ReLit Award Longlist Announced

apparently my poetry collection what's left (2004, Talonbooks) is on the longlist for the annual ReLit Awards, along with 30 collections of short fiction, 32 novels & 50 other poetry collections. whooosh. still, sometimes it is enough just to be nominated.

the poetics of accident

Kristjana Gunnars once wrote how memory is more like a deck of cards, how one plays off the next in a sequence. I always think of it when I’m constructing a collection, or a long poem.

As one accident moves along against the next, filmmaker Robert McTavish, months ago, gave me a copy of Phyllis Webb’s Wilson’s Bowl, and got me going through Webb’s work much more closely. More recently, while looking for another lost book on my shelf (which still I haven’t found), I caught my eye instead on Webb’s West Coast Line festshrift issue, and was back again, in the midst of her poems.

Part of the joy of writing is the surprise of where it end up taking me, whether a title or a reference taking me to another title, even as little as a poem in a journal. Falling into the eventual work of the day.

A copy of Conjunctions: 21 (1993) I was lucky enough to find ten years after the fact in a dollar bin has been an essential text, and one I continue to return to, again and again. Called "the credos issue," it included a number of "credos" written by solicited authors, including Ann Lauterback, Simon Ortiz, Robert Creeley, Kathy Acker, Ishmael Reed, David Mura and David Antin. As Robert Creeley wrote:

In particular echo
of inside pushes
at edges all these years
collapse in slow motion.

The will to believe,
the will to be good,
the will to want
a way out –

Reading through the issue, it directly resulted in me starting my own piece, simply titled "credo," started on a Sunday around noon, waiting for Jennifer Mulligan to arrive, before we drove out to her niece’s third birthday party. I was only three couplets into the piece in my notebook when Jennifer’s car appeared outside my window:

not everything comes when its supposed to,
a feeling of open-endedness

three days threat of rain, just
sick of it when it comes

he holds his head & squints, william hurt
in until the end of the world

Later on, I was able to complete the piece rather easily, through the accident of going out to her older brother’s converted log house:

the metal windmill rusts the field,
& hasnt turned an age

the memory of tire swing

when hannah was three fingers old,
now three plus a day

strewn presents follow suit, yellow wrapping
in the yard

do not believe anything i tell you
abt narration

we drive a drink past mulligans,
& it rains it rains it rains

(the entire poem lives here)

There are a number of pieces in the issue that have moved me in further directions, from a ghazal by Cole Swensen to a sequence of twelve poems by Thomas Meyer, as he wrote:

I have had this overwhelming feeling of open-endedness lately.

His poetry-prose sequences have helped trigger (among other influences, of course) a number of pieces since I discovered them, including the piece corrective lenses (published as a chapbook in 2004 by Bad Moon Books) and (with the help of a couple of Anne Carson collections) the poem "33 lines, a stolen phrase & a short apology" (included in the first issue of ottawater).

A poem is certainly a deliberate act, but one made out of accidents, random acts and the largest amounts of the unknown. Where else does the magic occur from?

In his collection of essays, Literary Occasions, V.S. Naipaul wrote:

It is the play of a people who have been cut off. To be an Indian from Trinidad, then, is to be unlikely and exotic. It is also to be a little fraudulent. But so all immigrants become.

For various reasons, it was a series of lines that immediately struck as overwhelmingly familiar, and triggered another few pages of notes for a book I’ve had in the back of my head on Glengarry county. Somehow so foreign, but how many ideas are so different once you boil them down to their particular essence? So far, the manuscript is no more than page upon page of scattered notes. It’s not ready to come together yet. It’s not the right time. I take notes and collect them. I wait.

The say the accident of invention, chocolate chunks falling into cookie batter by pure happenstance, and then "inventing" chocolate chip cookies. Where do we go from here? The forgotten bread that went moldy and the beginnings of penicillin.

I am not interested in mapping out entirely where a piece will go, whether poetry or fiction. I’ve always considered writing to be a collaboration between myself and the text itself, both of us having to let it go where it goes. For his Music at the Heart of Thinking (1987, Red Deer College Press), Fred Wah wrote of drunken tai chi, of learning to have control over the moves even with a lack of control. To let unpredictability take over, and thus make him a more formidable opponent. As he wrote in his introduction, "a critical practice that sees language as the true practice of thought." In so many ways, if I knew what I was going to write next, what would be the point in writing it?

Writing, as act of exploration and discovery. Don’t write what you know, George Bowering once said, write what you don’t know. It’s the only way you’ll learn anything.

grain magazine, featuring the Christmas cards of bpNichol

When Toronto poet bpNichol died in 1988 at the age of 44, he left a wealth of writing, living & friends behind to mourn the loss, & his life & work have spawned a whole range of admirers, imitators & celebrations, such as the current issue of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan’s grain magazine, featuring a number of the Christmas cards that bpNichol produced as annual handouts. As Stephen Ross Smith & Gerry Shikatani write in their brief introduction:

“In 1979 bpNichol and his wife Ellie began sending or handing out a special edition of a poem by bp as a Christmas ‘card’ to friends and family. The first card was red, and featured a hand-drawn cartoon with an ‘H’. By the ‘80s, the cards had, in some cases, become small chapbooks as exemplified by ‘Transformational Unit’ and ‘Some Scapes’, included herein. All the pieces were fine renderings, and included visual poems, poster-poems, and text pieces. By 1987, the year before bp’s death, about 400 cards were being sent out annually.”

Between the regular contributions of poetry & fiction by such as Shannon Bramer, Sara Cassidy & Ian Roy are bpNichol’s “Transformational Unit,” “Middle Initial Sequel,” “Some Scapes,” “Christmas card, 1979” as well as two details, from “Alphabet” & “Ilphabet.” Even the cover, opened, features what ended up being the last card published & sent while Nichol was still alive, the “Landscape #3.” Thanks to my neighbour & bpNichol friend, collaborator, collector & bibliographer jwcurry, I have a copy of the original on my kitchen wall, just over my computer.

Curator & poet Gil McElroy confirms the importance of Nichol’s work & publishing, specifically the Christmas cards in an interview at The Drunken Boat, saying “[. . . ] it was actually bpNichol who confirmed for the the validity and need to publish. He and Ellie were kind enough to include me on their Christmas mailing list, and I began emulating that practice when I could afford to as well.” McElroy himself has emulated the tradition, whether sending poems on cards for Christmas, or through email, as does Arizona poet Sheila Murphy (I can’t comment on where she got the idea, though, if from Nichol or somewhere else).

Still produced annually by Ellie Nichol & their daughter Sarah (much of the past few years have featured fractions of the utanikki “You Too, Nicky”), I’ve been fortunate enough to be on the Christmas card list for a couple of years. So much of Nichol’s work existed outside the boundaries of normal publishing, such as these cards, so it’s good to see a magazine such as grain work to acknowledge the accomplishment. So much of the criticism on Nichol’s work has focused on The Martyrology, when there was always so much more.

ottawater: a city of romantics & optimists

Published to help celebrate the 150th anniversary of the City of Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, "ottawater," and its chemical formula/logo "O2(H2O)," is a brand new poetry annual produced exclusively on-line, in both readable and printable pdf formats. An anthology focusing on Ottawa poets and poetics, its first issue appears in January 2005, 150 years after old Bytown became the City of Ottawa. Long seen as a town made only of bureaucrats and technocrats, and a more conservative poetics, "ottawater" simply wants to remind us of what work is happening, and has been happening for years, despite government types announcing every few years that the arts in Ottawa is about to begin. We say instead: we have always been here.

Edited by Ottawa writer rob mclennan, the first issue features work by various residents current and former, in both readable and printable pdf formats, including: Stephen Brockwell, George Elliott Clarke, Anita Dolman, Tamara Fairchild, Laurie Fuhr, Gwendolyn Guth, William Hawkins, Matthew Holmes, Clare Latremouille, rob mclennan, Max Middle, Peter Norman, Monty Reid, Chris Turnbull and Ewan Whyte, interviews with poets John Barton and Max Middle, and reviews of work by Stephen Brockwell, Peter Norman and Shane Rhodes, as well as artwork by Derrick Lacelle, Don Monet, Jeremy Reid, Jennifer Kwong, Sarah Dobbin, Juan Carlos Noria and designer Tanya Sprowl.

The launch party will be happening on Thursday, February 3rd at the Mercury Lounge, 56 Byword Street, Ottawa, from 8pm to 10pm, lovingly hosted by rob mclennan, who David Gladstone called "the poet laureate of Centretown Ottawa" in 1996 in The Centretown Buzz. There will be short readings by various of the contributors, including Gwendolyn Guth, Max Middle, Anita Dolman, Chris Turnbull and Peter Norman. After the readings, stick around and have a drink, as the program to follow is resident dj Trevor Walker hosting Mui Afro Funke, playing latin and African influenced musics, jazz funk, and house music later on into the night.

You can find the first issue here.

span-o, poetry 101 & The Factory Reading Series

It was in 1996, I think, when I first started hosting poetry readings at Gallery 101 on Lisgar Street, under the title "poetry 101," suggested by Fredericton poet Joe Blades. The idea was simple enough: regular readings by writers who probably wouldn’t have opportunities to read in Ottawa otherwise, whether local writers or those from further abroad. Despite the amount of activity in & around Ottawa over the past fifteen years or so that I’ve been paying attention, the bulk of activity has always been irregular, with very few actual regular events, whether the readings at the Manx Pub (focusing on out-of-towners), The TREE Reading Series (twice a month since 1980), or the Dusty Owl Series, which recently returned after a break of eight years.

Now under the umbrella of the small press action network - ottawa (which also hosts irregular readings at Mother Tongue Books & Collected Works, as well as the semi-annual ottawa small press book fair), some of the readers that have come through the doors of 101 to read for the series have been Joe Rosenblatt, R.M. Vaughan, Deanna Young, Sheri-D Wilson, Monty Reid, Robin Hannah, jwcurry, nathalie stephens, Stuart Ross, Chris Turnbull, Robert Priest, Jacqueline Turner, Gil Adamson, Joe Blades, Jill Hartman, derek beaulieu, maria erskine, Grant Shipway, Peter Norman & Stephen Brockwell. Now held at Gallery 101's Nepean Street location, this next season will include three readings, on Thursday nights starting at 7:30pm, starting with February 17th (Erin Bidlake, Shane Rhodes & Rob Winger, Ottawa), March 24th (Anita Dolman & Max Middle, Ottawa) & April 7th (Stephen Cain, Rachel Zolf & Mark Truscott, Toronto). More information can eventually be found here.

As well, span-o is hosting a chapbook launch by Eric Folsom (Kingston) & gregory betts (Hamilton) on Friday, February 25th at mother tongue books, 1067 Bank Street (at Sunnyside), starting at 7:30pm.

All events are lovingly hosted by rob mclennan.

maria erskine

2-1: nothing rhymes with purple, either

‘One word’ is two words - and to ... send you
‘a word’, an instant failure,
overreaching, the re-aching
over, and yet. yes.

you don’t need the quot. marks,
read unlettered signs - oh: in the market,
saw a piece of cardboard sticking up out of a
big bushel of carrots:
it read CARRUS; made me smile, think of
you again, for some.

1,2 ... and nowt rhymes with silver

in this subdivision,
raise the Zenophilic yamfry
stakes -
carve this
whittle conversation
[there’s some sauce left]
niblets, veegers, Whaanh?
... silver-y x-z lines
still two quiet
knots -
ellipses ease

When Toronto poet maria erskine read with jwcurry at the Factory Reading Series in Ottawa last year, it marked the first reading she had done anywhere in thirteen years. Always on the sidelines & secretly in the game, maria has been writing & publishing so quietly for years, in the little places where you might not otherwise see. It would be difficult to be at a reading in Toronto & not see maria there, somewhere, in the background, lurking in a corner with John Barlow or Daniel f. Bradley, perhaps.

For a time, around when she ran the Toronto Small Press Fair with Maggie Helwig, she self-produced lovely little chapbooks and broadsides that she would slip into the hands of friends, her gaddisflypapers. Sometimes a piece produced by jwcurry, sometimes a slip of paper by above/ground press (reprinted in Groundswell: best of above/ground press, 1993-2003), her published poems are like rare birds. We keep trying to convince her to release more but it moves so slowly. How does one get a poem or two out of maria erskine? I really don’t know; I only wish I did. I’ve been hoping for a chapbook manuscript for years of her poems, but so far nothing has come of it.

There’s a story told of one of Vancouver poet Maxine Gadd’s books from the 1960s, that bill bissett had to break into her house & steal a stack of poems to turn them into a book; telling Gadd’s reluctance to release work. Was it Westerns? The Hippies of Kitsilano? I wish I could remember. In the end, I guess she forgave him. It was what nearly had to happen around 1996 to get a poetry manuscript out of Ottawa poet Robin Hannah (now she doesn’t tell us where she lives). & I wonder if this might have to happen to maria.

The exciting result of her reading in Ottawa was that it pushed maria to want to read again, & she recently did a reading with daniel f. bradley for Toronto’s solsquinox series. We can only hope she might do more.

I would very much like to see a grouping of her lovely little graceful poems, quirky & completely original flecks of sound & language. If you ever have the chance to hear maria erskine read, take it. You might not have another.

some photos from a party at Clare Latremouille's house in Ottawaon December 18, 2004, including Priscilla Uppal, Suzannah Showler, Tom Fowler, Christopher Doda, Sean Wilson, Clare Latremouile, Jennifer Mulligan, Wanda O'Connor, Bryan McDonell, Melanie Little, Peter Norman, Stephen Brockwell etc.

aren't you sorry you missed it?

Spent the last few days sitting with a borrowed laptop in the Ottawa Room at the Public Library, looking up genealogical data. Until I re-emerge, an interview I did with Vancouver poet Meredith Quartermain should soon be up at Alterran Poetry Assemblage (on her forthcoming NeWest book, Vancouver Walking, among others), & an interview Arizona poet Sheila E. Murphy did with me at Stride magazine, UK. A very strange cartoon my daughter found, as an advertisement for soy sauce, & another that Susan Elmslie found, called bubblesoap. What odd distractions I do have.

Parts Unknown, Michael Holmes
2004, Insomniac Press, 88 pages
isbn 1-894663-59-4

His first trade collection of new poems since James I Wanted To Ask You (ECW Press) was published in 1994, is Parts Unknown, edited by Paul Vermeersch and published by Insomniac Press. With his work since as editor for ECW Press (a position he took in 1995, to replace outgoing poetry editor Bruce Whiteman), very little of his poetry and fiction has appeared in print over the past decade, with a chapbook published by above/ground press, 21 Hotels in 1998 (later reprinted in Groundswell: best of above/ground press, 1993-2003) and the "Hate Sonnets" in 2005 as an issue of STANZAS (some of which appeared earlier in an issue of Queen Street Quarterly), among other stray pieces, as well as the novel Watermelon Row (2000, Arsenal Pulp).

A collection of "wrestling poems," subtitled "Wrestling, Gimmicks and Other Work," the collection is built in five sections: Parts Unknown, Battle Royal, 10 Bell Salute, Finishing Moves and Parts Unknown: A Selected Professional Wrestling Glossary. Parts Unknown is a celebration of the sport of professional wrestling, as the pleading earnestness of James I Wanted To Ask You replaced with a carny’s sense of irony; the "Battle Royal" section including titles such as "The Godlike Genius of Scotty Too Hotty," "It’s True, It’s Damn True," and "Eat Your Hart Out, Rick Springfield." I don’t know of any other Canadian writer this much into wrestling, with the possible exception of Nathaniel g. Moore, or unoffical poet laureate of pop culture, David McGimpsey. There does seem to be a McGimpsey influence, from a poet Holmes has edited three books for so far, through ECW Press.

Socko’s hobby? To boost pomo works on non-stops from Oslo
to Moscow or Compton from Toronto; hotshot, gold shod, lord,
Socko’s cold, cooly loots (won’t kow-tow or cop to who jobs
for who). So coy Socko scowls, shoots: fops, fools, tools, boobs–
dolts pop for Holy sock-rot. Socko rocks how Bon Scott shook:

(p 32, Socko’s Bök, for Cowboy Bob Orton)

A lot of my problem with Parts Unknown as a collection (if "problem" is even the right word) comes from the fact that I don’t think I get it; I don’t know the references Holmes is making about specific wrestlers, events or wrestling moves. I don’t know who "Mr. Socko" is, and I don’t think I’m going to. Is this my problem or is it his? The way he has written the collection, for the pieces to work seem dependant on the reader knowing what the references mean. When Lisa Robertson worked her collection, The Weather (New Star Books, 2001), as she wrote in an afterward, the book "took shape when [...] I embarked on an intense yet eccentric research in the rhetorical structure of English meteorological description." Where Robertson wrote around her exploration of the language itself of "English meteorological description," Holmes explores, instead, the meanings and stories of contemporary professional wrestling, which, if you don’t know the stories, works often to alienate.

Nothing beats an education–the Hart school’s
basement and the Red River journalism program
will do–into you, separates everyday jackass from
serious assclown, like the cold. No one fools
or suffers themselves after being stretched by grim

extremes like the Chicago Manual of Style and Stu.

(p 26, The Walls of Jericho)

Certainly, there are enough literary references in the collection, from bpNichol in "The True Eventual Story of Badd Billy Gunn" (merging wrestler Billy Gunn with bpNichol’s Governor Generals’ Award-winning collection, the true eventual story of billy the kid) to Christian Bök in "Socko’s Bök" (merging "Mr. Socko" with a reference to Bök’s Griffin-prize collection, Eunoia, built of chapters written each using a single vowel). But even these aren’t necessarily written with a need to know what the literary references mean, engaging instead the language of the thing, and of the sources. Intended as play, or bonus, instead of necessity.

The bulk of the collection is the strangely uneven "Battle Royal" section, where some of the best pieces lie. A series of individual poems referencing wrestling, as well as a number of other cultural tics, as in this stanza from the poem "What?"that references both a loans commercial involving the over-the-top, carny threats of a wrestler (can’t you see him on your television, shouting into that microphone?), and the South Park movie:

Excuse me, excuse me, Intercontinental Champion here
gonna hit him so hard he’s gonna grow hair
don’t blame Canada, blame yourselves
so, for the benefit of those with flash photography
somebody call my momma, because I’m about to hurt somebody

(p 46, What?)

There is a lot of interesting play going on in Parts Unknown, and a poetry collection on professional wrestling (a sport/entertainment that arguably took much of its theatrics from the late comedian Andy Kaufman), considered an over-the-top entertainment, deserves the same from its literature, and Holmes delivers, for sure.

whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.
(I kicked your ass, Jake Roberts. No more
piledrivers, ever, Owen Hart.) The Hollywood Blonde nightmare
always leaves him like this, paralyzed by holy ghosts, whispering
Flying Brian Pillman. Stone Cold, we cannot rebuild him.

(p 19, A Man, Barely Alive)

There is a lot in Parts Unknown that I don’t know about. I’ve never been a fan of the "glossary" in a collection of poetry, especially in one as long as the one Holmes ends the collection with, over five pages of his "Parts Unknown: A Selected Professional Wrestling Glossary." But given the title of the collection, is "unknown" perhaps the point? Is it exactly this not knowing that Holmes is working with, and working against?

You knew wrestlers could be anything or anyone,
even your boys could hail from parts unknown.

(p 13, Parts Unknown)

The section I got the most out of in the collection is the penultimate section, "Finishing Moves," a twelve-part series of wrestling moves collected in groups. The section least dependant on knowing information about wrestling, it focuses on the movement of the words themselves, and as I would suggest, the strongest writing in the collection. Highly entertaining, a merging of meaning and play that both removes meaning, and plays off them.

Jalapeno Roll Sudanese Meat Cleaver Polka Dot Drop
The Shitty Elbow Bolo Punch Tutti Frutti
Flying Burrito Super Frankensteiner Marvelocity
"It’s the Big Foot!" Alabama Slammer Veg-o-matic
Towering Inferno Snake Eyes Niagara Driver
Razor’s Edge Pearl River Plunge Honour Roll
Human Frisbee Northern Lights No Laughing Matter
Shooting Star Press Sky High Seven Year Itch

(p 70, vii. Miscellaneous Phenomena, Condiments and Potables)

For the longest time, Michael Holmes has been one of my favorite poets, but I’m thrown (so to speak) by the writing in Parts Unknown. I recognize it, admire the play of language and the fun being had; I know that much of it is good, even great. But it feels like a joke I’ve been left out of, through the process of telling.

originally appeared in filling station

ongoing notes, December 2004

Hamilton ON: I think by the time I knew who or what Gary Barwin was, he was no longer making regular publications through his serif of nottingham editions, usually self-published chapbooks of poetry and/or fiction for the semi-annual Toronto Small Press Book Fair. One of the "Toronto surrealists," Barwin could uneasily be explained if Stuart Ross and David W. McFadden could ever have offspring.

When we read together in September (at an event with at least 2,000,000 readers, he being the first & me being one of the last), he handed me a publication of his strange visuals, the chapbook a periodic table of the alphabet (serif of nottingham editions, 2003). Ranging from clever tricks of formatting to drawings and altered images, Barwin seems to be one of the few Canadians working with concrete and visuals over the years that has really kept with it for some time; somewhere between the work of derek beaulieu and jwcurry.

A prolific writer, he is also included in Stuart Ross’ lovely anthology of Toronto surrealist poets, Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian poets under the influence, newly out from Toronto’s Mercury Press. As Victor Coleman wrote of Barwin in "An Eglected: Writing Toronto in the Eighties" (Open Letter, Eighth Series, Number 9: Summer 1994),

"His work represents a tradition of Southwestern Ontario pixilation that includes David McFadden, Robert Fones, Kurt Swinghammer, Dennis Tourbin, John B. Boyle, the late Greg Curnoe and, stretching it a bit, James Reaney. There’s something significant in his keeping literary company with the aforementioned because, with the exception of McFadden and Reaney, all are interdisciplinary aritsts. In Barwin’s case the other discipline is music (he’s currently working on a music degree from SUNY/Buffalo where he, surprisingly, doesn’t spend much time with the New Poetics/Black Mountain II crowd)."

Other recent works include Frogments from the Frag Pool (poetry with derek beaulieu; The Mercury Press, forthcoming), Doctor Weep and Other Strange Teeth (fiction; The Mercury Press, 2004), Raising Eyebrows (poetry; Coach House Books, 2002), and Outside the Hat (poetry; Coach House Books, 1998). If you want to find out what the hell he’s done lately through his little press, email him at himself@garybarwin.com

Mt. Pleasant ON: kemeny babineau, it seems, has been around for some time, even though he hasn’t, really. His most recent package included two of his own chapbooks, Winter’s End and A Collection of Water, as well as his The Theory of Half Truths, and Harold Rhenisch’s Snow. So far, most of what he has produced has been his own work, but he has been branching out into other areas. His small publication, HUE MANITEE (forGer ryGil bert) is pretty fun, and includes this piece:

Trojan Condoms

for when its got
the false gift
inside the walls

and the horse
cock is spilling men
blood and pillage laud

to steal a king’s
daughter for the king
dong, king-
dom cum, for
king

At least, if nothing else, the boy is reading Gerry Gilbert and Erin Moure poems. His chapbook A Collection of Water has some interesting moments in it too, and it’s fun to watch Babineau try out different things, to see how they fit, and watching him evolve as a writer as he does. Besides, I think it’s been a while since we’ve seen a poet write about that part of the country, between Hamilton and London and Buffalo. History always manages to come back again.

What I want to know is

(what was Simcoe
wearing
on his head
when he was paddled
up the Thames
toward where London
wasnt
Colonel Talbot
at his sleeve
The shore
an unbroken
green
growing darker
by the hour, what
sort of song
did the paddle sing
as Simcoe concocted
his scheme to defeat)

the american’s Dream

Try him, c/o Laurel Reed Books, 206 Maple Avenue, Mt. Pleasant Ontario N0E 1K0 or via alaric@rogers.com. His catalog says that "current titles are available for trade sale barter or beg – send chapbooks, small donations, stamps or good wishes." Done.

Another item in the same package was the first issue of a magazine he’s editing/publishing called The New Chief Tongue, a simple 8 ½ x 11 stapled on the side (reminiscent of two other newer publications, Daniel f. Bradley’s fhole and John Barlow’s Kenetic, but Babineau’s TNCT not as well designed), with some interesting contributions by quite a range of writers, including David Fujino, Penn Kemp, Anne Onimous, Jason Christie, John B. Lee, Brian Babineau, Kathryn Carter, Nelson Ball, Rob Read, Harold Rhenisch, Shane Plante, Mike Clancy, Barbara Caruso, Mary J. Williams and Malcolm Randall. Subtitled "Brantford’s Own Literary Way," I do like the fact that he distributes these for free. How can he afford to do that?

Ottawa ON: Even though she’s only recently moved here, why not call it here. Erin Bidlake, who recently arrived from the west, with her chapbook, SEEDS. Published by JackPine Press in November 2003, the relatively young Saskatoon chapbook press produces limited edition runs of books in unusual formats, whether in cloth bags, or in the case of this one, a seed bag. As she begins, in the poem "INSTRUCTIONS FOR GARDENING," writing:

You must begin with tools,
anything wooden
or older than
your oldest fencepost

Gather seeds.
Look under any bush or tree,
slip your fingers
into the mouth of a lily,
remove its tongue,

plant it.

I’m still new to her work, but am interested to hear her read as part of a new season of the Factory Reading Series at Gallery 101 on Thursday, February 17th, reading with Shane Rhodes and Rob Winger.

detritus

The review I wrote of Vancouver poet Mari-Lou Rowley’s last two poetry collections for The Danforth Review. The updated web page for Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory. The review I wrote of Di Brandt’s Now You Care, Suzanne Zelazo’s Parlance & nathalie stephens’ Paper City (all Coach House Books) for The Antigonish Review. Some of the photos Max Middle took for the fall 2004 edition of the Ottawa International Writers Festival here. My friend Tom Fowler takes over the artwork of DC’s monthly Green Arrow title here. Robert Kroetsch has a great new poetry collection here. The piece I wrote on John Newlove’s last poem here. The return of William Hawkins, Ottawa’s most dangerous poet. A neat piece by Louis Cabri on hole magazine that he and Rob Manery used to run in Ottawa. Some poems by Jon Paul Fiorentino + others. Some poems by Rachel Zucker. Poems and listings of Ottawa literary events. My Ploughshares author page. Paste magazine, that has amazing compilation cds of new music with every issue. Two older reviews, one of Gerry Shikatani’s First Book, 3 Gardens of Andalucia (The Capilano Review) and Jacqueline Turner’s Careful (ECW Press). Some very odd things involving The Prize Budget for Boys. I recently discovered the work of Ottawa artist Christopher Griffin, that I quite like. I’m working to edit an issue of Australia’s Jacket magazine on George Bowering, but it isn’t finished yet. Have you heard who replaced him as Canada’s second Parlimentary Poet Laureate? Michael Winter’s blog. Mark Truscott’s blog. Ron Silliman’s blog. Some funny cartoons. Happy Decemberwe’en, everybody.

Rachel Zucker

The past few months I’ve been getting more and more into the poetry of New York poet Rachel Zucker, after discovering her work in the first issue of the annual Xantippe (Oakland, California), the absolutely brilliant long poem "The Squirrel in the Palm." A poem in twenty-five parts, apparently written from December 27 to 30, 2001 from "New York – Savannah – New York," and opening line, "a mother without her children is everywhere a woman in a foreign country."

11. consider the body’s aptitude for salvage


cage of regret, nostalgia, ideas, description leaking in trivial half-lives


and technology an even greater failure : the silver-small camera is so compact it lacks the heft for seeing. Think of your skull that holds the eyes the brain that must make sense and them remember. Film is a flimsy predator for trees.



and words?



the palm escapes my everything but wonder



Perhaps the only poet I would consider comparing to Toronto writer Margaret Christakos, talking sensually through language about mothering and children, letting it wrap around long lines and lively action. I’ve not seen anyone use line lengths and spacing so well, her lines almost a counterpoint to the way Saskatoon poet Sylvia Legris uses short lines and spacing. There seem few poets who really acknowledge and understand the use of blank space on a page, and Zucker does it well, especially in the sixth section, that reads only, "6. the opposite of freedom is intimacy / [. . .] / travel is the collision of both." Written during a short trip, the New York resident and mother of two, at the end of "12. alone, the room gets smaller despite there being fewer people," writes:

so drag myself to watchfulness with a stab of catastrophic thinking and so tired, delighted I’ve half a mind to leave them and no mind left to do it and nothing to spare of this utter love incongruous

mother in a foreign

There is so much here to quote, that I could end up repeating the whole poem, written out of the divisions we end up making for ourselves, from mother to lover to woman writing, from the fragment "15. [birthing, ––]" that includes "the child becomes a wedge between her actions and self like a cyclone of gauze wraps himself / around her mothering and makes a hollow form," to "16. night alone, Savannah," the narrator talking of her son, writing, "Sleep with me he says. I like the other sheets, he says. Lime in my sippy cup? anything to keep / me. // Object of desires, I never satisfy because my very body is impractical, boundaried, impermanent." Is there a way to bridge the gaps we end up making?

19. coffee shop, fire in the hearth, a room of men


newspapers, garish paintings, poor lighting. the room hums with indifference and steaming milk. the foam is a perfect companion.


the man/boy with the black rimmed glasses and comics a condiment for some lightly-battered in-the-basket feast.


and me with my undercover stretch marks, I am almost leaving. although the focal point, deep vortex that demands me calls it, "returning"



I am total incognito: I’ve already never been here.

A chapbook, Annunciation, won the Center for Book Arts competition and was published in 2000. The author of Eating in the Underworld (Wesleyan University Press, 2001), I’m hoping this piece is included in her new collection The Last Clear Narrative (Wesleyan University Press) (I’m still waiting for a review copy).

Diana Brebner’s The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems

When Ottawa poet Diana Brebner died of cancer in 2001, bare weeks before her 45th birthday, it left holes in almost everyone that knew her. The author of three award-winning poetry collections, Radiant Life Forms (1990), The Golden Lotus (1993) and Flora & Fauna (1996) [all published by the now-defunct Netherlandic Press], she had been living with and through cancer for some time, even as she never took her attentions away from her family, friends and her writing. While raising two daughters, working for her husband’s business, and even running for public office, she still managed to win the League of Canadian Poets’ National Poetry Competition (1990), the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award (1990), the CBC Literary Competition (1992), the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (1993), and the Archibald Lampman Award (1997). When I met Diana, probably around 1992, she was eager to become a mentor to a younger writer, but we soon realized that she didn’t know what I was doing or working from, so instead we would meet for coffee, and talk about various subjects, whether writing, gossip or our kids. It was only in 1996 when Stephanie Bolster moved east from Vancouver that Diana found the kind of writer she was looking to help, and afterward, when she started teaching poetry workshops at Collected Works Bookstore. Becoming both mentor and friend to younger writers such as Anita Lahey (current editor of Arc), Lesley Buxton and Una McDonnell, it was much more an atmosphere of generosity and a kind of mothering than any teacher-student relationship. Soon after she died, a tribute was included in an issue of The New Quarterly (Volume XXI, No. 1, spring/summer 2001), that included pieces by Kim Jernigan, Bolster, Lahey, Buxton, Miriam Maust, John Vardon, Carol Shields, McDonnell and myself. Once you were part of her circle, it became both easy and essential to stay.

Thanks to the persistence of Stephanie Bolster, McGill-Queen’s University Press has just released The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems of Diana Brebner through their Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series (which has been very quite of late), edited with an introduction by Bolster. This is where all the current poets working within more conservative forms should be looking, from a poet who worked through more formal structures when they were less in favour than they seem now. Still, one of the poems that struck me from the "last poems" section is this one, a take-off of the last of Thompson’s ghazals from the posthumous collection Stilt Jack (Anansi, 1976); his brilliant collection of thirty-eight ghazals, published after he died at the age of thirty-eight. A break from much of her other work, it still works through the constraint, and the fine line between what she holds back, and what she gives.

VARIATION ON
JOHN THOMPSON’S GHAZAL XXXVIII

"Should it be passion or grief" – John Thompson

Both come
unasked for. Grief
(not that I have)
has a sweetness to ist

that cuts
as fine as any knife.
Sweet edge
to the blade, you say.

I am being
followed by grief
(and it skulks
as I turn

unbidden) just
a sense of being.
Passion, as well,
is overwhelming

the air that
a knife cuts through.
Should it be
passion or grief

that we release?
What did you hold
by nerve, or a string?
Hands. Fingers. Fist.

Another of the pieces in the "last poems" section that struck, was this one, that read very much as a response to a review that Montreal poet and critic Carmine Starnino did for Arc #37 (Autumn 1996), "Style at Odds with Passion: Seven Ottawa Poets" that wrote:

"Diana Brebner’s poems also sequester themselves emotionally from their subjects. In Flora & Fauna, we see the suppression of any kind of personal disclosure and the adoption of a voice that has been thoroughly stripped of its introspective abilities. She wants no sentimental slippage. But often it is the heightened concentration that only emotion can allow that helps discipline oneself against phoniness. Brebner’s poetry, in its uncompromising suspicion of feeling, regularly outwits itself into artificiality." Hmmmmmmmm. Diana’s was certainly a dark humour, and it was hard to get on her bad side, but I wouldn’t want to be there. I’m not even going to bother disagreeing with the review, and instead let Diana’s words speak on behalf of both of us.

FOR THE POET WHO TOLD ME
TO THINK LESS AND FEEL MORE

I will not assume that you
are an expert about feeling.

Nor will I believe that the
quiet & orderly among us have

not been thrown against walls,
that they write from imagination

and not from experience. If
I have not shed tears onto

your pages perhaps it is only
because I would not hurt you

with your indifference. When
you saw me, and asked how I

was doing, the kindest thing
I could do was to say

I was fine. I think of all
the women with bad teeth,

the ones who walk into doors,
the women with holes in

their walls and their lives
where pictures & memory

hung in the balance and how
that empty square on the wall

is a target for good intentions
that have become holy banners.

I will not assume that you
think less of me, nor will I.

After Diana died, Arc magazine founded the Diana Brebner Prize, now in its third year. Named for a poet "who fostered local literary talent, the Prize is awarded annually to an emerging National Capital Region poet who has yet to publish in book form. Run as a blind-submission competition, $500 is awarded to a single poet, based on the adjudication of an established poet living in the National Capital Region. One honorable mention is also chosen," with both prize-winning poem and honorable mention published in the most recent issue of Arc (#53, Winter 2004). This year the award was given to Betty Warrington-Kearsley, with an honorable mention going to Vivian Vavassis. Previous winners include Mary Trafford (2002) and Michael Blouin (2003). Information on future deadlines for the award can be found on the Arc magazine website.

some notes on narrative & the long poem: a sequence of sequences

In the sequence "death & trauma: a deliberate play of births & endings" (forthcoming, Yard Press: Calgary), I wrote a long poem as a very loose translation of fragments of an essay by Robert Kroetsch, "For Play and Entrance: The Contemporary Canadian Long Poem" (The Lovely Treachery of Words, Oxford University Press, 1989), while over-writing the story of the Frank Slide (Alberta, near Crowsnest Pass) disaster of 1903. Written during the spring of 2001 (in Edmonton, actually, at the Second Cup at 104th Street and Whyte Avenue), the idea was that the poem itself would talk about delay, delay, delay; the tantric nature of the Canadian long poem that Kroetsch both wrote about, and writes in his own work. As the story itself, still there but hidden (and relatively well-known, so why repeat it in the poem?) of the landslide that erased the town of Frank, Alberta (and in hindsight: Kroetsch + Frank + Edmonton = a very "Alberta" composition). As the story goes, three days later, as the remaining men dug themselves out of the mine (where the initial slide had trapped them) to discover that their wives, children, parents and friends were gone, buried under tons of rubble. The town of Frank was rebuilt a mile or so down the road, but the original town remains, as Frank Slide, buried under the mountain. It was considered for years to be Canada’s worst national disaster. The sixteen-part piece ends an unpublished manuscript called "aubade," and begins:

to un-name the silence back into name

survival of so few the thing,
three days & a man
rockslide the face, & whole town
wiped clean

who else
knows what was once there
surviving as testimony
more to make over
than could ever be recalled
or rebuilt

invisible tracks
running through the thread of these mountains

In writing classes and other places, they keep saying, show, don’t tell. If you want to read a story, go read fiction. A poem needs, I think, to be doing something other. Why tell a story if you aren’t going to tell it, you ask. Why would a reader presume there are no reasons. There has to be a reason, the poem working on and on and on. Perhaps the strongest tool a writer of poetry has is the allusion; not to say but to suggest. The delay. In an essay on David Arnason’s long poem Marsh Burning (Turnstone, 1980), Winnipeg poet and critic Karen Clavelle wrote, "David Arnason is a writer / poet whose involvement in the telling of stories is both a focus and preoccupation. Arnason operates in full awareness of the fact that absence is a form of presence, and that all does not need to be revealed, indeed, that it is impossible to reveal all. And this understanding opens the crux of a narrative problem." (p 116, "David Arnason’s Marsh Burning: Beginnings," Bolder Flights: Essays on the Canadian Long Poem, University of Ottawa Press, 1998).

There was such a joy in production, I remember; of flipping through the essay from a second-hand copy of Kroetsch’s collection (found a few days earlier in Calgary), and picking out lines to shift and alter, seeing how far the series could extend. The poem "death & trauma: a deliberate play of births & endings" is but part of a series of compositions built while in Edmonton, Alberta; built during my annual (or so) touring through the western provinces that bring me to stay with poet Andy Weaver; now-familiar haunts, with the drive down to Calgary with Weaver to read, just before or after a similar event in his city, and a few days spent with him before the next train arrives, to take me either further east or west. Almost every trip, a self-contained project written at the Second Cup and/or the University of Alberta grad lounge, waiting for the inevitable delay. Drinks at the Strathcona Hotel. "The Strath."

The way I prefer to build is through the fragment, writing piece by piece, leaping from line to line, instead of composing from beginning to end, although even two words side by side presume a narrative thread. Through any of this, unless you are willing to put words on top of each other to produce a concurrent work, with all seen at the same time, there is no way to completely erase narrative and meaning. Unless you begin to work with created, nonsensical words, words can’t help but mean.

& all those fucking tombstones

w/out clamour or blush, the lean-long,
at east w/ space & spacing, intruding
on the potential

in search instead of in vision

revisions of a father, grand

a miltonic scorn for economy
inside the longness, the long
rock slide

the model of the short

its offer of apprehensibility

So much of this craft comes from reading, from the "open form" writings of Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser. From the book-length pieces by George Bowering, a mentor by example. From the lifelong poems of Robert Kroetsch and Fred Wah. So much of this from their influence; their fault.

The delay and the inevitable. The long poem and the story of Frank Slide, of knowing how the story will end. With my first girlfriend, years ago, we would have sex in her apartment before going out, so we wouldn’t be distracted during the film, and could properly absorb what we were watching. Putting the end at the beginning. Distracted for what was to come. The inevitable.

Calgary’s dANDelion published five fragments of the poem (Volume 28, No 2, January 2003), just before editorial board member Jason Christie accepted the whole series for publication through his Yard Press. In angela rawlings’ essay on micropress, Christie talks briefly of the series:

"Rob McLennan’s longpoem about the rockslide which buried the town of Frank, Alberta made sense to publish because I’m currently living in Calgary and could easily get to Frank. The reason I wanted to get to Frank is that I wanted to publish Rob’s poem in a bag of dirt and since I was so close to Frank... Well, it just made sense." It hasn’t appeared yet (I’ve been anxiously waiting for some time), but there’s something both marvelous and ghoulish about a chapbook on Frank Slide including a small amount of the Frank Slide soil. The delay. The inevitable.

In a recent review of my collection red earth (Black Moss, 2003), Harold Rhenisch wrote of the title sequence, a poem on travels east to the Atlantic Provinces, saying that "The concept of a poem which is really an anti-poem, a poem which exists on the edges, in fragments, parentheses, lacunae, jottings scribbled on the back of the hand or the inside of the skull, even notes chiseled into the brain stem with a dental pick, is liberating [. . .] mclennan is better than the lot, a kind of Canadian Robert Creeley, presenting us with moments to move into, like museum dioramas, incomplete until we stand in them." (Arc magazine, Volume 1, No. 53, winter 2004). Another key to the supposed puzzle, incomplete until we stand in them; exactly in keeping with my own ideas of composition, how half of any poem what the reader brings. If you don’t know, you must ask yourself. What does that mean.

The poem the true eventual story of buffalo bill had a number of initial sources. There is always something fun (and even liberating) about continuing a line, and it’s something I’ve attempted before, more overtly here than in the Frank Slide piece, whether working my own "Sex at 31" piece (at Barry McKinnon’s suggestion), after the work he and Brian Fawcett started, or the novel I never finished, A Short Fake Novel about Richard Brautigan, which was started to continue the line begun with Jack Spicer’s "A Fake Novel about the Life of Arthur Rimbaud" (as part of The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether, The Auerhahn Society, 1962), to arthur craven’s "A Short Fake Novel about Spicer" (which, admittedly, I’ve heard of but never seen). the true eventual story of buffalo bill follows from the thread of the true eventual story of billy the kid (Weed/Flower Press, 1970; reprinted as part of Craft Dinner: Stories and Texts, Aya Press, 1978), bp Nichol’s eight-page chapbook that co-won the Governor General’s Award with Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (Anansi, 1970). What is it with Canadian poets and American outlaws? (See also: Paulette Jiles and Jessie James). According to the back cover of the most recent edition of the Ondaatje piece (Anansi, 2003), "When Michael Ondaatje won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1970 for The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker was publicly outraged by the work, and stated that it wasn’t even about a Canadian." As far as Ondaatje’s structure in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is concerned, Winnipeg poet Dennis Cooley was hugely influenced by Ondaatje’s book, and took the form even further for his own wild and expansive Bloody Jack. Written on the myth and life and myth again of Manitoban outlaw John Krafchenko, Cooley’s Bloody Jack is perhaps the best example of expansiveness and multiple (even opposing) narratives in the Canadian long poem, and was originally published by Turnstone Press (1984), and later reissued with various revisions and new pages by Cooley by the University of Alberta Press (2002).

And I see, too, that Spicer wrote a book called Billy The Kid (Enkidu Surrogate, 1959). Is that where Ondaatje got the idea?

Built entirely different than the original two, my own interest in Buffalo Bill Cody was in the fact that he played an active role in the creation of his own myth, eventually playing a caricature of himself in the touring "Wild West Shows." From two individual articles on Cody’s life found on the internet, I used the language of the articles as my base for how I would write about Cody, reworking the same language over and over, whether through baffles (taking every second word of the article, and creating line-breaks where there were paragraph breaks) or by simple randomization (each piece writing from and through all the previous pieces), the poem writes through the man, and the myth of the man, while still writing the piece in a particular order of events throughout his life, from his participation in the American Civil War to his tours headlining Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show:

hurts, the civil war

the united states army, continuously employed
by uncertain scouting. a hazard

across the ambush. a plain scout,
when born a new name kansas

given nickname, buffalo bill, when
he only twenty two. no single eye

a riding view of thieves deserving green,
recruiting army. the high breeze,

a peak of endorsement sales. firearms
and the glory of the regiment. considered lucky.

considered a head wound and his life
his only badge. buried everything

in gyrations. even a mountain
must preserve.

Published in its entirety by Xpress(ed) in Finland as a pdf file, the twenty-six part piece eventually breaks down, leaving the whole of a man’s life and myth in but a handful of words:

cody, coda

buffalo bill
wife louisa
a wagon train
twenty-two
army thieves
spectacular view
still a child
the wild west
pawnee east
lookout mountain
pony express
sitting bull
a ranch hand
fifty-fifth
cowboys and indians

What is narrative, really? Is it the story that is told, or as simple as the two words placed side by side. My own concerns of writing narrative in the long poem fall under the umbrella of the title, whether idea or simply the words themselves, and writing as far and as much underneath the umbrella as I can. Does every poem have to fit together in a straight line? Does every poem have to be about what the piece is about, or reference it at all? And if not, should there even be a reason why?

A good example of breaking the narrative is this brief fragment from bp Nichol, published both as an individual piece by jwcurry’s 1cent / Curvd H&z (1982) under the title "THE MARTYROLOGY, BOOK V: Chain 10," and as part of The Martyrology Book V (Coach House Press, 1982), that reads:

every (all at (toge (forever) ther) once) thing

So much of this is concerned with pieces that aren’t (necessarily) built to work on their own, but to work together as a larger unit. A fragment of a novel might be interesting to read, but it’s not giving you the whole story. Using the word as a metaphor. Why does this always have to come back to story. Too many people have been suggesting to me lately that poems are made out of individual moments, of individual things, inferring the absolute need for the poem to live on its own. As Michael Ondaatje wrote in the introduction to The Long Poem Anthology (Coach House Press, 1970), "Poems should echo and re-echo against each other. They should create resonances. They cannot live alone any more than we can ..." (p 14). Earlier in the same essay, he also says, "The stories within the poems don’t matter, the grand themes don’t matter. The movement of the mind and language is what is important –" (p 12).

In his statement on his Seed Catalogue for the same anthology, Robert Kroetsch wrote:

The continuing poem: not the having written, but the writing. The poem as long as a life. The lifelost poem.
The poem as big as a continent. Roy Kiyooka’s Transcanada Letters. (How do you like them apples, Roy?)
And speaking of silence: see Phyllis Webb’s ‘Naked Poems.’ It’ll give you the shivers. The heebie-jeebies. Love is like.
See David Jones’ The Anathemata. I go on coming back to that book. Trying to read the poem. A curse, so much like heaven.
And maybe Blown Figures, by Audrey Thomas, is a long poem disguised as a novel. The (at)venturing [in]to Africa. To neverywhere. Shore enough.
The writing the writing the writing. Fundamentally, I mean. The having written excludes the reader. We are left with our
selves
as critics. We want to be readers. The continuing poem makes
us
readers.
(p 311-2).

Writing poetry is not fundamentally about. Even to say it is "about language." It is language.

In an interview conducted by Ken Norris in the George Bowering issue of Essays on Canadian Writing (1989), Bowering had this to say about poetry and meaning:

Poetry, as far as I am concerned, is not interesting insofar as it is "about" anything, though I may out of curiosity read some poem about baseball or about Mexican food. I am not sure that poetry is interesting insofar as it is "about" poetry, then. But I do believe that when a novelist is making a novel, his intent is on the shape of the novel, not on the shape of life. If it were on the latter, why wouldnt he write an essay, or a letter to the paper, or anything else that is more often encountered than a novel?
[. . .]
I will tell you what art, what poetry is separated from life. It is the poetry that is written by somebody who has decided to use it to express herself. You do that by crying, or by hitting someone, or by wearing some stupid thing – three earrings in each ear. As soon as you start expressing yourself in a poem, the resources of the whole language, and the response of the reader are both infibulated.

Another sequence, monopoly/antiques (a number of which were first published in Jacket, later appearing as a whole in chapbook form through above/ground press), the most deliberately lyric of these three sequences, is a twenty-one-part piece working from the loose tradition of the English-Canadian ghazal, brought into being from the late John Thompson’s brilliant Stilt Jack (Anansi, 1976). Called the anti-sonnet, the ghazal (an ancient Persian form) works deliberately from the breaks that exist between couplets, constructing a poem that only fits under the title very peripherally. How does one work that peripheral, especially in a longer sequence of ghazals, as Thompson did, and later, Phyllis Webb, Douglas Barbour, and almost every poet in the book (but so few done so well as these)? The poem, although working from the reference to a break-up, a weekend of travel, the game of Monopoly, and visits to various antique stores around the Rideau Lakes, it also works against the referencing, writing so much around them as well:

monopoly/antiques

fifteen hundred dollars each, & i
the milk bottle

wood replaces metal, or then
replaces glass

the rust comes over thru the rain

the implication is clear, if
your parents owned, nostalgia

anything earlier, an antique

she winds the victrola, & builds it
slow

speeds up to 78, until the belt
slips up

a hole where the rain

& from a young boys window, the eyes
then fill

Not built to exist in any particular order, the order still exists, whether arbitrary or otherwise, in a series of individual pieces, each with the same title. Does that make these twenty-one individual poems, or simply one? Is this a serial poem or a sequence? I’ve always been relatively unclear on the precise distinctions of the "serial poem," but don’t mind borrowing from the example of its imprecise ways. Is the "serial poem" simply "ongoing," the poem built out of many poems, extending sometimes throughout the whole of the author’s life, whether Spicer, Blaser, Robert Duncan, Fanny Howe, bp Nichol or Fred Wah?

In her thesis on the Canadian long poem, critic Smaro Kamboureli wrote, "Dislocation, a theme consistently used in the long poem, declares a yearning that exceeds the lyric’s potentiality to locate the self. It is not that dislocation produces impediments not conductive to the prolongation of lyric intensity or that narrative can better accomodate what the lyric’s brevity leaves untold; rather, the absence of epic nostos becomes a nostalgia for the lyric." (p 71, On the Edge of Genre: The Contemporary Canadian Long Poem, University of Toronto Press, 1991).

monopoly/antiques

the last weekend we will ever
spend, looking

at old tractor parts

the rusted metal palm
of john deere model six

indented into memory
& flesh

the treat out of the old car
withers

the carriage-house, a box
of doll-heads

brown couch left out
the rain, & suffered

& a technology of dogs
& darker bone

Written quickly, in May 2002 in Ottawa, unlike the other two sequences, it was written with no specific starting point or end point in mind, but was written simply until the sequence felt as though it ran out of steam. The lyric or anti-lyric as it bustled forth. Both delay and inevitable. In the construction of each of these three sequences, I was not as interested in the individual as compositional unit, but a series of larger frameworks, with each sequence, too, fitting inside a much larger, book-length work. Although, in probably all that I do, working the book (and even, the multiple book) as the "unit of composition." Where is the lyric and meaning there. Where is the story.

The long poem (as I see it) what’s left (Talonbooks, 2004) is part of a trilogy of works that started with paper hotel (Broken Jaw Press, 2002) and ends with ruins: a book of absences (Black Moss Press, 2005). Reviewing the collection what’s left on his blog, Calgary poet ryan fitzpatrick said, "Effectively extending Paper Hotel’s project of sifting the fragments of self, What’s Left - a title invoking both the picaresque beauty of a ruin and the faint trace left by something moving - leaves us with detail of history and geography, interested in the shift of people across the land. Vikings and settlers meet pop detritus and road trips, inviting slips between them, forming constellations of meaning. For mclennan, borders fracture like water freezing in rock cracks; we are left with rubble - narrative unanswerable in its native state - that can only be combined and not fixed (repaired or made static). mclennan daftly employs family history, ancient history, and recent event to enact an archaeology of self."

monopoly/antiques

do not pass go, do not collect
the extra inning

a three day weekend, despite
the fact

a board game made, & opens
a range of contradiction

the way things work

how does the poet win, he wipes
the board

clear of competition

picking away, like a scab
until the blood flows

till there is nothing left
within collapsing veins

a thin light left
on the opposite bank

Writing of Robert Kroetsch’s poems, Robert Lecker wrote, "in [Kroetsch’s] long poems, as in the best verse in Stone Hammer Poems, we note several points of tangency and ongoing concern: an involvement with establishing through poetic language and a particularly Canadian and western sense of place, a desire to represent a peculiarly double sense of Canadian experience, and a need to find a sense of personal and public origins that may be dreamed by the poet whose task it is to write his world into existence." (Robert Kroetsch, Twayne, 1986). And there, at the end, is the part I understand best: to write his world into existence.

Ian Samuels, The Ubiquitous Big
2004, Coach House Books, $16.95 CAN / $13.95 US
96 pages, isbn 1 55245 135 6

If there’s a little truth in truth it’s this drop of rain
searching for an umbrella.

p 13, Whiching

For his second poetry collection, Calgary writer Ian Samuels has chosen to write about film noir, in The Ubiquitous Big, published by Coach House Books. In what seem to be a series of thematic poetry collections, his first, Cabra (Red Deer Press, 2000), explored "the mythification of 19th-century Brazil," while the current, works in blocks of found text and film noir, 40s/50s mythification and the birth of atomic power, writing big subjects of hard-hitting strength and irony. Much as Cabra, this collection feels as though it is much closer to the book as "unit of composition," structurally more a collection of parts than a grouping of individual pieces.

Working in blocks of poetic prose, it makes me wonder if this is becoming a specific tic to younger poets in Calgary, as others such as derek beaulieu, jason christie, Jonathon Wilcke (who has collaborated with Samuels, such as in the piece "COPPING: The Double Voice and Jazz Ethics" from side/lines: a new canadian poetics, published by Insomniac Press in 2002) and Julia Williams have done the same. Is it then, too, a coincidence that beaulieu’s first collection, with wax, and Williams’ The Sink House, also appeared with Coach House Books?

Samuels writes a series of evocative, descriptive blocks, both emotional and physical, that move to further the collection as a whole.

The gods gather for a swill of sake in the last
volcanic breath of an island yearning for a
descent beneath the waves, away from the
demands of cellphones and rat-race lifestyles
that tear into its face.

The gods smile at each other with poison-
slicked knives secret behind their backs and stir
to the rhythm of a Geiger counter’s memory of
Trinity and the walls coming down.

p 25, Arrivals

There was good coffee and fresh rolls steaming
just like a kill on the savannah, except with
more butter churned up by refugees walking to
shore and climbing into thousands of forgotten
boats.

p 31, Morning

Samuels’ plays a series of standards, playing off them, playing them against themselves.

The hacienda

A cup of coffee, that’s what a man needs. An
apple, a place I can feel, a growth that looks like
chicken. Dinner with the family lasted seven
months, but why not? In the bonds of matri-
mony that’s how the Feds weigh cellophane off a
cigarette pack. They tell the core stuck between
my teeth how it’s a crummy finger joint, but a
nickel gets a piece of the ‘haves’ and a drink
keeps murder heavy on my soul until the bunga-
low sags right to its floorboards.

p 63

I would be very interested to see what Samuels could do with a sustained longer prose, whether novel or short fiction. The Ubiquitous Big exists in three sections of prose blocks, from "Personality," "Arcana" and "The Ubiquitous Big," each writing from what you think you know of old stories, icons and standards. Through all of this, though, what does it mean and where is it going? From the Kenneth Patchen quote that opens the first section, Samuels’ interests in his explorations aren’t fixed in any time or place, but I wonder what it all means, and where he will be going next:

They invented the printing press out on the plain
this morning; Constantinople fell in the afternoon.
I suppose they’ll discover America tomorrow. What
a lot of running around they do.

Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight

Samuels writes contemporary poems that belong to another age, but hold quite firm to this one.

It feels so good when they pay attention

Recently, Ottawa writer Melanie Little wrote a neat little piece about the Poetics.ca website that Stephen Brockwell and I edit (www.poetics.ca), for a local newspaper, The Centretown Buzz (www.centretown.net). Absolutely lovely, Melanie published her first collection of stories last year with Thomas Allan, the highly-praised Confidence (http://www.thomas-allen.com/ThomasAllenPublishers/catalogue/0-88762-119-8R.htm) that everyone in the world should read, or at least own (it helps increase her royalties).

As she writes in the online version, "Some pieces focus on the work of other poets, like Jon Paul Fiorentino’s provocative essay on the work of George Elliott Clarke in Issue No. 2 (June 2003), or are more general, like Peter van Toorn’s brilliant meditation on the sonnet, "A Goose in the Caboose," in No. 3 (Fall 2003). There’s also a healthy handful of interviews, more like full-fledged conversations than the clippy, predictable Q&As favoured by most publications. There is an obvious desire here to encourage actual exchange between and among writers in lieu of plain old pontification. Writers can get on their soapboxes if they want to, but they have to share the park.

You’d think, given the quality of the result, poets and writers would be banging on Poetics.ca’s virtual doors to join its ranks, but, according to Steven Brockwell, not so. "It’s like pulling teeth," he says. Though the journal has already attracted a multitude of readers from around the world, contributors are harder to come by. He and mclennan speculate that part of the problem might be a dearth of contemporary models. Writers just don’t seem to know how to talk about their work anymore, at least not intelligently or usefully."

Unfortunately, we in Ottawa lose Melanie and her husband, the writer Peter Norman, for at least a year to Calgary, where she is the writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary starting fall 2005. They also recently edited the third issue of The Peter F. Yacht Club, our own little writers group magazine. To order a copy ($5 CDN, or outside, $5 US), send me an email (rob@track0.com). To read her article in full, go to http://www.centretown.net/news/detail.php?story_id=274&cat=Arts%20and%20Recreation

Another nice moment was by Nathaniel G. Moore, gadabout, now living in Toronto (he was previously in Montreal and New York), who wrote this in the most recent issue of Broken Pencil (www.brokenpencil.com) about the anthology Groundswell: best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (Broken Jaw Press) (http://www.brokenjaw.com/catalog/pg82.htm):

"If you only buy one Canadian poetry anthology culled from broadsides andchapbooks, created by the most dangerous (in a good way) and hardest workingpoet in Canada, let it be Groundswell. An eclectic buffet of Canadian poetry with too many stars to list, Groundswell also includes a lengthy bibliography that fascinates, plus a superlative introduction by Stephen Cain."

Nathaniel G. Moore, Broken Pencil, issue 26 (Nov 2004)

Superlative? Hmmmm. Anyway, everyone is waiting for Moore to have a first book published, whether poetry or fiction, both of which he is trying to find homes for, including his novel on the poet Catallus (strange). But enough about me, what are you doing?

McLennan, Alberta

I’ve been working over ten years on a genealogy of McLennan, MacLennan and MacLellan lines throughout Stormont and Glengarry counties, eastern Ontario (Canada). I’ve been working toward point of arrival from Scotland (even if that might take me to, say, New York State or northern Ontario or Quebec first). I’ve found a number of really interesting directions, which force me to do further research in Montreal (the McLennan library at McGill is named for a feller from Glengarry county), Boston (where his family eventually moved), California, Vancouver and plenty of other places.

A few months ago, I found these references to the origins of McLennan, Alberta, a little spot on the map invented for the sake of the rail line. The book The Story Behind Alberta Names, How Cities, Towns, Villages and Hamlets Got their Names by Harry M. Sanders (2003, Red Deer Press) writes:

Town on Highway 2, approximately 135 kilometres northeast of Grande Prairie

... The town was named for Dr. John K. McLennan, an executive (and future vice-president) of this railway.

In 1915, as its rails approached the Peace River country, the Edmonton, Dunvegan and British Columbia Railway (EC&BC) reached the shore of Round Lake (now Lake Kimiwan). Bypassing the existing settlements of Grouard and Round Lake, the ED&BC established the new divisional point of McLennan. Round Lake residents quickly packed up and resettled in McLennan. Despite its Scottish name, many of McLennan’s residents were French Canadian. The townsite was named for Dr. John K. McLennan, the railway company’s secretary-treasurer, purchasing agent and future vice-president. After earning a medical degree in Winnipeg, McLennan moved to California where he practiced until J.D. McArthur recruited him for the administration of the EC&BC. When the Canadian Pacific Railway took over the line in 1920, McLennan and his family returned to California. McLennan was incorporated as a village in 1944 and as a town in 1948.
(p 211-212)

Another reference I found in the book Back Roads of Northern Alberta by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey (1992, Lone Pine Publishing), that writes:

Continue west on Highway #679 to Highway #49 then turn north to McLennan, home of Hollandia Bakery, the largest, privately owned bakery in northern Alberta. Besides supplying baked goods in Alberta, they also cover the North West Territories and the Yukon. Tours can be arranged by phoning 342-3582.

Kimiwan Lake is the intersection of three major bird flyways: the Mississippi, Pacific, and Central. 27,000 shorebirds rest here on their yearly migrations. Many beautiful waterfowl nest on its shores and the lake is a protected wildlife breeding area. Visit the interpretive centre or wander along the boardwalk and see how many species you can recognize of the more than 200 that frequent the area. Especially watch for snowy owls, bald eagles, and whistling swans. Kimiwan is shallow, but has good fishing for perch, walleye, and pike.

The Cost of Ingenuity

McLennan owes its existence to the "ingenuity" of an Edmonton, Dunvegan, and British Columbia (ED&BC) Railway employee, Hughie Hunter. the railroad was searching for a source of pure water for their steam locomotives and Hunter was sent from Grouard to Winagami Lake and Round Lake (Lake Kimiwan) to collect water for testing in Edmonton. When he arrived back at Lesser Slave Lake, the water container was empty and rather than retrace his steps for another sample, he dipped the vessel into these waters. The water received high marks from the chemist in Edmonton. Thanks to his resourcefulness, the railway spent years hauling water from Lesser Slave Lake to McLennan, because the actual water from Winagami and Round Lakes ultimately proved unsuitable.
(p 67)

What I’m interested in is, who is this doctor fella, Dr. John K. McLennan, and where did he not only come from, but where did he go? So far, I’ve not been able to find anything.

-- blatant advertisements --

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starting January 1st, $30 percalendar year for STANZAS, chapbooks, asides + broadsheets. (in Canada,$30 Can, outside, $30 US)

Current & forthcoming publications by Julia Williams (Calgary), rob mclennan (Ottawa), donato mancini (Vancouver), Andy Weaver (Edmonton), Barry McKinnon (Prince George), Michael Holmes (Toronto), Jan Allen (Kingston),Rachel Zolf (Toronto), Matthew Holmes (Sackville), Jason Dewinetz (Victoria),William Hawkins (Ottawa), Lori Emerson (Buffalo), Gregory Betts (Hamilton), Karen Clavelle (Winnipeg), Alessandro Porco (Montreal), Stan Rogal (Toronto), derek beaulieu (Calgary), Max Middle (Ottawa), Peter Norman (Ottawa), Anita Dolman (Ottawa), Patrick Lane (Victoria), George Bowering (Vancouver) + others.

send all your money
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for more information on above/ground press & STANZAS magazine (for longpoems/sequences) (since 1993)
check out www.track0.com/rob_mclennan

for information on my own most recent titles, check out my own website or (for what's left) www.talonbooks.com, or (for stone, book one) www.palimpsestpress.ca

the duke of somerset
an elegy

edward seymour, the duke of somerset,
for a secret marriage

over edward vi

the corner of bank,
where the banks were

the duke of somerset pub,
sixty-eight years

in the same family

not a tavern licence new in this city
for decades

now one less more
where less

is exactly that

where will our old men go,
to smoke treason

of cigarettes

or warden
the scottish marches

one more disappointment

headless
at tower hill

http://www.dukeofsomerset.com/TheDuke.htm

Eckhart Cars, Peter Jaegar
2004, Salt Publishing, 132 pages
isbn 1-844710-37-8, $15.95 US
http://www.saltpublishing.com/

Anyone
can place their eyes
against the pieces

p 1, Eckhart Cars

The most recent collection by Canadian poet Peter Jaegar, now living and teaching in London, England, is Eckhart Cars, after the collections Sub-Twang Mustard (poetry, chapbook, housepress, Calgary, 2000), ABC of Reading TRG [on the Toronto Research Group] (criticism, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1999) and Power Lawn (poetry, Coach House Books, 1999).

A diverse collection of pieces under the banner of Eckhart Cars, the collection is filled with jagged lyric: "all ear / but never long without the heart / all her twinkling stars." (p 87, A Black Tooth In Front). The strongest section has to be the first, the multi-part title poem, as he writes:

Faced with a careful selection
of chemical stews, commonly found
plastered to walls or pouring
over heaths, dunes, and stony places,
we should buck up, for perfection
equals normalcy, and we assume
a human power to exceed
the less heroic traits most valued
in our culture...

p 2, Eckhart Cars

Each section, each piece follows its own constructional path and stretch, from the fugue of couplets that make up "Sitting" (p 67-71), the back and forth of lyric and choice in "Bibliodoppler" (p 72-77), to the ongoing length of the final piece, "A Black Tooth In Front" (p 87-129). The second piece, "Pollen," reads like a series of slogans or maxims, writing "As long as we stay with specifics we can only accumulate" (p 3) or "All theory constantly aspires toward the condition of example." (p 14). The piece "Buoyant" wipes all across the page, reading as a scatter: "ballast spreads // in tunes / waves // in the diner takes // a bath birth // twists // the water breaks –" (p 61).

Or, as in the jagged breaks of the poem "Midwest" (p 22-8), the text reads as a string of electrical starts, and breaks that read as both ends and expectations, taking the next instead to a different place, the poem existing there within the collisions:

strings of animal families
are at last. Slaking a penny
on my banking, as the
clanly faces seed
asleep–I grow
a back-up blameless: I
bark, the place a
bleached-out driver

p 23, Midwest

It’s as though the words are building up the text and at the same time destroying it.

the author of a dream, awake
to basic pretence–

p 33, A Book I Am Dreaming

The collection reads as though Jaegar worked through as many "baffles" as he could find (as Bowering has called individual constraints) and collected them into a book. Even on the back cover, the book describs itself as "not unlike a collage which samples and modifies other pieces of writing." And with Jaegar’s background, working on the Toronto Research Group (made up of bpNichol and Steve McCaffery), as well as both references in the book and on the back cover, he certainly knows his way around various kinds of non-linear writings (anyone who reads the collection can find plenty of references and games in the material), managing to take that ball and go so much further. I mean, should we be reading John Newlove into "So They Say" or bpNichol into the prose piece "Martyrologies," that begins:

He admitted that this was so, and after a short imprisonment he
was beheaded. He was broken limb by limb. She was burned to
death on an islet in the river. Whereupon they were buried alive.
But eventually she died from her sufferings. For the insubordina-
tion they were twice decimated. She was executed by being stabbed
in the throat (a common Roman form of execution). He was
himself arrested and put to death amongst supernatural happen-
ings. In a drunken fury they set on him, pelting him with bones,
and although one of them tried to save him, he was killed by a
blow on the head with an axe.

– p 52, Martyrologies

With the small size of his previous trade collection, Power Lawn, I’ve heard suggestions that Eckhart Cars is Jaegar’s first full-length poetry collection. Either way, Coach House Books should certainly put Power Lawn back in print; or someone should. Eckhart Cars is an impressive collection of pieces by a writer who knows the difference between reference and repetition, and knows how to write it close to the bone. It’s only unfortunate that, as a Canadian writer, Salt Publishing doesn’t have Canadian distribution (they distribute, I believe, in the US, UK and Australia). It would be good for more Canadians to be able to read one of their own.

What I like best is the smell. I don’t know what kinds of ink you folk use over there in England, but I could spend my whole day smelling this. Do you remember that part of Fast Times at Ridgemont High where the whole class smelled the gestetner copies?