Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 49

ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part one : Cameron Anstee + John Levy,

[see last fall’s similar notes here]

Ottawa ON/Kentville NS: It is good to see a newpublication by Ottawa poet Cameron Anstee, who is famously working at his ownpace, in his own time [see my review of his second collection here], and goodto see a chapbook of his produced through Gaspereau Press: Sky Every Day(2024), produced as Devil’s Whim Chapbook No. 53. It is almost a surprise to thinkthat Anstee hadn’t published with Gaspereau prior to this, as there does seem asimilar aesthetic of tone, of production, between the two (remember Anstee’swork through his own Apt. 9 Press, for example). Across seventeen poems in thisvery lovely chapbook, Anstee extends his exploration of poems that take up thesmallest space possible, yet each one packed with enormous resonance and scale.One can point to the work of the late Nelson Ball, titles by Mark Truscott orcertain works by the late Toronto poet bpNichol, but Anstee is workingsomething entirely evolving into his own direction with these pieces. There areechoes of Ball’s attentions to nature, but one that blends Nichol’s ownattentions to pure language, somehow meeting in the middle, establishing thestretch of his own, ongoing space. Anstee’s poems are aware of physical space,of physical place and of a space of attention that wraps itself around all theabove. There are enormous amounts that go into these poems, and one could spenthours, not lost, but comfortably settled into a suite of curiosities, withinthem.

AUBADE

sun
spilt

 Jay MillAr of Bookhug Press, hiding underneath his table,

Cobourg ON/Tucson AZ: It is very nice to see anew chapbook by Arizona poet John Levy [see my review of his recent selected here] through Stuart Ross’ Proper Tales Press, Guest Book for People in myDreams (2024). It is interesting in how Levy returns to composition-as-response,directly riffing off or responding to particular poets or particular lines,sentences or phrases, allowing for a wider opening of where it is his own linesmight extend. “That’s something to look forward to,” the sprawling openingsentence of the prose poem “Sisyphus at Noon” begins, “no shadows, though itwas marvellous before noon and afterwards, finding all sorts of colours in eventhe smallest shadows he rolled the boulder past—a pebble’s oblong shadow withblues and greys (a little yellow at one edge), or a dead bird’s longer widershadow with a greenish-grey stroke close to the feathered rise of folded wings.”Each meditative poem begins with a line or a thought or a moment and thenfurthers, the poet working one step and then a further step, curious to see, itseems, where it all might end up, as eager to discover as the reader. Produced inan edition of 150 copies, you should certainly try to pick one up from StuartRoss when next you see him.

Poem Beginning with a Sentence
by Elizabeth Robinson

The essence of nature isto be always borrowing.

I borrow my thoughts andrarely repay anyone or
anything, it’s part of mynature, is second nature

and third, and so on. Always,so on. There’s no Polonius

telling me what to do—or instructingnature
to stop lending naturemore nature. Dust

lends dust to the dust

that is always borrowingand returning the dust.
Bats chase bugs at dusk,what isn’t

dust at the moment

is taking its time.

newly posted at periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics: folio : Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)

folio : Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)
, edited by Jeremy Stewart and Donna Kane

Jeremy Stewart : Introduction : Something – forBarry McKinnon ;

Hope Anderson : Tribute ; Elizabeth Bachinsky : Threepoems ; bill bissett : ths xcelent prson k.darcy taylor  was driving meaway ; Marilyn Bowering : Barry McKinnon ; Lary Bremner : heart in place  out of time for barry mckinnon ; Brian HiramCoulter : There was this kid in band ; Pierre Coupey : a few words for barry ; JustinFoster : Caledonia ; Solomon Goudsward : On the Death of Barry McKinnon ; DonnaKane : Barry here ; GP Lainsbury : Phenomenology put to work in the Poetry ofBarry McKinnon ; rob mclennan : I wanted to say something ; Matt Partyka : Outof the Blind World ; Graham Pearce : No Distance – Three Poems ; Al Rempel :Anecdotes ; Clea Roberts : What can be done, as if an answer/ is possible? ;George Sipos : Tribute ; Jeremy Stewart : something (postscript for BarryMcKinnon ; Paul Strickland : Tribute Red Shuttleworth : Tribute ; Sharon Thesen: A FEW WORDS FOR BARRY MCKINNON ; Simon Thompson : Tribute ; Michael Turner :Tribute ; Fred Wah : Bundling Barry ; Tom Wayman : Tribute ; Gillian Wigmore :Tribute ;

extras: John Harris : Barry McKinnon -- We Remember ; Paul E. Nelson: BarryMcKinnon in ICU ; obituary by rob mclennan ; obituary by Paul E. Nelson ;obituary by Andrew Kurjata, CBC ; from the archives -- Remembering BarryMcKinnon (1944-2023) by Cecil Giscombe, The Capilano Review ; Barry McKinnon's 2022 Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] interview ; Barry McKinnon'swebsite ; other tributes (from Barry's website ;

photos of Barry McKinnon throughout provided by JoyMcKinnon ;
[except for photos provided by Simon Thompson + rob mclennan,

See the full folio [with links] here

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ken Taylor

Ken Taylor is the author of six books of poetry, three plays, and a collaboration with Ed Roberson titled  found poem(s) , a book of photography (Ken's) and poetry (Ed's) forthcoming from Corbett vs. Dempsey.  He is the founder of selva oscura press, which he edits with Fred Moten.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
self-portrait of joseph cornell was the result of reconnecting to poetry after about a 25-30 year hiatus and into a community that welcomed me (in Durham, NC). It was published when I was in my 50's by Pressed Wafer, which was run by the late Bill Corbett. Being published by Bill also connected me to a larger poetry community that revolved around New York City and New England. variations in the dream of X (just released by Black Square Editions) was actually started before my first book. It's the result of two different projects that had floundered over a couple of decades that seemed to find a way to work once I combined them.  When I wasn't writing poetry all those years, I was writing plays and even a couple of screenplays. This book borrows elements from both. The writing feels the same to me. The first was using a sonnet structure without having to think about form. The last was organizing different voices.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or nonfiction?
From what I can remember, I missed the bus one day in highschool and had to walk. I started to make up a song about being alone on a highway based on the rhythm of my breathing and strides.  I didn't start out to compose something. It just happened.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I'm constantly taking notes which I eventually collage. I seem to have many false starts, but something sparks and then I see where I'd like to head. Some first drafts don't change much , but most do, some much more than others, or get put in a folder I've labeled "scrap exchange."

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?
My poems start with a spark. I've written three chapbooks and three books. The first two chapbooks were more or less individual pieces that eventually were corralled under a title. The last chapbook and the full-length books have all been thought of as books from the beginning. That final form of what that book becomes has invariably changed from my initial take on the project.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don't do a lot of readings, but I like doing them. It also helps me edit the poems. If I can't speak them easily, then something needs adjusting.
 
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?
I can't really think in those terms without writing something that's crap.  I am however fascinated with some theoretical and scientific writing  as well as with philosophy.  And while I may not have the capacity to fully grasp what I'm reading, I find language that is useful to or excites me.

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?
Perspective? Presence? Articulating Questions?

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It depends on the editor. I'm open to going with the best idea.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
"Never let a day go by." Jerry Jeff Walker

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (solo work to collaboration, poetry to photography)? What do you see as the appeal?
I gravitate to things I like. And that feels easy. And this is certainly not an original idea, but I think all work is collaborative.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I don't support myself with what I write, so I find time around work. Sometimes that's just taking notes all during the day. The weekends are typically more focused on writing. I feel I am at my writing best in the mornings.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
My writing doesn't seem to ever get stalled for too long, so I don't worry about it. I'm constantly reading other poets as well as other kinds of writing. Watching movies. Going to see art. To the theatre. Going on long walks that typically spark something.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I was an Air Force brat. So my physical home changed. Both sides of my family are from Alabama (where I was born) and so I'd say honeysuckle and scuppernong conjure Alabama for me .

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?
Books, art, music, science, movies, theatre, menus, signs, overheard conversations, the Voyager spacecrafts, cooking instructions, repair manuals, powerpoint presentations—you name it.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Too many to list. Ready go tos are folks from the Durham, NC community —Fred Moten, Nate Mackey, Joe Donahue, Pete Moore, Maggie Zurawski. Maggie Nelson always inspires me and her writing points me to many other writers. I also find inspiration from Susan Howe, Fanny Howe, Alice Notley, Ed Roberson, John Yau, Robert Duncan, Gertrude Stein, Eileen Myles, Robert Creeley, Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, Anne Carson, and a bunch more folks.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Win Wimbledon. Act in a Coen Brothers' movie. Bowl 300. Play washboard in a zydeco band.

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?
Like I said, I don't support myself as a writer. Even at my age, I feel like there are still opportunities open to me. I'm learning more about photography. Would like to collaborate with musicians. Painters. Filmmakers.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It's a compelling way for me to express myself.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I read a bunch of things at the same time. But what's been exciting to me lately is Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, by Timothy Morton (an author/book I learned about from Maggie Nelson's On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint.) Collected Works by Lorine Niedecker.  Movies: Dogtooth, directed by Yorgos Lanithoms. Written by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou. Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Collage prose poems that all have the title wyoming.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Jennifer May Newhook, Last Hours

my review of St. John’s, Newfoundland writer Jennifer May Newhook’s Last Hours (St. John’s NL: Riddle Fence Publishing, 2024) is now up at The Woodlot.

Tracy Fuad, Portal

 

HYPOSUBJECT

In life, I imbued thingswith a great deal of meaning and purpose.

At times, as ifpossessed.

I wanted to understandreason, but it seemed to gather speed and breadth without
me, as if reason itself,once seeded, began to breathe and grow on its own.

But officials have saidthe hole is perfect.

So now I focus on thepractical use of the past.

The light of day. A bluechair standing before the mirror.

It occurred to me afterthe end, the fifth of that week, arriving when the doors
were closed: I may havedied.

How do you feel when theworld is big inside your head?

Another common moment.

I am very much appreciating the echoes, repetitions and folds in the latest poetrycollection from Berlin-based American poet Tracy Fuad, following about:blank (Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) [see my review of such here], her collection Portal (The University of Chicago Press, 2024).There are such fascinating strands of narrative that swirl and meet acrossthese poems; the way rhythm presents itself across her accumulated,self-contained phrases. Fuad’s poems are expansive, threading a myriad ofarticulations on language, translation, history and culture in poems that stretchout across landscapes far beyond the scope of the page. “At dawn I could make endlessness.And love all night.” she writes, as part of one of the “HYPOSUBJECT” poems, “However,when I stood to go, I couldn’t break into living.”

Setin a quartet of sections—“mortal,” “torpor,” “mortar, pestle”and “portal,” titles that bounce off each other in an effect echoing homolinguistictranslation—Fuad utilizes the shape and scope of the poem to articulatesomething so intimately large as to be difficult to name. “I was slushingaround in my slush. / Who could understand such a thing?” she writes, as partof “THE SIXTH PLANETARY BOUNDARY,” At but one hundred pages, there is suchan enormous sense of scale to this collection, one that feels akin to the widecanvas of the work of Anne Carson, offering the collection as holdingeverything her writing has learned and contained and continued up to that pointin a single offering. The poems are exploratory, examining how one unfolds andunfurls consciousness and human thought, engagement and responsibility. This isa remarkably complex, dense and thoughtful collection, one that requires andrewards both time and attention. As she writes as part of the long poem“BUSINESS”:

It was in the gouging ofthe valley that a trio of human remains was uncovered

Though upon examination,it was determined that the skeletons were not human

Belonging instead to adistinct and extinct species of archaic humans

The species was namedafter the valley

The valley named afterNeader, a man descended from a man who’d changed his
name from Neumann toNeander

Out of reverence,possibly misdirected, for the ancient Greeks

Both names meaning “newman”

I find, at times, thetaste of my own mouth to be abhorrent.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four collections of poetry: Exploding Head, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, all from Persea Books. Essays in TIME, The Sun, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Poems in Electric Literature, The Believer, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Cynthia lives in Madison, WI. www.cynthiamariehoffman.com.

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

When Sightseer wonPersea’s Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, it fulfilled my lifelong dream ofpublishing a book. In that sense, my life was changed. I joined a catalogue oftruly wonderful authors, and publishing opened the door to meaningfulconnections with readers and poets.

But I had a one-year oldat home and was fully settled in a non-academic job that had no expectations ofme to publish. So my day-to-day remained unchanged. Isn’t that how it is for somany writers, especially poets? Yes, I felt different. This incrediblething I’d worked so hard for over so many years was finally happening! But tomy coworkers, and to many of my friends and family, I was the same.

Exploding Head, mynewest book, is a memoir in prose poems about my lifelong journey withobsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), though it doesn’t say “OCD” anywhere inthe poems themselves. All four of my full-length collections form cohesivefull-length “projects” (if people are still using that word). But ExplodingHead is the first book that isn’t heavily based on research, spoken throughpersona poems, or influenced by historical figures, medicine, or architecture.It’s not only about me, but it’s about a part of me I never talked aboutbefore. It’s the most interior, vulnerable thing I’ve ever written.

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

I loved writing littlepoems with my mother when I was little. Sometimes we wrote down familiarnursery rhymes and drew pictures to accompany them on the page. Poetry hasalways been in my life.

3 - How long does it taketo start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially comequickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to theirfinal shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

Forever. It takes,seemingly, forever. I think I’ve been relatively prolific (compared to what? Idon’t know), but each poem I’ve finished has been hard-won. I often start withan idea of the structure of the argument I want to make (first this, then that)or a clear visual like a scene from a movie. Then I have the frustrating taskof putting it into words. Words are the hardest (and last) part of the poem toappear. By the time I have a “draft” on the page in a form others can actuallyread, it’s already in a very late stage of development. All the strands havebeen combed through, and I’ve just finally braided them together.

4 - Where does a poemusually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combininginto a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?

I’m working on a bookfrom the very beginning. For a while, poet NickLantz and I were curating an interview site on poetry project books called The Cloudy House. It’s still agreat resource (with more than 60 interviews!) for anyone who’s thinking aboutcrafting a book-length collection.

I’m more interested in booksthan I am single poems. I don’t know if that’s been good or bad for my poemsthat have to go out in the world on their own, but there is always aninterdependency at play. I do often revise quite a bit as the final book iscoming together. There’s no reason to keep re-establishing setting or identityif you’re building a memoir out of poems—so all those redundancies must be cutif the book is to be successful.

I spent a couple yearsresearching and building a book of poems about tuberculosis, but in the end, Iabandoned that project entirely. That’s a risk when you think “book first, poemsecond.” Those poems about my grandfather in the tuberculosis sanatorium in theearly 1940s couldn’t have been easily shuffled into a memoir about OCD. 

5 - Are public readingspart of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer whoenjoys doing readings?

I do enjoy doingreadings. I don’t know that they’re a part of my creative process. It’s rarethat I’ll “test” a new poem on a crowd these days. But I used to. I learned howto read in 2-minute open mic slots during my time in London in the late 90swhen I was living there on a work visa with another poet, Sarah Kain Gutowski. Then, weread at open mic series in northern Virginia, and I even hosted a readingseries in Arlington and later in my MFA program. That early experience shapedmy ability to present my work confidently and to use the public space as anarena of experimentation. I’ve learned where certain poems work better off thepage: in a quiet library, in a noisy bar, in a big crowd or a small crowd.

The best thing aboutreadings is the immediate connection with the listener. We so rarely have theopportunity to be in the room when our poems are experienced in real-time. Ilove attending readings, as well. I go to as many as I can (onscreen and off). Writingis such an isolating endeavor. Attending poetry reading is so important forcommunity-building. I love to hear poets read.

6 - Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?

My first threecollections explored my relationship to history: as a tourist confronting thehistory of other countries (Sightseer),as a pregnant woman benefitting from our current day understanding of medicine(PaperDoll Fetus), and as an inheritor of my family history during thegenealogical research craze (CallMe When You Want to Talk About the Tombstones).

But ExplodingHead is the first book to explore the history of own mind—growing upwith undiagnosed OCD and anxiety and finding my way as an adult.

My current work continuesthis line of questioning about the self. If I’m not writing from research orabout others, how can I position the self in my work? It’s a new thing for meto be writing about myself.

7 – What do you see thecurrent role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? Whatdo you think the role of the writer should be?

To document theexperience of being alive during our time, in whatever big or small ways suitthe poet’s skill. Even if we write about past events or speculate about thefuture, we cannot escape filtering it through the lens of our time. So even ifwe don’t know it, we’re always doing this work. 

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

Poets have a verydifferent relationship with editors than prose writers. I experienced thisfirsthand having worked with several editors on essays I published last year.The process made my writing better, and I’ve been thinking about what poets arepotentially missing out on by holding our work so close and by editors largelytreating it as finished.

I do, however, depend onthe feedback from poetry groups assembled from my peers, and to whom I’mindebted for my development as a poet and for rescuing me from writer’s blockwith the looming force of communal deadlines without which, at some points, I mightnot have been writing at all.

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

Advice from my time ingymnastics transfers well to general life and poetry: don’t overthink it;just go for it; let go.

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

Most of my day hasnothing to do with writing. But I try to keep a burner warm. Having a projectthat extends beyond one-poem-at-a-time really helps me dip in and out. I have ahard time getting started if I have to come up with a new idea each time I sitdown to write.

But the fact is, I’malways sitting. I sit to work, I sit to write, I sit to relax. I hope to getback into adult gymnastics again, or at least some more walking. As I’ve workedfrom home, the lines between work and writing have blurred. I write where I work.Sometimes I write on my work computer. Sometimes I check work emails during mywriting time. But mostly, my writing time and work hours don’t conflict; mymind is clearest and most alive late at night, when everything is dark andquiet. That’s when I’m most creative.

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

I love reading poetry,but if I’m too immersed in the voices of other poets, I tend to lose my ownvoice. I find inspiration in history, research, interesting science facts.Sometimes, when I feel lost, re-reading my own manuscript helps me remembermyself. 

12 - What fragrancereminds you of home?

In college, majoring inphotography and taking a color printing lab course, I was alone in a small,single-unit darkroom. I opened the drawer of the wooden desk beneath theenlarger, and a familiar scent wafted up to me. It was the fragrance of mygrandparents’ home in California, a place I’d visited only a handful of timesin my childhood.

I’m not saying,necessarily, that my grandparents’ home smelled like a musty, dusty old woodendrawer in a room of photo paper and chemicals, but all of a sudden, sounexpectedly, there it was—the exact smell. Good thing I was alone inthe dark, because the nostalgia came over me so powerfully, I stood there andsobbed.

13 - David W. McFaddenonce said that books come from books, but are there any other forms thatinfluence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I’m often inspired by themusicality of natural speech, though I have a tendency to get stuck onrepeating certain phrases (as a symptom of OCD) that feels troublesome and notconducive to creativity. I’m always inspired by science, the animal world, ourunderstanding of (and the mysteries of) the universe. Watchingdocumentaries.    

14 - What other writersor writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of yourwork?

The community of writersthat form my poetry and essay groups are so important to me. The more recentlybeloved books on my shelves include Eugenia Leigh’s Bianca andJames Davis May’s Unusually GrandIdeas for the way they explore mental health. Though I had finishedwriting Exploding Head before I discovered these gems, I feel my workhas a kinship with these collections, and as I walked the vulnerable roadtoward publication, I felt their presence farther ahead, having laid the path.

I was heavily shaped bymy early learning under Carolyn Forché,both by her own work and by her teaching. She opened her graduate courses toundergraduates, and I was lucky enough to be taking her classes as an undergradand again, years later, as a graduate student at George Mason University. Sheintroduced me to work in translation and poets I wouldn’t have stumbled upon bymyself. And she is the reason I came to love history, a subject I had famouslydespised for all my schooling years as I was forced to simply memorize datesand names. But Carolyn made history come alive; she made it magical. And suddenlyeverything made sense—the very reason we view the world as we do today. I feelso, so lucky to have been able to sit in her classrooms.

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

See the aurora borealisin its fullest form directly overhead. Sleep overnight in a treehouse. Get myfull-twisting back layout all the way around.

16 - If you could pickany other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Gymnastics coach. Orphotographer. In the fourth grade, we each wrote a book of poems and bound themwith tape and cardboard and fabric. I still have mine. The “About the Author”page says I wanted to be a photographer. (No mention of being a poet, but Ithink that was something I didn’t comprehend “being”—it’s just something Iwas.)

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

I became a writer inaddition to doing something else (i.e., a paying career). But day-to-day,what makes me write instead of sitting back in the red chair in the corner ofthe living room with a movie on tv and a cat in my lap? Having a deadline towrite something for poetry group, having a community of peers who check in onme (and I on them), and being in the midst of a project that feels obsessiveand urgent. 

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

I’m working through agiant stack of books I brought home from AWP and posting about them onInstagram (@cynthiamariehoffman). I’m calling it the “Book Fair Book HaulCrawl” because, let’s be real, it takes time to read all those new books we getso excited about, and there’s no reason to rush through. A few standouts so farhave been Lisa Fey Coutley’s Host,Jubi Arriola-Headley’s Bound,and Jenny Irish’s Hatch, butthere are so many more, and more that I have yet to read that will certainly bethe next great book.

As far as films, I can’tname one. I love movies, and I have a bit of an addiction to movies andtv. I’ll devour almost any movie. But they all kind of meld into a blob in mymind. Probably the result of too much tv.

19 - What are youcurrently working on?

Essays! In 2023, I made apoint of rekindling my first love for the personal essay. I’ve recentlypublished essays on OCD; one in Time Magazine online called My OCD Can’t Keep MeSafe From America’s Gun Violence—But It Tries, and another in TheSun called The Beastin Your Head. And I’d like to keep up my exploration of this form.

I’m also writing poems,but, for the first time, they’re not part of a pre-defined “project.” This hasleft me feeling lost at sea. But still, I write, hoping one of these poems willbecome an oar.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

new from above/ground press: mclennan, Bartczak (trans. Mark Tardi), Norris, Pakdel, Anderson, Archer, Myers, Polyck-O'Neill, Houbolt + Tracy,

I wanted to say something, : an elegy, for Barry McKinnon (1944-2023), by rob mclennan $5 See link here for more information ; Unsovereign, by Kacper Bartczak, translated from the Polish by Mark Tardi $5 See link here for more information ; Broken River, by Ken Norris $5 See link here for more information ; Un-Composed, Poetry by Saba Pakdel $5 See link here for more information ; Family Chronicles from Muffin Land, by Hope Anderson $5 See link here for more information ; Perverse Density, by Sacha Archer $5 See link here for more information ; BRADE LANDS, by Peter Myers $5 See link here for more information ; Process, by Julia Polyck-O’Neill $5 See link here for more information ; DAWN’S FOOL, by Kyla Houbolt $5 See link here for more information ; Gnomics, by Dale Tracy $5 See link here for more information

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April-June 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles, or click on any of the extensive list of names on the sidebar (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

AND TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON FOR THE 31ST ANNIVERSARY READING/LAUNCH/PARTY AT REDBIRD, SATURDAY AUGUST 10 ; see my report on last year's anniversary event here,

Forthcoming chapbooks by Carter Mckenzie, Maxwell Gontarek, Carlos A. Pittella, Conal Smiley, Ian FitzGerald, Nate Logan, Peter Jaeger, Noah Berlatsky, ryan fitzpatrick, russell carisse, JoAnna Novak, Chris Banks, Julia Cohen, Andrew Brenza, Mckenzie Strath, John Levy, alex benedict, Helen Hajnoczky, Ryan Skrabalak, MAC Farrant, Terri Witek, David Phillips and Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #42! And there’s totally still time to subscribe for 2024, by the way (backdating to January 1st, obviously).

Raisa Tolchinsky, Glass Jaw: Poems

 

Esther
[Some Things You Can’tUnderstand by Punching Harder]

I blushed like I hadalready been hit when she slipped that cotton baton
into my pocket betweenbells, though why was I ashamed our bodies emptied

without breaking? I rinsedblood from my hands and Coach parted the ropes.
Make him forget what youare. we never sparred the boys yet

he looked at me like therib we had stolen was between my eyes.
Then hit so hard I hearda sound like fishing hooks in a drawstring bag

(no one really sees starsglittering above them, the dark begins at the ankles, then
zips up)—he waited to sayI can’t hit a girl until I was already on the ground.

What ails you, that youflee? O Jordan, that you turn back?

Most of the boys had seena body bleed almost everywhere a body could
and never did I see themwince: not at the tooth wedged into the mat,

or the face shifted intoa Picasso painting, or a pupil pummeled red.
Still, the fight stoppedquick as the moment

God returned the Red Seaonly to part it again.
What are the rules forthat?

Aformer resident of Chicago, Bologna (Italy) and New York City, where shetrained as an amateur boxer, poet and current Harvard Divinity School student Raisa Tolchinsky’s full-length debut is Glass Jaw: Poems (New York NY: PerseaBooks, 2024), winner of the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. Through theform and language of boxing, Tolchinsky’s Glass Jaw takes a verydifferent approach and exploration than, say, Toronto poet Michael Holmes’exploration through the performative language of professional wrestling in hispoetry collection Parts Unknown (Toronto ON: Insomniac Press, 2004) [see my review of such here]. Tolchinsky frames her collection around amateur boxing,but utilizing language and character studies as a way through and across a journeyof deep faith, attempting to find both answers, as well as the proper questions.The book opens with a reference to prayer: “I’m not sure why I still pray,” shewrites, to open the first section, “or how I do it anymore. it’s likeknocking on the sky: can a girl come in? I knock with my whole body:which woman is made of engine grease and hot hands?”

Thereis such a liveliness to the language in this collection, and the book is organizedin two sections of lyrics—“DIATRIBE ON WOMEN GLADIATORS” and “HERE THIS HOLLOWSPACE”—the first of which offers a suite of poem-scenes and asides, and thesecond of which is structured across thirty-nine “CANTOS,” numbering down fromthirty-four (with repetitions) as a way not to expand, but to return tofoundations. There are echoes of Old Testament across the pieces throughout thecollection, and the first section focuses on individual boxers, an array of shortscenes named for and about specific women gladiators. As the poem “Delia” ends:“comparing mascaras // all clump from the sweat / and would we still do this, /if we were millionaires?” Around sly conversations around faith, these poems seeka proper foundation, perhaps, or a footing. “I hit her hard / because he saidthat’s how you win,” she writes, to close out “Canto 14,” a poem subtitled “ITraveled in a Spiral, I Never / Finished the Whole Permieter,” “and I hit heruntil I remembered / it was him who was afraid—[.]”

Tolchinskycomposes short scenes that circle themselves around a central question ofpurpose and belief, outcome and possibly penance, writing on power structures withinthe self, through and between women. “Before the ring I made a life out of language,”she writes, to open “Canto 26,” a poem subtitled “Within Those Fires, There AreSouls,” “but there were places it would not reach— [.]” There is somethingcurious about the way that these poems do write themselves around a central questionthat is never asked aloud, but perpetually present, as a kind of ongoingness;pushing the body to a physical limit to seek out, not a single, end-goal, but adeeper sense of being and connection. This is an utterly fascinatingcollection, and one that requires further study.

Purgatory

We’re trying to say
we’ve watched our
bodies without us
in them. Called ourselves
orphan, coiling
through the world.
In the field we played
with pebbles like
children and made
bargains with a bold
God. We thought if
we built what haunted us
a cage we could touch it
and survive

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Dawn Macdonald

Dawn Macdonaldlives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she was raised off the grid. Her poetryappears in literary journals like Grain and Nat. Brut, and alsoin speculative publications like Asimov’s Science Fiction and Wizardsin Space. She is the author of Northerny (2024, University ofAlberta Press).

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

My bookcame out in the midst of chaos. While I was in edits, our landlords decided tosell, and we decided to not get evicted, so we scrambled to buy our house atthe highest possible interest rates; then a tree fell on it. Sewage lines werebeing redone, so we had water outages and boil water advisories, and ourbackyard was excavated into a giant pit (now a giant mud field). My fatherreceived a cancer diagnosis just before Christmas, and while the prognosis wasinitially positive, he died unexpectedly in the week after my first booksigning. I cancelled my planned readings and went into grief. It’s been acouple of months and I’m still in grief. I don’t yet know how these pairedevents will have changed me.

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

1.     Shortattention span.

2.     Obsessedwith language itself: what it does, what it doesn’t.

3.     Really badat thinking up plots.

3 - Howlong does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writinginitially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear lookingclose to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I’m alwaysor never starting projects – always writing, never sure what is the start ofsomething. Some poems have been pieced together out of fragments of other poemswritten over a span of years. Some were pretty much one and done. I feelaffinity for the Beats with their “first thought, best thought” – but this ismanifestly not always the case – so, it’s all over the place.

4 - Wheredoes a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that endup combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book"from the very beginning?

I’m notgenerally trying to write on any predetermined topic. Writing happens, themescan then be deduced. Recurring obsessions over time may create the illusion ofintention? There’s a convention at the moment that poetry collections have tobe “about” something and I’m still getting my head around that – if I’ve got towrite 40 poems about the same thing, isn’t that an admission of failure?Shouldn’t one good poem do the trick? It doesn’t, of course, so there’s valuein coming at something from many angles, but this is a point of tension for me.

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

All myreadings to date have been online. Covid created some opportunities that way,as I’d never be able to attend magazine launches held in Montréal or Calgary orVancouver, but I can show up on Zoom. I also enjoy when an online journal asksyou to record a reading for them to post as an MP3. But the kind where you goto some sort of party and get up at a microphone? Don’t know – maybe we’ll findout!

6 - Do youhave any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions areyou trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the currentquestions are?

How theheck do words work? Can they work other ways than they usually do? Why would wetend to believe something just because it’s framed as a sentence? What’s theconnection with physical stuff? What’s stuff? Do stories just trick us intothinking things make sense? ... Not sure these are “current questions” asthey’ve been around for a while, but also not sure they’ve been answered.

7 – What doyou see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they evenhave one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Having away with words doesn’t make you extra-good at life. Rhetorical flourish doesnot equate to any special insight, to wisdom. We shouldn’t take beauty fortruth. I see writers and artists as shit-disturbers – throwing ideas out there,for good or for ill. My friend posted one of those lists of “25 Books That WillChange Your Life” and I was like, “I have read most of these and it has been areal rollercoaster.”

8 - Do youfind the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (orboth)?

I workedwith the wonderful Jannie Edwards on my book, Northerny. She wasmarvellously accommodating about my distaste for “Track Changes” – we workedover Zoom with verbal notes. My manuscript was rough. I hadn’t had a clearsense of how a poetry collection is typically structured. By no means did Iagree with or implement all of her suggestions, but we found a productivedialogue, and the book is far more readable thanks to her eye. That said, atthe end of that process, with all its hyperfixation on commas and consistency,I found myself badly blocked in any new writing. I had to set myself exercisesin inconsistency and non-sense-making, to regain freedom, potentiality andflow.

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

“Whateverit is about your work that keeps getting negative feedback, you should try todo that more, because it’s your one hope of originality.” I mean, with somecaveats, obviously, keeping in mind it isn’t especially original to be usingtoo many adverbs, for example – but then, maybe you could construct a poementirely out of adverbs and see what happens? Worth a shot.

10 - Whatkind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How doesa typical day (for you) begin?

Poetry iswonderfully interstitial, fits into those little gaps in the day. I’ve always gota notebook and a pen somewhere nearby, can jot things down over breakfast,fiddle with a few words at the bus stop. I’ve tried “the morning pages” and“the afternoon pages” and “the evening pages” but never found a consistent timethat worked for me. So long as it’s happening, I don’t think it matters when orwhere.

11 - Whenyour writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of abetter word) inspiration?

Periods ofstasis are okay. Some weeks (months, years) are more about taking in.Eventually it will turn and start to flow out again, quite naturally, or ifnot, okay – if you don’t need to, you don’t. Not sure it’s necessary to be takingan aphrodisiac to reignite poetic desire. But, in practice, poems often pop outof snippets of conversation, or the big and small events of daily life, so Ithink just staying alive to the world and its inhabitants.

12 - Whatfragrance reminds you of home?

Woodsmokeand beer.

13 - DavidW. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other formsthat influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Basicallyeverything is an influence. Because my educational background is in science,that’s a thread, and because I live in the North, the wilderness is part ofdaily life. On a syntactical and metrical level, hip hop is an influence – thewordplay, intertextuality, the layering of rhythms. Conversation – andsometimes mishearing someone in conversation, “wouldn’t it be a neat phrasingif they had actually said this ....” Weird phrasings on signage or on products– Nivea sells a body wash with the line, “naturally caring me moments fortouchably smooth skin,” which just has so much to unpack – time as an entityoffering care, care as natural yet purchasable, the purpose of “me moments”being to induce the touch of another. Could I write something as smooth,evocative, dense, and defying of literal sense?

14 - Whatother writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your lifeoutside of your work?

All ofthem? Haha I am on a bit of a mission to read all the books. Accordingly, havebeen obsessed with anthologies. I was very fortunate as a teenager to stumbleacross a second-hand copy of The New American Poetry 1945-1960 (editedby Donald Allen) which absolutely blew my mind – poetry can do this? TheBeats, the New York School – I’d had no idea. Those guys (mostly guys) arestill a big influence. Frank O’Hara’s “I do this I do that” poems, Kenneth Koch’s humour and play, Ginsberg’s long-line chattiness. Also a big fan of A.R. Ammons, who has a sciencey sort of eye and who wrote a book-length poem aboutgarbage, which speaks to me as an inveterate scrounger and lover of organicmessiness. Alice Notley, who goes big on the page and claims never to revise. Inprose, I have so much respect for Percival Everett, whose most recent novel Jamesis very clever about dialect. I could go on and on.

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

To(mis?)-quote P.G. Wodehouse, “It is my fervent hope that the remainder of mydays shall be one round of unending monotony.”

16 - If youcould 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?

My day jobis in Institutional Research, which is a bit like market research and/or dataanalysis. I do a fair bit of survey design, which trains you to write clear andconcise questions that are not too susceptible to divergent interpretations.I’ve done manual transcription of focus group recordings, which is a revelationin terms of learning how people really speak (tip: not in sentences). I do abit of coding in R and SQL, another kind of pithy and precise communicationstyle. But my original career goal was physicist. I wanted to find the GrandUnified Theory. I did my undergraduate in applied mathematics with atheoretical physics concentration, but I’m a physics grad-school dropout, sothat’s the road not taken.

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

Not sure Iever thought of it as being opposed to doing anything else! I have to have aday-job, and I definitely have hobbies (mostly knitting and running around inthe woods, not at the same time because you should never run with knittingneedles). A notebook is easy to carry around and writing fits in. Maybe that’sthe answer – because writing is completely portable and fits into very smallspaces and bits of time.

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

Book: NaturePoem by Tommy Pico.

Film: JeanneDielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is my favorite film to sayis my favorite film, but, I will probably never watch it again – it’s aone-time experience. Still, pretty great.

19 - Whatare you currently working on?

Ugh. I amvery much in a state of grief. I am writing around that but wouldn’t be able tosay I’m working on anything there. It’s rough and raw and it’s dominating me ina way that’s outside of artistry. We’ll see.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Alex Cuff, Common Amnesias

 

The road to becoming lessdisgusting is a long one but doable
Is what my Tinder profilesays
I’m on the toilet swipingleft and right
I schedule an event in myGoogle Calendar for October
Hello from March thingsaren’t so great
I try to write a poem andam like oh hi mom and dad
All my poems are about ashame so deep I didn’t shit for two weeks in
    college
The field is dead orbuilt over or really far away or too expensive or
    there’s not enough time
I give myself my firstenema (“DESIRE”)

Thefull-length poetry debut by Brooklyn poet and No, Dear cofounding editorAlex Cuff, following Family, A Natural Wonder (Reality Beach, 2017) and ITry Out A Sentence to See Whether I Believe (Ghost Proposal, 2020), is Common Amnesias (Brooklyn NY: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2024). Set in fourpoem-sections—“Family, A Natural Wonder,” “How Are Your Bowels?,” “Even RobocopDreams of His Assassins” and “I Try Out a Sentence to See Whether I Believe”—thequartered accumulations that make up Common Amnesias document a clusterof first-person statements, clarifications, declarations and explorations,composed as monologues against the potential for disappearing completely. “I writesentences while standing / Because I have sprayed dissolved magnesium / Allover my lower body,” part of the second section writes. The poems are loose,fragmented, intimate, declarative and ragged, declaring themselves, howeveruncertain, as a point of being. “I dream the Guggenheim Museum drifts down theEast River on a barge / Followed by the 6th Avenue Jefferson branchof the library,” she writes, as part of the opening sequence, “The subject ofmy anxiety shifts and lands on what is most socially palpable / I take theadvice of several friends who say it is ok to not get out of bed // Thecontradiction of my own brain    takeit easy girl    get the fuck off thefloor [.]”

I have time
I eat a burrito at theParade Grounds
Go to the dollar store
Find a glass bowl with alid for school lunches
I spend the monthabstaining
Abstain from alcohol inJuly
Abstain from alcohol formost of July
I purchase a blue translucentplastic spray bottle from Duane Reade
I make this purchase withgreat hope and promise
Spray my thighs indissolved magnesium
I infuse herbs and drinktea
Tulsi & wood betony
Yellow dock & fennel
Burdock & prickly ash
I have time on my hands
I lose ground and wrestle
I mistake privilege forsymptoms
I mistake the outside forthe inside (“How Are Your Bowels?”)

I’mfascinated by Cuff’s curious accumulations and linguistic twirls and twists, curlicuesof sound, texture and meaning in lovely, small phrase-gestures, offeringintimate fractures and confession. There is something about Alex Cuff’s workthat feels closer to work produced through Futurepoem, somehow, than with uglyduckling (although perhaps my perception, from this geographic distance, may beflawed); it is through the ongoing and fragmented lyric narrative fracture thatdistracts, I suppose, one that holds despite every suggestion that it probably shouldn’t.As the second poem-section ponders: “I meditate on the relationship betweenconstipation and fear of a lover’s / fear of anal [.]” Or, as she includes inthe final sequence:

I read a story about aman who struggles to support his consumptive wife
    and her long ropes of hair by digginggraves and collecting scrap metal.
I thought it was a badstory but find myself wondering where I can get a
    wife with long ropes of hair.
Consumptive or noteveryone I know is dying.
I cross dye thingsgreen from my to-do list.
I am in the produce aisleat Key Food.
I am hushed by a man whohas his hands deep in the bananas.
I make synaptic space forfuture threats.
I see sap in the trees soI tap them.