Chaudiere Books (
rob mclennan &
Jennifer Mulligan) &
the ottawa international writers festival invite you to the launch of three of the first four Chaudiere Books titles on
Thursday, October 26, 2006, 7pm at the National Library & Archives Building, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa as organized by the ottawa international writers festival. A free event, lovingly hosted by Chaudiere Books editor/publisher
rob mclennan. We will be launching Ottawa writer
Clare Latremouille's first novel
The Desmond Road Book of the Dead, Toronto-area
Meghan Jackson's first poetry collection
movements in jars, and former Alberta poet
Monty Reid's first Ottawa poetry collection
Disappointment Island.
On Clare Latremouille's The Desmond Road Book of the Dead:
In
Clare Latremouille's debut novel,
The Desmond Road Book of the Dead, she writes a story through the lives of multiple generations of women in a family line. Moving seamless through a lyric of decades, blood and voices,
Latremouille works her story through a collage of prose and poetry to their compounded end, and her authorial voice is fierce, lyrical and impassioned. Once you step inside the doors of her house, it becomes impossible to leave.
On Monty Reid's Disappointment Island:Since
Alberta poet
Monty Reid moved from badlands Alberta (Drumheller) to badlands Quebec (Aylmer) in April 1999, he has barely published at all, with his last trade collection
Flat Side (Red Deer Press) appearing the fall before. Now that he has moved directly into the City of Ottawa, he gives us his
Disappointment Island, made up of a sequence of sequences, including some that have previously appeared in editions by
BookThug and
above/ground press.
Monty Reid takes the best of a small idea and stretches it, moving from poems that are short, individual, and even quick, and that resonate through simple information, in that way that feels almost Creeley-esque, to the extension of an idea pulled gracefully across the page. The winner of the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry three times and a
three-time Governor General's Award nominee, these may poems hold the weight of the emotional world on their shoulders, referencing bluegrass, the Gulf Islands and Cuba, as well as friends and lovers, and they never disappoint.
On Meghan Jackson's movements in jars:Meghan Jackson's poems are a series of
studies of small moments, like figures of fine glass. Formerly publishing quietly under the name
meghan lynch, her
movements in jars is a work honed and steeled over an extended period of time, and one that many of her readers have been waiting on with bated breath. Her poems are the alabaster that capture without destroying and explore and display without diminishing; hers is a sacred, scrying art.
for more information on the launch, call the ottawa international writers festival office at (613) 562 1243 or check out their website at
www.writersfest.com ; for more information on the press (our official website will be launched soon), email rob mclennan at
az421@freenet.carleton.ca or Jennifer Mulligan at
jennifermulligan@sympatico.caLater in the fall, we will be launching the first in hopefully of a short series of anthologies of work by Ottawa area writers, the anthology
Decalogue: ten Ottawa poets, featuring the work of
Stephen Brockwell,
Michelle Desbarats,
Anita Dolman,
Anne Le Dressay,
Karen Massey,
Una McDonnell,
rob mclennan,
Max Middle,
Monty Reid and
Shane Rhodes.
