadian and American literary journals. He was co-founder of Sparks, Anthos, Ottawa Independent Writers and the Ottawa Valley Book Festival. He was President of the League of Canadian Poets, 1992-94. He is working on a new manuscript of short stories (entitled Nomads), a series of poetry and on a work drawing upon his journal entries while living in Islamabad, Pakistan (August 2008-2010).

As part of Steve Zytveld's spring term at school, this event will be lovingly guest-hosted by Christine McNair;

17 April – David Groulx

David Groulx was raised in the Northern Ontario mining community of Elliot Lake. He is proud of his Native roots – his mother is Ojibwe Indian and his father French Canadian.  David studied creative writing at the En’owkin Centre, Penticton, B.C. in ’98-99, where he won the Simon J Lucas Jr. Memorial Award for poetry. He has written two poetry books – Night in the Exude (Tyro Publications, 1997); and The Long Dance (Kegedonce Press, 2000). Under god’s pale bones (Kegedonce Press, 2010), Until The Bullets Rose is due out 2011 (Wosak & Wynn). David’s poetry has appeared in over a 100 periodicals in England, Australia, Germany, and the USA. He lives in a log home near Ottawa.                        

As part of Steve Zytveld's spring term at school, this event will be lovingly guest-hosted by rob mclennan;

Watch for upcoming readings by Michael Blouin and Ronnie Brown, and the Dusty Owl fifteenth anniversary "family reunion" at the Elmdale Tavern, May 22nd!

The Dusty Owl Reading Series; 5pm with featured performer(s) and open stage by 6; Admission is free. Donations will be lovingly accepted.

For more information please contact: Steve Zytveld and/or Catherine MacDonald-Zytveld, Reading Series Coordinator + Media Coordinator Tel: (613) 230-7710

E-mail: steve@dustyowl.com E-mail: media@dustyowl.com

VERSeFest, Ottawa’s first annual poetry festival

Ottawa recently celebrated VERSeFest [photo of our own John W. MacDonald, super-photographer], organized as Ottawa’s newest annual poetry festival. Headed by Rod Pederson, David O’Meara, Jessica Ruano, Kevin Matthews and Monty Reid, the festival managed to corral fourteen of the city’s reading series into a spectacular collage of events at the Arts Court, from participating hosts Plan 99, The TREE Reading Series, Dusty Owl, Capital Slam, The AB Series, Voices of Venus, The Factory Reading Series, In/Words, blUe mOnday Reading Series, Urban Legends, the Sasquatch Reading Series, Oneness Poetry Collective, KaDo Haiku and the Ottawa Youth Poetry Slam. What became quickly apparent was in how the side-by-side events were managing audience crossovers between what has unfortunately been labeled “page” and “stage” poets (designations I find problematic, but at least understand for the sake of clarity, to talk about the chasm between groups).

One of the features of the festival was in how it managed so very well to highlight many writers in the local Ottawa community, while also bringing in talented outsiders, including John Akpata, Richard Greene, Amanda Earl, Steven Ross Smith, David McGimpsey, Chris Turnbull, Ian Keteku, Craig Poile, Sandra Ridley, Christine McNair, Brad Morden, Beth Anne Fischer, Barry Dempster, D-LightFul, Sense-Say, Michael Dennis, Ben Ladouceur, Danielle K.L. Gregoire, Karen Solie, jwcurry and singer-songwriters Mike Dubue and Megan Jerome.

What will be interesting will be in seeing just what happens next, if all the reading series in the city manage, through the increased publicity and attention, more audience across the board, or if it simply falls back to where it was before, post-fest. What will be interesting to see will be how the festival develops, over the next couple of years. Anyone interested in readings in Ottawa generally should just check out the Bywords site, which lists everything literary, festivals and otherwise.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it out to much (other postings exist for various events from VERSeFest, including those by Amanda Earl, Pearl Pirie, John W. MacDonald, Kate Hunt and Charles Earl), but here are some notes I scribbled down during some of what I did catch.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Ottawa poets Christine McNair and Sandra Ridley read as part of the blUe mOnday Reading Series, hosted and organized by Aaron Kozak and Sean Moreland. McNair, the author of the self-published chapbook Evidence (cartywheel press, 2010) is author of “Conflict,” one of nine manuscripts recently shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, now forthcoming in spring 2012 with BookThug. Ridley, on the other hand, is author of the acclaimed poetry collection Fallout (Hagios, 2009), the chapbook Rest Cure (Apt. 9, 2010), co-winner of the 2009 bpNichol Chapbook Award for her Lift: Ghazals for C. (Jackpine, 2008) and author of the forthcoming Post-Apothecary (Pedlar Press). 

Interestingly enough, a collaborative manuscript Ridley wrote with another Ottawa poet, Amanda Earl, was also on the Kroetsch Award shortlist (a further Ottawa poet, Pearl Pirie, actually won), meaning that Ottawa women poets made up a third of an impressive shortlist.

Following an open set that seemed (unfortunately) to drag on a bit long (especially after a previous event featuring many of the same performers), Christine McNair and Sandra Ridley each read a set of recent writing, both taking turns stepping up into the other’s set for a poem for two voices. McNair’s work over the past few years, between this and her recent Voices of Venus event, bounces furiously along with clear, hummingbird intensity, and include a quiet, sly and subversive humour, bouncing language at the speed of light, the speed of sound.

sweetness

a dolce tiramisu cut into shreds

reshaped into threats

the trauma of being everywhere

and nowhere all at once

‘even when we are quite alone’

‘we recognise the same influence’

‘a man cannot prevent past impressions’

a desolation of cupcakes and sherry

my ears melt into pads of cotton

wool fear a seed stitch picked off hems

icing sugar caulks broke tile dusts

breast petals falls in drifts

For Sandra Ridley, her lines extend like horizon lines, furthering even longer than the endings, and slowly edge their way so far you manage to lose yourself, completely, asking, how exactly did we get here? I’ve long been a fan of Ridley’s long prairie breaths, long prairie lines, but so much of her reading was obscured by a muddy sound system, and I was occasionally lost in her poems’ horizons. How did I get here? After seeing fragments of her forthcoming second poetry collection for months now, I am very interested in seeing the shape of the entire second manuscript.

Friday, March 11, 2011

It became striking to note that The Factory Reading Series has existed back to January, 1992, when I began to organize readings in the Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton, some nineteen years ago. How do things manage to exist for so long? Striking, or perhaps even terrifying. What previously was called Poetry 101 (for a time), what before that didn’t even have a name, with events going back through The Ottawa Art Gallery, The Carleton Tavern, Gallery 101 (two locations), The Mercury Lounge, Mother Tongue Books, Collected Works and the Stone Angel. I’m sure there are some other locations I’m just not remembering right now. Nineteen years is a long, long time.

For this event, I thought it would be more interesting for poets familiar to Ottawa audiences to give a series of talks, to extend what we already know of their works. Marcus McCann, formerly of Ottawa but now living in Toronto, presented his “No Permission: Why Poets Don’t (and Shouldn’t) Ask Nice,” followed by Ottawa poet Monty Reid’s “How Come Inger Isn’t Here?” And perhaps this will be my annual contribution to the festival, featuring two writers talking about writing, featuring one local and another from further away. Both pieces are scheduled to appear online this fall in the fourth issue of the online journal seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics.

Marcus McCann, formerly of Ottawa but spending most of his time these days in Toronto talked on permissions, referencing writing such as flarf and plunder, asking, is citation necessary? Is permission? And how far do these “borrowings” extend before legalities emerge? His talk gave the most interesting post-lecture discussion, heading off in all sorts of directions including Canadian copyright law, and just what exactly qualifies as “theft.”

Monty Reid’s talk began with absence, suggesting that The Odyssey and The Iliad were both stories about absence (which others have referred to as stories about home, about the return, about the entire journey being one of return instead of leaving). As he said, we predominantly write and talk about what is not actually there, not here. Poems of leaving, poems of loss, poems even of heartbreak. He ended the piece by talking about three poets who were also not “here,” reading at the festival. VERSeFest aims to be international in scope, which is a worthy goal, but not always easy for the first year, for the sake of organizing and funding, but one of the poets he mentioned “not here” was Inger Christensen, a Danish poet not at VERSeFest in part because she had died in January 2009. Here’s a poem from her Butterfly Valley (original title: Sommerfugledalen, trans. Susanna Nied; Dedalus, Poetry Europe Series No. 9, 2001). There were two other poets he mentioned, very much alive, but of course I can’t remember their names. Why is Inger not here?

VI

Delusion for the universe’s fool

is the belief that other worlds exist

that there are gods who bellow and roar

and call us random tosses of the dice;

just remind me of a summer day in Skagen

when arctic blues, in their mating flight,

fluttered about all day like bits of sky

with echoes of the blue from Jammerbugten,

while we, who lay lost in hills of sand,

as numerous as only two can be,

allowed our bodies’ elements to blend

with earth as fusion of sky and sea,

two people who bequeathed to one another

a life that does not die like anything.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Originally Ottawa’s TREE Reading Series (considered the third-longest continuing reading series in Canada, alongside Harbourfront and Montreal’s Yellow Door) had planned to host three poets instead of two, but David Seymour, body-double for actor Russell Crowe, got caught up in a film shoot in Sault Ste. Marie. How strange is that, and have there ever been poems emerge from his time spent doubling? I’m intrigued by this.

Otherwise, TREE hosted Cobourg, Ontario poet Richard Greene, Governor-General’s Award for Poetry 2010 winner for his Boxing the Compass (Signal/Vehicule Press, 2010). Having already gone through part of his book, I knew it wasn’t going to appeal, stylistically, yet I found him a charming performer, reading excerpts of a longer, more narrative poem about his Greyhound travels through the United States, there for the sake of editorial/archival work on the (unrelated to him) writer, Graeme Greene.

I’ve heard Toronto poet Karen Solie perform a number of times over the past decade or more, and there’s just something about her soft, subtle and smart explorations that are getting stronger as she continues, with an undertone of wry humour that comes through far stronger through performance. I think I’ve heard her read from her mega-award-winning Pigeon (Anansi, 2009) at least three or four times now [see my report of the Griffin Prize reading here; see my review of her book here], so I could imagine that she’s possibly wearing on the collection, and her reading included a small selection of newer poems (one exists in the festival-specific issue of The Peter F. Yacht Club) which were quite magnificent. How could anyone else manage a love poem about rental cars, or is it really a love poem? (It probably is.)

Sunday, March 13, 2011

One of the last events was The Dusty Owl Reading Series, featuring Ottawa poet, publisher, performer, bookseller and archivist jwcurry. Steve Zytveld and Cathy Zytveld-MacDonald have been running their Dusty Owl Reading Series (with a slight break in the mid-1990s) for fifteen years now, which is an impressive amount of time. They’re even working up to an anniversary party, if you can believe it, in May at the Elmdale Tavern, which I am very much looking forward to.

Given his recent major performances in multi-vocal sound works, it was an interesting counterpoint to hear jwcurry feature his reading on a series of straighter texts, starting with a fragment of his correspondence with British writer and music critic Ben Watson, known for his extensive work on the late Frank Zappa (a curry favourite, alongside bpNichol), including the seminal Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play (1995). I’ve always wondered, when will someone attempt a Ph.D. on the collusions between bpNichol and Frank Zappa, as seen through the critical lens of jwcurry? I’m just disappointed that curry himself can’t work the project, given the sheer amount of other works he keeps adding to. Once the suggestion between the two is made, the connections almost begin to make themselves.

The excerpt of curry’s correspondence with Watson explored considerations of fatherhood and children, Frank Zappa’s music, postmodernism and the avant-garde. Given his less-than-usual productivity as a publisher over the past year or three, there are those of us clamouring less for more of his critical writings (or even a collection of some of his criticism) for the sake of simply wishing for more of what he used to make regularly, from the 1cents to chapbooks to newsnotes [see my review of a recent issue here]. Where have all the 1cents gone?

The highlight certainly came at the end, when curry’s infamous LAND IS DOWN piece was performed as a work in two voices with Alastair Larwill, one of the group that participated in curry’s most recent Messagio Galore [see my report here].