Ongoing notes: late February, 2024 : Michael Chang + Ethan Vilu,

There are only THREE DAYS LEFT in the VERSeFest fundraiser! But youalready knew that, yes? And the schedule for this spring’s VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival (March 21-24) will be announced very very soon!

Toronto ON/Brooklyn NY: I’ve seen work byAmerican poet and editor Michael Chang around for a while now, so it is good tofinally get my hands on a small collection, the chapbook SWEET MOSS(Anstruther Press, 2024), following collections such as SYNTHETIC JUNGLE(Northwestern University Press, 2023) and EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS(GreenTower Press, 2024). Jim Johnstone’s Anstruther has been leaning intopublishing work by more Americans these days, I’ve noticed, allowing for aparticular kind of cross-border conversation within the bounds of his press,one of the more active chapbook publishers in Canada. The seventeen poems thatmake up SWEET MOSS shift in structure, from prose poems to more traditionalline-breaks, each of which offer accumulations of first-person statements.Chang’s poems write in a kind of propulsion of direct statements, sly commentaryand observation in a language condensed, communicating with the immediacy ofsocial media or text messages. “if the gods are watching,” Chang writes, aspart of the poem “SPECIAL SNOOZE,” “I’m not allowed to be too happy // I’m notsure why I think this / Probably something learned from television [.]” There’san element of Chang’s lyric lined with input from every direction, whether culture,social media, relationships and travel, attempting not only a through-line buta line through. Perhaps, through Michael Chang, one might manage, and evenmaintain, a degree of clarity through all the external noise.

SMOKE IN JAPAN

the man u loved
died in a war
of ur own making
downturned mouth
mess of fallopian tubes
yes but have u heard of
staring in the samedirection
changing NO HOPE FOR US!!!
we’re full
of special moments
that end
in a matter of hrs
a place in nature
we can finally meet
pegged by peggy
hootin’ for hooten
heads in clouds
in flagrante delicto
the battys in the club
peep ur finest garb
seething assured
a hit dog will holler

Toronto ON/Calgary AB: The latest from Calgary poet, reviewer and editor Ethan Vilu, following the longsheet, A Decision Re: Zurich (The Blasted Tree, 2020), is Drawings From Before The Red Year (Anstruther Press, 2024), an assemblage of short narrative scenes witha clipped lyric. Vilu’s poems are lean, and precise, a sketchform of linesenough to see the whole portrait, even the spaces not drawn. Taking theircontent from the online fantasy game series, Elder Scrolls, I’m surprised therearen’t more poems composed across further elements of pop culture (although thelist of those composing poems for superhero comic characters are fairly short,also), specifically online gaming, something Leah MacLean-Evans has beenworking for a while (I’ve been awaiting a chapbook or collection of some time)and Ottawa poet IAN MARTIN, who has been exploring both gaming and programming.“In my skull I hear the clattering of bad fables. Dark signal,” Vilu writes, toopen the poem “Galtis Guvron,” “scrabled scar. Down the stairs, a messenger approaches:// blood on her hands, a translusccent musical name. A siren // siphoning fromthe stars.” Vilu’s poems here are sharp, serious and playful, and one mightwonder if there might be a full-length collection-to-come, perhaps, one thatmight even allow certain readers an entry point into poetry, from online gaming.The opening lines of the poem “Drarayne Girith,” might even serve as a kind ofars poetica for Vilu’s explorations through gaming: “I stop just short. //Clipped writsts, ragged staff, crushed tongue.”

The Docks Outside Vivec

Ambrosial, this seabreeze –
salt, anther pollen andpearl.

Linen and wood
form a necklace to collarthe cove.

straight ahead: theheather patch,
the sigil-stone, thesky-vibrant beach

and the wide bridge,
tense and time-honoured,

carrier of secrets,
working to cast off itsburden.