Monday, April 28, 2014

National Poetry Month 2014: rob mclennan,



What remains of winter; spring,


            Plunged you down plunged

            down by one minor detail
                        Sarah Mangold

Laden, comma. Heavy. Common thread. A snowy onslaught, pleather. Coats. Backed-up, curved, a reproduction. Side-long. Snow-sweats, sidewalks bathe. Reluctant. Margin, marginalia. Attempt to see if sentences can breathe, take root, grow limbs. A shiny tension. Time is free, up to a point. We borrow, shoplift, hoard. Spring. Perplexing, interludes. The earth absorbs unease, a taut line. Intercedes. A sunlit slope, foregrounded. Symptoms, iced. A scarf sewn shut. Conjunctions, bleed. If wishes fishes, technique. Strobe. The illusion of deep snow, which is truly snow. Cities, planets, continent. Exclude, a fleeting habit.





Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan [photo credit: Christine McNair] currently lives in Ottawa. The author of nearly thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. His most recent titles include notes and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press, 2014) and The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014), as well as the forthcoming poetry collection If suppose we are a fragment (BuschekBooks, 2014). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books, The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

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