dusie : the tuesday poem,

The Tuesday poem is nearly six years old, with three hundred new poems published to date! Since April 9, 2013, I've been curating a weekly poem over at the dusie blog, an offshoot of the online poetry journal Dusie (http://www.dusie.org/), edited/published by American poet and publisher Susana Gardner.

http://dusie.blogspot.ca/

The series aims to publish a mix of authors from the dusie kollektiv, as well as Canadian and international poets, ranging from emerging to the well established. Over the next few weeks and months, watch for new work by dusies and non-dusies alike, including Elisha May Rubacha, Noah Falck, Rebecca Rustin, Seth Landman, Marvyne Jenoff, Mikko Harvey, Erin Emily Ann Vance, Michael Turner, Heather Sweeney, Tanis MacDonald, Evan Gray, Conyer Clayton, Laynie Browne, Timothy Otte, Tim Atkins, Erin Bedford, Alex Manley, Jen Sookfong Lee, Kirby, Emma Bolden, Ruth Daniell, Lindsay Turner, Brenda Brooks, Rob Winger, Jordan Davis, Avonlea Fotheringham, Winston Le, Diana Arterian, Manahil Bandukwala, Samuel Ace, Zane Koss, J.I. Kleinberg, Luke Bradford, Sadie McCarney and Shelly Harder.

A new poem will appear every Tuesday afternoon, Central European Summer Time, just after lunch (which is 8am in Central Canada terms).

If you wish to receive notices for poems as they appear, sign up here for the weekly email list.

So far, the Tuesday poem series has featured new writing by Elizabeth Robinson, Megan Kaminski, Marcus McCann, Hoa Nguyen, Stephen Collis, j/j hastain, David W. McFadden, Edward Smallfield, Erín Moure,Roland Prevost, Maria Damon, Rae Armantrout, Jenna Butler, Cameron Anstee, Sarah Rosenthal, Kathryn MacLeod, Camille Martin, Pattie McCarthy, Stephen Brockwell, Rosmarie Waldrop, Nicole Markotić, Deborah Poe, Ken Belford, Hugh Thomas, nathan dueck, Hailey Higdon, Stephanie Bolster, Jessica Smith,Mark Cochrane, Amanda Earl, Robert Swereda, Colin Smith, Sarah Mangold, Joe Blades, Maxine Chernoff,Peter Jaeger, Dennis Cooley, Louise Bak, Phil Hall, Fenn Stewart, derek beaulieu, Susan Briante, Adeena Karasick, Marthe Reed, Brecken Hancock, Lea Graham, D.G. Jones, Monty Reid, Karen Mac Cormack, Elizabeth Willis, Susan Elmslie, Paul Vermeersch, Susan M. Schultz, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, K.I. Press,Méira Cook, Rachel Moritz, Kemeny Babineau, Gil McElroy, Geoffrey Nutter, Lisa Samuels, Dan Thomas-Glass, Judith Copithorne, Deborah Meadows, Meredith Quartermain, William Allegrezza, nikki reimer,Hillary Gravendyck, Catherine Wagner,Stan Rogal, Sarah de Leeuw, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Arielle Greenberg, lary timewell, Norma Cole, Paul Hoover, Emily Carr, Kate Schapira, Johanna Skibsrud, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Richard Froude, Marilyn Irwin, Carrie Olivia Adams, Aaron Tucker,Mercedes Eng, Jean Donnelly, Pearl Pirie, Valerie Coulton, Lesley Yalen, Andy Weaver, Christine Stewart,Susan Lewis, Kate Greenstreet, ryan fitzpatrick, Amish Trivedi, Lola Lemire Tostevin, Lina ramona Vitkauskas, Nikki Sheppy, N.W. Lea, Barbara Henning, Chus Pato (trans Erín Moure), Stephen Cain, Lucy Ives, William Hawkins, Jan Zwicky, Rusty Morrison, Jon Boisvert, Helen Hajnoczky, Steven Heighton,Jennifer Kronovet, Ray Hsu, Steve McOrmond, Lily Brown, Daniel Scott Tysdal, Beth Bachmann, Harold Abramowitz, Sarah Burgoyne, David James Brock, Elizabeth Treadwell, Shannon Maguire, Mary Austin Speaker, Victor Coleman, Charles Bernstein, Jennifer K Dick, Eric Schmaltz, Kayla Czaga, Paige Taggart,Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Lillian Necakov, Liz Howard, Jamie Reid, Jennifer Londry, Rachel Loden, a rawlings, Jenny Haysom, Jake Kennedy, Beverly Dahlen, Kristjana Gunnars, Eleni Zisimatos, Pete Smith,Julie Carr, Natalee Caple, Anne Boyer, Alice Burdick, Buck Downs, Phinder Dulai, Bronwen Tate, Ashley-Elizabeth Best, Nelson Ball, Laura Sims, Cassidy McFazdean, Paul Zits, Geoffrey Young, Michael Sikkema,Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Emily Izsak, Michael Ruby, Kemeny Babineau, Mairéad Byrne, Amy Bagwell, Jamie Sharpe, Dina Del Bucchia, Endi Bogue Hartigan, Claire Lacey, George Bowering, Muriel Leung,Michael Lithgow, Brynne Rebele-Henry, Kate Hargreaves, Carrie Hunter, Jennifer Baker, Rita Wong, Kristina Drake, Sonnet L’Abbé, Montana Ray, Farid Matuk, Michael Cavuto, Mark Truscott, Virginia Konchan, Christine Stewart and Ted Byrne, Chris Martin, Jason Christie, Marie Buck, George Stanley, Sean Braune, Natalie Lyalin, Donato Mancini, Shannon Bramer, Anne Cecelia Holmes, Kiki Petrosino, Emily Abendroth, Melissa Bull, Barbara Langhorst, Suzanne Zelazo, Aaron McCollough, Éireann Lorsung, Alexandra Oliver, Klara du Plessis, Daphne Marlatt, CAConrad, Sarah Dowling, Sara Renee Marshall, Sarah Fox, Nyla Matuk, Cody-Rose Clevidence, Brian Henderson, Adrienne Gruber, bp sutton, Laura Walker, Jessica Popeski,Collier Nogues, Mark Goldstein, Zach Savich, Jacqueline Valencia, Gerry Shikatani, Jennifer Stella, Matthew Henriksen,Sharon Thesen, Sarah Cook, Eryk Wenziak, 신선영 Sun Yung Shin, Ander Monson, Carrie Etter, Sarah Moses, Julia Polyck-O’Neill, Aimee Herman, Christine Stoddard, Aaron Boothby, John Barton, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Steve Venright, natalie hanna, Melissa Eleftherion, Adam Clay, Jennifer Zilm, Michelle Detorie, Kyle Flemmer, Biswamit Dwibedy, Rebecca Salazar, Ryan Eckes, Kate Siklosi, Lissa McLaughlin, Ashleigh Lambert, Shane Book, Anna Gurton-Wachter, James Meetze, Conor Mc Donnell, Jake Syersak, Domenica Martinello, Stephanie Grey, Christy Davids, Jay Ritchie, Katie Fowley, Emily Sanford, Geoffrey Nilson, Simina Banu, Marty Cain, Chelene Knight, Madhur Anand, Matthew Johnstone, Chia-Lun Chang, Andrew Wessels, Michael Martin Shea, Kimberly Quiogue Andrews and Sarah Blake, Lance La Rocque, Callie Garnet, Kerry Gilbert, Laura Theobald, Felicia Zamora, Eléna Rivera, Christian Schlegel, Janet Kaplan, Stuart Ross, Beth Ayer, Laressa Dickey, Beni Xiao, Annick MacAskill, Jenna Lyn Albert, John Phillips, MC Hyland, Di Brandt, Anthony Etherin, M.H. Vanstone, Sommer Browning, Melanie Dennis Unrau, Madeleine Stratford, Liz Countryman, Jamie Townsend, nina jane drystek, Nicole Steinberg, Lauren Haldeman, Catherine Cafferty, Cath Morris, Kristi Maxwell, Shira Dentz, Taryn Hubbard, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Joel Robert Ferguson and Jane Virginia Rohrer.

Ongoing notes: New Year’s Day, 2019

Aoife, during one of our shopping/photocopying jaunts

Gadzooks! Where does it all go? Here we are, another year blah and another year blah blah. Older, certainly. So: hoping your 2019 is better than your 2018! I hear from more than a few that their 2018 wasn’t terribly good (things were okay in our household, although some larger country/world things of late have been quite distressing), so perhaps seeing an end to all of that is okay. New year, new hope. Yes?

On that note: I’ve been attempting lately to get back to the amount of reviews I once did, and am spending a couple of days pretending that I’m not overloaded by simply doing completely other, unrelated work. So here you go!

Chicago IL: From Chicago poet and editor Carleen Tibbetts comes the chapbook DATACLYSM.jpg (2018), a precursor, it would seem, to a full-length title of the same name out in spring 2019 with White Stag. Published in a numbered edition of fifty copies by Paul Cunningham and Jake Syersak’s r/adio/active c-lou_d [see my recent interview with them on the press here], DATACLYSM.jpg is a collection of twenty-four of Tibbetts’ ongoing “DATACLYSM” series, working from numbers one to seventy-two, each composed as meditative accumulations of short phrases/lines. DATACLYSM.jpg works to articulate the disconnect between information and knowledge, digital presentation and human consumption, and the disconnect between how information is processed versus actually being understood.

DATACLYSM0011.jpg

you’ve a prolonged obsession with crash sites

the blue of tonal mash

inhabiting small sections of sky

some say cohabitation is the mark of failure

neither adam nor apple

image search result for lotus toe

lusty spittle

tympan sex bot

doing a slow dance in the gallows

unstoppable love action

you too can be subsumed by

a crisis of wonder

It will be interesting to see how the full-length version differs from the chapbook in structure, if the missing numbers will be included, or if the project simply progresses.

Calgary AB: From poet Helen Hajnoczky comes the self-published and hand-sewn chapbook variations on the stillness of motion (?!, 2018), a small sequence of seventeen short sections on grief, set over full-colour images limited to an edition of twenty copies:

1.

forgiven foregoes a process

we are forgiveness when we

pick apart a forgotten part

of giving our harness or it

pulls the getting of forment

this is important

Amid the language-mix and play there is a slowness to this piece, one that demands a calm attention, shifting and morphing through the flow of seventeen short sections set in sequence. Hajnoczky has long favoured playing with forms, and the poem-as-project, and this short variation engages both stillness and motion, existing concurrently between them. It will be curious to see, given her book-length works are also project-driven, if this small poem might land in one of her trade collections at some point, or simply exist here, quiet and still and lovely.

14.

there’s coping and there’s

a day when we easily reach

and the sun we go out and

we say that when something

but we don’t say much else

it’s easy enough

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Hana Shafi

Hana Shafi is a writer and artist who illustrates under the name Frizz Kid. Both her visual art and writing frequently explores themes such as feminism, body politics, racism, and pop culture with an affinity to horror. A graduate of Ryerson University's Journalism Program, she has published articles in publications such as The Walrus, Hazlitt, This Magazine, Torontoist, Huffington Post, and has been featured on Buzzfeed India, Buzzfeed Canada, CBC, Flare Magazine, Mashable, and Shameless, Known on Instagram for her weekly affirmation series, she is also the recipient of the Women Who Inspire Award, from the Canadian Council for Muslim Women. Born in Dubai, Shafi's family immigrated to Mississauga in 1996, and she currently lives and works in Toronto. It Begins With The Body is her first book.

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

It Begins with the Body is my first book and it's pretty surreal finally having this out. It's something I've dreamt of for a long time, but it's difficult actually thinking about how it'll feel when the book is done and physically in your hands. I'm soaking in this feeling as much as I can.

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

Poetry was always my go-to writing style since I was a kid. I started writing poetry in the fifth grade—terrible, cheesy, angsty poetry haha. But I think it's a very interesting genre. People have a lot of preconceived notions about what poetry is supposed to be like. We tend to picture really abstract work with high-flown language. I've always wanted to show people how diverse poetry can be. I went to journalism school, so non-fiction writing is something that I was really invested in for a long time. It made me miss poetry a lot. I still write non-fiction, but getting to write a full book of poetry just felt like a huge release.

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?

I start writing pretty fast, but refining it takes a while. Some of my pieces are very close to the first draft, whereas others were dramatically revised.

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?

Before It Begins with the Body, I would often just write short pieces and then want to combine them into a larger project. When I started on the book, I wanted to write pieces that were more deliberately a part of a narrative. So I think this book has definitely changed my writing process.

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

I do enjoy readings. I get nervous sometimes, but I'm a pretty performative person, so I do like being up there.

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?

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 really think there's a singular answer to this question. The role of the writer changes over time, changes from person to person. For some writing is therapeutic, for others its activism, for others its to push buttons, start discussions, change public opinions. For some it's about leaving a legacy. For me it's often all of these things at once in varying degrees.

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

Vivek Shraya was my editor and I found her insights to be essential to my work. She was very much a mentor to me in that role; a much more experienced writer from similar cultural backgrounds who could really understand why this work was important to me, and how I wanted to tell this story. It's important to have an editor that's willing to critique your work, but who also comes to it with a cultural competence that allows them to understand your work so that they're not changing it in ways that remove your original intentions.

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

Probably from Vivek, during her Toronto launch of her book I'm Afraid of Men. She said to the audience that no one knows you as well as you know yourself and explained that people may try to make other definitions or interpretations of you, but only you know your true self and to hold onto that.

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

For me moving between those genres has been easy because each of them have had a different purpose, and each of those genres is able to inform the other I think. I see a lot of my journalistic background spilling into my poetry and artwork, and I like that I don't necessarily have the same conventional background of going to art school and always being immersed in that. Having done other types of writing helps me see poetry in a different way. Having been in a very research-oriented genre like journalism has helped me approach visual art differently.

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?

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

If I'm getting stalled, I try to just write something crap. Nobody has to see it, or no about it, but you kind of need to purge yourself of all the crappy writing before you can really get back to that project you really care about.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Agarbathi and bukhoor!

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?

People watching. People watching is a huge thing that influences my work. I get a lot of work done alone at bars and cafes because I like to observe people, movement, white noise, chaos. A lot of people may find these things boring, but if you really tune into people watching, you learn a lot.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
 
Sex Magick by Ian Young is a hugely important book to me. I also really love The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. On a totally different end of the spectrum, I love a lot of Alan Moore's work; naturally, graphic novels appeal to me a lot as both a writer and visual artist. And since I'm a big fan of non-fiction narrative, and dabble in that a lot myself, I really enjoy Roxane Gay's work. I learned a ton from her book Bad Feminist.

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

Maybe make a comic? I made a mini one in a class I took recently and I would love to make something bigger out of that.

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?
If I hadn't ended up being a writer or an artist, I probably would've just been miserable. I'm not good at anything else, hahaha. But if I could pick another occupation, I would really love to work with animals. I have zero credentials to do so and sucked at science in school. But I love animals so much, and I love seeing the work of dedicated folks who work to protect endangered species.

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

Writing came as an instinct. Maybe I chose to write and draw because it's just survival to me.

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

The last great book I read was a graphic novel called Redlands. And the last great film? I've actually been watching a ton of horror movies I've already seen before in the last few weeks, because I'm obsessed with Halloween. In terms of new stuff, I just finished watching The Haunting of Hill House series.

20 - What are you currently working on?

What I'm hoping will turn into my next book...

12 or 20 (second series) questions;