happy holidays! christmassing! etcetera

Here are some photos recently taken of our wee girls for the sake of our Christmas card this year.

Queen Mob's Teahouse: Jennifer Zhou interviews Kristin Chang

As my tenure as interviews editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse continues, the latest interview is now online, as Jennifer Zhou interviews emerging poet Kristin Chang. Other interviews from my tenure include: an interview with poet, curator and art critic Gil McElroy, conducted by Ottawa poet Roland Prevost, an interview with Toronto poet Jacqueline Valencia, conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Drew Shannon and Nathan Page, also conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Ann Tweedy conducted by Mary Kasimor, an interview with Katherine Osborne, conducted by Niina Pollari, an interview with Catch Business, conducted by Jon-Michael Frank, a conversation between Vanesa Pacheco and T.A. Noonan, "On Translation and Erasure," existing as an extension of Jessica Smith's The Women in Visual Poetry: The Bechdel Test, produced via Essay Press, Five questions for Sara Uribe and John Pluecker about Antígona González by David Buuck (translated by John Pluecker),"overflow: poetry, performance, technology, ancestry": kaie kellough in correspondence with Eric Schmaltz, Mary Kasimor's interview with George Farrah, Brad Casey interviewed byEmilie Lafleur, David Buuck interviews John Chávez about Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing, Ben Fama interviews Abraham Adams, Tender and Tough: Letters as Questions as Letters: Cheena Marie Lo, Tessa Micaela and Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Kristjana Gunnars’ interview with Thistledown Press author Anne Campbell, Timothy Dyke’s interview with Hawai’i poet Jaimie Gusman, Hailey Higdon's interview with Joanne Kyger, Stephanie Kaylor's interview with Kenyatta JP Garcia, Jaimie Gusman’s interview with Timothy Dyke,Sarah Rockx interviews Gary Barwin, Megan Arden Gallant's interview with Diane Schoemperlen, Andrew Power interviews Lauren B. Davis, Chris Lawrence interviews Jonathan Ball, Adam Novak interviews Tom Stern, Eli Willms interviews Gregory Betts and Jeremy Luke Hill interviews Kasia Jaronczyk, Karen Smythe and Greg Rhyno, Chris Muravez interviews Ithica, NY poet Marty Cain, Róise Nic an Bheath interviews Kathryn MacLeod, Heather Sweeney interviews J'Lyn Chapman, Lisa Birman interviews Portland, Oregon poet Claudia F. Savage, Justin Eells interviews Eric Blix, Luke Hill interviews Claire Tacon, Jeremy Luke Hill interviews Adam Lindsay Honsinger., and Jeremy Luke Hill interviews Marianne Micros.

Further interviews I've conducted myself over at Queen Mob's Teahouse include: City of Ottawa Poet Laureate JustJamaal The Poet, Geoffrey Young, Claire Freeman-Fawcett on Spread Letter, Stephanie Bolster on Three Bloody Words, Claire Farley on Canthius, Dale Smith on Slow Poetry in America, Allison Green, Meredith Quartermain, Andy Weaver, N.W Lea and Rachel Loden.

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

[some of the above/ground press spread]

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

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

The old excesses

do you know what horizons hold?

a capacity to hold, hold

could you even see the smoke, imagine

bringing smallpox in blankets & jars

I stand here in past tense

blood rises up from the warm earth & smells

of coincidence, & hey, you too.     blocks

in a caretaker’s grid

& shallow certainties; abrasive noise

I emerge from each breath

pressing keyholes w/ glow-sticks

penetrate the interior

like alien dust

through a river

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a signal, a blip

no one sees

you leave me without

causing harm

i’m there as you found me

an address, a number

a name

12 or 20 (small press) questions with Isabelle Kenyon on Fly on the Wall Poetry Press

Isabelle Kenyon is a northern UK based poet and the author of This is not a Spectacle, Micro chapbook, The Trees Whispered (Origami Poetry Press) and Digging Holes To Another Continent (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York).
​
Her poems have been published in poetry anthologies such as YANYR Anthology and The Road To Clevedon Pier. She has had poems published in literary journals such as Breath and Shadow, Eunoia Review, FoxTrott Uniform, Mojave Heart Review, The Blue Nib, The Pangolin Review, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Eskimo Pie, Scrittura, Anti - Heroin Chic, Bewildering Stories and Literary Yard.

Her book reviews, articles and blog posts have been published in various places such as Authors Publish, Harness magazine and Five Oaks Press. She has headlined at Cafe Del Nino's spoken word night, Cannock, and has opened Coventry Cathedral's Plum Line Festival. She is a fierce dog lover and a confessed caffeine addict.

Press ethos:  Publishing high quality anthologies on pressing issues, chapbooks and poetry products, from exceptional poets around the globe.

1 – When did Fly on the Wall Poetry Press 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?

So it actually difficult to pin down when the publishing press started, just because I started a blog in September 2017 and then a call out for submissions for a mental-health anthology in November 2017 snowballed, and I published, please hear what I'm not saying, in February 2018. It was then that I felt like a publisher and so I would say that's when it started. I have learnt everything about publishing since then! I have learnt about distributors and printers and paper quality and how to be brutal and apply my picky editor's eye without guilt!

2 – What first brought you to publishing?

I have always wanted to write and I have always been very opinionated, so definitely had some ideas about what I could bring to the publishing industry. It didn't seem to me like anyone was producing books which actively strove to make a change – at least in poetry. Of course now I know so many independent publishers aiming to do this, particularly Culture Matters and poetry on the picket line.

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?

I think the role is to move fast and show the big publishers what they are missing out on. I think I can take risks which are rewarded rather than criticised. I don't know if it's responsibility to everyone, it is one that I have set myself, which is to publish underrepresented voices or stories.
 
4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?

I haven't seen any press work with charity partners and organisations in the same way that I do on an anthology. I've had some lovely opportunities to attend events with the charities my anthologies fundraise for.

5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?

Well I am new to publishing chapbooks, as 2019 will be the first time I have published these! So time will tell! However, I make sure that the books are distributed with leading leading bookshops in the UK, at least online, and then I sell via my website. I think each book should have a physical book launch if possible - it may surprise you to know that even close friends and relatives will not buy that book without the incentive to in person.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?

I am quite involved as an editor but the edits I apply from one author to the next. For example, where I see talent and potential but not a finished product, I will work with that writer until the book is ready. In other instances, the book is already ready and just needs proofreading and marking up professionally.

7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?

So I distribute online via Waterstones, Foyles, Blackwells and the Book Depository, as well as Kindle options via Barnes And Noble, Amazon, Nook and Apple books. I sell most via my website but I have a few in independent bookshops. My print runs differ regarding how many author copies my writers require for any signings or festivals they may have! For selling through my website, I will usually order a print run of 50 books.

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?

Just me! I think I could afford it I would work with a proofreader, just because it is always helpful for peace of mind... I often work with illustrators, as although I have the book cover ideas, I don't have the time or the talent! I am hoping to design two out of the four chapbooks which I will be publishing next year, however. I am making myself learn! As a small press, my budget is stretched, and learning how to do design would be invaluable long term!

9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?

Because I'm reading so many people's work constantly, I do think writing is improving. I am also more likely to take risks and try new styles.

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?

I wouldn't do it myself just because I think it does devalue the editor if they prize their work over their values of the press. For me, it is more satisfying to be published by other people because they have an objective eye.

11– How do you see Fly on the Wall Poetry Press evolving?

Well in the new year I will be publishing an anthology called, Planet in Peril, which will work with the climate research department of Oxford University, WWF, The Climate Coalition and Emily Gellard photography more aim to bring science and the Arts together as an educational tool. I feel really passionate about this project and I feel like this could define the press going forward! At the end of 2019 I will also be looking to find short story and novella writers - I'm always reading novels and comparing them to the voice of the poet, so I don't think it is contradictory for me to publish them both.

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 think I am most proud of the anthology Persona Non Grata because it proves to me that I am publishing current and important messages from exceptional writers. I think people possibly overlook the diversity in voice of my publications -this is something I ensure that I am doing, though it is perhaps quite subtle. My biggest frustration is that 60% of the people submitting their work to my press, have not read any of my publications. I don't understand this and is disheartening as an editor as it proves to me that these writers are only contributing to the industry in a selfish manner, and this does mean that small presses struggle to get by.

13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?

I'm constantly inspired by The Emma Press and I spoke to Emma when I was first starting out about printers and schemes to be involved with - very helpful advice! I also really love Influx press and 404 Ink. I also take a lot from my own publisher, Clare Songbirds publishing house, because they've been going so long and have an established name.

14– How does Fly on the Wall Poetry Press work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Fly on the Wall Poetry Press in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?

I think it works with the community in that it identifies subjects and causes which they are passionate about and then it encourages them to write and submit and that passion for publication. I think reading and submitting work to Fly on the Wall makes people feel good because they're giving back via fundraising. Because of the socially conscious element of the press, I think that it speaks to Culture Matters, and Poetry on the Picket Line, as well as I am not a silent poet. I really love friendships with other publishers and hope that I can talk to them in person in future! For example, I am often talking to Hedgehog poetry press, Indigo Dreams and Knives, forks and spoons press.

15– Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?

I do hold book launches, but I think it does largely depend on the location and often the weather as to the turn out! I think it's a really important thing today because otherwise publishing can be quite insular and lonely.

16– How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?

I use the Internet everyday and ultimately I sell 80% of the books I sell through my website via twitter referrals! I also really think it is important for conversation and I try to get my personality across on social media.

17– Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?

I do -either via the manuscript callouts or via open callouts for my online magazine. And not looking for work heavy in cliche, or nice poems about love, or work which imitates other poets! I want the new and exciting and the political.

18– Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.

Well because I only started publishing in February I'm going to take you about two which are released and one which is upcoming!

Please Hear What I'm Not Saying, features 116 writers writing on the theme of mental health. Proceeds go to UK mental health charity, Mind, and we have so far raised over £560. This book was awarded runner-up at the saboteur awards 2018 and was endorsed by Ian MacMillan!

Persona Non Grata features 45 poets around the globe writing on the theme of social exclusion. The book fundraises for Shelter and Crisis Aid UK. The book focuses on homelessness and the current refugee crises.

Bad Mommy/Stay Mommy by Elisabeth Horan, will be published in May 2019. It is a stunning debut exploring postpartum depression.

All books are available via www.flyonthewallpoetry.co.uk

They are all special in their own way and as I am a one-man band, I truly put my heart and soul into them.

12 or 20 (small press) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Laurie Anne Fuhr

Laurie Anne Fuhr is a former Ottawan poet and singer-songwriter now living in Calgary. Her first book, night flying, was released in Fall 2018 from Frontenac House (Calgary), and her first EP, love in the digital age, is available at https://birdheat.bandcamp.com. Laurie's poetry has been published in various magazines and anthologies, and her manuscript for night flying was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. In Calgary, she instructs poetry at the Alexandra Writers Centre Society, organizes and hosts the Single Onion Open Mic, and daylights in secretarial and security. Laurie also plays upright bass in a lyrics-driven 7-piece Eastern European folk and post-punk band called Total Gadjos. Connect with Laurie via @Multimodalpoet on Facebook.  

[editor's note: even though Laurie Fuhr is already included in this series, it felt long enough ago that a repeat, especially surrounding her first trade collection, seemed worth doing; she launches her new book in Ottawa on December 28th as part of The Peter F. Yacht Club Christmas party/reading/regatta]

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

Inspired by the Ottawa poetry community when I was a teenager, I made a chapbook on the family inkjet printer called Newsprint Butterflies, started blue moon cut n' paste poetry zine, and launched the micropress activities of blue moon books. Since then, I've made a few broadsides and chapbooks for classes I've run in Calgary under blue moon, but I was busiest in Ottawa and Winnipeg. It was a fun but difficult task, and it made me appreciate micropresses like above/ground that get so much done! My first chapbook that wasn't self-published was accident: a chain reaction from above/ground press. That adults might think my poetry worthwhile really encouraged me to keep writing; I am still grateful. 

Comparing my new work to my old work -- interesting prospect! Right now, I've noticed that I already write differently from how I wrote the book that was just released from Frontenac House, a small press in Calgary. It's got to do with the process, rather than the resulting work. When I wrote chapbook poems as a teenager, and the poems in night flying as a young adult (written 1998-2004), everything was written immediately, or in-the-moment. If I was writing about it, it was happening to me. I would often make notes during, or directly after, something happened. The work was very personal, and it took years and workshops and the hard deadline of the book to learn how to edit those very personal poems into pieces that others might like to read.

Lately, I am able to write both the immediate, and about memories of things past, or about other people, ancient history, aliens, or anything else I want to, with intention. Taking workshops as well as instructing poetry has freed me from certain superstitions about writing that I didn't know I had. Poetry that you write after the fact can be just as valid, and feel just as immediate, as poetry you write in media res of your own life. However, I suspect romantic poems will always pour out at the time the romance is happening, and with a passion and excitement that could never quite be matched after the fact. That might be one superstition I don't mind holding on to 'til death do us part (me and writing).

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

When I was a kid, I loved reading fiction, and I loved writing stories for school assignments, so technically I came to fiction first. But I was a kid living on air force bases, and I didn't know there was a community for it, or any way to publish unless you got picked up by the Big Five. I did enter a poem into the annual Legion Remembrance Day contest, and got second place for a poem in the style of John McCrae about the soldiers in his poem ascending to heaven ('In Flanders Fields we do not lie / no longer bound 'neath earthly sky', I don't remember the rest), so I thought I might have a thing for poetry.

When I visited my Cold Lake skating friend Cyndi in Nova Scotia at around age 13, where she'd been posted, there was a poetry anthology in the room I stayed in, and I got into it. She saw that and gave me a pink floral notebook for a gift, and wrote inside that she hoped I would write poetry in it. We went to Peggy's Cove, and my first poem in my first poetry notebook was about that -- well actually, it about wishing the ocean would magically inspire me, and being disappointed that it didn't!  My preteen voice was a little cynical. As an adult you look back and think, well of course, the ocean did inspire you because there's a poem in a book. A few years later, my friend Armour in high school who lived two doors down on Rockcliffe Base (the Ottawa base that is no longer there) put pen and paper in my hand, put on old records, and said write. There is a magic when you write knowing that someone is going to read it soon, and knowing who it will be. I had just had to give up figure skating for medical reasons, so I think my determination and passion transferred from one art to the other as a survival mechanism. Armour really encouraged me, and soon after, we walked into Cafe Wim as two kids on the lam from the 'burbs checking out the downtown underground, and there was "Hi, Steve!" running the Dusty Owl series, and all the likely characters were there, people like Ronnie R. Brown, David Collins, b stephen harding and Allison Calvern. Some guy who looked like Captain Morgan gave us poems and handbills about other readings, and the rest is history.    

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 have definitely gotten into the prompt and freefall method. A few years back I took Stuart Ross' Poetry Bootcamp, because years before that, his readings and books launched in Ottawa sparked my imagination into a blaze of surrealistic insanity that I still draw on to warm up my work. His Bootcamp inspired me to run a Poetry Cafe in Calgary where we try different prompts every week. I get them from my own imagination, from other poets, from books (Pearl Pirie sent me some awesome resources! Thanks Pearl!), or as suggested by our surroundings at cSpace, an arts incubator founded in an old sandstone school that houses arts of every kind. My next book will probably be random, humorous, playful, and wild when I gather up the best work I've been writing on Sundays.

So far, I haven't tackled a major research project, but I've been getting excited about the Canadian Long Poem (thanks Dymphny Dronyk!), and learning amazing things about my family history that I never knew before, so I'm going to have to do some writing.

There's also a lot of work I'm sitting on that can be edited into publishable -- everything I've written since 2004! And a lot of work that didn't fit into night flying. So to answer your question, writing comes quickly, but editing could take years. Maybe I'll get the poetry of age 25 to 35 out by 45, and age 35 to 45 out by 55...if I live that long.

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?

Poems begin with something I notice in daily life that seems bizarre or otherwise noteable, or some metaphor or turn of phrase that pops to mind, or an outside prompt, whether taken at face value or twisted. I have always let them be individuals and wrangled them after, but after the recent challenge of putting together work into chapbooks and books, linked by themes or styles, chronology, or other possibilities, I have been having book ideas! The other day I was approached by a cowboy poet about doing programming at the Poet Tree on his ranch. I thought that was charming, and why not, with cowpoke experience, a book of freeverse cowboy poetry? Is it an oxymoron, or a possibility? I'm still stumped about that one. It makes me laugh, but it also excites me! What if it worked? Or what if no one read it because eww, cowboy poetry always rhymes and is full of cliches? Could I mess with expectations and cliches and make something new? Ideas like that scare me a little, because they can be risky, and risk can bring trouble or reward, there's no telling which. Without risk, though, I think we get complacent and boring as writers. My poetry might not look like the most experimental work you've ever seen, in the context of the contemporary -- my stanzas try to communicate rather than obfuscate, for the most part. I'm still trying to make meaning. But I'm constantly experimenting with who I am as a writer, and how to present my poetry, thus the @Multimodalpoet social media moniker. One good thing about having to do your own marketing as a writer is that it forces you to examine who you are as a writer.

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

Readings are a lot of fun, and I have a feeling they are going to become even more a part of my creative process than they have been. Just yesterday I was talking to another fellow writer-musician, Jim Jackson, about collaborating on an event coming up, combining poetry and music and creating a purposeful confusion between the two in places. Another poet friend goes by BeatsxHellsHeart on Instagram, so we're going to explore some avenues with recording poems that respond to his creations, and vice-versa. Meanwhile, a couple of loop stations sit beside me on the desk. Why rule anything out? My narrative lyrics have an element of spoken word to them, and certain pieces in particular. I'll never go the slam route because I dislike a lot about it, competitive pettiness and gross behaviour and rules, but I might go entertain the spoken word kids now and then with something they haven't heard before, in a way they might not have heard it, and let them know about other local poetry events and workshops outside of their circle. Nothing will ever replace the communicative simplicity of reading from the page, though. I will always organize and participate in those readings because I think developing the skill of listening to poetry is essential to the process of becoming a better poet.

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

Both. When I went to the Banff Centre Writing Studio in 2016, I shared my work with three major poets. They all gave me different, conflicting advice! This was freeing because I realized, no matter how many credentials an editor might have, there is much of poetry that remains subjective. eg., there is no right or wrong poetry, it's mainly a matter of taste.

When it came to my first book night flying, I expected things to go differently with the editor of the press. I thought I was entitled to a thorough, substantive edit. As you know, that's not usually what you get at the small press level, at all. That was a huge wake-up call: no one is going to fix my work for me. It forced me to learn to do it better myself, and that was super difficult, but so essential. They did teach me a lot about avoiding lazy grammatical constructs and the value of immediacy in poetry, unforgettable things that will always help me as a writer, for which I am grateful.

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

I keep looking for the quote without being able to find it, but Gertrude Stein said something to the effect of, a true artist has no critic. The way I take that is not that you should ignore criticism -- in fact, you should seek it out -- but that you should take every criticism with a grain of salt, keeping in mind that you're the artist, you're the one in control. 

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

It seems like I get caught up in one for awhile, and then the other for awhile. While focussed on songwriting, ideas more readily come out as songs than as poems; while focussed on poetry, I get more poems than songs. When I manage to have both going on at the same time, I get musical poems and lyrical songs. Sometimes that really works out, and sometimes it doesn't work as well. I think it has produced my best songs, but my worst poems, somehow!

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

Every day, I still carry a notebook with me, just in case I have an idea and a chance to write it down. We are creatures of habit to the extreme however, so by instructing and participating in the Poetry Cafe I run every Sunday, I'm finding that's when my creativity is ready to flow the most. These days I am working a lot to get out of a financial hell-hole I created for myself a few years back before I had as many job prospects, and unfortunately that takes a lot of time away from creativity. One day maybe I'll do what many writers have done, and find a sugar daddy or mommy -- so far, however, I keep falling in love with fellow bohemians!

10 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Trees. Mom and Dad live in Forest Drive in Cold Lake, I used to wander around the provincial park forest when I wrote some of the poems in night flying. In Germany, we snuck under the barbed-wire fence and played in the Black Forest, not knowing until much later that they want to keep you out of there in case of "unexploded ordinance" from World War II. Trees have always reminded me of home. I feel fortunate to live beside one of Calgary's biggest parks right now.  

11 - 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?

All of the above. Ekphrastic approaches to writing excite me. Reading nonfiction or watching films, going to museums, and taking in live music or plays often makes me pick up a pen, sometimes right in the dark of the theatre. A few years ago I had poems published in a Leonard Cohen anthology that were written at a Cohen concert in Vancouver. I guess it goes back to conversation about the immediate writing vs. storing experiences for later approach.. I'd tell my students, do whatever motivates you most to actually get the work done, and I should take my own advice.  

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

Favourite poets include Karen Solie and Lisa Robertson by now, but Leonard Cohen, Al Purdy, Milton Acorn, and Carolyn Forche are early influences I still return to frequently. I'm always excited to read as many contemporary Canadian poetry releases as I can get my hands on and make time to read. Stuart Ross is still my absolute favourite since his first book, and I love reading your work, too -- it always gets my brain firing poetic and has me pick up a pen. The editor of my first book night flying, Micheline Maylor, writes incredible, magic poems, and Alice Major from Edmonton writes very important political and environmental work, poems that effectively move people to deeper thought and moral action. Ottawa Review of Books just agreed to accept a review of her Welcome to the Anthropocene from me. I'm eagerly awaiting a copy of Anne Michaels' most recent poetry book that a local independent bookstore ordered in for me last week, and I'm really enjoying Liz Howard's Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent, she's writer in residence at University of Calgary right now. Billy Ray Belcourt's breakthrough from last year, This Wound is a World, is a must-read. Locally, Richard Harrison, Weyman Chan, and Kirk Miles are my favourites, and those they've inspired are coming out with incredible books. George Elliott Clarke and George Amabile and George Bowering -- Georges all day. But those closest to us, I find, are the most essential to our progress. In Ottawa, my friends who went to Tree and Sasquatch and Factory readings, people like Jim Larwill, Sylvia Adams, David Collins, Ronnie R. Brown, Lynn Alsford, Stephen Brockwell, jw curry, and Pearl Pirie got me going and kept me going, both with their writing and their participation in the writing community. In Calgary, their names include Bob Canuel, Pam Medland, Paul Swift, Miranda Krogstad, Leonor Henriquez, Josephine LoRe, and David Martin. David recently released his first trade press book, and I hope the others are working on theirs. If I could, I would get my favourite poets on the East side of the country read the work of my favourite poets on the West side of the country, and vice versa. Too many poets write but don't read enough.

13 - 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 my dysplastic hips hadn't stopped me, I was very determined to be an Olympic figure skater. By now, that career would have been over if I had made it, maybe even the Stars on Ice part, and I might be shilling for Nabisco or teaching runny-nosed kids how to do a salchow. It's my hope I would have come to poetry anyway, where anything can happen on the page -- no matter what shape your physical body is in.

14 - What are you currently working on?

Currently I'm working on making extra money to come to Ottawa and launch between Christmas and New Years, and buying Christmas presents. It's hard working a lot and shopping when you'd much rather stay home and write, or head to a cafe. Wish me luck! Writing project wise, I plan to dig into some work that is ready for editing in January -- there is a workshop group I've been meaning to try out, and a blue pencil session I've signed up for with Richard Harrison. My next book is likely to contain puzzle pieces that fill in narrative gaps in night flying, when things I couldn't write about immediately, or that weren't edited to satisfaction for the book, come together. And it'll probably take us to France and Turkey, where I ended up for a few months, and which is what landed me in Winnipeg -- but that's another book and another interview.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

m a n y _ g e n d e r e d _ m o t h e r s : r e c e n t _ e s s a y s

many gendered mothers is a project on literary influence featuring short essays by writers (of any/all genders) on the women, femme, trans, and non-binary writers who have influenced them, as a direct or indirect literary forebear.

This project is directly inspired by the American website Literary Mothers, created by editor Nadxieli Nieto and managing editor Nina Puro. While we hope that Literary Mothers might eventually return to posting new pieces, our site was created as an extension and furthering of their project (in homage, if you will), and not meant as any kind of replacement.

We've nearly sixty essays posted! Our most recent include:

Amy Leblanc on Jeanette Winterson [pictured]

Arielle Burgdorf on Liz Worth

Eve Rachele Sanders on Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë

Michelle Butler Hallett on Flannery O’Connor

Michele Sharpe on Befriending Jane Austen’s Emma

Kim Fahner on Bronwen Wallace

Ronna Bloom on Rhea Tregebov

Drew Kiser on Sylvia Plath

Please check out our submissions page for more information (we are constantly seeking submissions! we even pay a small amount!). We've also a Facebook page!

We are also still accepting signed books for our upcoming fundraiser! and check out our Patreon page! All donations go directly to paying contributors.

Ongoing notes: Meet the Presses (part seven,

[Stuart Ross' Proper Tales Press table]

Okay, I clearly picked up too many items at this year’s Toronto’s Meet the Presses’ annual Indie Literary Market [see part six of my notes here; and my most recent post on what I gathered at the ottawa small press book fair]. Don’t tell Christine! I’m squirrelling items away all over our house.

Toronto ON: A further title from Gap Riot Press comes Toronto poet Andy Weaver’s latest, the chapbook HAECCEITY (2018), an extended poem that suggests it is part of a much longer work-in-progress. The piece is built, in part, as a collage, as Weaver writes at the end of the collection:

Many of the ideas, images, words, phrases, etc., throughout the poem have been borrowed, adapted, and carried forward from other works. The only type of text that I consciously tried to limit within the realm of usufruction was other poetry, though I freely allowed poetics and other writings by poets.

He does include a bibliography at the end, and it would be interesting to see further how individual lines and phrases emerged from such a list. Increasingly, over the space of three trade collections and multiple chapbooks, Weaver’s writing has explored experimental forms with a more formal language, akin to writing out Robert Duncan’s twists and shapes with Stephen Brockwell’s sentences. As his poem begins:

When I had journeyed half

of my life’s way, I found

I had lost sight of love, the path

that does not stray. The self

is obscure—even worse,

it inures us to a feeling

that our life is a rock slowly

chipped away by each day,

that we live as debtors withdrawing

hourly from a sum owned

by some other self to which

we owe an amount constantly

on the edge of being due.

Toronto ON: From Maureen Scott Harris' annual chapbook series of lectures comes Daphne Marlatt’s On the Threshold of the Page (A Fieldnotes Chapbook, 2018), the text of “The Sixth Annual Page Lecture delivered on October 24, 2017 in Watson Hall, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario,” with an introduction by Stan Dragland. I’m quite pleased that Harris has taken on the publication of these lectures, which so often might become ephemeral productions, slipped later into collections of the individual authors’ essays, if at all, without any sense of not only the immediacy of the event, but the acknowledgment of the series, which also include post-lecture chapbooks by Elizabeth Hay and Stan Dragland, among others. The annual lectures were actually founded by Phil Hall, who continues to curate such, during his tenure as writer-in-residence at Queen’s University, named for the late Kingston poet Joanne Page. As Marlatt’s lecture begins:

Would you give a talk on the page? This open invitation from Phil Hall immediately raised questions for me: whose page? mine or another’s or even other writers’ in the plural? Having spent much of the past year going through forty years of my own work with my editor Susan Holbrook for a collected poetry, Intertidal, the answer to that question seemed a given. But then a further question arose: as a poet, do I approach the page now as I used to twenty or thirty or even forty years ago? Is what was at stake then, at stake now, in writing a poem? I’ll try to answer such questions in this talk.