Stuart Ross's Blog, page 17

Meet the Presses presents an Indie Lit Market and the winner of the 2013 bpNichol Chapbook Award!

This Saturday (November 16), the Meet the Presses collective is holding its 2013 Indie Literary Market. The info is all in the poster below. A couple of changes: Horse of Operation will be there, and The Emergency Response Unit will not.
We're pretty darn proud of this event.

I'll be there with my Proper Tales Press, and I'll have a record-breaking (for Proper Tales Press) four new chapbooks.
What the heck are they?
Good Dog, Bad Dog, by Sarah Burgoyne.
18 Goddamn Centos, by Stuart Ross.
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday Weld, by Tom Walmsley.
The Technology of the Future Will Emergy Hungry: Erasure Poems, by Paul Vermeersch.
Pretty good lineup, huh?
The finalists for the bpNichol Chapbook Award are listed right here.
Hope to see you there.
Over and out.

The Patchy Squirrel in her own words

I've been doing the Patchy Squirrel for 344 weeks. Not sure how many years that is: about 150 maybe? Patchy recently got some press in the Town Crier online. The interview is by Jess Taylor, a gentle powerhouse in the Toronto literary world, best known perhaps for running the Emerging Writers Reading Series at sumptuous Duffy's Tavern on Bloor West.

Here's the interview.

What impressed me most was that Jess left out the dirt. As I was rambling to her over Skype, I revealed the only acts of censorship I perform on Patchy. Most interviewers would have leapt on that and made it central to the piece. Jess sensibly just left it out, making moot all my sleepless nights before the interview went live online.

For the record, though: Patchy does reserve the right to edit in any way she sees fit the listings she receives.

You may be asking: what the hell is Patchy? Patchy is a literary lit-serv that goes out by email every Monday or Tuesday to about 1,060 subscribers. It lists in detail a ton of literary events coming up in Toronto in the coming week.

You can subscribe by sending a note with "Here, Patchy Patchy" in the subject header to patchysquirrel[at]gmail[dot]com.

The one other thing Jess didn't put in the story she wrote was my plea that if every subscriber and event organizer donating a buck or five or ten or twenty to Patchy, which is a free service, my life would be much easier. Patchy has had a few dozen generous contributors, but I'm surprised there haven't been more over the years.

On the other hand, as I mentioned to Jess, the audience for Patchy is mainly writers, and most writers don't have a lot of money to spare. So I understand. (Though writers usually have enough money to arm one of their fists with a pint of beer!)

Since I moved away from Toronto, putting together Patchy every week has been a bittersweet experience. Because geography means that I will miss almost everything that Patchy promotes. But my literary heart really is in Toronto, and Patchy is my way of still being part of the Toronto literary community, even if the Toronto literary community doesn't know it.

Over and out.

A chat with Michael Dennis, poetry blogger

I've been friends with Michael Dennis since the early 1980s. We met in Toronto when I was selling my chapbooks out on Yonge Street and became fast friends, though I found him sort of intimidating. Still do. But, in spite of a few rough patches, it's been a great and enduring friendship.
Michael is the author of over a dozen poetry books. Among my favourites are Coming Ashore on Fire (Burnt Wine Press, 2009), Fade to Blue (Pulp Press, 1988), Sometimes Passion, Sometimes Pain (Ordinary Press, 1982). There are lots more and you can find them here.
This year Michael started a new project: he decided he'd blog roughly ever two days about a poetry book he liked. He is one of the most well-read poets I know, so this seemed a natural for him. Except that involved a computer and the internet, and he is a Flintstone.
But he's done an amazing job, and has already made a great contribution to the art and industry of Canadian poetry. Every day, this secret weapon in Canadian poetry becomes less secret.
Over the past week or so, I have interviewed Michael by email. Here's what we had to say.
Over and out.


*

Michael, since last February or March, you have been writing about a different book of poetry on your blog every two days, more or less. Are you crazy?

Still crazy after all these years.  No, not crazy, but you could say I’ve rediscovered my enthusiasm for poetry.  As it happens I have lots of time on my hands, I spend two or three hours a day on the blog.  Thankfully I have a very supportive partner who sees that this project is important to me and supports it.

How did you come up with the idea?

My friend Christian McPherson suggested it. I had been writing little blurbs on FaceBook from time to time to mention books I’d enjoyed and they were primarily poetry. Christian suggested I should start a blog. Initially I had no interest. Then he suggested to me that if I blogged about poetry, publishers might send me books. That was the real hook.

I have been collecting poetry since I was a teenager and the idea of getting books in the mail was tremendously appealing to me. But I was very skeptical.  

Christian actually set up the blog for me; there is no way I could have or would have, and I started with books I owned.

Within two weeks I had a couple of different publishers sending me books. I was astounded.  Kitty Lewis at Brick Books and Hazel Millar at BookThug were both very big supporters right from the start. In fact, the support and encouragement of people like Kitty and Hazel really made the blog far more real for me.

Once I started to get books from publishers, I quit writing about any books that didn’t come from a publisher. It’s one of my rules.

One of your other rules is that you write only about books you like. I know we’ve discussed this before: what’s your rationale, and how much do you have to like a book? Is “good enough” the criteria, or does it have to be great, or excellent?

Excellent is best, but I guess the criteria I have is whether or not I like it enough that I would suggest one of my friends reads it. I’ve always felt that finding one really good poem in a collection made that collection worthwhile but I’m certainly not using that criteria here. All the books I’ve chosen to write about are books that I would happily put into the arms of a friend.  Certainly some of them are stronger than others — but all of them contain enough of one thing or another that I was entertained, challenged or interested at some committed level.  

I’m very naive sometimes and was surprised to find myself feeling terribly guilty every time I passed on a book, for whatever reason. I found that I felt a real obligation to the publishers who were sending me books, that I should write about each of them, but as you said, I only write about books I like, books I like well enough to recommend.

I don’t think you should feel guilty! But how come you don’t write about why you don’t like a book? You’re coming off as too nice a guy!

Stuart, you know me so much better than that. I did think about the reasons I only wanted to write about things I like. One of them is my “tool set”.  As much as I love poetry and have a degree in English literature, I don’t really feel I have the skill set to deconstruct other people's poems.

But that really isn’t it. I’m a nasty prick as often as not and full of vitriol to the brim — that doesn’t mean that is the person I want to be. I figured I would write about the positive, and if I didn’t feel the positive, I wouldn’t write at all. There is only so much time and I didn’t/don’t want to spend my time exploring things I don’t like, don’t enjoy, don’t approve of. To put it another way:  I didn’t want to spend my time talking about burnt toast.

As you know, this blog started more by accident than with purpose — but when it did start I made a conscious decision not to bitch about one thing or another. I am the King of complaint and the Bard of Bitch and it is not attractive.

I don’t think of these blogs as traditional reviews in any sense of the word. I call them reviews only for lack of a more recognizable term. I would call what I do “appreciations” more than reviews — but I’m not out to break new ground. There are critical reviewers out there who do a fine job of deconstructing poems but I never sought to do that.

Think of it this way, would you rather spend time talking about a book you like or one you don’t? The blog and everything associated with it is entirely my responsibility — so I get to set the parameters. If people and publishers don’t like it, I guess I won’t be doing it for all that long. But as it stands, as long as publishers will send me books I’ll be blogging about the ones I like.

The other side of that coin is the joy I mentioned earlier. I’d gone through, for a variety of personal and professional reasons, a period where some of the shine had come off of poetry. I felt terribly discouraged and frustrated and was withdrawing from my involvement with poetry. When books started coming through the door I was astounded by a couple of things right from the start. The first of them was that I didn’t know what I thought I did.

For the best part of forty years I have called myself a poet and acted accordingly. I’ve been reading all I could and collecting all I could afford. I felt confident that I had a good grasp of the poetry scene in Canada. I have never been more wrong. The flood of poetry that came to my door was a joy in itself, the surprise was the number of authors I’d never heard of. How could that be. Quite literally hundreds of books of poetry published in the last couple of years and a vast number of them by poets I’d never heard of. Once I got over my initial embarrassment and shock, it was an uplifting discovery.

The best part of that was/is the quality. Of course there have been books I didn’t like, but they are a minority. So many of these books are so good it makes me laugh, real happy laughter.

And it made me feel better about my own life as a poet. A great deal of the frustration I’d been feeling about my own work, and the lack of attention it received, evaporated. I honestly felt a rejuvenating glee at seeing all these fine books. I’ve enjoyed every one I’ve written about. I don’t necessarily love every poem but I try to share why I’m enthused about each book. And then there have been the books that have simply blown me out of the water. Nora Gould’s I See My Love More Clearly From A Distance was simply astonishingly good. There have been dozens of books of such superb poetry it just boggles my mind.

With all of these books to write about, and I am trying to keep to one every two days (surgery this month and subsequent recovery have caused some gaps). I choose to not have the time for those books I would only criticize.

What effect has this rigorous practice of writing about a book every two days had on your own poetry?

I’ve always been a writer who wrote something almost constantly. I’ve been keeping a journal since I was a teenager. Over the years I’ve had many periods when I wrote less for one reason or another and I was certainly in one of those periods when I started the blog. I continue to write poems but haven’t been nearly as active in recent months. But this is one fallow period where I’m really enjoying the break and certainly feel like I am fueling up. This is a real learning process for me. I’ve always read a lot of poetry, at least a couple of books a week, but since I started this blog I’m probably reading six, or seven or eight books of poetry every week.

I continue to read outside the blog. As generous as some publishers have been I’m still only getting books from a small percentage of all the presses out there. What I mean is that there are plenty of books I want to buy. Most recently I bought Austin Clarke’s Where The Sun Shines Best. And of course I read stuff other than poetry.

But to get back to the question, I am still writing. I have a chapbook coming out sometime this fall with Warren Dean Fulton’s Pooka Press in Vancouver, Blue Movies for Blues Players or Sonnets for the Eternally Sad. These poems are about gender and power in film, believe it or not.  I originally wrote them for a film course I took at Carleton. The professor, Jose Sanchez, was a revelation and the course a genuinely eye-opening experience. I liked these poems a lot and shopped them around a little. Warren very kindly agreed to publish them and I’m thrilled.

I continue to write other poetry but it isn’t a priority at the moment. Frankly, I’m getting my poetry Jones fixed with the blog. And like I said earlier, fuelling up.

Some of the books you’ve written about have surprised me: some pretty experimental stuff. Is this process of doing the blog broadening your aesthetic?

I hope so. It’s a good question. I follow the same procedure with each book. I try not to read anything else about the book in question so I don’t have any preconceived ideas about it. When I’m reading these books I keep pen and paper handy and make notes, I jot down the poems that I find striking and proceed from there. With the more experimental works that you are talking about it was simple really, as I was reading and making notes, it was clear to me that these books had marvels in them that I was just beginning to understand, or appreciate.

It’s not like I’ve had a change of heart or direction, I’m still partial to narrative poetry, I like a good story and a little dirt under the fingernails.

But certainly there is an attempt, by me, to have a broader window to look out of.  

Perhaps it’s this: every time I open a book, I really WANT to like it. I want to find the joy someone felt with each and every book when they decided to publish it.  

Of course, that isn’t always the case. Some books mystify me. I cannot begin to imagine how more than one person admired the poems. Those are the ones I don’t write about.

What is the fate of those mystifying books? Your bookshelves are already pretty crammed!

Those books, the ones that I don’t blog about, end up on my shelf in alphabetical order, just like the rest of them. Maybe I’ll like them next time around. More to the point, I am proud of the collection of poetry I’ve amassed, even before this project began. It’s never been a criteria of mine that I had to love every book on my shelf. There are certainly some Irving Layton books I care for more than others — but that doesn’t mean I don’t keep them all.

And I can always build more bookshelves.

(Lately I’ve been building shelves out of recycled IKEA bed and couch frames. It’s great clean wood and can be found for free on many garbage days.)

It’s not that I’m a completist, but I am a collector of sorts.  You’ve been to our home and seen the art K and I have collected over the years; it is a bit of the same thing. You don’t have to love everything equally to appreciate it, or keep it, as long as you recognize it has value to you. And of course I’m not talking about monetary value — emotional currency is more like it.

What you’re doing is extremely important. There is less and less space for poetry books to be reviewed in this country, so intelligent, enthusiastic bloggers are key to getting the word out about books from small presses. But how do you get the word out about your blog? How do you let publishers know you exist? And any idea how many people are reading your appreciations?

The number of readers so far is almost 20,000 and I guess that works out to around 100 a day.

Shortly after I started and was still writing about books from my shelves I got an email from Kitty Lewis from Brick Books telling me that she was sending books. I was overwhelmed. When I first started the blog I had emailed or otherwise contacted a long list of Canadian publishers and explained what I was doing.  

Since then I have broadened the list to include a couple of American presses. I figure I’ve contacted about 150 different small presses and had responses in the form of books from 42 of them. A little less than one in three.

As I’m a total Luddite I really am at a loss as to how to get a better readership. When I publish a blog I contact the press/publisher in question and send them a link to the blog. If it is possible I post my blog on their FB homepage. I also try to contact the author and send him or her a copy of the blog. Otherwise I post it on FB. I figure most of the people who read the blog are doing name searches for the writer and they get directed to the blog by a search, but in truth I’m not really sure how it happens. And I’m certainly open to suggestions for attracting a wider audience. Having both the publisher and the writer posting the blog on their home pages helps.

I appreciate that some people find this important, the blog about small press poetry, and I guess I think it’s important as well. Not that what I say has particular importance or relevance but that there is another voice championing these books.

There really is a wide, wide universe of small press poetry in this country that so many readers don’t know about and it’s not their fault. If I didn’t know how broad it was, how many presses there were, how many great books, it would be hard for people outside the poetry world to know either. In that universe there are such a number of fine writers. That’s what I’ve discovered more than anything else in the past few months.  

I’ve been encouraged that in recent weeks I’ve had a couple of packages from publishers I never contacted, never sent an email to — so they have heard of the blog — and that is exactly what I would like to happen. I’ve also been excited that I’ve received books from a couple of American small presses in recent weeks.

One of the ways I can gauge the success of the blog will be whether those presses who’ve sent me work will continue to send work as time goes on. Of course I want to please readers, but I also want the publishers who are sending me this work, at considerable expense, to feel that they are being treated with respect and courtesy.  

And that leads me to talk about how I choose which book I’ll write about. It’s very simple. I write down each book/publisher/author when it arrives and write about them in first come, first serve order, one publisher at a time. If I don’t like a particular book enough to blog about it I try to choose another from the same publisher so that they don’t lose their place in line. If I don’t have another book by that publisher I move on to the next.

I also receive a few books from individual writers. I treat them exactly the same as I do for the books that come from publishers except that if I choose not to write about the book — I still contact the author. Individuals aren’t publishing houses and I feel they are due a personal response regardless of whether I publish a blog or not.

As for letting more publishers know I exist, that’s next. The blog has now been seen in close to 100 countries, has a readership of almost 20,000 (by the end of the month, with any luck) and is seen around 100 people a day. I’ve posted 113 blogs in a little less than eight months. The next time I send an email to a group of publishers I’ll have that as ammunition.  

Right now I’m waiting to see what will happen with all the fall releases and crossing my fingers.

What’s the future of Michael Dennis’s poetry blog?

For the foreseeable future it will be staying the course. I’m very pleased with the response thus far. I’m certainly enjoying the process far more than I ever thought possible. So the easy answer is that as long as books keep coming I will continue to blog. I’d like to learn a little more about the tech side of things so that I could add more additional information, pictures, links and such, but that will come. I’m a slow learner.

I’m glad there are people out there who see this blog as an important addition to the world of small press poetry, if I’m allowed to say that. It allows me to be involved in the conversation in some small way, that I could never have predicted.

Can we expect a review of Michael Dennis’s new book from Pooka on Michael Dennis’s poetry blog?

No, I don’t think I’ll be reviewing my own book.  Besides, I’m not sure I could wax eloquently enough about its virtues.

Seriously, no, I won’t be writing about my own book.

You Exist. Details Follow. shortlisted for the 2013 Award for People's Poetry!

Well, here's a shortlist I never would have expected to be on! It's worth a medallion and 500 bucks. The Award for People's Poetry, says the official website, "is awarded annually to a Canadian poet, based on a book published in the previous calendar year. The work should follow in the tradition of Acorn, Livesay, Purdy, Plantos and others by being accessible to all people in its use of language and image."

Being accessible is something I've always wanted, though lately I'm more determined that my audience come meet me more than halfway. But I'm thrilled to be part of this list, and to know that my work might appeal to a broad audience. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

The Acorn-Plantos Committee is pleased to announce the short list of those authors under consideration for the 2013 Award for People's Poetry. They are, in alphabetical order: 

TERRY ANN CARTER (day moon rising, Black Moss Press)
CHRIS HUTCHINSON (A Brief History of the Short-lived, Nightwood Editions)
KEVIN IRIE (Viewing Tom Thomson, A Minority Report, Frontenac House)
JOHN B. LEE (Let Us Be Silent Here, Sanbun Publishers)
STUART ROSS (You Exist. Details Follow., Anvil Press)
TOM WAYMAN (Dirty Snow, Harbour Publishing)

We extend our congratulations and best wishes. The winner will be announced in November , 2013.

It'd be sweet to win this prize, but I'm very happy just to have made the shortlist.

Over and out.

I'm reading in Cobourg

So back in the fall of 2010, when I was writer-in-residence at Queen's University, I got to meet some very talented young writers. Three of those writers are doing a small Ontario tour this week, and they're stopping on August 7 here in Cobourg, where I live. They've asked me to read with them.

The three are poets Michael Casteels and Nick Papaxanthos, and fictioneer Christine Miscione. They were among my star "students" at 529 Watson Hall. If it hadn't been for 529, they might not ever have met each other. I certainly never would have met them.

They are wildly different writers, but they are all smart and ambitious and extremely entertaining.

We're reading at an awesome art shop/gallery, Impresario, at 7 p.m. I think I'm going to perform the Cobourg premiere of the six-minute version of my theatrical masterpiece, The Ape Play. And perhaps I'll read a very short story that I finished earlier this week. And maybe my Lee Marvin story.

I look forward to hearing Christine, Nick, and Michael. I haven't heard them read their work since Kingston.

Over and out.

Meet the Presses All-Star Non-Stop Indie-Lit Variety Show!

This Monday (June 12), the Meet the Presses collective is offering up a sort of crazy new concept. We have invited a whole bunch of literary presses to do something onstage for about 5 to 7 minutes each. They'll probably also bring some books or chapbooks to sell, but this isn't going to be the usual kind of fair/market.

The Meet the Presses All-Star Non-Stop Indie-Lit Variety Show runs Monday from 7 till 10 pm, at Supermarket, 268 Augusta Avenue, in Kensington Market. We don't really know what the fuck is going to happen. Well, I know what I'm doing: a puppet show with toy apes, an expanded version of "The Ape Play" that appears in my story collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog.

Jim Smith will be there representing Mansfield Press. Ronna Bloom for Pedlar Press. Nicholas Power for Gesture Press. Gary Barwin for serif of nottingham. Paul Dutton for Underwhich Editions. Someone from BookThug. And I think a few others.

Admission is free. You should come and check it out. It could be the beginning of something beautiful.

Over and out.

Boot Camps, McFadden, the Kootenays, Hunkamooga...

Been a while since I posted here. And so much to blog about.

POETRY BOOT CAMP

In Toronto this weekend, I'll be running my Poetry Boot Camp — separate sessions on both Saturday and Sunday, from 10 till 5, in the Christie/Dupont area. The cost is $90. You will write a million poems in a million weird ways. Well, at least a dozen poems. These sessions always get rave reviews from participants, and there are writers who have taken my Boot Camp three, four, five, six times. Some participants have never written a poem before. Some have a pile of books published. There may be last-minute space available still, so write me at razovsky [at] gmail [dot] com if you are interested.

DAVID W. McFADDEN

It's been almost exactly two months since I received a mysterious, brief email from the awesome Dani Couture. It read: "Yay McFadden!" I had no idea what it was about. Then little clues began appearing here and there. Turns out it had just been announced that David W. McFadden had been shortlisted for the Canadian Griffin Prize for Poetry, worth $75,000 ($10,000 for the pre-awards reading, and $65,000 for the actual prize). The book is What's the Score? (Mansfield Press, 2012), the fourth of five books by Dave that I've worked on as editor.

I was thrilled. I still am. Next week, on June 13, we'll find out if Dave McFadden has finally taken a major prize, after three GG shortlistings and now two Griffin shortlistings. The first book I worked with him on was Why Are You So Sad? Selected Poems of David W. McFadden (Insomniac Press, 2007). It was shortlisted for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize. Dave lost to Robin Blaser, and turned to me and said, "You could have edited it better." (Dave was joking.) The next book we worked on was Be Calm, Honey (Mansfield Press, 2008); it was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry. Then came Why Are You So Long and Sweet? Collected Long Poems of David W. McFadden (Insomniac Press, 2010), a remarkable book that deserved far more attention than it received. And then there was What's the Score? Most recently, Dave and I worked on a travel journal he originally wrote in 1992, called Mother Died Last Summer (Mansfield Press, 2013).

I think it's time for Dave to win a prize. This would certainly be a fine one.

THE KOOTENAYS

As I have done for seven of the past eight years, I spent a few weeks this spring in the Kootenays, in the B.C. Interior, working in schools and working on poems. And doing a bit of kayaking. I may be the luckiest writer in Canada to have this opportunity. I worked with students at five schools this time around, everything from kindergarten up to Grade 12. I came out a week early and did nothing but sit in my cabin on the outskirts of New Denver and work on my own writing projects — a novel, solo poems, collaborative poems, translations. It was pretty idyllic. I'd never been so productive out there.

Great times, as always, in the various schools I visited. I'm really getting to like working with kindergarten kids. I remember the first time I walked into one such class a few years ago, all ready to get them writing. And then I looked at all these very little people, and I turned to the teacher and said, "They can't actually write, can they?" She said nope, they can't, except maybe to print their names. I had to instantly adapt, and it worked out beautifully. And I've gotten better at it ever since.

Another highlight of this trip was a porch reading I did with poet Linda Crosfield at her home in Ootischenia, just outside of Castlegar. We had a full porch: about 24 people came, and the atmosphere was just amazing. Linda gave a lovely and well-received reading, and I got a very good response as well. I met Linda and her husband, Ted, the first time I visited the Koots, and we have become great friends since. Linda has also just published a great, gorgeous chapbook of poems by George Bowering through her nifty and pretty new Nose In Book imprint.

HUNKAMOOGA

It is with great regret that I announce the death of my long-time column "Hunkamooga" in sub-Terrain magazine. A few months ago I pulled it. "Hunkamooga" began in the Toronto monthly Word a very long time ago, and migrated to subby when Word became on online publication. The column was traumatized back in 2008 during The Great Troubles (some stupid fucking threatened lawsuit against me, not related to the column, but one that taught me what "libel chill" means, and what an evil thing it is to bring about). I think "Hunkamooga" took a bit of a turn at that time, but I've been very proud of what I did with it in each instalment. I made some half-hearted attempts to attract another home for the column, both on Facebook and Twitter, but nothing came of it. Will I ever speak with the publisher of sub-Terrain again? I hope so. We'll see. Maybe it'll all just be water under the bridge I burned.

Yeah, I burn 'em. But I also build 'em at an equal velocity.

Thing is, I'm going to start putting my Hunkamooga energy back into this blog.

Over and out.

You Exist. Details Follow. makes CBC's Top 5 list!

I am the master at receiving honours with no money attached! But that's OK. Just found out a couple of hours ago that I made a list of 5 must-read poetry books of 2013, in the estimation of some anonymous adjudicator at the CBC.

Hey, I'll take anything I can get.

And it's been nice seeing You Exist. Details Follow. receiving a fair amount of attention. Here's what those people of great taste at CBC had to say about my book:

Ross is the joker in this pack: in his latest book, he serves up absurdist wit and playful irreverence, putting a weird but entertaining tilt on subjects as varied as family ties, suburban life and geopolitics. There's heart as well as hilarity here. In Fathers Shave, written from a child's-eye view of a father shaving, the blade of the razor "rips the carpet/and the curtains, rips/Sylvester the cat/right off the TV screen..." -- surrealistically bizarre, yes, but emotionally true to a young boy's awed view of his father.

I, joker.

Over and out.

The stray breezes of You Exist. Details Follow.

Very happy about this review from the Ottawa-based poetry journal Arc. I'm especially happy about the first sentence. But what I like overall here is that the reviewer deals with the material on the page: he doesn't seem to be inflicting agendas on my writing. And, as in all the reviews that make me happiest, he points out things I had never noticed.

As always, I feel very fortunate that my books get reviewed pretty widely.

Plucking a Stray Breeze: Stuart Ross’s You Exist. Details Follow.
THURSDAY, MARCH 28TH, 2013

Stu­art Ross. You Exist. Details Fol­low. Van­cou­ver: Anvil Press, 2012.

Reviewed by Andrew Johnson

Stu­art Ross’s You Exist. Details Fol­low. is a won­der­fully sprawl­ing col­lec­tion far more inter­ested in explor­ing poetic process than in using poetry to make grand statements. The title quashes any desire for con­clu­sions right away: “you exist”, full stop, clears the way for the inter­est­ing parts—the details that fol­low. Ross exca­vates those details play­fully, using var­i­ous struc­tural strate­gies, one of which is the cento, or “patchwork” poem, in which a new poem is con­structed from an exist­ing poem or poems. “Cento for Alfred Purdy” gives us “love and hate/ doing pushups under an ancient Pon­tiac…” and “I knew a guy once would buy a sin­gle drop/ of the rain and mists of Baf­fin,” lines where Ross chan­nels Purdy, reflects on Purdy, and works at push­ing past him through the respect­ful assim­i­la­tion of the other’s work. The poem also ends with a lovely, lov­ing evo­ca­tion of Purdy: “stand­ing on a patch of snow/ in the sil­very guts of a labour­ing ter­ri­bly use­ful lifetime.”

In notes included in the col­lec­tion, Ross writes that a num­ber of these poems were writ­ten “dur­ing” another poem—“’Keeping Time’ was writ­ten dur­ing John Ashbery’s ‘Grand Galop’”—which sug­gests that he uses his read­ing of a poem to pro­vide the spring­board for cre­at­ing a new poem. In this case, Ross trans­forms Ashbery’s descriptions—“the smil­ing expanse of the sky / That plays no favourites…” and, “The dog barks, the car­a­van passes on” (Ash­bery, Poetry, 1974)—into con­densed, assertive metaphors—“The sky is hon­est, / smil­ing down at the bark­ing / car­a­van.” Ross’s approach acknowl­edges the role of read­ing, sug­ges­tion, and influ­ence on creation, while the selec­tion of Ash­bery and David McFad­den (another poet whose work is inter­po­lated in a sim­i­lar fash­ion) sit­u­ates him amongst other avant-garde poets with a deep under­stand­ing of surrealism.

While Ross’s bent for sur­re­al­ism is evi­dent through­out You Exist, it is par­tic­u­larly effective in the haunt­ing prose poem “Lin­eage,” which begins, “I step into a crowded swim­ming and look for my grand­par­ents. They are dead on another con­ti­nent.” The asso­ci­a­tions and juxta­posi­tions Ross works with in “Lin­eage” cre­ate a pro­found sense of absence and loss, leav­ing behind “the sort of silence that broad­casts from another era or from across an ocean.” The poem ends with an apoc­a­lyp­tic vision of “dis­tant explo­sions of orange,” con­vey­ing a sense of dread founded in humanity’s propen­sity for com­mit­ting the same hor­rors over and over.

This volume’s reflec­tion on process shows up in five new offer­ings of his annual New Year’s Day poems, most notably “Inven­tory Son­net.” From 2008, it is an exam­ple of Ross’s respect­ful use of the son­net to work through an idea before pro­vid­ing a cou­plet that is typ­i­cally a bit wacky but that is sus­tained by its apt­ness. Here, after rad­i­cally dis­as­sem­bling him­self within his “inven­tory” (includ­ing see­ing part of him­self as “Claes Oldenberg’s / Giant Hamburger”), the poet writes, “I sit in a circle/ all by myself try­ing to con­vince myself/ that I love myself. A pass­ing fork­lift agrees. / I rake fin­gers through my hair and pluck out a stray breeze.” Who, reflect­ing on a new year, isn’t at once weighted down by dis­ap­point­ment and buoyed by hope­ful­ness? We all believe in the pos­si­bil­ity that a “stray breeze” will come along, offer­ing some­thing fresh and new. Thank­fully, stray breezes abound in Ross’s You Exist. Details Follow.

Andrew John­son is a Hamilton-based writer and editor.

Over and out.

Oh, what a week!

The rewards are few and far between for small press publishers, editors, and writers, and we all struggle to make ends meet while doing what we can to create interesting stuff for audiences of 17 or 381 or maybe even 749.

So it's a rare pleasure when I get an actual week packed with amazing and transformative moments, and moments I can be proud of.

It all began on Tuesday, March 12, when a hundred or so poetrypeople packed the Monarch Tavern in Toronto for the launch of Mansfield Press's spring 2013 list. Publisher/editor Denis De Klerck kicked things off by introducing me, and then I had the great glee of introducing each of the four writers, three of whom (the boys) have new books under my "a stuart ross book" imprint. First, Peter Norman read well from his sharp, dark, and funny second full-length collection, Water Damage; then Priscila Uppal gave her usual fun and friendly reading from her second collection written as Poet in Residence for the Olympics and the Paralympics, Summer Sport: Poems. After a break whose conversations I was reluctant to rupture, I had the honour of introducing my friend and huge influence, David W. McFadden, who read from Mother Died Last Summer, a sometimes fun, sometimes moving journal that was privately published (in an edition of 11) in 1992 and revised for the Mansfield edition; and then, to close off the night, we brought on George Bowering, all the way from Vancouver, who delivered his usual powerhouse reading, from Teeth: Poems 2006-2011. My favourite line from George, after he'd read a poem consisting of potential epitaphs for himself, was "Dead is the new seventy, you know."


What is additionally exciting about these Mansfield launches is how many other Mansfield authors come out to celebrate, and how many other publishers and editors join us. It really feels like Denis and I — and the writers — are building something very important, and appreciated, and anticipated.

On Thursday, I hopped the train to Ottawa, a sort of second home for me, where I took part in the Tree Reading Series' installment for VerseFest, a celebration of poetry in its third year. It was an eclectic night, as I read mostly new work alongside heavy metalist/poet Catherine Owen from Vancouver and the now-St. John's-based Don McKay. I'd never met Don before, or seen him read, and I was surprised how damn funny he was. It is always great to catch up with my Ottawa friends, and make a couple of new ones, and afterwards Catherine, Don and I had a few drinks and munchies at the bar at our hotel. A fantastic night, and I wish I had been able to stay for more of the festival.

Friday, it was back to the train station, where I hopped the rails for Montreal, which is quickly rivalling Ottawa — and New Denver, B.C. — as my second home. (I'm not sure what happened to Toronto in this hierarchy.) That night, my favourite little store in town, Argo Books, was sardinely packed for readings by Rachel Lebowitz, in from Halifax to launch her new poetry collection, Cottonopolis, drawn from some fascinating labour/industrial history; Stephanie Bolster, in a supporting role (as per her name), reading from A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth and an absorbing new long poem in progress; and very entertaining opener Sarah Burgoyne, a young poet whose broad influences are test-tubing into some brilliant linear and prose poems, sometimes reminiscent of Charles Simic, sometimes Harryette Mullen (who Sarah hasn't read, in fact). I predict great things for her if academia doesn't ruin her!

Saturday night, my friend Glenda, who worked across the road from me when I was at Harlequin in the early 1990s, took me on a tour of some less-touristy areas of Montreal, which was fantastic. And then we went to Café Cherrier, once a hotbed of intellectuals, artists, and FLQ types, and now a swanky restaurant-bar for the upscale Francophone crowd. We sat the bar and I was embarrassed to speak only English. The bartender looked a bit like Claude François might have had he lived another twenty-five years, and I told Glenda about my obsession with the late French pop icon. She'd never heard of him, but as we paid our bill to leave, she asked the bartender if he knew about Claude François. He lit up, and the staff near the bar laughed, and he turned to me asked me, in English, how I knew about CloClo, and whether I'd seen the biopic. And then he broke into a brief rendition of "Le Téléphone Pleure."

Sunday evening was the big night, though. I received an email a few weeks about by an animated Montreal poet named Catherine Cormier-Larose, telling me I had won the sole Anglo prize handed out by a group of young Francophone writers, l'Académie de la vie littéraire au tournant du 21e siècle. The awards night was the culmination of an eight-day celebration called Festival dans ta tête, created by Catherine, who also founded l'Academie, about eight years ago, to create community for the younger French lit set. I was pretty nervous: I'd be in a room filled with French speakers, and unless they said "Donnez-moi le poulet," I probably wouldn't understand anything. Luckily, I was joined by Sarah Burgoyne and Nick Papaxanthos; Nick is another brilliant young poet, one I met during my stint as writer in residence at Queen's University in 2010 (he too better not get ruined by academia!). There were about 120 people in Club Lambi, and the atmosphere was friendly, beautiful, smart, and celebratory.

About 15 awards were handed out to writers, zinesters, graphic artists, and playwrights, and the brief onstage readings and performances were mesmerizing. My mind often wanders at readings, but at this one, where I understood almost nothing, kept my attention non-stop. When it was time for me to go up, I read three poems from You Exist. Details Follow. — which received the esteemed Exist Through the Gift Shop award — and Catherine read translations she's written of each, as we'd arranged in advance. I read each of the poems very differently: some fast, some slow, some loud, some soft, and Catherine perfectly mimicked my delivery. It was pretty exhilarating, I'll tell you. The Anglo on the stage was well-received, and afterwards many of the other writers came up to talk with me; some were fluent in English, some struggled with the language, but I was pretty ashamed that I couldn't reciprocate in French. (I'm going to fix that.)

This event — this immersion for an evening in the Francophone literary community, more joyous and exciting than any English-language reading or awards night I've ever been to — was a life-expanding experience. How much poorer I'd be now if my weird-ass poetry book hadn't attracted the attention of a few young French writers. In talking with Catherine, as well as Mathieu Arsenault, who created the collectible authors' cards, and some of the other writers there that night, I learned a lot about what it was to be a writer in French in this country, and on this planet.

I said, when I was introduced, that as a writer in English, this was perhaps the best prize I could possibly win. I managed a pretty-well-accented "Merci beaucoup," but I couldn't thank them enough.

Over and out.