Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 6

a bunch of poems, interviews + a new book soon + a review of a prior book + some other things (with a guest appearance by sean braune,

Hey! It's me and Toronto poet (and above/ground press author) Sean Braune! We hung out together recently, the first in a long time, so that was cool. It has been a while since I've done one of these, so thought it worth mentioning that I've a poem up at Pamenar Press online, "Reading Kaveh Akbar’s Pilgrim Bell by our new inflatable pool," a piece I composed during the same period I was working a review of that book [see that here; remember?]. Otherwise, I had two poems up at Blood + Honey, another up at George Murray’s NewPoetry, a further at Scrivener Creative Review, even more over at Noir Sauna, and another at Colin Dardis’ Poem Alone. An interview I did some time ago, conducted by Victoria Cole for Horseshoe Literary Journal, is now online (I only found out recently! did you see my 2023 post from being out in Newfoundland, for their literary festival?) and interviewed again, more recently, by Mia Funk for the Creative Process. Despite my claim that I've barely been poem-ing, it has been a year for such over here. I'm probably waist-deep into a further collection, ever since returning home from Ireland (and attempting to shape random notes and thoughts together into something coherent).

Don't forget that my fall poetry title, the book of sentences, is up for pre-order (I do have copies on-hand, if such intrigues). Plans are afoot for a fall Ottawa launch in October, so keep your eyes peeled for that (announcing that soon, with a new essay on the collection, over at my substack). And did you see this real nice review that Paul Pearson did of my poetry title, the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022)?

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Angela Antle

Angela Antle is the 2025 Rachel Carson Writer in Residence atGermany’s LMU, an artist and former CBC producer, documentary-maker, host and producer of the podcast GYRE, an interdisciplinary PhD candidate (MemorialUniversity) and a member of Norway’s (NMBU) EmpoweredFutures: A Global Research School Navigating the Social and EnvironmentalControversies of Low-Carbon Energy Transitions. Her research intersectsclimate communications and justice, disinformation, petrocultures, politicalrhetoric and energy futures.Her first novel The Saltbox Olive ispublished by Breakwater Books.

1 -How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent workcompare to your previous? How does it feel different?
That remains to be seen.The Saltbox Olive is my first novel. I can only compare it to how I felt as anew mother: joy, relief, worry, excitement, and extreme vulnerability.

2 -How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I’ve had a long career as ajournalist - writing scripts and documentaries for CBC. That was my trainingground - I learned to really listen to what people say and to be faithful totheir words and intent when quoting. When I took my first creative writingclass with Lisa Moore, I was petrified, until I felt the crackle of energy thatcomes from writing back and forth over the invisible line between truth andfiction.

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’m pretty slow, but I’mwriting things all the time in my phone, in various paper journals (I have asort-of system) and on my laptop. Some days it’s an article for theIndependent.ca aboutEnergy Futures, some days it’s academic writing (I’m doing an interdisciplinaryPhD in energy humanities and I’m interested in climate disinformation andspeculation). Although I find both those worlds extremely generative forfiction writing - it can be hard to make the switch to fiction writing. Ascheesy as it may sound, if I’m having trouble, I use the pomodoro method; setmy timer for 20 minutes and write without stopping, that can usually move theinternal lever from non-fiction to fiction. Walking also helps.

4 -Where does a 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 write a ton of short pieces,sometimes it’s just dialogue or quirky things people have whispered to me. It’slike quilting. I have a Scrivener file that holds all those scraps and I goback to it often to rework the pieces and darn them onto other pieces to turnthem into something longer. 

Although, when I started TheSaltbox Olive, it was always going to be a novel, one that I’ve wanted to writefor a long time, but I had no idea how to do that. I was fortunate to have thesupport of Trudy Morgan Cole through the WritersNL Mentorship program. Thathelped me get started. I just kept writing and writing until I arrived atcharacters and a structure that felt authentic and meaningful.

5 -Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you thesort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I’m a big believer in thepower of readings to foster community, but I haven’t read The Saltbox Oliveyet! I’m in Germany on a fellowship and just this week received a physicalcopy. There is talk in the farmhouse I share with the other researchers, thatthere’ll be cake and a reading this week which will be nice. The first officialreading will be at Writers at Woody Point this summer - I’ve been a co-hostthere for over a decade and I’ll be interviewed by my friend and former CBCcolleague Shelagh Rogers and it will be like reading to family.

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? 
All my work: art, journalism,research, and fiction is eco-critical and explores how language can maskinjustice, manipulate, disempower, as well as set the stage for the future. Inshort, I’m interested in the abuse of power - a topic that will (unfortunately)always be in vogue. I try to illuminate that in my work and give readers achance to get closer to a more embodied kind of truth.

7 –What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do theyeven have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
To challenge stasis andconnect readers with the world’s injustices and beauty. 

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

9 -What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to youdirectly)? 
Put your characters in peril. 

10 -How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to journalism tofilmmaking)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don’t know about easy, butmoving between genres can be quite generative, when I’m writing journalism, Iget ideas for research and fiction and vice versa and I hope that it all makesme a better thinker and writer. 

11 -What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? Howdoes a typical day (for you) begin?
I sit up in bed and start. IfI can’t shake off the sleepiness, I get a coffee and get back in bed and keepwriting. At some point in the day, I’ll be embarrassed that I’m still in myPJs; get dressed, and migrate to my desk. 

12 -When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of abetter word) inspiration?
I draw or paint or garden,look at art, and read about it - that always loosens the cogs. When The SaltboxOlive stalled, I looked at WW2 photos from the Imperial War Museum’s digitalcollection, they have 11 million images! I think that’s where I discovered thework of South African photographer Constance Stuart Larrabee upon whom I basedthe character Barbara Kerr.

13 -What fragrance reminds you of home? 
Blackcurrants. 

14 -David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any otherforms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art? 
l studied a lot of archivalmilitary maps and used Google maps to explore parts of Italy where the men ofthe 166th fought and lived; that’s how I put together the puzzle of where theywere at different points in the war - a spacial timeline - I mostly stayed trueto; you can’t exactly make up a new date for the Battle of Cassino! I also usedthat timeline to create an itinerary for a 166th research trip that I took withmy husband in 2018. 

The other medium thatinfluenced the characters was audio. Through the MUN folklore archive, I wasable to listen to a 1940s  radio show Calling Newfoundland that aired tapedmessages from the men while they were overseas. Hearing the gentle hesitationin their voices helped me write Arch, Slade and Tom (Tombstone) in contrast tothe hero soldier archetype we often read or see via American media.

15 -What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your lifeoutside of your work? 
All the generous, creative,and collaborative writers in Newfoundland, as well as philosophers TimothyMorton and Rosi Braidotti…and the brilliant Naomi Klein.

16 -What would you like to do that you haven't yet done? 
Farm. In Emilia-Romagna. 

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 awriter? 
See above. 

18 -What made you write, as opposed to doing something else? 
Reading Death on the Ice, River Thieves, and February. 

19 -What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film? 
I absolutely love Ali Smith’s writing and am reading the last of her seasonal quartet of novels. Truth betold, I’m not actually finishing, but sleeping alongside the book, and puttingoff reading the last chapter, because it’s so wonderful, I don’t want it toend.

As for film, I loved ChristianSparkes’ Sweetland - the adaptationof Michael Crummey’s novel. 

20 -What are you currently working on? 
I’m writinga speculative podcast script about a post-oil future on a North Americanarchipelago. It’s called Hag Islands and it’s part of my PhD project. I do hopeto turn it into a novel. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

Paul Vermeersch, NMLCT: Poems

 

Hello. The wetware is atit again, synthesizing mythologies from monstrosities,
hobgoblin cognition fromthin err. On Golgotha, the hippogriff is singing
“Mandinka” to children. Let’stelecommunicate, cool? Let’s watch TV collectively
across a desert of brokenantennae. Let’s ache for obsolescence. Let’s go. (“On Monstrosity”)

Thelatest from Toronto poet and editor Paul Vermeersch, following his Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020 (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2020)[see my review of such here], is NMLCT: Poems (ECW Press, 2025), acollection very much constructed as a book-length project, one that opens with ahelpful “NOTE ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF TERMS”: 

“MCHNCT” is pronounced
machine city 

“NMLCT” is pronounced
animal city

AsI’ve written prior—referring, specifically, to Hamilton writer, musician andeditor Gary Barwin’s charming creatures: poems (ECW Press, 2022) [see my review of such here]—I’m always intrigued to see the first collection by anypoet, following the publication of a selected; to look at a new work composed afterhaving examined, and self-examined, even if rather broad in scope, the lengthand breadth of a career in poetry. “Words say there is another place.” the poem“ESCAPE FROM MCHNCT” begins. “But who will make it there?” Vermeersch’s eighth fulllength poetry collection (if one counts the selected, which seems only fair), itis interesting in how his work has evolved from articulating echoes of nostalgiclooks at once-imagined futures from the mid-twentieth century into this assemblageof four-lined stanza blocks, themselves accumulating into a narrative structureof speculative fiction, setting a conflict between animal and machine. “Submergedin celestial shadow,” the poem “THE SECOND MOON BEHIND THE FIRST MOON” writes, “saturatedand rattling with frags / of cyborg nightmares, the collective unconscious ofartificial life, none / of this will be remembered. But it can be recovered.” Throughoutthe collection, Vermeersch builds his bricks of lyric narrative in lengthy andeven gymnastic lines, more oriented in propulsive, almost staccato, sound than inhis prior work. He builds his bricks, four lines per, whether through sequencesof four poems, one to a page, including the opener, “On Monstrosity,” and toclose, “Deep Water / Amnesia,” with the bulk of the collection, not to mentiona further interruption or two, made up of self-contained poems, each of which,themselves, as quartets of these poem-blocks. His structures are rhythmic, evenpropulsive, offering line breaks when needed to maintain that particularfour-line shape.

After ejection from amirrored box, where you have spent your entire life,
will you understand thatyou have arrived in a forest—or will you believe
that you have become aforest, and the wooded landscape that you see all
around you is just thereflection of your new body inside the mirrored box?
                                   (“Inside AMirrored Box”)

Andthrough this assemblage of stanza-bricks emerges a book-length narrativeumbrella composed to examine the tensions in that imagined future, between thebinaries of machine (“MCHNCT”) and animal (“NMLCT”) (humans are most likely oneither side of that particular binary, I suppose, depending). “Here you are.”the poem “WELCOME TO MCHNCT” writes. “Everything you love is now customizablewith cutting-edge / character tech, but there’s always a faint trace of someremnant avatars embedded in / the most recent blueprint of MCHNCT. We’ve madesome changes for your security / and convenience.” The tension is palpable, shiftingbetween an optimism for humanity or sense of doom, interspersed throughout. Or,as his opening sequence of broadcast signals continues:

Hello. The dead will berecast. The dead are imaginary animals in the forest
of broken telephonepoles. Electrified crosses are bearing what an era needs
to calm itself. The deadare source material, the end product of homeostasis
converted to narrative. Thedead all have their I’s X’d out.

Composedas a response to recent more overt cultural shifts across technology (and vice versa,of course), including elements of artificial intelligence programs that continueto propagate, seemingly against our will, this collection furthers a growing (andintriguing) thread of speculative fiction across Canadian poetry, one that alsoincludes Toronto poet and filmmaker Lindsay B-e’s full-length poetry debut, TheCyborg Anthology: Poems (Kingston ON: Brick Books, 2020) [see my review of such here], an anthology shaped around speculative fiction, exploring ideas ofconsciousness, being, artificial intelligence and technology, and Ottawa-basedpoet Mahaila Smith’s own full-length debut, Seed Beetle: poems (HamiltonON: Stelliform Press, 2025) [see my review of such here]. Much as with Smith’swork specifically, Vermeersch’s poems provide a landscape of speculative conflictas warning for the present, of where this all might be heading, akin to JamesCameron’s original 1984 film, The Terminator. As the sequence “TheForest” offers:

Deep beneath Antarcticice, a forest has waited ninety million years for its rebirth.
This is not Eden. This isthe end state of every ecology. Every sprout is the crown
of this realm trying tobreach our own. Great pines of epochal growth climb beneath
primeval glaciers. They signalalways to the upper world their need to breathe again.

Asaddendum, the acknowledgements at the end of Vermeersch’s collection providesthat: “No part of this book was created with artificial intelligence, chatbots,language models, or any similar technology.”

Grace Nissan, The Utopians

 

bring any country     to a standstill
take the same form    with everyone 

say it’s hard to find
it’s hard to find 

hold up their hands
their hands 

start thinking uparguments
and that’s farming (“TheUtopians”)

I’mintrigued by this title by New York-based poet and translator Grace Nissan, TheUtopians (Brooklyn NY: ugly duckling presse, 2025), a book that but hintsat the structure of the constraint used, through blurbs offered by HannahBlack, Kay Gabriel and Ted Rees. As Black offers: “Using mostly thepara-colonial language of Thomas More’s Utopia, Grace Nissan has made analmost shockingly compelling book out of a formal constraint as sharp andabsurd as the limitations of living in these trivial, awful, genocidal, yearningtimes.” Gabriel, also: “Rewriting Utopia using, mostly, Thomas More’sown language, Grace Nissan poses in a different way a classic organizer’squestion: how do we turn what we have into what we need to get what we want?” Itis only through the publisher’s website that one might find this (arguablyoffering little more than what the blurbs provide, and not assisting to spellout Nissan’s specific constraints through this project): “Built around asequence written entirely with language from Thomas More’s Utopia, TheUtopians invents a new world, from the pieces of the old one, to formallyexplore the contradictions of liberation. A series of letters to Thomas More,and a poem called ‘THE WORLD’ about Utopia’s vexed escape, encircle the remixedno-place as they elaborate Utopia’s double edge.” Or, one can seek through thetext itself to hear Nissan’s own thoughts, set close to the end: “that the deadmix freely / in a spirit of reverence // this translation is based on / death /terribly well, I must admit // they cremate the / discussion / to accept it [.]”

Nissanis also the author of The City Is Lush With / Obstructed Views(DoubleCross Press), as well as the translator of kochanie, today i boughtbread by Uljana Wolf (World Poetry Books) and War Diary by YevgeniaBelorusets (New Directions / isolarii), and their translations of YevgeniaBelorusets were exhibited in the 59th Venice Biennale.

“I feel almost ashamedto send you this little book about the Utopian Republic.” (That’s how youstarted Utopia—with a letter, to introduce Utopia through its messenger,Raphael.) “Some people say that he has died somewhere on his travels. Othersthat he has gone back to his own country. Others again that he has returned toUtopia, partly because he felt nostalgic about it, and partly because he couldn’tstand the way Europeans behaved.”

Thebulk of the collection exists as “The Utopians,” with two further sections—“THEWORLD” and “Passages 1, 2, 3”—interestingly enough, are interspersed throughoutthe collection, held as fading text (something Ellen Chang-Richardson recentlyplayed with as well, through their recent above/ground press title) and eventext set backwards. The interplay, the interlay, feels akin to less a series ofinterruptions than a layering, held as a critique of where we currently are,but through the translated and transposed language of English lawyer, judge,social philosopher, statesman, theologian and writer Sir Thomas More(1478-1535), and their infamous book originally composed in Latin, and publishedin 1516. “Utopia / wasn’t retailing,” Nissan writes, “like a talented   author / had seen absolutely    nothing // to get an even clearer picture /died somewhere    on his travels / andwhispered / More [.]” There are few poetry titles, one would think, responding totexts by one simultaneously held as Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII and veneratedby the Catholic Church as a Saint. If More’s Utopia offered a fictional,perfect, island republic or commonwealth, Nissan’s The Utopians writesof a population set within a bubble, offering an articulation of andcounterpoint to contemporary western society. How does any utopia turn in onitself, and twist its own impulses? How can any society find its way out ofsuch dark? Held as critique and counterpoint, The Utopians occasionallywrite directly to More, writing out his limitations, his declarations, throughlyric fragment, layering and narrative interplay, and into what More could neverhave imagined. Or, as Nissan writes:

What I mean is,transmission hurts. Utopia was not always an island, you wrote, it was apeninsula first. Because your new world is dripping with passage, territoriallust and imperial phantoms, as well as all that could not come into being. Thrillingcall for the abolition of private property. But you are sullied by the name ofone (yours), puppeting as total social structure. You are sullied by personageitself.

Sometimes it helps tothink like a child. More: there is no point outside the world, there is onlymouth.

Let me enter the picture.Notice me like a low and constant breeze. When it stops.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Hannah Brooks-Motl

HannahBrooks-Motl wasborn and raised in Wisconsin. She is author of the poetry collections  TheNew Years  (2014), M (2015),  Earth  (2019),and Ultraviolet of the Genuine (2025), as well as chapbooksfrom the Song Cave, arrow as aarow, and The Year. She lives in westernMassachusetts.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change yourlife? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feeldifferent?

My first book came out in 2014. I had the sense that something elseshould happen then, so I did a variety of things that now seem unbelievable tome—danced it, chanted it, etc. I haven’t pursued such activities with recentbooks, but the experience relaxed my relation to ideas about “the work”generally. I’d say it helped me welcome contingency, accident, potentialembarrassment. Otherwise, there’s a general kind of vibe that persists acrossthe books, sort of earthy and philosophical (I hope).

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

As a reader, I came first to novels. My family took many cross-countrydrives when I was a kid. I read for the days it took us to get somewhere.Non-stop, fully immersed—that’s my dream. Poetry arrived in the form of my mucholder sister, who was a poet then (now she’s a forensic pathologist); her 90spoet life seemed impossibly glamorous. She let me hang out in bars with her andher writer friends when I was a teen.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Doesyour writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first draftsappear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?

I write a lot in notebooks, accruing language and concerns. At some pointthe feeling mysteriously arrives that a poem should result. The poems undulateacross the many days or weeks of gathering and jots. I sort of find them there,lead them out. 

4 - Where does a poem 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 wrote one book “project,” involving the essays of Michel de Montaigne.Mainly now I let reading, practice, life be my guide.

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

I like readings, sometimes very much. Sometimes a poetry reading willmanifest and crystallize the happy, nervy, hopeful energy of people together, yearningto be.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kindsof questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even thinkthe current questions are? 

One concern is with poetry’srescue of discourse, where the poem, or the kind of thinking a poem is, can bea true statement, albeit one that we only very briefly inhabit or are allowed. Recently,I’m invested—to my surprise—in rehabilitating the old quarrel between Shelleyand Wordsworth, via Mill, poems of the head vs poems of the heart, to ask: whychoose? As in, why is that the choice we are asked to make again andagain? There’s (always) questions of what reading is good for; in what waysdoes poetry do a kind of (moral) philosophizing; interest in humans, theirbehaviors and reasons (actual, believed), and the lives of creatures.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?

Writers and artists and thinkers I admire tend to believe in some different or otherreality, the pursuit and discovery of which language, image, aestheticexpression uniquely allow. Art is a bridge one walks on and toward—an earthy,clumsy substance and a spiritual, extravagant one. It often encodes a personallonging but it’s also social, environmental, historical, political. Who but writersand artists will honor these stubborn, modest, generous dreams?

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

I am a scholarly editor—I mean I edit monographs, edited collections,journal articles. I was an acquisitions editor for a university press full-timefor years, now I do free-lance developmental editing. I have lots to say aboutediting and its importance, but yes, I think working with editors is essential.

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

I have a poem in my latest book that includes the line “Keep going +believe = ‘advice.’” It’s a joke but not a joke.

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

Most days I get up very early to write. People used to sleepdifferently—a first sleep, an interlude around 3:00 am, a second sleep. Thishistoric interlude is where a lot of my work’s language arrives.

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

Philosophy. Biography. Walks in the woods.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Cut grass, violet skies with a thunderstorm somewhere, slight farm.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but arethere any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, scienceor visual art?

Working and being with animals. Listening to the anecdotes of others.

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

Iris Murdoch, Marguerite Young, Lorine Niedecker, Paul Valéry, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Ernst Bloch, Paul Goodman, Wong May, Dan Bevacqua, Peter Gizzi, Emily Hunt, Sara Nicholson, Ben Estes, Alan Felsenthal, Kai Ihns,Hai-dang Phan, Patrick Morrissey.

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

Hike the AT. Live in France. Write a play with my husband and stage it inour house.

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 notbeen a writer?

I frequently wish I had been an ethologist. It’s the science of, someonehas said, interviewing animals in their own language.

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

My other artistic talents were minimal. Other forms of more regular orprofessionally legible work leave me feeling half-alive.

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

Last great book was Unclay by TF Powys; last great film was a rewatchingof The Souvenir by Joanna Hogg.

19 - What are you currently working on?

More poems and a novel about a self-taught artist in rural Illinois. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Jumoke Verissimo, Circumtrauma: Poems

 

after war
a mother and her familyof four
            arrive in an airport taxi: a body of feudal songs

broken people              in dirty wrappers
            a fluent suffering body

we are of same material
our              body also collects feudal songs
before and after war     our body collects feudal songs

  

we know no sleep        we collect only fear. (“1001-a / 1001”)

Fromaward-winning Toronto-based Nigerian poet, novelist, children’s writer and criticJumoke Verissimo, following the poetry titles I Am Memory (Lagos,Nigeria: DADA Books, 2008) and The Birth of Illusion (Nigeria: FULLPOINT,2015), as well as the novel A Small Silence (London UK: CassavaRepublic, 2019), comes her first full-length Canadian title, Circumtrauma:Poems (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2025), a book-length poem thatcaptures and articulates the details and ripples of the Nigeria-Biafra War(1967-1970). Histories such as these have rippling effects throughout apopulation across years, and history forgotten, after all, dooms to repeat. As Verissimowrites as part of her preface to the collection: “I began researching theNigeria-Biafra War (also known as the Nigerian Civil War) because I wanted answerson why the conflict has stayed on the bodies of even the unborn. How does onecapture the unacknowledged edged pain that resonates across generations and mayeven inform the lens from which social relations are formed?”

Thereare structural echoes of Verissimo’s accumulated lyric articulating witness comparableto Kingston, Ontario-based poet and critic Otoniya J. Okot Bitek’s full-lengthdebut 100 Days (Edmonton AB: University of Alberta Press, 2016) [see my review of such here], a collection of one hundred poems through one hundreddays of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, or even, to a lesser degree, the full-lengthpoetry collection articulations of history and the ripples of trauma through workingarchival materials of further recent titles such as Montreal poet, editor andtranslator Darby Minott Bradford’s full-length debut, Dream of No One butMyself (Kingston ON: Brick Books, 2021) [see my review of such here] or Vancouverpoet and editor Andrea Actis’ full-length poetry debut, Grey All Over (BrickBooks, 2021) [see my review of such here]. Through Verissimo, her lyrics hold togetherprecisely because of the way she pulls them apart, focusing on individualmoments, elements and parts of speech, collecting together to form a far wider andcomplex tapestry. The length and breadth are entirely held though such deepattention and precision. “a rickety train pulled up / heads disappeared,” she writes,early on in the collection, “our brothers left home / for a godforsaken place /our brothers returned / with a gunshot in the head [.]”

Heldwith a short preface and hefty afterword, “METHOD NOTE, OR CIRCLING / THEWOUNDED,” the body of the collection Circumtrauma is structured as anassemblage of poem-fragments, an accumulation of short, layered poems titledvia a numerical system, akin to government records that acknowledge a great anddark archival depth. Thoroughly and heavily researched, with an afterword thatexpands upon details within her poems, as well as a bibliography of primarytexts and works consulted, Verissimo centres her storytelling across language,offering what is exactly necessary, with all that might be extraneous strippedaway. As the poem “00010101-a” includes: “silence thickened our saliva / wecannot defend our children / when trouble come // uncertainty is a bomb / we donot want to die like chickens.” Or, as the opening section, “A TWEET, A TIKTOK,AND A LINGERING WAR,” of her afterword begins:

The passing of QueenElizabeth II sparked widespread commentary, but it was a controversial tweet bya Nigerian American professor, accusing the queen of complicity in the genocideagainst the Igbo people during the Nigerian Civil War, that particularly caughtmy attention, sharply highlighting the enduring impact of that conflict. For manylike me who did not witness the war, the stories from elders, fiction, andhistory books were how we learnt about the war. As of today, the war is nolonger taught in schools, due to the exclusion of history lessons. In fact,generations younger than mine only came to actively know about the warfollowing novels like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.

There’sa lot to admire about literary work that attempts to deliberately uncover andexamine such brutal history, especially for those stories buried, overlooked orsimply forgotten (I was first made aware of Ottawa’s “Mad Bomber of Parliament” in 1966, for example, somewhere in the 1990s, thanks to a poem by Judith Fitzgerald, from her 1977 CoachHouse Press poetry title lacerating heartwood). The stories might fade,but the body remembers, even across generations. Facts and stories matter, andto lose the stories of such brutality is to render an entirely different violence.“we were all brothers / massacred / albeit      on a very small scale,” Verissimo writes,as part of “10111110-b,”  “we are allmemory’s children / superior in our pain [.]” Circumtrauma swirls alyric notation of accumulated moments, offering archival moments across andthrough a devastation that continues, rippling across generations. Or, as shewrites early on in the collection: “our body is a people:           before and after [.]”

 

Heather Christle, Paper Crown

 

Mistake

For years I have seen
dead animals on the highway 

and grieved for them
only to realize they are 

not dead animals
they are t shirts 

or bits of blown tire
and I have found 

myself with this
excess of grief 

I have made with
no object to let 

it spill over and
I have not known 

where to put it or
keep it and then today 

I thought I know
I can give it to you

Oh,I am delighted to see a new poetry title by American poet Heather Christle, PaperCrown (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2025), her first in adecade, although she’s published two works of non-fiction during that time: The Crying Book (Catapult, 2019) and In the Rhododendrons: A Memoirwith Appearances by Virginia Woolf (Algonquin, 2025), of which I am but onetitle behind. Following her prior collections The Difficult Farm (OctopusBooks, 2009), The Trees The Trees (Octopus Books, 2011), What is amazing (Wesleyan, 2012) [see my review of such here] and Heliopause(Wesleyan University Press, 2015) [see my review of such here], the poems in PaperCrown offer Christle’s usual tight lyric narratives—lines one could bouncea quarter off of, perhaps—but with a bit more breath between lines, almost as akind of open comfort in the way she approaches her lyric. As she writes mid-waythrough the opening poem, “Suggested Donation”: “Somehow / I own like six nailclippers / and I honestly can’t / remember ever buying / even one. My sister /came to visit and / saw them in a small / wooden bowl. I / heard her laughingin / the bathroom. I hope / she never dies.” These poems offer counterpointbetween lightness and dark, acknowledging how dark the dark might get, but notquite allowing it to overwhelm, held back by an optimism, or even a pragmatism,that can’t be stopped, even amid dreams, surreal narratives and childhood recollection.“Thr is a reason / for everything says the terrible book,” she writes, mid-waythrough “Description of a Work in Progress,” “and there is no comfort in that /or anywhere. I checked. I am paid / to make the index.”

Theseare curious poems, rich with imagination and outreach, and I’m fond of Christle’slyric declarations, blending together an array of threads into a finely wovennarrative, precise and clear-minded and quietly intimate. “I did not know itwas possible (your constancy / being among your chief characteristics),” opens theshort piece “My Love You Died in My Dream Last Night,” “and I, bereft, could notthink of how to tell our child / and so kindly you got up and together we admired// the suit in which you chose to be buried / and your ongoing good humor.”These are smart and clear-headed poems, providing a subtlety that I deeplyappreciate. Pay attention, here. Or you might just miss something. Or, as the poem“To the Brim” writes, mid-way through: “What pins // me to my seat is the dread/ of having darkneess / dragged from me the way // the executioner would take /entrails from a person / still alive, say see?”

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Andrew Bertaina

Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection, The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus 2024), the book length essay, Ethan Hawke & Me (Barrelhouse, 2025), and the short-story collection, One Person Away From You (Moon City Press Award Winner 2021). His work has appeared in The ThreePenny Review, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Orion, and elsewhere. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry, The Best Microfiction, and listed as notable in three editions of The Best American Essays and as a special mention in The Pushcart Prize anthology. He has an MFA from American University and more of his work is available at andrewbertaina.com
 
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 was really just making writing feel possible. I wasn't sure I'd ever have a book, and I think landing that first book just made writing feel suddenly real. 

This book is my third, which means the initial excitement isn't quite as large. I've settled into a career as a writer, which means books if I'm lucky, so I'm enjoying it, but it's definitely a different experience. 

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I have always written fiction and non-fiction. Like most writers I started out wanting to write fiction. However, I started my MFA as a really inexperienced writer, and I happened to land in a non-fiction course and wound up loving it. I think I wanted to write fiction because the novel has long been the dominant form, which means my experience as an avid reader had me thinking it was the only real form. 
 
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?
My writing tends to come quickly when I'm interested in a project. I really prefer to finish a whole draft in as few sittings as possible. I find that without momentum I tend to lose the thread of a project. My writing is already partially fragmentary, so I need to do it quickly to keep it together!

4 - Where does a work of prose 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?
In this case, Ethan Hawke & Me was a known project. I figured I was working toward a book, and I had the lovely scaffolding of the Before Trilogy movies by . The book is subdivided into three distinct time periods in my life that roughly coincide with the thematic concerns of the movies. That gave me a nice pathway into the book. 

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy doing readings, but I consider them as only somewhat related to the art. Reading is a bit of a performance with its attendant requirements of audience engagement. Ie, I love and write pretty lyrically. I tend to find something funny or that breaks up the hypnotic feeling of being read to when I'm doing it for an audience.
 
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?
My writing is always considered with questions of meaning, self, spiritual, and cultural. I tend to write towards questions that I try to unravel in my work. How should a person be? I think Sheila Heti already took that title, but it's the question underneath my work. What to do with the time we have been given here? 

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?
I think the role of a writer in the culture is pretty diminished, particularly in the United States. People don't think writers are cultural critics in the way they used to. I do think story telling is an important part of conception on a cultural level, and I think losing a role of prominence probably isn't the best thing for writers. However, it's always been a rarefied air for those writers at the top. Almost everyone else should be doing it for the love of the game. 

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I found working with my editor to be really positive. Mike Ingram at Barrelhouse was great. He pushed me where I needed it but was also okay with my stylistic tics. As I said, I write lyrically. I would really struggle with an editor who wanted that lyricism pared down to make it more palatable. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Read a lot. I feel like we are in an era where I see more and more writers cropping up, but folks should be matching that with a lot of reading. 

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I write what I'm interested in. That's the only reason I have continued to write for the last fifteen years. That means I'm bad at the marketing side because everyone thinks they can sell a novel. But I just can't get myself to write something I'm not interested in. The appeal of working in multiple genres is really keeping myself interested in the work. 

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 have a writing schedule. I tend to work best when inspiration strikes, which can come in burst of a month or so when I will get a lot done. Then I might go months and write only one or two short things. I wish I could control it more. 

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I read! Or if I'm in the middle of something I'll take a nature walk and not listen to anything. I find the mind needs time to wander. The subconscious brain is always working, and we just need to let it have some silence at times. 

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The smell of hot tar or honeysuckle. 

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?
In the case of this book the Before Trilogy was really the inspiration. Of course, my book is written with writers like Patricia Hample or Lia Purpura as influences at a line level, but it was really these movies that helped create an outline for life. 

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Too many to count! As I said, Patricia Hampl and Lia Purpura come to mind for this project, but I'm inspired constantly by so many different writers, past and present. I love to be fed by the great lake of writing. 

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Live an entirely different kind of life :). 

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?
I considered being a therapist. Sometimes I tell my kids that I got an A+ in my college acting course and wish I'd pursued that instead. Bookshop owner. I have a lot I'd have liked to do. 

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I just wanted to see if I could do it after having the incredible experience of feeling so moved by the masters. A mixture of wonder, honor, and I suppose a bit of hubris. Also, I was so bad at math. Horrendously so. 

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book I read was It Lasts Forever and then it's over by Anne De Marcken. It's this incredible meditation on grief and loss folded into a zombie novel. I'm not even a zombie guy. This book just blew me away. It has these haunting and lyric lines combined with thinking through the grief of a relationship and life that has been lost. I'm always drawn by line level stuff and this book manages to wed the gorgeous lines to the form of a strange and compelling story. Masterful. 

The last great film was probably All Of Us Strangers. I am apparently just a sucker for grief. We all have those things we love. 

20 - What are you currently working on?
I'm writing some short stories that keep getting stranger and stranger. I think I'm just always interested in something new in fiction. In the essay form, I have a more consistent voice, but I don't have anything to reflect on right now, so it's weird short stories! 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Natalie Lim, Elegy for Opportunity

 

If Mary Can Do It 

I give myself permissionto write
about the small things. atrip
to the ice rink. the busride home.
cherry blossoms in fullbloom. anything to feel
like I have anything atall to say.
my pen pal in Tokyo writesa book
and I find out throughTwitter. it’s getting easier
to see the future. marriageand a kid,
two probably, unless I changemy mind. I want
people to remember me. Iwant to write like she did.
focused, intentional,whole poems taken over by a flock of starlings
or a blade of grass. not thiswild tangle of thoughts
all pressed in together. Iwould blame
the internet, but I thinkit’s just me. I want
to stop living throughlate-stage capitalism.
I want to do somethingabout it
but without getting in trouble.I don’t care
what you say – I need tobe good. tell me
about despair, Mary. tellme if, at the end,
you felt you had done more
than just visit.

Thefull-length debut by Vancouver poet Natalie Lim, winner of the 2018 CBC PoetryPrize and Room magazine’s 2020 Emerging Writer Award, and author of thechapbook arrhythmia (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2022), is Elegy forOpportunity (Hamilton ON: Buckrider Books/Wolsak and Wynn, 2025). I’mcurious about the way Lim approaches narrative and her first-person lyric:offering the suggestion of something relatively straightforward, but curving abit. “I’ve only written love poems for months so it feels like I’ve written nopoems / at all.” she offers, to open the prose poem “Love Poems Don’t WinContests,” that begins the collection. “Instead of writing, I’m sitting on apark bench in early spring, the air so heavy with pollen and promise that it’shard to breathe. I make eye contact with a dachshund wearing a coat and yet allI do is complain.” There’s something intriguing and almost wry about the wayLim acknowledges the economy of poem composition, including attempting contests,writing her failure as an accomplishment (or the other way around, perhaps). “Iam scared of killing everything I touch,” she writes, to open “On Biology,” “thisincludes people, which is new, / and plants, which is not. / did you know welose vertebrae / as we age? we’re born with thirty-three and die / withtwenty-four, usually, the lower ones fusing together / by the time we callourselves grown.” Lim’s poems are immediate, and the collection provides amyriad of lyric shapes and purposes as Lim feels out possibility, the way one couldargue a debut full-length collection should be, seeking out what options thelyric form might allow. She works poems big and small, expansive and uniquelycondensed. There’s a meandering element I quite like, a fresh counterpoint tofar too many poems that one can see the ending from the beginning. Lim’s poemsare thoughtful, unafraid of exploring within a particular moment, or makingsharp turns; they move as needed with a quiet confidence. I’m quite taken withher short poem “Winter in Ottawa,” a poem she is possibly unaware holds a titlesimilar to one of John Newlove’s final pieces. As her poem, dedicated “forthe Love Poem Collective / after Manahil Bandukwala,” begins:

the Rideau Canal doesn’t freezeover
for the first time ever.
it feels like a sign,although
I’m not sure what of.
global warming, I guess. our
impending doom.
but we sit in the café
and talk about love poems
and the dread can’t touchus.
I think the cold makes mebetter.

the ottawa small press book fair, autumn 2025 edition: November 22, 2025

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

   

 the ottawa
    small press
    book fair

autumn 2025 :
will be held on Saturday, November 22, 2025 at Tom Brown Arena, 141 Bayview Station Road.

“once upon a time, way way back in October 1994, rob mclennan and James Spyker invented a two-day event called the ottawa small press book fair, and held the first one at the National Archives of Canada...” Spyker moved to Toronto soon after our original event, but the fair continues, thanks in part to the help of generous volunteers, various writers and publishers, and the public for coming out to participate with alla their love and their dollars.

General info:
the ottawa small press book fair
noon to 5pm (opens at 11am for exhibitors)

admission free to the public.
$25 for exhibitors, full tables
$12.50 for half-tables
(payable to rob mclennan, c/o 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9; paypal options also available

Note: due to demand, we offer half as well as full tables (because not everyone needs a full table, and this allows more exhibitors to participate).
To be included in the exhibitor catalogue: please include name of press, address, email, web address, contact person, type of publications, list of publications (with price), if submissions are being considered and any other pertinent info, including upcoming Ottawa-area events (if any). Be sure to send by November 10th if you would like to appear in the exhibitor catalogue.

And hopefully we can still do the pre-fair reading as well! details TBA
: and we're on Bsky now! that's exciting, yes? follow us!

BE AWARE: given that the spring 2013 was the first to reach capacity (forcing me to say no to at least half a dozen exhibitors), the fair can’t (unfortunately) fit everyone who wishes to participate. The fair is roughly first-come, first-served, although preference will be given to small (literary) publishers over self-published authors (being a “small press fair,” after all).

The fair usually contains exhibitors with poetry books, novels, cookbooks, posters, t-shirts, graphic novels, comic books, magazines, scraps of paper, gum-ball machines with poems, 2x4s with text, etc, including regular appearances by exhibitors including: above/ground press ; Anvil Press / A FEED DOG BOOK ; Apt. 9 Press ; Arc Poetry Magazine ; Manahil Bandukwala ; battleaxe press ; Jessica Bebenek ; Book*hug Press ; Bird Lips Zine ; The BumblePuppy Press ; Bywords ; Dave Cooper ; CreateSpace ; Amanda Earl ; Elliott Dunstan ; equitableEducation.ca ; flo. lit mag ; Good Golly Zines ; The Grunge Papers ; John Haas ; Seymour Hamilton ; Heartlines Spec ; Horsebroke Press ; Shirley MacKenzie ; Robin Blackburn McBride ; Patricia McCarthy ; Kersplebedeb Publishing (LeftWingBooks.net) ; Paragon of Virtue Press / la presse POV ; phafours press/Writebulb app/Pearl Pirie ; Proper Tales Press ; Puddles of Sky Press ; Raccoon Comics ; Claudia Coutu Radmore ; ROOM 3o2 BOOKS ; Sarah's Zines ; Simulacrum Press ; shreeking violet press ; swooncor ; Tel # Publishing ; Things in my Chest ; Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] ; Turret House Press ; Alberte Villeneuve-Sinclair ; Wyrdsmyth Press ; etc etc etc.

the ottawa small press fair is held twice a year (apart from these pandemic silences), and was founded in 1994 by rob mclennan and James Spyker. Organized/hosted since by rob mclennan.

Come on by and see some of the best of the small press from Ottawa and beyond!

Free things can be mailed for fair distribution to the same address. Unfortunately, we are unable to sell things for publishers who aren’t able to make the event.

Also: please let me know if you are able/willing to poster, move tables or distribute fliers for the event. The more people we all tell, the better the fair!

And don't forget: the 2026 fairs have already been announced for Saturday, June 20 and Saturday, November 14, 2026;

Contact: rob mclennan at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com for questions, or to sign up for a table.