Hook & Ladder (1993-8): bibliography, and an interview

this interview was conducted over email in October-November 2015 as part of a project to document Ottawa literary publishing. see my bibliography-in-progress of Ottawa literary publications, past and present here

Victoria Vernell lives; loves; and waits for the Doctor in the suburbs of Ottawa, Ontario. She is a decaffeinated mother of three teenagers and doesn’t go downtown nearly often enough for a cup of Bridgehead. Two cats keep her mindful of her position on the food chain, and two large dogs guarantee that a house is not a home without small piles of randomly shed fur about the place.

A writer from an early age, Victoria has published poetry in small press publications including Quills (2008), and Jones Av. (1996). There’s a poetry manuscript or two that needs completion, but in the meantime you can read her nonfiction work at her two blogs Taking The Mother Road and Whovian On A Budget.

Q: How did Hook & Ladder first start? I know there were at least a couple of you that had emerged from a creative writing workshop with Seymour Mayne at the University of Ottawa (the same class, I believe, that prompted b stephen harding and Maria Scala to found graffito:the poetry poster). What was it that prompted the creation of a new journal?

A: Ah, yes. We were young and full of gumption. Looking back, we were aware of Arc and its ties to Carleton University, Ottawa U had Bywords, and your above/ground press had just begun producing broadsheets, etc. For myself, since I can’t speak for my co-editors at the time - Robin Hannah and Alexander Monker, who were also part of Seymour Mayne’s poetry workshop that year - I wanted something that transcended existing literary cliques and made local poets of all levels of experience feel encouraged to submit their work for publication.

Q: What were your models when starting out? Were you basing the journal on anything specific, or working more intuitively?

A: I liked the look of Arc. A mini book you could carry around with you and fit into a purse or backpack.

I guess in its way we were of the “no school like the Old School” mindset as far as design. I had a copy of Aldus (? – later Adobe) PageMaker installed on my parents’ computer and I was a high-level font collector, and taught myself how to do the layout.

As for the selection process, we all tended to favour a similar style of writing. We weren’t looking to reinvent the wheel and were always mindful that people were giving us their money to do this, either through direct sales or subscriptions, so we wanted to give them a quality product on every level, within our collective ability to provide it.

Q: What was the process of putting together those first few issues? Did you have an open call for submissions, or were you soliciting work?

A: When H&L started, we intentionally kept our net cast within Ottawa and Eastern Ontario. We didn’t have the budget or the distribution network to take it much further, as it didn’t receive government arts funding until years later, from the City of Ottawa; and we felt that between the two universities plus the literary reading series (Tree, Sasquatch, BARD, Vanilla/Vogon, to name a few) we would have a strong pool from which to solicit submissions. I was also a full-time undergraduate student studying English Lit at Ottawa U, so I was able to get us a mail slot in the English Department as an address, which may have helped with cachet. That was the extent of the university’s concrete support of the magazine.

I was adamant that my name would only appear in H&L as a byline on book reviews. I sent out letters to small presses across the country requesting review copies. Most were pleased to oblige.

As for the selection process, whoever was on the editorial board at the time would get together as a group and go through the submissions one by one. Eventually we worked up the nerve to send poems back to their originators with comments. Payment was two contributor copies.

Q: Why were you, as you say, adamant your name only appear as a byline?

A: Good question. I was unable to see the value in my own work. I could not be objective and impartial and make that distinction between myself and my poetry.

It was less demanding to find the merit in others’ work because I had no personal investment in it.

Q: Did this change at all over time? What effect, if any, had Hook & Ladder on the way you saw your own writing?

A: Yes, it did. It bears mentioning that depression and anxiety and every dark corner those two mental illnesses encase all but silenced me for approximately 12 years, during which time I also got married and had three children with complex medical issues; and I eventually got divorced. I didn’t start writing again until 2006, and went to some workshops. The last time I read in public was in 2007.

I was lucky also to meet someone who was very supportive of my writing and keeps poking at me to do more. These days my output is mostly online with two non-literary blogs, but I have never lost a love for books and printed zines and I want to concentrate more on the literary form that ignited H&L’s creation 22 years ago.

Q: What kind of reception did the journal have, whether in Ottawa or beyond?

A: I would say the response was positive, overall. We had our critics of course but our decision to stop publishing after a five year run had nothing to do with that. My children became my focus and I built my life around them, as the song goes. But when H&L was active we all strongly believed in what we were doing and it was a great learning experience on many levels.

Q: What prompted the decision to finally suspend publication? Was it simply a matter of shifting priorities?

A: Babies and bills. And back then due to undiagnosed depression and anxiety I was a lousy juggler, worse still at asking for help, and expert in pushing people away – usually people I cared about. After I came to terms with those things, I was of the mindset that I had to give 100% of everything to motherhood, so I did what I thought was best for the sake of my domestic life at the time. It isn’t coincidence that I began writing again and pursuing publication after my divorce.

Q: You mention Alexander Monker and Robin Hannah as co-founders/co-editors. Was the collaboration between the three of you an equal partnership, and were they both there during the entire run of the journal? How were either of them involved in the decision to suspend publication?

A: Robin, Alexander, and I were the team behind most of the first issue of H&L. Alexander was dropped from the masthead prior to the launch of the first issue, to paraphrase the late Irving Layton, because Robin and I jointly decided that Alexander’s devotion to the project wasn’t perfect. Difficult to pin down for meetings, etc. I remember Robin’s partner at the time, Sean O’Neil, came on board and helped with content selection.

It was Robin and I who put out the second issue. My university classmate Kim McNeill joined us for the third issue, and I believe it was around that time that Robin and I severed ties and she eventually moved back to Toronto.

If we are going to talk about personal or professional regrets, my biggest was losing her. She was (is) an amazing writer and knew her stuff. To the best of my awareness she published her chapbook with above/ground press and a collection with Broken Jaw Press and nothing since.

At the time H&L ceased publication, I was also building a reading series and a chapbook press under the name Electric Garden. Kim had moved on, and my ex-husband briefly joined creative forces with me, which was not without its negative consequences.

As I said previously, it was a valuable learning experience on many levels. The fallout is not something I wish to revisit.

Q: Looking back on the journal now, how successful do you feel you were in your original goals? What do you feel were the biggest accomplishments of Hook & Ladder?

A: At its peak, it was great fun. I still get a great chuckle from the memory of you, Warren Dean Fulton, and I, sandwiched in the back of my parents’ minivan with our boxes of publications, heading down to Toronto at some ungodly early hour to attend CanZine at the Spadina Hotel. Do you still have that coffee cup from the Denny’s in Kingston?

I think H&L achieved what it set out to do. I tip my hat to the people who are still in the game. For me there will always be something about the printed zine that is timeless and needs to continue.

Hook & Ladder bibliography:

Volume one, issue one. Spring/Summer 1993. Editors: Robin Hannah, Sean O’Neil, Victoria Vernell. Managing Editor: Victoria Vernell. Poems by Matthew Barlow, Andrew Milne, Sylvia Adams, Kimberly J. McNeill, Barbara Fras, Robin Hannah, Seymour Mayne, J.D. Boyes, rob mclennan and Robert Craig. Review by Victoria Vernell.

Volume one, issue two. Fall/Winter 1993-1994. Editors: Robin Hannah, Victoria Vernell. Managing Editor: Victoria Vernell. Poems by Tony Cosier, B. Stephen Harding, Michael Abraham, Kimberly J. McNeill, E. Russell Smith, Dan Doyle, Colin Morton and Juan O’Neill. Review by Victoria Vernell.

Volume one, issue three. Summer Solstice 1994. Editors: Robin Hannah, Kimberly McNeill, Victoria Vernell. Managing Editor: Victoria Vernell. Poems by Seymour Mayne, Allison O’Shaughnessy, Warren Layberry, Cindy Upton, Juan O’Neill, Rob McLennan, David W. Henderson, Shel Krakofsky, Ciaran O’Driscoll, Joy Hewitt Mann, E. Russell Smith, Brick G. Billing, Yvonne Dionne and Kimberly J. McNeill. Review by Rob McLennan.

Volume one, issue four. Spring Equinox 1995. Editors: Kimberly McNeill, Victoria Martin. Managing Editor: Victoria Martin. Poems by  Diana Brebner, Joanne Epp, Maggie Helwig, Michael Abraham, Linda Jeays, John Barton, Gregory McGillis, Wayne K. Spear, Warren Layberry, Catherine Jenkins and Rob McLennan. Reviews by Tamara Fairchild, Gregory McGillis and Colin Morton.

Volume two, issue one. Autumn Equinox 1995. Editor: Victoria Martin. Managing Editor: Victoria Martin. Poems by Linda Jeays, Andrew Milne, Wayne K. Spear, Diana Brebner, Ruth Latta, Andrew Steeves, Leo Brent Robillard, Kimberly J. McNeill, Paul Politis, Ross Taylor, Michael Abraham, Cyril Dabydeen, LeeAnn Heringer, Alan Corrigan, Julian Millar and E. Russell Smith. Reviews by Corey Coates, Tamara Fairchild, E. Russell Smith and Andrew Steeves.

Volume two, issue two. Summer Solstice 1996. Managing Editor: Victoria Martin. Poetry Editoris: G.T. Fougere, Stephen Martin, Victoria Martin. Book Reviews Editor: Victoria Martin. Visual Art Coordinator: Robin C. Fougere. Poems by Ken Norris, Allison O’Shaughnessy, Judith Anderson Stuart, Karen Hussey, Louise Bak, Noah Leznoff and rob mclennan. An interview with Ray Fraser by Andrew Steeves. Reviews by Andrew Milne, George Elliott Clarke, Juliana Starkman and Tamara Fairchild.

Volume two, issue three. Autumn Equinox 1996. Managing Editor: Victoria Martin. Poetry Editoris: G.T. Fougere, Stephen Martin, Victoria Martin. Book Reviews Editor: Victoria Martin. Visual Art Coordinator: Robin C. Fougere. Poems by Noah Leznoff, Jackie Moran, Marianne Bluger, Caitlin Hewitt-White, p.j. flaming, Tamara Fairchild, Jennifer Footman, Neil Hennessy, Mark Hamstra, LeeAnn Heringer, Ben Ohmart, Ruth Latta, Paul Politis, Janet Somerville, T. Anders Carson, Jay Ames, James Spyker, j.a. LoveGrove and Ray Heinrich. Interview with David Donnell by Neil Hennessy. Reviews by Corey Coates, Mark Hamstra and Andrew Steeves.

Volume two, issue four. Lughnasa (Summer) 1997. Managing Editor: Victoria Martin. Poetry Editoris: G.T. Fougere, Stephen Martin, Victoria Martin. Book Reviews Editor: Victoria Martin. Visual Art Coordinator: Robin C. Fougere. Poems by Susan McCaslin, Lorette C. Thiessen, Virginia K. Marshall, R M Vaughan, Allison Grayhurst, Linda Jeays, Kimberly Fahner, Mike Paterson, Christopher Finlay, David A. Groulx, R.D. Patrick, Rhonda Mack and Kirsten Aidan. Reviews by L. Brent Robillard, E. Russell Smith and G.T. Fougere.

Volume three, issue one. Winter (March) 1998. Editor / Poetry and Book Reviews: Victoria Martin. Poetry Editor: G.T. Fougere. Visual Art Coordinator: Robin C. Fougere. Poems by R.D. Patrick, Alex Boyd, Ernest Magi, Aidan Baker, Linda Frank, Giovanni Malito, Amy Eggleton, Kevin Sampsell, Rob Yedinak, Patrick Belmonte, Tricia Woods, Nicolas Mare Billon, Mark Howell, Debra Anderson, Brian Burke, Coral Hull, William Jacklin and p.j. flaming. Small Press Comix Feature by Leanne Franson. Reviews by Corey Coates and E. Russell Smith. Cover Art by Rev. Hipolito Tschimanga.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Joanne Epp

Joanne Epp [photo credit: Anthony Mark Schellenberg] has published poetry in literary journals, including The New Quarterly, The Antigonish Review, and CV2; her work appears in Lemon Hound's New Winnipeg Poets folio. Her chapbook, Crossings, was released in 2012. Eigenheim, her first full-length poetry collection, was published by Turnstone Press in 2015. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, she spent several years in Ontario and now makes her home in Winnipeg.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Having my first book accepted by Turnstone Press felt like a really big validation of my writing. I’d been writing a long time, and had become quite involved in the local writing community, but even though I already knew I was a real writer, having the book published still changed things.

The publishing process confirmed what I’d experienced a few years earlier, when I self-published a chapbook: while writing itself is solitary, putting a book out is a collaborative process. I’ve been grateful that I’m able to work with people who are skilled in things like design and marketing, about which I know little.

My recent work continues along earlier themes, but takes them in different directions. I’m still exploring the idea of home, which forms a prominent thread in Eigenheim, but also taking home as a given, a place or state of mind from which to move outward, and focusing more generally on landscape and place. Time has become a more frequent motif—or maybe I am just more conscious of it now. And I recently got a taste of ekphrastic writing, and found it quite stimulating.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I think I’ve always been attracted to the compactness of poetry, compared to prose. Years ago I made a couple of half-baked attempts at fiction, but ran into dead ends very quickly. Fiction seemed to require so very many words just to get from one thing to the next, and I became overwhelmed and impatient at the prospect.

Poetry was always a familiar thing. We had books of children’s poetry at home, and memorized poems at school. And I still have a book my aunt gave me for my ninth birthday called The Enchanted Land: Canadian Poetry for Young Readers. It contains both formal and free verse, and was probably where I first saw unrhymed poetry. I must have read it thoroughly; so many of its poems feel like I’ve always known them.

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?
A poem tends to go through several versions before it feels settled, although the general shape of the finished piece may be discernible in the first draft. I usually set a poem aside between revisions and let it sit for several months while I work on other things. The result is that a series of poems can take years to develop. I have several in progress at the moment, most of which started out as single poems and expanded as I kept discovering more angles on the subject.

There are a few poems in Eigenheim that I had to take apart and rebuild a few times before they really worked. Then there are the rare ones that emerged fully formed and required very little revision. But there’s only been two or three of those, ever.

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?
Besides working on series, I also write individual pieces that aren’t deliberately connected to anything else. In any case, a poem begins with something concrete, with an image or incident or sound. I generally can’t start with an idea, unless I’ve got something concrete and particular to anchor it.

Eigenheim wasn’t conceived as a book from the beginning; when I started putting it together it was a collection of most of what I’d written up to that point. Then I had to find where the connecting threads were and determine what did and didn’t fit. The manuscript I’m working on now has a more deliberate structure—although there, too, it began as a discovery that the various series I was working on had some things in common.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like doing readings. They can be part of my creative process, if I’m reading something fairly new and want to test it, but on the whole I see readings more as communication than as part of the creative process.

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?
Recently I’ve heard a number of poets talk about how they push the boundaries of poetry in different ways. And I realized what I’d probably known for a long time, that while I find what these poets do very interesting, my approach to writing poetry is not like theirs. If I have a theoretical concern it’s probably this: does lyric poetry that is, by some measures, fairly conventional, still have interesting things to say? I’m working on the assumption that the answer is yes. But at the same time I find it helpful to listen to poets who stretch my ideas of how language and poetry work. 

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 think attentiveness is a large part, if not the main part, of a writer’s task. A writer can reflect what’s around her, reflect on what’s around her, entice readers into the unknown, make them believe in fairies—but you don’t accomplish that by thinking about your role in the larger culture; you accomplish it by doing the best writing you can.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Working with an editor is difficult in that it makes me think harder about what I’m doing, but that’s a useful kind of difficulty and one that I might avoid otherwise avoid. I have become better at editing my own work, but there comes a point when I need someone else’s eyes. Eigenheim in particular is more tightly organized and more thematically interesting thanks to my editor.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
When I was in my teens my mother once told me that I should find something I loved and stick to it. (She rarely gives advice, which is probably why I still remember this.) She was thinking, I’m sure, of occupations that would earn me a living, and in that sense I have not followed her advice. But I have stuck with poetry, whatever else I was doing.

Then there’s something my organ teacher occasionally says when I ask about some detail of musical interpretation. Sometimes there are rules or conventions that apply, but at other times she simply says: “Use your ears.” This seems to me like a generally useful principle.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
Writing non-fiction ends up being a form of study for me; it’s for argument, discussion, for working out ideas. I find it harder to write than poetry, where you have to be convincing but not necessarily logical, and where you can make things up if you want.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I work in fits and starts, and am not nearly as disciplined as I’d like to be. Fortunately, I have a writing partner whom I meet with once a month (at times it’s been a group, but for now it’s just the two of us) to share new or recently-revised work. Those regular deadlines are a lifesaver.

One thing that’s remained consistent about the way I work is that I always write first drafts in longhand, and do a fair bit of editing with different coloured pens before entering anything on the computer. I think better with a pen in my hand.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Going for a walk is good. Sometimes it just clears my head; sometimes being physically in motion gets the words moving, too. At home, my favorite route goes down toward the river. When I go on a retreat (which I haven’t done in a while) I get into an alternating rhythm of writing and walking, which I find very satisfying.

I also read when I don’t know what to write. And sometimes I just keep writing: if I’m stuck for a word or phrase I write out as many possibilities as I can think of, until something works.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Poplar trees—I think it must be balsam poplars—have a scent I associate with the small towns in Saskatchewan where I grew up. You rarely see poplars in the city.

When I think of smells associated with the home where I am now, they’re all food smells. Toast, granola fresh from the oven, or the onion-and-herb aroma of soup.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Nature has become an important one, I think partly because of the way I find it rewards attentiveness. The places I visit over and over become ever more familiar, and yet they keep showing me new things. Music and visual art, too, influence my work. With music it happens organically, it more or less soaks in, while with visual art it’s been more deliberate. I’ve done a little ekphrastic writing recently, mostly through workshops, and have enjoyed the way it brings forth poems I would not have expected to write.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Dorothy Sayers: her novels, for pleasure, and her plays and essays for their solid arguments and their “aha” moments. G.K. Chesterton, for the same reasons. The best of Robertson Davies’ novels, for his incisive observations of character. Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery, again for their vivid characters, and also for their close attention to the details of women’s lives and work. The sermons I hear every Sunday, which are both passionate and unfailingly literate. I keep coming back to The Enchanted Land, the anthology I mentioned earlier, as well as 20th-Century Poetry and Poetics (ed. Gary Geddes) and the anthology we used in high school, Poetry Of Our Time, in which the work of several Quebec poets stands out for me.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d like to learn to write formal poetry. I’d probably have to take a class or workshop, because I wouldn’t have the discipline to do that on my own.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I once had notions of studying library science, and might still like that, as long as I got to work with actual books. I’ve been involved in music to a greater or lesser degree since I was a child, and in an alternate timeline I might have made it a bigger part of my working life.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I can’t imagine not writing. The amount of time I’ve been able to devote to it has varied quite a bit over the years, but it’s always been there, along with whatever else I was doing, whether studies or paid work or raising children.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, a novel of social class that seemed like it was going to be firmly anti-industrialist but ended up being much more nuanced. As for films—my family and I watched several by Wes Anderson recently and loved them (The Darjeeling Limited et al.). I also think Housekeeping and other films by Bill Forsyth are among the best I’ve seen.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I have a manuscript in progress—it’s been in progress for several years and I really mean to get back to it soon, but there’s also a series of poems that I want to turn into a chapbook, and I’m preoccupied with that at the moment. I also just took a class in letterpress printing and want to keep doing that.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ben Doller, FAUXHAWK

The word is a verb

but the word

is a noun

I noun you

I noun pronounce you

now pronoun you I do—

I am my wife’s wife.

I wive. I wave the news at a beetle

who must die.

It runs into and out of

this house

of mine. (“RUN”)

San Diego poet Ben Doller’s latest poetry title is FAUXHAWK (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015). The author of the poetry collections Dead Ahead (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), FAQ (Boise ID: Ahsahta Press, 2009) and Radio, Radio (Albany NY: Fence Books, 2010), as well as two collaborations, the poems in FAUXHAWK utilize an energized, and nearly manic, sense of play through erasure, repetition, exaltation, the footnote, lyric fragment and collage, as well as some of the most lively and gymnastic turns I’ve seen in a very long time. The collection is constructed with an opening, seemingly self-titled section of shorter poems before moving into shorter poem-sections: “Earing,” “Hello,” “Pain” and “Google Drive.” Part of what appeals about this collection is seeing the ways in which Doller is, with such a lively glee and a fierce intelligence, stretching out the boundaries of his own poetic, from the staccato-accumulations of a poem such as “[BEE]” (“I background my ground. / I backlist my list. // I backtalk my talk. / I backwash my wash.”), the erasure/excisions of the poem-section “PAIN”(“Consider thee carefully / what thou taketh for pain”), to underscoring the overwhelming footnotes of the poem “HELLO,” a short lyric poem awash with forty-six different footnotes, the first of which reads:

 

1. Hello: The poem functions in the book as a phatic and in media res greeting as well as a belated introduction to certain poetic effects and themesthat are mobilized throughout the material. “Hello” is an Americanized compromise selected over the course of millennia from a multiplicity of alternatives: “holla” (stop, cease), “halon,” “holon” (to fetch), andmany more, hunting hollers (“halloo!”) and hailings. Each term conveys more a sense of pulling another into one’s sphere than an act of politesse or acknowledgement, an interruption or imperative as opposed to an introduction. Hail Caesar. Sieg Heil. Hey Girl. Halt your motion and attend to your addresser. Not until Edison successfully lobbied that the word be used as a greeting for telephone calls, a way to acknowledge the scratchy silence about to be breached, ws the term standardized. The telephone was originally envisioned as an open line between two offices, and a bell was originally proposed as a way to initiate a conversation until Edison’s suggestion (“I don’t think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What do you think?). Another Bell, Alexander Graham, who is credited with the invention of the telephone, but who appropriated much of the vital technology (including a liquid transmitter) from one Elisha Gray, argued for “Ahoy!”

The poem, “[BEE],” also, becomes a poem that, rhythmically, would be quite wonderful to hear aloud, and the sounds and rhythms that run through the breaks and collisions of Doller’s poems are quite striking. In FAUXHAWK, Doller articulates and explores the difficulties with language, and how language is so often misued and misappropriated, in an exacting and glorious music, and creating a fine and precise tension between drudgery and song. As he writes to open the poem “DUMMY”:

Isn’t it dumb

to write a

letter

at a time.

“On Google Drive,” he writes, in the sequence/section “Google Drive,” “the eucalyptus trees / sing Philip Levine // behind the Korean / bakesales.” The sequence/section plays off of a form of poetic translation, opening with a quote by American poet Fanny Howe, who is referenced throughout the sequence: “I’m rewriting Fanny’s book probably a gift for a friend / Or from her file I stole it from the faculty lounge.” The sequence reads as a curious blend of possible translation and poetic response to Howe’s poetry, from the cadence to the ghazal-like fragments and connections between them, and his coy references to the strong undercurrent of Catholic faith that runs throughout her poetry. “Unlike myself,” he writes, “you are immune to cliché. / Yours is faith to write what you say // myself, I can’t always tell when I’m joking / and I pop out of bed plotting paths to get loaded.”

In the notes at the end of the collection, Doller informs that “‘Google Drive’ is a word-by-word writing-through of Fanny Howe’s ‘Robeson Street,’ from the book of the same title, published in 1985 by Alice James Books. The line ‘Schizophrenia is hearing voices, not doing them’ belongs to the comedian Maria Bamford.” Still, each referenced link to Howe’s writing throughout the sequence reads as both link and deflection, which could easily be a matter of Dollar utilizing Howe’s language, but not necessarily similar intentions, somehow allowing him opportunities to slip his own poem underneath the structure of what is a variation upon hers:

Blackbird stealth fighters sure make noise

Mach 12 over beachvolleyball totally Top Gun

Officehours are over, but there’s a Spanish Miltonist

Interviewing for an empty chair, holy smokes

The weather so soft I go vegan for the challenge

Hunger as an element, not hunger,

inconvenience as continuous present

You just know the daughters

Skyjacked the text

Paradise Lost, if these wars are my Vietnam

Oh Fanny I’ve barely watched

So no thanks

Hold the onions, shouldn’t you be on strike

You’ve been working since you made me my grassjuice

Three hundred and twenty seven more days

Are due this year and even with that many lives

I’d still be this lazy (“Google Drive”)

Judith Fitzgerald (November 11, 1952 - November 25, 2015)

Canadian poet and critic Judith Fitzgerald has died. An obit here reads:

Ms. Fitzgerald died suddenly, but peacefully, at her Northern Ontario home on Wednesday, November 25, 2015 in her 64th year. Cremation has taken place. A Celebration of her Life will be announced at a later date. Judith Fitzgerald was the author of twenty-plus collections of poetry and three best-selling volumes of creative non-fiction. Her work was nominated and short-listed for the Governor General's Award, the Pat Lowther Award, a Writers' Choice Award, and the Trillium Award. Impeccable Regret was launched this year at BookFest Windsor to critical acclaim. Judith also wrote columns for the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, among others.  "Her work is incredible...entirely inventive, deeply moving, and universally attractive." – Leonard Cohen. For further information, to make a donation, order flowers or leave a message of condolence or tribute please go to www.paulfuneralhome.ca or call Paul Funeral Home, Powassan, ON (705) 724-2024.

As I wrote in my recent review of her Impeccable Regret (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2015): “The author of some two dozen poetry titles going back more than forty years, from Octave (1970) to the most recent “Adagios Quartet” – published through Oberon Press as Iphigenia’s Song, vol. 1 (2003), Orestes’ Lament, vol. 2 (2004), Electra’s Benison, vol. 3 (2006) and O, Clytaemnestra!, vol. 4 (2007) – Fitzgerald, through multiple award nominations and her ongoing critical work, has been a consistent force in Canadian writing for decades. She has also produced some of my favourite poetry overall; her Lacerating Heartwood (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 1977) remains one of my most reread poetry collections.”

Judith Fitzgerald was one of my favourite Canadian poets, as well as being one of my earliest and most passionate supporters, and both she and her work were very important to me in my twenties [see the piece I wrote here about a decade ago on one of her poems from Lacerating Heartwood]. We even brought her to town to read at TREE (as she claimed, her “second last public reading”) on April 9, 1996, and produced, through above/ground press, her chapbook 26 WAYS OF THIS WORLD: A Variation of Ghazals. Part of a longer work-in-progress, D’Arc and de Rais, about Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais, I was always slightly disappointed she abandoned that title for the final publication, appearing as 26 Ways Of This World (Ottawa ON: Oberon Press, 1999). We kept an occasional correspondence that was furiously active between extended silences. She was good enough to even occasionally send poems for some of my schemes, including my Canadian issue of dusie. An email two weeks ago after my review of her Talonbooks was the first I’d heard from her in a few years.

As a poet, critic and person in the world, she was passionate, brilliant, forceful and sometimes difficult. I shall miss her.