Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part four,

[some of the above/ground press spread]

Here’s another batch of items I picked up at the most recent ottawa small press book fair [see part three of this list here; see the most recent list from Toronto’s Meet the Presses]; these lists sure are giving the impression that the small press in Canada is pretty darned healthy and active these days, don’t you think? Why not support one or two of these presses by picking up some publications? Yes. I think that’s the best idea here.

Ottawa ON: I was quite humbled to realize that Pearl Pirie had been working on a plunder of my own works as a manuscript of poems, resulting in the small chapbook rob, plunder, gift (battleaxe press, 2018). As she read from such as part of the pre-ottawa small press book fair event, it was very strange hearing lines I recognized from my own multiple poems (even if I couldn’t place them or their context, necessarily), some going back more years than I care to count.

The old excesses

do you know what horizons hold?

a capacity to hold, hold

could you even see the smoke, imagine

bringing smallpox in blankets & jars

I stand here in past tense

blood rises up from the warm earth & smells

of coincidence, & hey, you too.     blocks

in a caretaker’s grid

& shallow certainties; abrasive noise

I emerge from each breath

pressing keyholes w/ glow-sticks

penetrate the interior

like alien dust

through a river

The effect really is curious, as Pirie composes new poems out of the bones of my own fragments, creating both new poems and a strange kind of collaboration between our words and effects. Still, what really impresses is the extensive list of sources at the back of the collection, seemingly as long as the manuscript itself, and will provide some potential graduate student weeks of entertainment through searching and comparing. Oddly enough, seeing elements of my own words and phrases through her lens provides a fresh perspective upon her own work, and her own approaches, as she herself has developed her own twists, pivots and turns over the past fifteen or so years I’ve been attentive to her writing. As Pirie writes in her notes at the end of the collection:

I’ve read rob mclennan poems with bafflement and then increasing absorption and admiration since the early 90s.

Each poem is a sort of mandala, or twist of the kaleidoscope of context. It is a chance to see again how he pivots, deflects, dives. The poem can enter itself, open-endedly and see where it goes. It doesn’t rely on a papercut of profundity as the kicker of the page.

These poems make centos out of 25 years of his poems between 1993 and 2018. It was rather like corpus work, and a make-your-own-mystery at line and phrase level.

Over the making of these poems, from 59 poem sources, it’s been fascinating to re-read how linear relaying of anecdotes transformed into post-lyrical, non-narrative impressionism that better reflect his worldview of there not being a singular point of view, there not being a need for precious subjects, but a need to see others, listen, watch.

His model of write through — the good, the bad, the neutral, the comic and the undecided — has become a backbone of some of my wiggling movement forward.

Ottawa ON: Cameron Anstee hasn’t been producing as many chapbooks lately through his Apt. 9 Press, but at least he did produce a very graceful item of two poems: constellations, by jesslyn delia smith / Amour de soi, by Jeff Blackman. Produced in a numbered edition of eighty copies, this item isn’t even mentioned on the Apt. 9 Press website yet, so that shows how busy he’s been lately. While we are hoping he returns to producing chapbooks, this small item is quite lovely, allowing for an attention to a single poem each by two Ottawa poets that Anstee has been championing for some time [both have published titles with Apt. 9 Press, and both are also included in the Apt. 9 Press five-poet anthology Five]. “I have this great thought I think but I am on the go,” Blackman’s short poem begins, pushing for a kind of slow attention against his rushed thought that fights against silence. smith’s poem is quieter, writing out her own variation on silence, as the second half of her short piece reads:

a signal, a blip

no one sees

you leave me without

causing harm

i’m there as you found me

an address, a number

a name

OTTAWA LIT: FALL 2014 PREVIEW

My piece on fall 2014 Ottawa lit, in which I took recommendations from and for Frances Boyle, Jesslyn Delia Smith, Cameron Anstee, Deanna Young, Sandra Ridley, Phil Hall, Chris Johnson, Anita Dolman, James K. Moran, Kate Heartfield, Monty Reid, Amanda Earl, Roland Prevost and a bunch of others, is now posted over at Open Book: Ontario.

Profile of In/Words magazine, press + reading series: Open Book

My profile of Ottawa's In/Words, the umbrella for the journal, press and reading series, is now online at Open Book: Ontario.

12 or 20 questions (second series) with jesslyn delia smith

jesslyn delia smith is a recent Carleton graduate living and writing in Ottawa, and has had three chapbooks published through Carleton’s In/Words Magazine & Press. her poetry and prose can be found on her blog, www.jesslyndelia.com, which is updated frequently. feedback at jesslyn.delia@gmail.com or www.twitter.com/jesslyndelia.

1 - How did your first chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

my first chapbook was edited and published by Cameron Anstee and In/Words when i was in my second year at Carleton. the chance to have Cameron help me with that first chapbook gave me a boost of confidence to continue to publish with In/Words/at all. i find that my more recently published poems reflect the growth in my writing since that time, but the structure and style of some of those poems is recognizable still. it’s only been a couple of years since then. the first chapbook allowed me to set a very basic standard for myself and my poetry, that i can always continue to grow beyond.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

i actually didn’t start writing poetry until i was in high school, when i began to use my writing as more of a therapeutic outlet than anything else. until that point i only thought of “writing” as “fiction-writing”, or i didn’t think of it at all. my poetry grew out of that process of development; now it’s a form that i trust and rely on, although self-therapy is no longer the (only) reason i write poetry.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

it can be a very slow process. the writing itself comes quickly and the finished poem rarely looks very different from a first draft, but for me it’s usually a process of combining different pieces of writing together to create one poem or piece of prose.

4 - Where does fiction or a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

short pieces come together. i write about the same things over and over again; two very different pieces actually have a lot more to do with each other than they originally seem to, so they inevitably find themselves together in a larger project. i always know that i might take what i think is a finished poem and later throw it in the mix with something else, so i don’t restrict myself to writing a “poem” or “story”.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

neither/no. i don't like reading out loud - not even my own writing, just anything. and public speaking isn’t exactly my “thing”.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

there have been so many questions i have tried to answer through my writing, but those are for myself and i’m still not sure what they are. i typically position myself, my mind and my physical body, against concerns i have about everything that exists outside myself. i’m fascinated by the physical limitations of my body/bodies in general. i find there’s a lot about bodies and body parts in my writing, and physical objects, attempting to find some kind of stability when in actuality that probably doesn’t even exist. i’m not sure i’m trying to write about that necessarily, but it keeps coming back.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

i don’t see writers, individually or as a group of one type of person, as having any real relationship to the culture they are a part of. they have the same relationship to their culture as any other type of person, which is relative and comes down to being mostly insignificant. for me, and maybe from a historical perspective, it’s more about the processes and movements that end up having a real “role”. if one particular writer or group of writers influences a process that helps shape the direction of a culture then so be it, but i don’t think that anyone can define that as it happens.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

essential. probably both, but i haven’t had enough experience with editors to really say that.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

once my grandma said “don’t save for an occasion, there is no occasion” and i thought that was pretty rad, but i’m not sure who she was talking to. and it has nothing to do with writing. or maybe it does.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

it’s never been very difficult, but that doesn’t mean i’m any good at it. i’ve always been able to write whatever i have needed to write. i guess versatility would be the appeal, but that isn’t something that matters to me.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

i write at night, if i can. my routine, if you can call it that, is to just write down whatever i can whenever i can and then later it might turn into something worth writing about. i use a notebook, but i’m that person who will also use garbage, receipts, twitter, the back of my hand, my phone, post-its, whatever, as i go. and then i write later, preferably much later, when it’s dark out.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

if it’s pretty bad then i let it go all together. i might read, or re-read. if i feel like it’s just a pause then i’ll write a diary entry or a blog post about nothing just to be writing; that’s usually enough, and it’s best if i can do that somewhere outside.

i also like to go online and look at pictures of my hometown/city (hamilton, ontario). there's something about a beautiful place in decay, coming back to life, that brings on forward-thinking.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

cedar sawdust.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

nature is a big one for me, and science sometimes even though i don’t understand much about either. architecture and, more simply i guess, just the urban landscape, are huge influences for me. the creation of structure is something that i think and write about all the time and if i’m sitting next to a bridge it doesn’t take long before i know what i’m trying to say.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

no one person or piece of writing comes to mind. whatever i’m reading at the time is what inspires my writing, whether it be a novel or collection of poetry or non-fiction/historical accounts. no one has ever inspired me.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

everything. i haven’t done anything yet.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

unless i’m working as a writer, which i’m not, i can’t really answer this properly, but i’m currently unemployed so i guess i’d pretty much do anything.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

i pretty much taught myself to read and write, from TV and from books by the time i was three, so i kind of did this to myself. everything else that comes along is never important enough to me.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

i can’t remember the last great book i read, which probably means i need someone to lend me a great book, and i don’t really care about movies.

20 - What are you currently working on?

i’ve been working on a collection of poems inspired by T2: Judgement Day for a really long time, but it’s the kind of project that has been pushed aside over and over again as “more important” things come along.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

span-o presents: jesslyn delia smith, Hugh Thomas + Dennis E. Bolen!‏

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:
a back-to-school event:

with readings/launches by:

jesslyn delia smith (Ottawa)
Hugh Thomas (Fredericton)
+ Dennis E. Bolen (Vancouver)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, September 23, 2011;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

author bios:

jesslyn delia smith is a recent Carleton graduate living and writing in Ottawa, and has had three chapbooks published through Carleton’s In/Words Magazine & Press. Her poetry and prose can be found on her blog, www.jesslyndelia.com, which is updated frequently. Feedback at jesslyn.delia@gmail.com or twitter.com/jesslyndelia.

Hugh Thomas [pictured] is a writer from Fredericton, where he is a professor of mathematics at the University of New Brunswick. Chapbooks of his poetry have been published by Paper Kite Press ("Heart badly buried by five shovels," 2009) and BookThug ("Mutations," 2004), with a new chapbook this month with above/ground press. A book of variations on Kafka texts, a joint project with Gary Barwin and Craig Conley, will be published by New Star Books in the fall. Hugh Thomas's poetry has appeared in a variety of Canadian small press periodicals, including 1cent, BafterC, CRASH, dig, fhole, filling Station, Hardscrabble, Peter F. Yacht Club, and Twaddle.

Dennis E. Bolen is a novelist, poet, critic and educator; author of seven books of fiction; his latest, Anticipated Results was described in Quill & Quire as '...a dance with clever language that both mocks and questions a generation’s legacy.'

http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/review.cfm?review_id=7236

Ongoing notes: Toronto + Ottawa small press fairs,

I recently attended the Toronto Small Press Fair, as well as our own ottawa small press book fair [a snapshot of part of the Ottawa room]. Here are a couple of items I picked up, between the two. Each fair holds two events per year, and there are various other fairs around Canada (Toronto's Canzine in the fall, Montreal's Expozine, and Toronto's upcoming Meet the Presses, etc), many of which post to the (canadian) small press fair blog, so be sure to check back regularly for updates for future events!

The next event I'm aware of is the first-ever chapbook-only Meet the Presses in Toronto on July 9, which includes many Toronto-based publishers, as well as Ottawa's own AngelHousePress and Apt. 9 Press.

Ottawa ON: It was good for Toronto author Jim Smith to be able to come through the pre-fair reading in Ottawa to launch his newest chapbook of poems, Exit Interviews (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, 2011), a collection of pieces composed in tribute to a series of dead, male poets, including bpNichol, Jack Spicer, Ed Dorn, David Aylward, Frank O'Hara. Vladimir Mayakovsky and Federico Garcia Lorca. There was something compelling about the way he read, also, ending the pieces before the end, giving the closure of each piece its own soft edge, tied up in subtle ways.

Ted Berrigan

POOF!

I'm dead.

& you can't keep me here

As is mine

Great mud intelligence

That icebox I hadn't read

You cant keep me

Davy Crockett is right on

What thoughts I have

Smoking a pipe

You cant keep

Sober dog

White powder

Ron Padgett said

Me here

Go back to speed

Chicago,

It's made of everything!

[Jim Smith, seeing his Apt. 9 Press chapbook for the first time] Interesting to think he might have twigged on the idea, possibly, after a similar series by Toronto poet Victor Coleman, who wrote poems for a series of his late poet friends, each piece dedicated to another, his “Eulogistics” series (originally published as STANZAS #20), which appeared in his trade collection ICON TACT : Poems 1984-2001 (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2006). 

In both authors' series, the writers weave in echoes, slight traces, of the poets they write on, write for, small tributes to each, and the legacy they might have left behind. 

Of Jim Smith's work I'm aware of (which is, admittedly, quite little), these pieces strike as some of the more interesting of a mid-length (so far) career, from his One Hundred Most Frightening Things (blewointmentpress, 1985) to his most recent trade collection, Back Off, Assassin! New and Selected Poems (Toronto ON: Mansfield Press, 2009).

Federico Garcia Lorca

At five in the afternoon.

I will not see it.

Spain is the only country.

Yet the Milky Way

Has filled the valleys of Spain.

The rest was death.

Now, archer, now

There are newly crated things,

There are jellyfish,

There are angels who never attack.

I love the song

I love the cartwheel

I love the rooster.

Que pasa, rooster?

The best bullfighters fall,

Torn apart by the horns

Of their mothers.

Spain stretches out

At five in the afternoon

All is finished

The bull

Loses itself, the fighter

Scares himself.

Ottawa ON: I've only been requesting review copies from In/Words Magazine and Press editor David Currie [that's him in the middle, there] for six months, so it's good to finally see a small stack of publications, including two poetry chapbooks from jesslyn delia smith, her so it's the first really warm day (In/Words, Chapbook Series 8.10, February 2009), edited by Cameron Anstee, and rescue poems (In/Words, Chapbook Series 10, January 2011), listed as, since she was about to end her fourth year as an English student at Carleton University, “her last in/words chapbook.”

behind mike's place in january,

thinking about the future

from where i stand

the flag is lit

on brilliant fire

behind

cold stone pillars,

rising with smoke,

supporting

our flourishing minds

Whereas the poems in the first of this pair of chapbooks seem unformed, unfocused and with so very little happening, the poems in her second, some two years later, read like koans in comparison, short, thoughtful poems that reveal by what they manage to hold, so briefly, back.

love lines.

decisions have been

made, unlike before, white

tea seeps from sponges,

creases of your skin,

love lines

and yellow bruises

on the backs of both

my knees, my ankles, from

kicking them in slip-on

princess shoes

There's a gaze here that focuses inward here, and considers, and is considered. The first chapbook might not have been much to grab the attention of too many, but smith's rescue poems intrigue. She might have moved away from publishing with In/Words, but one can only hope that this doesn't mean the end of her publishing. That would be a shame; she should keep going. I'd like to see where she goes.

Toronto ON: I've long been a fan of the small chapbooks produced by Sarah Pinder [see a previous entry on her here] through her bits of string, and the Toronto Small Press Fair provided copies of COLLAPSE (May, 2011) and THE RYE HOUSE, a suite (October, 2010).

one street named after a saint or a mountain, another after blood, pealing bells, loose live gerunds strung across, pitched in hum, every eye a question, a pan, an establishing shot

the alternate ending: wreck this, move with speed, a leash, obedient, the click and what follows, wagging, eager, all breath

after the foot lifts, the cloud of upper sound in the flat wet warmth of the afternoon, you want the drag in chorus, field spent, the clench of taking aim at exhausted scrap, blowing it all – the name of a pocket, a hand carved tattoo (COLLAPSE)

What I like about her writing is the cool clarity of the lines, whether the prose or short line-lengths, and the smooth way that these chapbooks so wonderfully seem to exist outside the boundaries of trade publications. I don't know what her goals are, but I think I almost prefer that I haven't seen any of her work outside these small items; it gives her work a kind of credibility, stepping outside the mess of publications, journals, funded book-length works.

Lake Ontario

New York State on the other side,

but you had turned away,

flicking a match into

the velvet frozen sand (THE RYE HOUSE, a suite)

[Here is Sarah at the most recent Toronto fair] Hers are small, lovely poems that require extra thinking, that require attention of all sorts, for the reader to enter slowly, and live inside for a while, listening.

There's a part of me that would love to see her writings collected into a larger form, and another part of me that just wants to leave the whole of it alone. 

Go find her work, please. Give her your money, and ask, politely, for some of her works. 

If you can't find her, you should be able to at the next Toronto fair.

Son-in-Law Tony at Home, Sept 1973

before he embarrasses himself

with the axe. (THE RYE HOUSE, a suite)