Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 33

Andy Weaver, The Loom

 

where
            we’re headed,
                                    only realizing that
the arc
              of the pitcher’sarm
                                                mirrors
the galaxy’s
                    swirl,
                              thatthrough
its parts
              the universe
                                    posits
a sum
            and the silliness of games
                                                     ends. (“ligament/ ligature”)

Thefourth full-length poetry title by Toronto poet Andy Weaver, following Were the Bees (Edmonton AB: NeWest Press, 2005), Gangson (NeWest Press,2011) and This (Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2015), is The Loom (CalgaryAB: University of Calgary Press, 2024), one hundred and forty pages of an extendedsequence-thread on the surrealities surrounding marriage, children, parentingand homestead through first-person lyric. As the back cover offers: “Andy Weaverled a life of quiet contemplation before becoming a father at the age of 42. Withinthree years he had two sons; two small, relentless disruptions to an existencewhich had, for a very long time, been self-sustaining and tranquil.” For sometime, Weaver has been engaged in pushing his own variations upon a blend of thelong poem/serial poem, and The Loom exists as an extended, book-length line.Composing sequences within sequences, he writes an excess that stretches itselfthrough sequences and layerings, suites upon suites, clusters and accumulations,one held together and by this new foundation of domestic patter, and discoveringhow big a human heart might become. “Perhaps if a new content is / a newdevotion,” he writes, as part of the extended sequence “THE CLEAVE,” “theresult / of novel imagination, then / there is love even in reason—if / emotionis the first evolution / making ways for new forms of life, / then love is whatgives us reason / for reason and saves us from the crushing / reality ofreality.” Through the evolution of his lyric, passion and reason are no longer separate,distant poles, but a blended opportunity for enlightenment, calm and perspective,offering fresh layers of personal and lyric insight.

ThroughoutThe Loom, Weaver offers structural echoes of Robert Duncan’s lyricblocks and staggers, writing not an abstract articulating the spaces around andthrough the occult, but one of an open-hearted familial love, a groundingprovided through his two young sons. “When I had journeyed half my life’s way,”he writes, near the opening of the collection, “I found I’d lost sight of love—justthe sort / of line that mediocre, middle-aged men / have been using since theevolution / of male pattern baldness.” Through his explorations around familyand children through a particular lens of the long poem, his work exists nearlyas counterpoint to that of Ottawa poet Jason Christie, two modest and quiet poets(both with two young sons of similar age) simultaneously working their long lyricstretch of an abstract, accumulating domestic line. As a fragment of the fifthsection of “THE BRIDGE” reads:

Looking at the lake atnight, a child knows
the flat field ofreflected lights is a series of depths
of incalculabledistances, sets of eyes gleaming
from an underneath wherethere is no holding
them away, and the strainis etched into the walls
of his brain cells likeshapes scratched uncountable
years ago into the stonesof a sea cave forgotten
so long ago the crews ofthe fishing boats sail over it
every day without evenshivering, no clue that every
minute love is watchingand waiting for the moment
to capsize us.

There’sa density to Weaver’s lyrics, stretching out across packed sequences even asthe language breaks down, fractals, breaks apart, leaning harder into pure soundand collision. At times his language deliberately scatters, akin to lightthrough a prism—“the knot / will not / knot but / that does not /mean that / anuntie,” he writes, as part of the extended “ligament/ligature,” “a terriblenaught / that unbinds, / should be taught / as an answer / to shield you / fromfeeling distraught.”—and the structure of sequence-within-sequence offers afurther layering of the book-length poem stretching further and endlessly out,his mix of sound and cadence offering a propulsion well beyond the accumulationof one line upon another. Through the book-length poem The Loom, Weaver weavesa deep sincerity across the newness of children, devotion, uncertainty, minutedetail, deep appreciation and abiding love, detailing a swirling abstract ofemotional upheaval and ongoing, continuous wonder; one might almost consider TheLoom to be a meditation on love through chaos. “My actual family,”he writes, “those bodies / whose parts / in my speech / make a texture / beyondcognition,” offering a detail upon detail. As the final extended sequence, “THEBRIDGE,” ends the collection:

                        But there is a point in every event
that we cannot seethrough, and another we
cannot see at all. Love’sopacity, then, is its essence.
Which is to say that thepeculiar fate of the lover
may be that the mostserious question can only
be posed in thevocabulary of love.
                                                            And I’vewritten
myself into a corner, afull stop, an unproductive
bafflement that freezesmy hands over the keyboard,
trying to parse out thedifference between hiding
and lying in wait—until thereyou are, stamping
into my room trailinggiggles of glory, grabbing
my hand and pulling mefrom my seat at this
cerebral dead end, mylovely gosling, my godling,
my Hugh ex machina.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Oluwaseun Olayiwola

Oluwaseun Olayiwola is a poet, critic, choreographer,and performer based in London. His poems have been published and anthologizedin The Guardian, The Poetry Review, PN Review, OxfordPoetry, Tate, bath magg, Fourteen Poems, Re•creation,and Queerlings. As a Ledbury Poetry Critic, he’s written reviews for TheGuardian, The Telegraph, The Times Literary Supplement, the PoetrySchool, Magma Poetry, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, andthe Poetry Book Society. His poetry has been commissioned by the RoyalSociety of Literature and Spread the Word.

1 - How did your first book changeyour life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does itfeel different?

I’m still waiting on it to be released (Jan 2025 in US andUK) so perhaps I don’t have yet the retrospective eye that I assure you Icrave, and for some reason, thirst at the thought of being able to reflect on.I never really had the fear that I wouldn’t be able to do it. No, the fear wasmore would it be of quality, and this, is still to be decided and seen.

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

I think dancing led me more neatly to poetry than to theothers. I think I can say for years, I’d softly consumed poetry, usually usedin voiceovers for dance music. Growing up in the Pentecostal tradition as well,listening to and reading the bible weekly, attending church, and being preachedat––one could say there was also a poetic quality to those Sunday sermons.There were some feeble attempts at writing fan fiction where I was the maincharacter, some guy (a peer, a choreographer, a teacher) was a pretend lover,but those, I know now, were just ways to express to myself a queerness thatwasn’t being entirely nurtured, even accepted; a queerness that wasn’t beingentirely given voice to. It’s no surprise my poems move along such desirelines––in equal amounts of repose, and ecstatic upwellings.

3 - How long does it take to startany particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or isit a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape,or does your work come out of copious notes?

It’s really a mix of all. Some come quickly, urgently, andhave remained mostly unchanged. But I would say that, as I look across mymanuscript, many are often poems I wrote, I then forgot about, and then months later remembered because a similartheme or word came up in a new poem I was writing. What would happen then isthe new poem would likely cannibalize the old one for its best parts, which isusually a line or two, sometimes just a situation. I do have a notes app thatI’ve been keeping for more than 6 years that I call ‘Notes for Poetry’.Sometimes whole poems come from that, or just crucial lines that help a wiltingpoem revivify itself. Two years ago I started “Notes for Prose”, though thisone is not nearly as helpful.

On starting a project: I’m able to have my finger in manydifferent pies. This is how I am though I am not sure if it's conducive to mypractice. I can often feel paralyzed trying to think across poetry and prose(I’m a critic as well).

4 - Where does a poem usually beginfor you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a largerproject, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I remember there being a discourse on Twitter about thedifference between a ‘book poet’ or ‘poem poet’, which are funny distinctions.I can’t speak to the validity of the binary, but I can say, I think as I beganto see that these poems could be collected into a book, I slid towards being a‘book poet’. Of course, it is always composed of individual poems, but I quitethink I’m a tonal, musical thinker and as what was maybe 8-10 salvageable poemsbecame 30, then 40, I found myself thinking more cosmically about the book,less about what it was saying, and more about how it was sounding itself.

5 - Are public readings part of orcounter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doingreadings?

Oh yeah, I love reading in public. I’m a dancer by trainingso I like lights on me. But, contrarily, I wouldn’t call myself a showy readerreally. I actually tend be more or less still and try to channel the poeticenergy through my voice, which has a resonance to it. I rarely gesture, and Ithink people have come to expect of me some more elaborate performancemovements as I read, but that would feel to me a great disservice to the poems,which is the medium through which what I feel in the moment comes through.Also, it’s more easy to tell if a line is wrong (untruthful, clunky,out-of-place, too explanatory) when you’re reading it to others.

6 - Do you have any theoreticalconcerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answerwith your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

What is intimacy? What does it take to really, really bewith another human? Versus, what does it take to really be with another human?

7 – What do you see the current roleof the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you thinkthe role of the writer should be?

Oh I don’t know. Writers and writings are so various. Ithink writers all do something fundamental though––they tell us who was alive,when, and, most importantly, how.

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

I love it––I’m a high conceptualizer, an ENFP––I daydream,fantasize, theorize. And poems are one way in which I try to bring myself backto the ground, though one might find in my poems a interest, maybe desperation,for horizontal movement. Editors are people on the ground, who are trying tocatch you. You know in movies when someone is jumping off a building, butthere’s a group of people with a blanket below, trying to catch them like ahammock of sorts?

It's essential for me. I like making messes (but really likecrisp finished products) and my editors at Soft Skull Press and Fitzcarraldo Editions, helped me clean up the work. I don’t mean in the language so much(though one can always be tighter) but conceptually, structurally. As someonewho didn’t study English/creative writing in a normative way, it was alsoimportant for me to feel my editors were teaching me about craft, implicitly orexplicitly. This was achieved.

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

Don’t imitate. Steal.

10 - How easy has it been for you tomove between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

I move quite fluidly, giving myself permission in criticalprose to be as poetic as I need, understanding the conventions of lyric poetryas critical. It’s harder the other way around, but more worthwhile. How to makethe rhetoric as interesting (musically or argumentatively) as the bombasticimage flying off the handle. But sometimes it’s okay to just make the argument,lose the image, lose the prettiness, lose the glamour, and argue.

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

Writing this book, when my life was less structured, and Iwas more financially scant, I could wake up at 7 and write until ten, eleven.That’s when my brain starts to go. But if you do that, even for like twomonths, so much gets done. Now it’s all over the place. I lecture three days aweek, with the other two days essentially for writing. Mondays are bad, I doscroll the most on Mondays! Why though?? I also believe protecting your writingtime, as I take from Zadie Smith, is essential, but much more difficult themore responsibility you have to others, students, friends, colleagues. Itreally is a paradox, you need a life to write about and time away from thatlife to write about it.

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

I steal lines and reorganize them from other poets, randomlyoff my shelf. Though, there are some books that are ripe (and by that, I meanso masterful any line jolts you into saying something) for theft: anything byJohn Ashbery, lots of Jorie Graham. Louise Glück is harder to steal frommaterially, but her tone is so impressive (as in it impresses itself on you)that after a couple of poems, when I want to be, and see the value of being,less woo-woo. I am very suggestive person.

13 - What fragrance reminds you ofhome?

Aboniki Balm which is kind of menthol rub.

14 - David W. McFadden once saidthat books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence yourwork, whether nature, music, science, or visual art?

As a choreographer and dancer, dance definitely influencesmy work implicitly. Contemporary dance, I’d hazard, taught me to ngaf what Iwrite, after having twisted my body into so many forms and shapes.

15 - What other writers or writingsare important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

SZA and Frank Ocean. Rita Dove –– I read one of her poemsevery couple of months and am just reminded of how limited my imagination is.And then work towards opening it. Jorie Graham who was recommended to me,Louise Glück who was recommended to me by Amazon, and more recently writerslike Christina Sharpe and Carmen Maria Machado

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

Write a book made of mostly sentences. Or entirely.

17 - If you could pick any otheroccupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think youwould have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Definitely a model. I think I could still be one.

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

I danced first. Well, if I’m being accurate, I did musicfirst, as a trombonist. And then danced. But both of these forms, I felt givento. Writing was the one I didn’t know if was innate in me. Music and Dancewere. Writing was something I had to graduate into my life and I’m stillfiguring out how to do that––

19 - What was the last great bookyou read? What was the last great film?

Like A Ghost I Leave You – Quotes By Edvard Munch

20 - What are you currently workingon?

Poems and sentences––I don’t say that to be facetious.Writing a good sentence is so difficult! And I think I have to think of it asthat small, the local, to keep the same intensity I’d like my work to have, thesame force––Paragraphs, yikes!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part two: Stuart Ross, Claire Sherwood + Jeff Blackman,

Hereare some further items I recently picked up as part of our thirtieth anniversary ottawa small press book fair [see part one of my notes here]. Somany things! And might we see you this weekend at our mini-VERSeFest festival, running Thursday through Saturday? Tickets for the Thursday night reading available now through RedBird Live!

Cobourg ON/Montreal QC: I hadn’t been aware ofthis wee title by award-winning Cobourg, Ontario poet, fiction writer, editor and publisher Stuart Ross [see my review of his latest poetry collection here;my piece on his recent short story collection here], his a very little street (Montreal QC: Turret House Press, 2023). This is a curious structure,two numbered sequences that suggest a far larger, more expansivework-in-progress, with the eleven-part opening, “1. The Highway,” and seven-part“2. The Doughnut.” There is something in this sequence, this pair of sequencesset as part of (possibly) something longer, reminiscent of bpNichol’s novel Still(Vancouver BC: Pulp Press, 1983), the manuscript of which won the 5thInternational 3-Day Novel Writing Contest. Across that small book, Nichol describedthe room he was in with enormous detail; in a very little street, Rossdescribes a moment across a particular unnamed street, moving out across recollectionand points across an expansive lyric map, as the chapbook opens: “One hundredand seven kilometres / of highway. Clouds roar through the sky. // Runningshoes dangle from telephone wires. / Clouds of gnats. The smouldering ruins. //And my history: a red-brick barbecue / my father built in nineteenseventy-four. // The backyard patio’s pink and green / ceramic tiles.” Utilizingthe highway, the sequence, as a kind of prompt, Ross weaves and meanders acrossa meditative assemblage of accumulated couplets, driving for as long as he can,just to see where he goes. He writes a highway into a street, and a street intoa recollection, allowing the structure as a kind of catch-all for memory, avariation on the book-length poem Vancouver poet Michael Turner wrote onanother rather lengthy street, Kingsway (Vancouver BC: Arsenal PulpPress, 1995). As Ross writes across his sequence-thread, as part of the secondsection:

through our streets everyday. We saw him
beaming every day. He clutchedthe handle

and bellowed a song inHebrew, manoeuvred
the rattling cart. The giantant mass undulated,

animated. The wheels ofArnie’s shopping
cart screeched against thesidewalk. He wore

baggy jeans and a faded blueT-shirt
that said Hey Hey We’rethe Monkees. His shoulders

quaked with the vibrations.The crooked wheels
faced every direction. Ahand of lightning

snatched the bag my handgrasped,
tore it from my grip. Adoughnut. A doughnut

rose from the paper bag,dangled from
the claws of three whitedoves. It ascended

Manahil Bandukwala (Brick Books), wishing to recreate the 'grumpy poet' sequence of photos from the prior post,

Montreal QC: The opening reader of our pre-fair event at Anina’s Café (a wonderful new café in Ottawa’s Vanier neighbourhood, I shouldadd) was “Montreal writer, visual poet, and oral storyteller” Claire Sherwood,reading from her chapbook sequence, Eat your words (Montreal QC: TurretHouse Press, 2024). As she writes at the offset:

This poem is aninterrogation of memory, a fluid autobiography. Swirling with intergenerationalflavours and aromas. Stirring, blending, beating, scraping the sides of thebowl to find the right words. Struggling with separation, painful endings. Searchingfor home.

This is a poem strugglingto be a poem. Words are impossible to control. Nothing is static. Memory continuallyreorders and reframes archived slices of the past. Loops and lines write thestory. Is it leftovers? Am I home?

AcrossSherwood’s twenty-eight page/part sequence, she writes through an accumulation ofmemory centred around her mother’s cookbook, threading what seem like childhoodrecollections and precise questions, open secrets and gestures. There’s a lotof information packed in here, and her poems read like lists, offering layersof nuance between lines, one set atop of the other. “Is it dragging your feet,”she writes, early on in the collection. “Is it a leg up / Is it the hand offriendship / Is it losing old friends [.]”

Is it too many cooks
Is it the wrong pan
Is it returned to theoven
Is it a complete shambles
Is it terminal
Is it treatable
Is it roaring back to life
Is it mightier than thesword
Is it easier said thandone
Is it one horse and onecow sharing a meadow
Is it ever easy to findthe right words

Pearl Pirie, phafours

Kingston/Ottawa ON: I was intrigued to see thatKingston editor/publisher Michael e. Casteels had produced, through his Puddlesof Sky Press, a small chapbook item (sixty copies hand printed, hand sewn,within an envelope) by Ottawa poet and publisher Jeff Blackman, his IN THEBRINY (November 2024). Anyone who has seen a Puddles of Sky item knowsthere is a detailed and graceful ease to these publications, and there is aspare element to these poems I appreciate, one that allows moments of density, hesitation,spark and flourish in contained and compact spaces, such as the poem “In It,”that begins: “Honestly / I want less to do / with my body // but the body / hasa poem / I want [.]” There is such an intriguing slow and careful attentionhere, a perfect blend of text and production. Or the second half of the poem “HR,”that reads:

       howthis
     poem ends

     but not yet, friend.

 

 

                        Look,
your ride’s here.

 

Maw Shein Win, Percussing the Thinking Jar

 

Thought Log

Swinging on an old ropefrom the edge of a cliff.

A lit-up room, a giant Xcovered in sequins.

Gone lawns, fan crowns,drone town.

An orange ceramic swallowfrom Portugal.

My love’s laughter fromthe study.

Reimagine cures.

Amber nimbus, ochrehawks, spring shambles.

I believe in the healingpower of crystals.

They thought my hair hadturned white due to pandemic stress.

My sinuses are beingoccupied.

I feel lonely & thenI don’t.

I eat another bowl ofkitchari, the bits of ginger.

Sorry fabric, mild steel,jade traps.

What are we in for?

The somatic therapistleads us on a guided visualization through a sacred grove.

I swim in a field ofpathogens.

San Francisco poet and editor Maw Shein Win’s third full-length collection,following Invisible Gifts: Poems (Manic D Press, 2018) and Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2020) [see my review of such here] is Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn, 2024), anaccumulated and expansive lyric of thought logs, articulating thoughts andmovement across a wide swath of health, aging, family and memory. At nearly twohundred pages, there’s some serious heft to this collection of poems composedas elements of point-form: how her lyrics hold, stretch and extend, one stepafter another. “A friend tells me she wants to live in a house with no light.”she writes, as part of the poem ‘Tympanum,” “Only / rooms with walls she must touchto find the door that leads to / the dirt path beneath invisible trees. Growingfrom a break in the / brick.” She writes of loss and body changes, aging andher mother’s stroke; she writes of memory and her late sister, ripples of a logbook articulating movement and recollection in physical detail. The craft allowsfor the feeling of the quick-sketch, a notebook of her days and thoughts, butone composed with a sharp eye, logging a list of entries on thought and eye andblood pressure and sleep and weather and hyphens and missives to friends, allheld as a way to not simply articulate but to process the whats and whys of herlandscape and beyond. “Dad knew he was going to die because he was two vultures/ that morning.” she writes, to open a further “Thought Log,” “Suitcasesbreaking open display queen conch shells. // Apparition of snapped bone trees.// Pataflafa, Flam Drag, Triple Stroke Roll. // The suburbs are sinking.”

Thereare elements of Win’s clipped language that I find reminiscent of Quebec poet Pearl Pirie’s work, but only other writer I’ve been aware to reference thenotion of the poem as log entry is Ottawa poet Roland Prevost, having composeda daily journal of entries he refers to as his “logbook.” It was through himreworking a handful of entries that formed the poems of his full-length debut, Singular Plurals (Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2014). The daily diary/journal is how Ottawa writer Elizabeth Smart (1913-1986) composed those first drafts of what became By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945), after all. “Monitorcoffins,” Win writes, through a further “Thought Log,” “banister motif, creekballots. // We unpack our elegance armor. // Is emptiness a placeholder?” Throughher own journal-poems across Percussing the Thinking Jar, Maw Shein Win’spoems offer a freshness, an immediacy, across the crisp and electric buoyancyof lines that extend out into a singular, continuous ongoingness of thought andprocess. These are difficult times we live in, and through these log entries, MawShein Win might hold us all together. Or, as the poem “Sleep Log” ends:

I hear a disembodiedvoice, snap alert.

For years, nails &shards of glass flew from my mouth. I imagined this as rage.

Sleep under four heavyblankets.

Dream about losing apurse even though I don’t own one. My older sister visits me. She died sixyears ago. She swings a leopard skin pouch around on a golden chain, she isglowing.

I whisper: everything isgoing to be okay.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Raymond de Borja

Raymond de Borja is the author of they day daze (High Chair, 2012), as well, in our estrangement (Aklat Ulagad, 2022), and facture (Broken Sleep Books, 2024).

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book they day daze (High Chair, 2012) helped me figure out how I might want to approach the writing of poems, in my case, often intuitively, prosodically, and from a place of not-knowing. It was important to me that the poems I wrote offered not knowledge but experience, because I am suspicious whenever anything I write tries to be wisdom. Often what comes across as wisdom, decontextualized and dehistoricized, is affect. But I am interested in how truth is embodied. These attitudes persist in facture (Broken Sleep Books, 2024). I also describe these approaches in essays -- "Action, Number, Silence, Work" (published in The Operating System's Field Notes) and "Lyric Gesture" (published in Annulet Poetics Journal ) both included in my second book as well, in our estrangement (Aklat Ulagad, 2022).

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Language lessons, as I remember them structured in primary school, were diction and syntax. This set me up with an early appreciation of the material qualities of language; and so, poetry.

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?
Writing is one way I deal with the world. The poetry writing projects I undertake usually come from a constellation of life interests. Then each new poem in the project takes shape in relation to the poems around them. My essays are usually occassioned -- by invitations to talk, by the work of friends and other artists, or by the pause required by other life projects.

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?
I think of my projects as pursuits of particular geometries attuned to the interests and intuitions that comprise the work, for example collage, or the shape of prose vs the shape of a line, or the shape that repetitions might take, or how poems take trajectories away from the center, or how we might move from one periphery to the next, etc.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love working with prosodic elements. Readings allow for prosody to take aural shape (or at least hpw I imagine prosody might take shape) before a public. So there is value in readings in terms of being able to test out those shapes, and finding out what tensions they might produce in the public speaking voice.

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?
Whenever I'm asked to describe my book of poems, facture, I say that it consists of poems that think about art, labor, gesture, persons, and dream.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Some have immediately discernible and do urgent and important work, the journalist for example. Writers shape how we feel and think. From the copywriter to the writer of policies and laws lie both ethical responsibility and potential for subversion albeit in varying degrees. Poets do this work of shaping differently, often impractically, and that might be where their value resides. Many have written about the roles poets might take (some affirmatively, some critically, most over-determined), while most of us will eventually turn out mistaken in our assumptions.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Except for two cases, and sadly, both with university presses, I've been lucky with editors. My poems, essays, and books, published mostly with small presses and independent literary journals, had editors and book artists that gave my work utmost care. I am thankful to them.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Foucault: Do not become enamored of power.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to visual art/collage)? What do you see as the appeal?
I move from poems, to essays, sometimes to visual work for a change of pace, or maybe tp find the necessary pace.

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?
Not exactly a routine, but I tend to work on several projects and read several books at any given period of time. I don't necessarily keep separate notebooks for each of them, and so the notes can get messy. I flip the pages of my current notebook and find notes on the politics of weather data modeling, then on Glissant's play on errantry/errancy, then on the Wertheim's Hyperbolic Coral Reef Crochet project, then on tweaks I made to a chicken adobo recipe I cooked for dinner.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
When I know that I'm stalled because I don't really have anything to say, then I don't force it. But if I'm stalled as to how a form or trajectory might proceed, then a break or some physical activity helps -- walking, yoga, weightlifting, etc.

A quiet beach.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
My cat's (Sushi's) coat of fur which smells like (I kid you not) baby powder.

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?
Recently, mostly coastal, intertidal and pelagic forms as I've started learning to surf

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Limiting the response to poetry: the poems of Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Lyn Hejinian, Fanny Howe, Paul Celan, Inger Christensen, and Barbara Guest

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I started 10 months ago, but I would like to continue to progress my skills in longboard surfing.

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?
Maybe teaching?

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Growing up, I had more access to resources for developing skills in writing than say music or the visual arts.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Lisa Robertson's The Baudelaire Fractal, Adania Shibli's Minor Detail, Donna Haraway's Staying with The Trouble, Neferti Tadiar's Remaindered Life, Allan Popa's Narkotiko at Panganorin, Divya Victor's Kith, Ramon Guillermo's Ang Makina ni Mang Turing, Cid Corman's translation of Basho's Oku no Hosomichi

Drive My Car dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Cleaners dir. Glenn Barit, Monster dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, Pluto by Urasawa x Tezuka x Kawaguchi, The Beaches of Agnes Varda dir. Agnes Varda

20 - What are you currently working on?
I am working on a new book of poems that explore ideas and intuitions that cluster around and share affinities with the activity of surfing. These include: coastal communities and coastal gentrification; the language of weather, weather data modeling and forecasting; movement and how movement changes sensibility; community, friendship, and the diaristic; lyric forms of (bodily) knowledge and how perception, experience, and knowledge can be variously, non-causally arranged; coastal submersion in relation to lyric subject formation, i.e. the myth of the bounded, individuated lyric "I" and the possibilities that arise when thinking instead of a lyric holoent or a lyric holobiome.

Also, some art writing and essays adjacent to said writing.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part one: Rose Maloukis, Ksenija Spasić + Kristjana Gunnars,

Bynow you know we’ve come and gone through the 30th anniversaryedition of the ottawa small press book fair [see my notes from the spring 2024 fair here and here, by the way], which was the largest (by a third or so) todate of our semi-annual event, which is quite remarkable. And all the vendors Iheard from said it was the best in sales they’d ever had! So that is deeply exciting.And did you see this report Amanda Earl made after the event?

Be aware that our next two dates are already booked andconfirmed! Saturday June 21, 2025 and Saturday November 22, 2025, again at TomBrown Arena, just west of Ottawa’s downtown core. If you lose track of those dates, you can always check here, of course. And make sure to keep track of theoccasional posts at the (ottawa) small press almanac, our small collective of Ottawa-based small publishers, yes?

myself, Stuart Ross (Proper Tales Press) + Cameron Anstee (Apt. 9 Press)

Montreal QC: I’m a bit behind, clearly, in my readingof Montreal poet and visual artist Rose Maloukis’ work, only now catching herchapbook Offcuts (Montreal QC: Turret House Press, 2023), a follow-upto, among other titles, Cloud Game with Plums (above/ground press,2020). Her chapbook-length sequence “Offcuts” suggests an element of collage,of stitching lines and sentences together, each page a self-contained burst ofphrases held together with precise intent. “one / thousand / would that be /enough to send / into the world / to say,” she writes, early on in thesequence, “here / look at these / and just for / a moment / yield [.]” There isa curious way that Maloukis works her own ekphrasis, engaging through text herown ongoing visual practice, allowing the one side of her creative work toreveal itself through another form, akin to a kind of commentary or poetics ofher visual art.

to save my life foreleven days
I made drawings
                            mybody
                           smoked
the novelty

lay on the floor
under a table

burnt ultra-thin candles
not to flame the paper
                           only to mark
                           with soot

this dirty foul smoke
and dangerous wax
                           affirms

all the charred days
bring back
                            mythirst

Ottawa ON: I was intrigued to see that Jeff Blackman’s Horsebroke Press has expanded to include single-author chapbooks, with the newtitle, the beautiful the bearable by poet Ksenija Spasić (November 2024)appearing, according to the colophon, as “These Days #29.” There isn’t anauthor biography included for Spasić, although a quick online search reveals theMoscow-born author currently lives in Montreal, after studying at both theUniversity of Toronto and Concordia University. Has she published anywhereelse? Either way, the beautiful the bearable is a chapbook about familyand war, offering ten first-person poems documenting response, aftermath andhow one can never fully escape. Referencing The Complete Works of Primo Levi(2015) by the Jewish-Italian chemist, writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi(1919-1987), Spasić offers: “Levi writes madness, / but describes method / orderliness,the gears that make it go. / Like transposing the patterns of life/ to give intelligibleform / to death.”

Thereare small gems within these poems, some of which really strike, and make mecurious about what else she might be writing or working on. “Into these words,”she writes, to close the poem “Ritual,” “I take a part to flee the whole, /perform the ritual / that shrinks a shoreline or a man / into the beautiful, /the bearable.”

jwcurry, Room 3O2 Books

Toronto ON/Vancouver BC: I’m frustrated to onlynow discover (via our small press fair “free stuff” table) Canadian poet and artist Kristjana Gunnars’ chapbook sequence At Home in the Mountains: A Report on Knowledge in Twenty Parts (Toronto ON: Junction Books, 2019) [catch the essay I did on her fiction a while back here]. As she writes at the offset:“I want to acknowledge the University of Alberta Department of English and FilmStudies for hosting the writer-in-residence anniversary event in 2016, whichbecame a precursor to these poems.” This is wonderful to hear, but frustrating,as I had also been part of that event, and had even produced a new chapbook of poems by Gunnars as part of it (and a further one since). I had no idea this existed!As Gunnars writes as part of her “PRELUDE AND INTRODUCTION” to the collection:

            Because I have fused the traditional poetry manuscriptwith the more academic or literary essay, with the attendant paraphernalia, I amthinking of this work as “essay-poetry.” Mixing genres can be illustrative of away of thinking that is not strictly “according to rule” and doing so oftenopens up avenues otherwise left untouched. We are not living in the age of Rumi,or in the age of the chanting of lyrics, unless they come to us as musicalpresentations. We live in a textual age, brought on by the uses of the computerwith all its tentacles. We are now used to seeing “hypertexts” and feelingcomfortable with many layers of text and information coming to us at once. I havesimply followed an inclination brought on by contemporary technology increating the present manuscript, and I feel I am able to imply a great dealmore this way, and allow some of the voices I have left out of the poems toenter the field.

Asequence of twenty poems, Gunnars moves through and across prose poems to themore traditional lyric mode, offering a sequence of meditations on writing,thinking, living and solitude. “and yet the life of everyday is nice; food anddrink,” she writes, to open the poem “LOVE’S INEBRIATION,” “walking, sleeping,talking, regular life, as we know it; / how nice also for Milarepa when hereturned home from the mystical heights / and the villagers spread for him a feastof food and happiness— [.]” I complain of a lack, and yet, if I could figureout where I put my copy of her more recent collection, Ruins of the Heart: Six Longpoems (Brooklyn NY: Angelico Press, 2022) [see my review of such here], this particular poem-sequence is most likely and completely included inthere as well. Is my attention really that fractured?

without a word, withouteven a thought. I am trying to decipher
the botanical prints leaningagainst the wall, the faded cardboard
and singed edges of ourhearts—the ones we have tried to read
like maps or graphs ormathematical formulas, our long-lost

perspective that hangs bya thread, and how we cannot say
the words. how speechlesswe are, how mute, how afraid we seem
of the possibility itwill all be destroyed again: as it will, as it will

some recent adventuring : someone editions (Toronto) + drift/line (Kingston) (and Calgary tonight, fyi

Oh, adventuring. Christine and I are reading in Calgary tonight as part of the single onion series, at Shelf Life Books , but you probably already know that. We've been wandering around, there and here, over the past little bit to help promote our new books: her hybrid/memoir Toxemia (Toronto ON: Book*hug Press, 2024) [see my essay on such here] and my On Beauty: stories, (University of Alberta Press, 2024). You should pick up copies if you haven't already! I mean, they would make great holiday gifts, I would think.

You probably already know I was interviewed by Alan Neal over at CBC Radio about On Beauty: I was admittedly startled by how good an interviewer he is, although I probably shouldn't be. He's been doing this a long time. It was such a good interview (and you can listen to such here). And I even wore my CBC t-shirt! Out of respect, naturally.

On Friday, November 8 I did a short reading as part of a launch over at someone editions on Dundas Street West in Toronto. Given Christine had done a Toronto Book*hug launch the prior Monday, and a Hamilton launch the night before (she had been in the area across that whole week), we managed to figure out overnight childcare so I could leave the kids in Ottawa and meet up with her in Toronto (nights out without tasks or readings seem to be a rarity for us, so we took it upon us to enjoy the small space), and drive home the following morning. We were there to help someone editions launch a series of publications in their French Letter Society project, curated by Beatriz Hausner, which including a beautifully designed letterpress publication with a small poem of mine (part of my work-in-progress "Fair bodies of unseen prose," by the way) alongside artwork/design by Someone editions printer/designer/founder Deborah Barnett (who had produced, moons back, a prior letterpress object with poems by myself and Nathanael G. Moore, actually). There was a young Toronto poet, Agata Mociani, who also had work in the series, so it was good to be introduced to her, and her work. Saskatchewan poet Mari-Lou Rowley also had a poem produced in the series, but she wasn't able to attend.

Deborah had requested I land early, to sign all the copies of the publication (I think I'd signed half the run before I was even offered a glass of wine, which was probably wise). I probably signed them all properly, I'm sure. I mean, I wouldn't do anything ridiculous as part of such a project as that. Would I?

We got to hang out with Beatriz and Deborah and meet Agata; we met "writer, researcher and book artist" James Nowak (who passed along a chapbook he'd produced), and hang out for a good long stretch with writer (and Guernica Editions founder) Antonio D'Alfonso! There were a couple of other folk as well, but I'm terrible at catching names. Either way, it was a worthy event (and you should pick up copies of these publications)

Be aware that Someone does absolutely beautiful work. You should go by their space to see some of the things they've produced.

me an' Deborah Barnett

On Sunday, November 17, Christine and I did a reading together in Kingston, alongside Kingston poet Allison Chisholm, as part of Wanda Praamsma's Drift/Line Series (the last of the 2024 season), with a musical set by Kingston musician Megan Hamilton. Allison mentioned upon stage that she'd manage to forget her glasses at home, so I made a point to only take blurry photos of her (out of respect, of course). Her reading was great! Such small, careful, delicate poems (although she should have read longer). I'm hoping there might be a further book on the horizon at some point, soon. [see my review of her debut here]


Christine was, of course, remarkable. You really need to hear her read from this hybrid/memoir collection [you can catch the video recording of her incredible performance as part of the Ottawa launch here via the Ottawa International Writers Festival, in case such intrigues]. It was lovely to be hosted by (and hang out a bit with) Wanda! And it was great to see local folk, including poets Jason Heroux (above/ground is soon producing a collaborative chapbook between him and Dag T. Straumsvag), Armand Garnet Ruffo (reading soon at VERSeFest, you know) and Eric Folsom (whom I have now known for thirty years! he was good enough to pass along a recent chapbook of his I hadn't yet seen). It was a packed (admittedly small) house! A lovely time had by all. Although, exhausted by adventuring (and the prior day's ottawa small press book fair), we crashed pretty early, and drove immediately home the following morning (where I delivered Christine back to work around noon). A day and a half or so of regular, before we're all back up into it. Calgary! Might we see you tonight?

happy eleventh birthday, Rose!

Happy eleventh birthday to my brilliant, hilarious and ridiculous dervish middle daughter, Rose!

She's requested I refrain from posting recent photos of her on the interwebs, so here is one when she was smaller, visiting me in my home office (which I am currently dismantling, so they can each have their own bedrooms).

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Zoë Richards

Zoë Richards is an author and writer, having written for nationalmagazines for many years. She is represented by Clare Coombes of The Liverpool Literary Agency. Her debut novel, Garden of Her Heart, published byUCLan Publishing, is a heartwarming story about recovery, community andpurpose.

Zoë is an experienced speaker, panelfacilitator, and interviewer with experience on radio, including as a pundit onBBC Radio Merseyside for many years, and through being the host of the Write, Damn It! Podcast. She is also experienced at running workshops on topics suchas creative writing, putting yourself out there as an author, handling impostersyndrome, and dealing with writing demons to get the writing done.

With over 30 years of working on mindset,and as a teacher of coaching for more than 25 years, Zoë coaches writers indealing with imposter syndrome, helping them to overcome their demons andblocks, and get the writing done. Much of what she uses on mindset comes fromlived experience, as she is a suicide survivor, and it is through her recoverythat Zoë learned the power of the mind, and a positive approach to life.

During her career, Zoë worked for the NHSfor many years where she managed projects across a range of health servicesincluding those for children and young people with special educational needs.

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

Writing Garden of Her Heart, which has atheme of recovery along with community and purpose, helped me deal with thingsgoing on in my own life, such as being a carer for my mum and also for myhusband, and working through my own mental health issues. It has, quiteliterally, changed my life as I find I'm now more chilled than I was beforewriting it. I guess you could say it was cathartic. My latest novel, which is astandalone sequel, was something I needed to finish as I was dealing with mymum's cancer diagnosis and then her death 6 weeks later. So another catharticprocess but for different reasons. In that respect, although there's less of mein this second novel that I've literally just sent off to the publisher, thewriting process still do me a lot of good.

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

I've written a lot of non-fiction for work, sowriting fiction has always been a release for me. However I've written poetryor sorts all my life - in fact, I wrote a poem for Garden of Her Heart, and itappears twice.

3- How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does yourwriting initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appearlooking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copiousnotes?

I plot the boundaries of a novel, and play aroundwith who the characters are, what the setting is, and what the key plot pointsare, all before I write anything. As a result, although it's not a detailedplot, I know where the story is going, and so it doesn't take me long to writea first draft. I can write that in 3-4 months, and then I spend about 2 monthsediting it. I've just spent a weekend away at a writing retreat where I wasable to workshop book 3, another sequel to Garden of Her Heart, over 4 days,and I'm aiming to have the first draft completed in under 3 months. I think mycareer of writing huge reports to deadlines must help me with focus anddelivery.

4- Where does work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of shortpieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a"book" from the very beginning?

I work on a book rather than short pieces, though Ido have a notebook that I call 'Where Ideas Go To Grow', which has notes onideas that I can use for short stories or to combine into something bigger. Sofar I've used bits from this notebook for scenes, but nothing more than that.

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

I love doing readings - though not too long, andthat's from personal experience of listening to too many readings from writerswho don't know how to inject any energy to what they're reading. It's an artform to be able to do a good reading, and I've benefitted from being able topractice with my writing tribe, getting feedback on how to energise a reading.I combine my readings with background about the inspirations and themes of thenovel, so that people have a greater understanding of the 500 or so words thatI read. I also find that reading out loud helps us to hear what works and whatdoesn't in our writing, so even if I'm on my own, I will read my work out loud.

6- Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds ofquestions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think thecurrent questions are?

On a personal, writerly level, I'm currentlyworking on understanding what my voice is, as people say it's distinct but Idon't know what it is yet. A friend recently said that it's akin to ourpersonality - others might know and understand my personality better than I domyself, and voice is like that. In terms of concepts within my writing, I'minterested in the masks we were and why we wear them. This could relate tomental health, where you can find people hide what is going on for them untilthey are in crisis, or to neurodiversity where women, for example, mask theirND traits, just as much as it can be about how we play at being differentpeople in different situations.

7– What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Dothey even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

We have many roles – to entertain, to get peoplethinking, to help people know they’re not alone or to feel seen, and probablymany more. One role that is important to me as a writer is to handlerepresentation with sensitivity whilst also not shying away from the issuesthat need to be covered. For example, in Garden of Her Heart my maincharacter was brought up with coercive control. My editor wanted me to changesomething about the relationship she had with her parents, and because of mylived experience I knew I couldn't do that - I have to be true to the realexperience of coercive control. As a result, I have been contacted by readerswho tell me they feel seen, and I think that's part of my role in my writing.

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

I love working with my agent first for an editorialpass, as she is also an editor, and then with my editor at my publisher. Theirperspectives help me to lift the novel to a better place, strengthening mywriting. Both are the kinds of editor who suggest rather than dictate, leavingthe final decisions and the rewrites of scenes to me, which means that thenovel is still my voice. It's hugely beneficial, and I truly think it's a shamethat editors don't get their names alongside the author's, as it's definitelyteamwork.

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

I was told by an author at a book event to finishwriting in the middle of a chapter, or at least part way into a chapter, as ithelps you start up again the next day. I can report, it works! When I don't dothis, I can struggle to get going the next day, and worse still if I can'twrite for whatever reason for a few consecutive days.

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

I retired from employed work at Easter, but beforethen I would get up early and write for an hour before breakfast - that couldbe 5:30am or 6am. Now, my routine is that every day's a writing day, even if Ionly write 10 words. And those 10 words might be a quick pass over a sectionI've already written - I'd not quite call this an edit, but it's a pass over itto make sure it makes sense. I'm finding that now I'm a full-time writer,routine can be my enemy, because it's easy to create rules that I can onlywrite if the set up is right. In fact, I can write anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

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

Any time I get stuck I go for a walk - preferablyout in nature. My brain starts ticking over and ideas start to flow. I'll oftenplant a question as I start my walk, and leave it to my sub-conscious to do itsthing. I'll also read and chat to friends. The one thing I can say that dullsany inspiration is social media.

12- What fragrance reminds you of home?

I'm not a fragrance person. However I live near thecoast (about a mile from the sea) and we have very fresh air here. So if I gointo a city, like when I visit London, I love to get into a park for a bit sothat I can enjoy slightly fresher air than you get on the crowded,pollution-soaked streets.

13- David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there anyother forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visualart?

Always nature, and I also love visiting our localart gallery in Liverpool - The Walker Art Gallery - and seeing what storiesthere are in paintings. As well as that, I go into cafés and let myself beinspired by people interacting with each other. I love observing real life, andthat’s probably my greatest influence.

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

I don't know that I can pick a single writer, but Ido find that my writing benefits from reading works that are considerablybetter than my own, so that I can learn from how they craft a sentence. If Ihad to pick any writer, though, I'd choose Elizabeth Gilbert or Brené Brown,and happily listen to their books on audio again and again. I also listen tothe radio as you never know what you will learn and how you might use that inthe future.

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

I don't have much left on my list, as I did 50things in my 50s. I always wanted to go to Iceland to see the aurora borealis,and then when I was in The Lake District earlier this year I was fortunate tosee the most spectacular display. I'm pretty fearless, and if I come up withsomething I want to do, I now just get on with it.

16- If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or,alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been awriter?

I'd love to be an actress - in fact, I've alwayswanted to be an actress who writes. And if I didn't write novels, I'd love tobe able to write a screenplay.

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

Nothing made me write - it's more a case of I can'tstop myself.

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

The last great book I read would be Prima Facie bySuzie Miller - and I saw the film of the play recently too, with Jodie Comer.Wow! Just Wow! It ought to be compulsory viewing for men, and for anyone in thelegal profession. Due to my husband's health, we don't watch many films as hecan't concentrate that long, but a TV series I absolutely love is Slow Horses.That's really clever writing, and so well acted, particularly Gary Oldman asJackson Lamb.

19- What are you currently working on?

I've just handed in book 2 which is a standalonesequel to Garden of Her Heart. I think my publishers like the title, and if so,that will be called Tell It To The Bees. And to stop myself constantly checkingemails to find out what my publisher thinks, I'm working on book 3 which is aChristmas novella in the series. After that, I have a historical crime novelI'd like to get back to, but as I write uplifting bookclub fiction for mypublisher, I might need to carve out some time for working on that.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics

Recently on periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics: new poetry by brandy ryan, Nicholas Power (for John Barlow), D.A. Lockhart, Czandra/Sandra Stephenson (for John Barlow), Jane Shi, Catriona Strang, Joanne Arnott (for John Barlow), Lillian Nećakov (for John Barlow), Craig Carpenter (for Roy Miki), Mari-Lou Rowley, Yaxkin Melchy Ramos (translated by Ryan Greene), Penn Kemp, Gary Barwin, Martin Corless-Smith, ryan fitzpatrick, Aakriti Kuntal and Scott Ferry, Charlie Petch, Jason Heroux and Dag T. Straumsvåg ; reviews of work by Katie Naughton (by Geoffrey Nilson), Christine McNair (by Kim Fahner), Susan Rich (by Kim Fahner), Klara du Plessis (by Alan Read), Isabelle Courteau (by Jérôme Melançon), Agnes Walsh (by Kim Fahner), Joyelle McSweeney (by rob mclennan), Dyane Léger (by Jérôme Melançon) and Hollay Ghadery (by Kim Fahner) ; rob mclennan interviews Alice Burdick (with a further interview with Manahil Bandukwala to post in about thirty minutes or so, both of which relate to this month's VERSeFEST mini-festival), Joelle Barron in conversation with Jes Battis ; Stan Rogal interviews rob mclennan ; Michael Sikkema interviews Eric Lindley and Joe Milazzo ; Michael Sikkema interviews Adam Stutz ; rob mclennan interviews David O'Meara ; J-T Kelly interviews Buck Downs ; Stan Rogal interviews Stuart Ross ; 

Conal Smiley, Mckenzie Strath, Ian FitzGerald, Vik Shirley, Scott Inniss and Gil McElroy each write on their recent above/ground press chapbooks ; Residency Reports by Anna Quon, Leah Horlick (from the Calgary Distinguished Writers’ Program), K.I. Press (Banff's Summer Residency Program) and Cassidy McFadzean (Sheridan College's CW&P Writer-in-Residence) ; nathan dueck on Sarah Klassen ; a sequence of review-essays by Kevin Spenst ; Blaine Marchand on Catherine Ahearn, Ottawa's (and Canada's) first municipal poet laureate ; rob mclennan on John Barlow ; Karen Shenfeld on Goran Simic ; Phinder Dulai on Roy Miki ; Notes from the Field by Winston Lê ; Kate Rogers on Poetry of Witness ; Thom Eichelberger-Young on Joan Retallack ;

folio : Three from Viscera: Eight Voices from Poland, edited by Mark Tardi, with statements and poems by Maria Cyranowicz (translated from the Polish by Małgorzata Myk), Hanna Janczak (translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Szuster-Tardi) and Anna Adamowicz (translated from the Polish by Lynn Suh); Anne K Yoder: on MEEKLING PRESS ; Briony Collins on Atomic Bohemian ; Mary Meriam on Headmistress Press ; David Wojciechowski on Postcard ; Rob MacDonald on Sixth Finch Books ; allison calvern on Robert Gibbs ; further pieces in Stan Rogal's ongoing REPORT FROM THE DEAD POETS’ SOCIETY ; "Process Notes," curated by Maw Shein Win, by Kathleen McClung, David Koehn, Chris Stroffolino, Terry Tierney and Blas Falconer  ;

with forthcoming poems, essays and reviews by: Jérôme Melançon, Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, daniel barbiero, Kim Fahner, J-T Kelly, Brook Houglum and Kevin Spenst (among plenty of others)

and a reminder: periodicities is open to submissions of previously unpublished poetry-related reviews, interviews and essays. We are also seeking pieces (essays/interviews etc) on the Canadian long poem! please send submissions as .doc with author biography to periodicityjournal (at) gmail.com

For the time being, submissions of previously unpublished poetry will be by solicitation-only, with the exception of translated works (which you should very much send along! please send translations!).

ALSO: periodicities is seeking essays in its #FirstRealPoets series, a series originally prompted by Canadian poet Zane Koss, who wrote on first encountering Stuart Ross. Who was the first real poet you ever encountered in the flesh? How did that encounter shape your approach to poetry? How does that poet make poetry a possibility for people who might not otherwise see themselves as poets? We hope to read essays about real poets' poets. The poets who might not get the critical recognition they deserve but are nonetheless important community-creating figures who welcome and encourage new voices.

ALSO: periodicities is seeking essays in its #reconsiderations series; essays on a particular older book by another poet, a series originally prompted by Ken Norris, who wrote a piece on Michael Ondaatje's Rat Jelly.

periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics,
founded March 2020
edited and lovingly maintained by rob mclennan
built as a curious extension of above/ground press (b. July 9, 1993