span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:
the ottawa small press book fair
spring 2010 edition will be happening Saturday, June 26, 2010
in room 203 of the Jack Purcell Community Centre (on Elgin, at 320 Jack Purcell Lane).
contact rob at az421@freenet.carleton.ca to sign up for a table, etc.
"once upon a time, way way back in October 1994, rob mclennan & James Spyker invented a two-day event called the ottawa small press book fair, and held the first one at the National Archives of Canada..." Spyker moved to Toronto soon after the first one, but the fair continues, thanks in part to the help of generous volunteers, various writers and publishers, and the public for coming out to participate with alla their love and their dollars.
General info:the ottawa small press book fair
noon to 5pm (opens at 11:00 for exhibitors)
admission free to the public.
$20 for exhibitors, full tables
$10 for half-tables
(payable to rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset St W, main floor, Ottawa Ontario K1R 6R7).
note: for the sake of increased demand, we are now offering half tables. for catalog, exhibitors should send (on paper, not email name of press, address, email, web address, contact person, type of publications, list of publications (with price), if submissions are being considered & any other pertinent info, including upcoming ottawa-area events (if any).
& don't forget the reading, usually held the night before at The Carleton Tavern!
also, due to the increased demand for table space, exhibitors are asked to confirm far earlier than usual. i.e. -- before, say, the day of the fair.the fair usually contains exhibitors with poetry books, novels, cookbooks, posters, t-shirts, graphic novels, comic books, magazines, scraps of paper, gum-ball machines with poems, 2x4s with text, etc, including (at previous events) Bywords, Dusty Owl, Chaudiere Books, above/ground press, Room 302 Books, The Puritan, The Ottawa Arts Review, Buschek Books, The Grunge Papers, Broken Jaw Press, BookThug, Proper Tales Press, and others.
happens twice a year, founded in 1994 by rob mclennan & James Spyker.
now run by rob mclennan thru span-o.questions, az421@freenet.carleton.ca
free things can be mailed for fair distribution to the same address. we will not be selling things for folk who cant make it, sorry. also, always looking for volunteers to poster, move tables, that sort of thing. let me know if anyone able to do anything. thanks.
for more information, bother rob mclennan.if you're able/willing to distribute posters/fliers for the fair, send me an email at az421@freenet.carleton.ca
Between 1951 and 1955, the young poet Phyllis Webb was preoccupied with the lot of the poet and the state of Canadian publishing. In 1951, at the suggestion of Earle Birney, then professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Webb designed a questionnaire to gather information and mailed it to “almost every poet of any merit in this country” (“P&P” 1955, 499). During a difficult and transitional period for Canadian poets and publishers of poetry, Webb’s questionnaire served as a focus for concern and catalyst for solutions. Its significance was most directly felt by Phyllis Webb herself; the questionnaire brought her into contact with other poets and with publishers, made her cognizant of the Canadian literary climate and pointed her in a number of directions which she would pursue in the following years.
I’ve gone through this essay, and this issue, again recently, while co-crafting the new selection of “12 or 20 questions” for small and micro-press publishers and editors. Most literary writers and writing aren’t written of nearly enough, if at all, in this current climate, and publishing ventures, even less so. For a period in the mid-1980s, Grain magazine out of Saskatoon was producing pieces on the history of literary presses, short histories of presses such as Thistledown and Turnstone. Shouldn’t all presses have such opportunities to tell their stories? How the hell did Hagios Press get started, for example, or BookThug, or even CUE Books? How can even the writers published by such presses know so very little?
Most small press books and chapbooks don’t even seem to get reviewed, so any larger or longer conversation of press activities can’t help but get overlooked. Why are so few of these stories ever asked for, ever told?
Costumed and impostured in her sheet, my actress cues hormonal ghosts with scheming cunts and sequin eyes. I won’t be delivered silences like that. Tucked in, her arms are girls made of overwrought iron playing combat in the wet spot. Claque-dent down cold, I try dissolving her in sobs oozing from some blank world. I try nursing her grudges. I ruin her exhibits of caprice, but this one looks real breathing the curtain. She’s pushing me down, unsatisfied. She breathes me to my own rank, where I’m waiting with weapons in my holes.
There are wonderful things Hume manages here, through the line-breaks of the “standard format” open lyric and the prose poem, far more “poem” than many I’ve seen claiming such, writing expected shapes and a far straighter line. These are poems that crackle, sparkle and sing, and stake their immutable claim over that sightseeing dark, and write themselves almost as a veritable claim on the dark, over sleep; she might not know of Rob Budde’s poetic explorations on sleep, but might she know of Anne Carson? As she begins the poem “UM, UM …”:
Angel HousePress is a conduit for experiments in sound, colour and text. It began in 2007 with three chapbooks i self published in a limited edition of 26 copies. i had planned for AHP to be a sandbox where i'd play alone, but i have since decided to let others in to play along too. Invite is the key term for now. I'm not considering unsolicited manuscripts. I don't have the money or time to do so. The Angel In The House is a Victorian concept and poem about a very weak and mindless woman whose sole responsibility was to be charming. Perhaps you can see the irony.
Amanda Earl’s poetry appears most recently inRogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology (Mansfield Press, 2010), Drunkenboat.com, the Windsor Review, and the White Wall Review. Her chapbooks are Welcome to Earth: poem for alien(s) (Book Thug, 2008), Eleanor and the Sad Phoenician's Other Woman above/ground press, 2007/2008. Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal and runs AngelHousePress (www.angelhousepress.com). For more information on upcoming readings and recent publications, please visit www.amandaearl.com.
1 – When did AngelHousePress first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?
i started AHP in 2007. my original goals were to publish my own work, mostly colourful visual stuff that i figured i couldn’t publish elsewhere in print because of the expense. i had planned to just do limited editions of my own, ephemeral stuff, especially artists’ books. But then my poetry workshop group wanted to publish a chapbook and i offered to publish it under AHP. the process of working so closely with everyone’s poetry gave me a fresh perspective and i discovered i enjoyed design and layout. so i published my group’s chapbook, Whack of Clouds. then an excellent but not well published writer shared some of his poetry with me and it was exquisite and intense stuff, so i wanted to publish it. he came up with the great idea of having a visual artist collaborate so that’s how Compositions by Jamie Bradley and Brenda Dunn was born. i have no strategy or plan to publish a multitude of chapbooks. i take things as they come and when i discover good work that should be out there and in people’s hands, i want to publish it. i’ve discovered there’s a thrill in publishing raw talent, ragged edges, rule breakers.
2 – What first brought you to publishing?
in the early oughts i was taking a creative writing workshop at the University of Ottawa and found out about the ottawa small press book fair. a few of us from the class sold some of the workshop’s anthologies at the fair. i had no idea such a world existed. i thought publishing was just perfect bound books put out by mainstream publishers. i had no idea of the versatility and flexibility that the chapbook offered until i went to the fair. once i held one in my hand, (i think the first one was Jay MillAr’s the Small Blue from BookThug), i wanted to make them. i ended up running Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal as managing editor, which i did for four years before i started AHP. i am still managing editor of Bywords.
3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
i never tell anyone or any group what its roles and responsibilities should be. i think the creators of small magazines and books should enjoy themselves, do what they want and publish whatever they like.
4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?
AHP’s own little niche is versatility and playfulness. aside from poetry, we’ve also published a print version of a web comic, a one pager called “Signs of the Apocalypse Magazine” that mixes apocalyptic language with an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, and are about to publish a memoir.
unlike other chapbook presses that tend to go for a uniform design, we let the work itself determine the design , size and style of the chapbook.
we also publish both essays and magazines on line. your own above/ground press is very much a model in that you also do on line publications which contain reviews, essays and interviews as well as poetry [Ottawater & 17 Seconds].
5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new publications out into the world?
i’ve found the best thing is when the authors promote the work themselves. for example, Patrick Edwards Daugherty, the author of Secret Vespers: I Only Pretend To Hide promoted his chapbook on his website. we sold copies all over the world and sold out in a very short time.
6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
with AHP so far i have done a bit of both. it all depends on the work.
7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?
this is a very grassroots effort. i carry chapbooks around with me; people buy them from me in my home; on the site we have a Paypal button. we sell at small press fairs and i advertise via our Facebook group and listserves. usual print run is 50 copies or for my own stuff- 26 copies.
8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
two: the author and my husband Charles. i do the basic layout and design in consultation with the author and Charles makes the magic. i don’t work with other editors for AHP. i work with other editors for Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal and that’s great, but for this project, i wanted to be independent. the benefits of working with other editors are you get fresh viewpoints on the work and they might catch something you miss. the drawbacks are that you have to compromise. for AHP, i don’t have to compromise and i get to work closely with the writer, which is something i enjoy.
9 – How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
i understand the labour that goes into editing and publishing a work. i don’t send my work out lightly. i also tend to want to have a role in the design of the publication. i have seen some excellent work be marred by a bad design.
10 – How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?
for AHP which is funded solely by myself and my husband, i see nothing wrong with publishing my own work; however, for Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal, which is funded by the City of Ottawa, i would never publish my own work or the work of the editors.
i wouldn’t stick my nose in the business of other presses and tell them who and how they should publish. i have enough of my own stuff to do.
11 – How do you see the press evolving?
right now i’m just trying to keep up with things. since i’m recovering from a major health crisis i have to take things slowly. regardless, i am not in a rush to publish anything unless the time is right or the work makes me want to publish it. i’m not getting funding to do this so there’s no pressure to put out four books a year. the beauty of AHP is that it is completely independent from funding or any kind of rules. think of it as a rebel angel.
12 – What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?
i am really happy about the essay series. we have essays on various topics including visual poetry, poetics, fiction, women and gendered writing by well known writers such as Gil McElroy, Phil Hall and Gary Barwin and lesser known folk such as Kane X. Faucher, Jeff Fry, Jamie Bradley and Pearl Pirie with more on the way by Todd Swift, Christine McNair, and the trio of Luna Allison, Kathryn Hunt and Jessica Ruano. i want the essays to be an ongoing dialogue about creativity, risk, art, literature and more. so far we’ve had a bit of feedback, but i’d like to see a lot more. and i’d like to see responses to the essays in the form of new essays.
i also had a plan to do some AHP launches but it hasn’t happened yet, mostly due to my health crisis. i’d like to do something different, a bit quirky and entertaining for people. i haven’t been able to arrange that yet.
13 – Who were your early publishing models when starting out?
14 – How does the press work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see your books in immediate dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?
i’m interpreting “immediate literary community” as those who are local and “community at large” as those who are on line: via small press fairs when we can get to them, a FaceBook group, an AHP list serve, through the essay series, the National Poetry Month site, Experiment-O.
journals or presses the books are in immediate dialogue with? i don’t know how to answer this. there’s nothing immediate about the contact we have with journals or presses and there isn’t really any dialogue other than my occasionally running into Cameron Anstee in the Glebe or you, rob at the 2nd Cup on Somerset or jwcurry on his bike.
over the last ten years i’ve been quietly admiring and collecting the work of other chapbook presses. i just received a wonderful chapbook from derek beaulieu’s No. Press out of Calgary (“Seminar XVII” by Peter Jaeger) and a few others by US publisher Paper Kite Press (by Gary Barwin and Hugh Thomas).
i’ve supported and promoted other small presses through AHP and through Bywords. i can’t think of the last time i saw a chapbook being reviewed in a journal. maybe this series will spark a dialogue.
is it important? i suppose it would be fun to chat with other small pressers about design, distribution and such, but to be honest, the pleasure of the experience for me is the independence. as much as i enjoy learning from others, i really want to do this my own way. it’s a labour of love and doesn’t cost as much as a booze addiction.
15 – Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events for your books?
not yet. please see # 12. readings contribute but they aren’t the only promo tool. i’ve seen authors give readings and not sell a single book. there’s nothing more disappointing for an author than to work hard on preparing for a reading only to have just a handful of folk show up, or just family and friends. it’s a challenge to attract people to a reading even when the feature is a well known writer. i think a lot has to be done in the way of promotion especially on line, maybe podcasts. i know i am more likely to buy new work by someone i haven’t heard of if i can listen to them in the comfort of my own home, at my own schedule and with access to information about the work and the writer at my fingertips.
again i also think the writer needs to have a hand in promoting his or her own work. rather than the press organizing a reading for the writer, it would be best in my opinion, if writers organized and promoted their own readings with back up support from the press. if writers are willing to take the initiative and promote themselves, there’s more of a chance people will show up and books will be sold.
16 – How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?
in every way possible, via FaceBook, the AHP list serve, various on line list serves such as UBuffalo Poetics, Spider Tangle, our sites: www.angelhousepress.com, www.experiment-o.com and www.nationalpoetrymonth.ca. i think having an active on line presence is an essential tool for a small press. we don’t have an IPhone ap. alas, but it’s very cool that Coach House does.
17 – Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?
no for chapbooks, yes for the essay series, Experiment-O.com and National PoetryMonth.ca.
i’d rather talk about what we’re looking for:
for the essay series, engaging, amusing or provocative articles that talk about the artist or writer’s work or someone else’s work or deal with poetics or other literary or artistic subjects and engage with other contemporary writing and art.
for Experiment-O.com, something out of the artist’s or writer’s comfort zone. someone who writes mostly narrative, storytelling poems might contribute something that is more sound-based, less linear. someone who writes poetry might try their hand at short fiction, a new writer might consider doing an interview with seasoned writers about their work or vice versa.
for nationalpoetrymonth.ca next year (this year’s submissions are closed), i want fun stuff, no unrequited love poems or woe is me poems and i’d like to avoid autobiographies as much as possible. i’d like to see really creative work. i especially want visual poems, quirky and maverick pieces. something compelling and arresting that makes the finger linger over the mouse before clicking away.
18 – Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
in print, there’s Alert by Ben Ladouceur, a young emerging former Ottawa writer who is now in England. i like his style of writing, his sense of fun, his earnestness and imagination. i also really like his other chapbook which came out with Apartment 9, the Argossey and is written from the point of view of Odysseus’ dog.
another chapbook we’ve published is Pent Up, by my workshop group, which was a lot of fun. the group consisted of me, Marcus McCann, Pearl Pirie, Sandra Ridley and Roland Prevost. the title comes from the idea of working on one or two particular sound constraints. the group challenged themselves quite a bit because many of us were not used to working so specifically with sound.
on line, we’ve had two issues of Experiment-O so far and i’m really thrilled with those. the magazine celebrates the art of risk. contributors come from all over the world and are both emerging and well-known writers and artists.
19 – [adding my own question] What’s coming up?
in April we have NationalPoetryMonth.ca with work by 30 different contributors from Canada, the USA and Europe. i wanted to celebrate the nation of poetry as something without borders of any kind.
in June, all being well, two chapbooks will be published: house, a (tiny) memoir by rob mclennan and over my dead corpus by Pearl Pirie.
also stay tuned for new essays in the spring and summer and a new issue of Experiment-O late in the year.
Born in Ottawa, Michael Eden Reynolds grew up in Caledon, Ontario, and spent some time in Guelph before moving permanently to Whitehorse in his early 20's. Michael's poems have been published widely in Canada, winning awards from ARC, Grain, PRISM and Fiddlehead. He's been shortlisted twice for the CBC Literary Award for Poetry and had a poem included in 2008's Best Canadian Poetry in English. His first book,Slant Room was published by Porcupine's Quill in 2009.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first trade book isn’t yet a year old, so I’m still finding out how it’s changing my life. I think it’s safe to say not dramatically. It’s the logical weigh station on a road that I’d been on for ten years – more really. And It’s not sent me – yet anyway – careening off in another direction. Though I do have cravings to do other things. Like theatre.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I didn’t come to poetry first. It’s more where I’ve ended up – at least for now. Throughout elementary and high school I liked writing in different forms. I did amateur theatre in high school, and again when I got to Whitehorse. Guitar and songwriting realized a level of commitment new to me in my late teens, and that carried me through my early twenties. Through that same period I was into photography and printing photos when a darkroom was handy. I wrote a some short (slight) scripts and a couple of short stories, and around that same time stopped songwriting and really dedicated my time to poems. And then I started getting poems published, and then I had kids and found my limited creative time required a level of focus that hadn’t restricted me to one medium before. Like any restriction I’ve had to innovate to keep moving, and I think the poems have benefited from that.
When I imagine myself as an old man, he’s a poet, but when I was twenty-one, I never would have believed that a guitar would cease to be a central object in my life.
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?
Poems come to me in different ways but these days almost always slowly, and over time. If I can figure out early what the shape of the poem is, that greatly increases the chance that it become one; likewise, if I know what the poem is going to do. These two things, shape and effect are entwined, and are essential for my writing in a way that subject really isn’t. Thinking: I’m going to write a poem about the time I stopped the escalator as a kid, or having a stroke, or the raven that is right now shrieking on the back fence, is almost never fruitful. Unless it arrives with it’s own form or function. I’m going to write a poem that loops and goes up like an escalator—then suddenly stops: that’s a much more hopeful beginning.
Sometimes the shape of the poem can change substantially even after I think it’s finished. A poem called Slow Boat from Slant Room was a loose sestina for quite a while before it fractured along more natural fault lines – it really wasn’t a sestina, but thinking it was helped me to get it down, and in the finished version the ghost of a sestina provides it with a cyclical repetition that suits the poem.
A new line of poetry sometimes comes into my head like a melody I might hum (especially when walking), but almost none of these lines – which I always write down – ever find their way into (or become) a poem.
Not copious notes, but copious drafts.
4 - Where does 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?
Where a poem begins: see above.
Poems or books? Both. Slant Room and it’s four-section form was not predetermined. Two of the sections are galleries—collections of stuff stylistically linked. And the other two sections were conceived as suites. Off and on through the time I was writing the stuff that became Slant Room—and ongoing now—I’ve been working on a long narrative poem which—assuming I finish it—would be a book on it’s own.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy doing readings, though I don’t do them that often – maybe two to four a year? Reading publicly is part of my creative process, but separate from the writing. I prepare ahead, make a set list that has an internal logic and arc. I’ll rehearse the set, sometimes make substitutions or take a poem out. A reading gives me the chance to take stock of the poems, and for sure the response (or lack of response) from an audience feeds into that. Sometimes reading has left me feeling kind of agitated, but a good reading is extremely cathartic.
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?
‘Theoretical concerns,’ suggests that I know what I’m trying to say, which I usually don’t. There are exceptions, but usually writing a poem is the discovery of how to say something. And once its down I can rarely paraphrase and put to prose what that something is in any satisfying way—attempts tend to leave me humiliated. I definitely have preoccupations, but I don’t have anything really remarkable—certainly not new—to say about them. I think there’s something about making connections and parallels across different fields (metaphor). In a philosophical mode this can point me towards a view of universal oneness—joyful and terrifying depending on the approach. Certainly the fact that we are using up the earth (even if you don’t believe, specifically in climate change, I think it’s hard to argue with this). That feeds into a lot of my poems. I aspire to be an activist, but my poems don’t really work out that way. Getting a poem right is kind of the best that I can do, when I can manage it.
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 know about this. I think imagination is undervalued and underused, but don’t see this as the exclusive domain of writers and other artists. I think people need to be deeply committed and introspective in their lives. To see our actions as meaningful beyond ourselves—empathy and understanding of the world. These are things writing can help provide (also humour, fun, entertainment…) but I don’t see writers as a special category. Great writing enriches the world because of its greatness. Most of us are bricks and mortar and very occasionally someone sends up a spire.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
My experience here is pretty thin. Of course the process and its value will vary widely depending on the editor (and the poet), but I do think it should be sometimes difficult. Over time working with the same editor I imagine you could build a relationship of trust that might ease that difficulty: namely is the editor right about this or not? I asked Zach Wells to edit the last section of my book, a suite of seventeen sonnets called, Fugue. He pointed out that I overused pronouns, often as metrical padding. This was fairly easy to see the truth in, and was useful when I went through the rest of the book. Another comment was harder to swallow: he said that the final sonnet in the poem took a self-conscious, writerly angle that, in its penultimate position diminished the rest of the suite. This was difficult news, but it didn’t take long to realize that he was right. It was over some months that I found the ending that the poem now has. I didn’t agree with all the opinions that Zach had for Fugue—though most of them were bang-on, and certainly the poem is better for his involvement.
My brother Brett edited Slant Room, from the position of someone with a specialization in grammar, but he doesn’t read poetry. Poetry can create its own grammar, so it wasn’t usually a case of saying this is wrong, but saying this is what’s happening here. This was very useful as well, and resulted in lots of changes.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Create a routine. Stick to it.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
My days begin when Rue, our four-year-old daughter climbs into our bed. Mostly this is around seven-o’clock, which is much better than six. I work twenty-eight hours a week doing outreach for adults with disabilities. The schedule is flexible. My approach is to work Monday to Friday, leaving early to pick up the kids (we also have a boy, Syth, who’s six) when my wife Jenny is working or has a class. The routine in my writing week is Thursday morning after dropping Syth at school. I go to a coffee shop, plug into some lyric-free music and write, pen and paper, for four hours (or sit there with pen in hand and take a stab at the paper every once in a while). When I have holes in my client schedule, or have a cancellation, I’ll grab few hours other weekdays as well. Evenings I transcribe and edit, catch up on correspondence, but seldom do much new writing. Right now I’ve also been getting a regular Saturday morning when Jenny takes the kids to swimming lessons. I don’t have a lot of uninterrupted time for writing, the upside of which is that I’m always hungry for it.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
When inspiration comes, I’m not looking; I don’t have much luck conjuring it. Perseverance and patience are where I turn when I’m stalled, and when patience is spent I psychically eviscerate myself.
12 - What do you really want?
Just a little bit more.
13 - 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?
Definitely all of the above.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I’ve got this anthology that my grandpa gave me as a kid, most of which I never read, and most of what I read I didn’t ‘get.’ The World by Henry Vaughan is in there, I still don’t get much of the biblical allusion, but something about the cadence of the poem moved me, and I used to read it regularly trying to penetrate the meaning. I see now that meaning is overrated—the music of the poem stayed with me. Eliot, at a later stage was also formative—especially Four Quartets.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d like to spend a year walking, sleeping somewhere different each night.
16 - 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?
I might have picked an art that provided some sort of paycheque—though I think this would turn out to be an unhappy arrangement. I’ll say gardener.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
See 2.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, with it’s matryoshka doll structure really blew me away as I read it, but I think I’ve kind of used it up. The Master by Colm Tóibín is a fictional account of parts of the life of Henry James it’s heartbreaking, I’ll read it again.
For film Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (come to think of it there’s a Russian doll structure in that as well). This blew me away at the concept level, but also had a real depth of emotion—and great acting, and funny. Loved it.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I’m keeping the windows open for anything new. And I’m immersed in the long poem I mentioned above. It’s called Trout’s Account, a narrative poem that picks up the story of Tom Thomson just after his death by drowning, and carries it through the eight days until his body is found.
I saw a wave of birds, clenching and relaxing like the breath of an accordion. It lasted for miles. I didn’t tell anyone.
I wished someone good luck without knowing if I had it to give.
(Meghan Horton, “Things I Have Been Doing Instead of Writing Poems”)
The prose poem has always seduced me—I find that the grammar of the sentence truly is glamorous to me. With the sentence it’s more of a losing myself in the balance of phrasing, in the geometry of making that balance fresh each time. I do find each sentence is exciting, even erotic. I always loved parsing sentences in grade school. I don’t do that now—though it would be fun to begin again. I relate to prose thoroughly at the level of the sentence, not at all at the level of narrative. I’m really a gentleman collector of sentences. I display them in cabinets.
I’ve been, over the past few years, very interested in watching poets experiment with the sentence, working my own explorations through them as well, triggered by reading poets such as Robertson, Lisa Jarnot, Juliana Spahr, Sarah Manguso, Margaret Christakos, Sina Queyras and Rachel Zolf. Reading this issue of sentence I wonder, if this is an exploration of the “prose poem,” I’d like to see more of the poets who experiment with the sentence itself? Still, for a journal of over three hundred pages, there are certainly many highlights, such as Ray Gonzalez’ “The Guitars,” that writes out a list of exactly what the title promises, beginning with:
When Bob Dylan unstrapped his acoustic guitar after recording a few songs for Blood on the Tracks, he forgot the two other songs he had been carrying in his head. When he picked up the guitar in the studio again, he wrote a different song that never made it on the record, though the two forgotten songs appeared on bootlegs. The last guitar John Lennon played before he was murdered stood against the cold fireplace in his New York apartment, the leather collar he wore on the cover of Two Virgins tied around the neck of the guitar. When Eric Clapton’s four-year-old son fell out of a 49th floor apartment to his death, there were two electric and two acoustic guitars in the room with the open window.
An essential part of sentence’s mandate seems to be “features,” and this issue includes some seventy pages of new writing in a section called “Contemporary American Indian Prose Poetry,” with pieces by such as Orlando White, Molly McGlennen, Chezia Thompson Cager and others. As Dean Rader writes in his lengthy introduction, “Where Function Invents Form”:
What Native poets ask of genre is often linked to what they ask of language. For centuries, language and its power to transform, record, activate, and animate has been one of Native America’s most powerful weapons. That legacy carries over into poetry. Also located in Native poetry is an ontology of orality, which connects even the most contemporary, most postmodern Native poetry to its incantatory roots. So, moving from “verse” to “prose” can carry with it a number of different significances for Indian writers. It can signal the transition from conversational to ceremonial speaking, the move from chant to song, or even the visual encoding of a linguistic shift from oral to written discourse. “I have written what is called ‘free verse,’” says the great Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday, “though to my mind that is a contradiction in terms.” Momaday continues: “I’m greatly interested in the so-called ‘prose poem,’ another contradiction in terms, but what I mean is I like writing what is essentially a lyric prose in which I’m not concerned with meter, but with rhythms and fluencies of sound, primarily” (Bruchac 178). For Momaday, prose’s proseness liberates language from the prison house of poetry.
A Merry Little Christmas At my uncle’s house for the holidays, surrounded by kin, the old grandfather chose me for his story, perhaps because I chose to listen to him yearning for his lost wife, how in the end she lay on the bed, her eyes wild, and told him to take care of her little dog because she loved it so, and then she was gone, her feet, he said, already turning black, and afterward I thought of him and the little dog wearily walking the empty house in the short time left to them, how what we give and receive is left behind and comes to mean almost nothing.
spring is upon us, & a new batch of above/ground press poetry chapbooks!
add $1 to orders for shipping, etc (outside Canada, $2 US); payable to rob mclennan
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