Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part three,

[Hugh Barclay, with his Thee Hellbox Press] Another listing of titles picked up at our most recent fair! See part one here and part two here, obviously. How much is too much? (We might need to build more shelves)
Ottawa ON: It’s nice to see a new small press offering from Toronto poet (and longtime editor of the Surrealist Poets Gardening Association) Lillian Nećakov, her chapbook The Lake Contains an Emergency Room (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, 2015).
The Lake Contains an Emergency Room
There are pacifists and mongrels sitting herethere is no window to look out ofyou hold a small puddle of blood up against your cheekoutside, I imagine the clouds are bluewe have been waiting hoursit has been 16 yearswe wait our turnyou can no longer hold a pencilthe doctor looks like a roosternight is finishedthere is no smell to painthe needlework is shoddythe door remembers us.
There is an odd humour and compelling candor to the surrealism of Lillian Nećakov, one that seems very human in nature, exploring the surrealism of such tangible subjects as gardening, the nature of origins, making soup, or a stroll through the park.
Step Away
Let’s return to an empty chairor we could weed the gardensomething to silence the hauntinga thing to teach us to carve boneun-mouth the meannessun-speak the dark promisesmurmuring over our lakes
let’s return tonightto our child’s skinselfish, shirtlessbruisedlet’s rage against the tonguestich togetherall our dead relativesand lingerregretlesson the wind.
Ottawa ON: After an extended period working on a variety of other projects [see my recent Jacket2 piece on him here], jwcurry has been publishing again recently, with some recent oddbits including the collaborative (and hand printed) tchts(jwcurry and Rachel Zavitz) produced as CURVD H&Z 474 (31 oct 2014).
shadow planetsmithereensat impact
The small collaboration between curry and Zavitz is one of but a long line of collaboration he’s been doing with multiple writers over the years. There is something about this short sequence of three-line stanzas that have the tautness of (English-language) haiku combined with an incredible precision that presents the illusion of a single (as opposed to double) hand present in every line. To order a copy, or inquire about other publications, write him c/o his new address: #302-28 Ladouceur Avenue, Ottawa ON K1Y 2T1
Another recent publication is the gestetnered INDUSTRIAL SABOTAGE #64, as jwcurry writes in the colophon, “the ‘selfstarterkid’ issue,’ the first to appear (after a long hiatus: #63, Messagio Amor Some More, was issued 13 april 2008),” featuring writing by a host of regular and irregular contributors to curry’s wealth of publications: Michael e. Casteels, M.R. Appell, P. Cob_, Lenore Cochrane, Jon Cone, Judith Copithorne, Marilyn Irwin, Lance LaRocque, Billy Little, bpNichol, Jim Smith, Hugh Thomas and Rachel Zavitz. One thing I’ve always admired about curry is his patience, fully aware that he has said that for his letterpress printing, he has to like a poem to produce it not once, but up to one or two hundred times (which makes one wonder how many published pieces would actually survive the same criteria, even from their own authors).
Apple
apple,so to say, never againuneaten
someone gave me a bump on the head (Hugh Thomas)