National Poetry Month : Gregory Betts,

 

 

 

The Idea of Moths

flames have no shadows

when the moths come pure in their pursuit
their singed bodies fall
into the word jumble of newsprint
die on my table into an ad
where the word bed
looks like a bed
by last night’s wine
on my table

search in daylight for moths but
they answer where, when, what
by replacing w with t 

and, there, when you discover
the news that
Winnie the Pooh in Winnipeg
was a she
you learn
that all skittles taste the same
that happy Casper, before he died,
was once the ghastly Richie Rich
footage might be measured in feet
but nobody films the growing pile
of dead and dying moths 

and then when the moths come back,
what, they seem to shrug,
as if more embarrassed for you,
flames have no shadows

you learn
that they turn dark in sooty times
rare and luminescent in an apocalypse
and always disappear in the daytime
in disinterest
for the sun pales to a candle in the dark

 

 

 

Gregory Betts is an experimental poet with collections published in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Ireland. He is most acknowledged for If Language (2005), the world’s first collection of paragraph-length anagrams, and The Others Raisd in Me (2009), 150 poems carved out of Shakespeare’s sonnet 150. His other books explore conceptual, collaborative, and concrete poetics. He has performed these works hundreds of times, in many countries, including at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games as part of the "Cultural Olympiad.” He is a professor of Canadian and Avant-Garde Literature at Brock University, where he has produced two of the most exhaustive academic studies of avant-garde writing in Canada, Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations (2013) and Finding Nothing: The VanGardes, 1959-1975 (2020), both with University of Toronto Press. He is the President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE), curator of the bpNichol.ca Digital Archive, and Associate Director of the Social Justice Research Initiative. His most recent book is Foundry (2021), a collection of visual poems inspired by a font named after a 15th century poet. He lives in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Douglas Barbour reviews Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013

Douglas Barbour was good enough to review Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 (Chaudiere Books, 2013) over at his Eclectic Ruckus. See his original review here. Thanks, Doug! This is actually the third review of Ground Rules, after Catherine Owen reviewed such over at her blog, and Ryan Pratt reviewed such over at the ottawa poetry newsletter.

Breaking ground, breaking rules:

rob mclennan, ed. Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003 – 2013 (Chaudiere Books 2013).

There are a lot of Canadian (& other) poets who are grateful rob mclennan runs above/ground press & somehow manages to publish a huge bunch of chapbooks, magazine, & broadsheets every year, no matter what else he also gets up to. And he’s been doing so for more than 2 decades now. In Ground Rules, he offers up a generous sampling of what above/ground does for those readers who just haven’t been paying attention or else couldn’t keep up.

Some critics & poets argue that eclecticism makes for weak editing, but mclennan, who has also spent all that time learning as much as he can about (especially) modern & contemporary Canadian poetry, has made it into a virtue. He likes & publishes a very wide range of poetry, but, if this anthology is anything to go by, he has a pretty good sense of what works in any particular area. Ground Rules has a smattering of single poems, including a couple of concrete beauties from derek beaulieu; but the anthology really shines in its many & varied chapbooks. These range from Nathanaël’s gender bending self-examination, ‘what exile    this,’ through the faux (& witty) ‘Text Panels’ of Lisa Samuels’s ‘The Museum of Perception,’ to Rachel Zolf’s lovely minimalist homage, ‘the naked & the nude'; & that’s just the first three.

mclennan appreciates poetic comedy: see Sharon Harris’s ‘more fun with ‘pataphysics,’ with its ‘amazing’ (& always amusing) ‘findings’ & ‘experiments in progress'; or Stephen Brockwell’s ‘Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment),’ which includes (‘From Metonomies: Poems by Objects Owned by Illustrious People‘) these lines by ‘Stephen Harper’s Shoes': ‘Long days holding up the country, / short nights breathing fresh air,’ & ‘My steel / shank would never pass security / if the face did not control it personally,’ in which the ambiguity of that pronoun speaks volumes.

mclennan appreciates the elders: see, among others, D.G. Jones, with the sly & sophisticated lyrics of ‘standard pose,’ & Robert Kroetsch, with the subtle & actively probing wit of his letters to other poets in ‘Further to Our Conversation’ (one of his last chapbooks, generously offered to various small presses). He also appreciates formal experiments, such as Emily Carr’s ‘ ] / & look there goes a sparrow transplanting soil / ] /[3 eclogues]‘ or Gregory Betts’s deconstruction of the Canadian documentary poem in ‘The Cult of David Thompson.’ I also especially enjoyed Monty Reid’s striking serial poem, ‘cuba  A book,’ Marilyn Irwin’s ‘for when you pick daisies,’ Natalie Simpson’s ‘Writing the writing,’ Julia Williams’s ‘My City is Ancient and Famous,’ & many of Eric Folsom’s ‘Northeast anti-ghazals.’ No anthology can satisfy everyone, but Ground Rules has a higher percentage of the worthwhile than most; I found all of the chapbooks worth my reading time.

As a valuable overview of the kinds of poetry above/ground press publishes or just of the kinds of poetry being written in Canada (or North America) during the first decade or so of the 21st century, Ground Rules has much to recommend it. Because it gives each poet real room, & also because it publishes new work, it provides a genuine insight into a lot of what’s happening now. Anyone interested in getting a sense of what a number of our most interesting poets have been up to recently will find Ground Rules offers a terrific introduction to their work.

a new essay by Monty Reid, published online by AngelHousePress

The latest in the AngelHousePress essay series is Monty Reid's "Twenty Minor Improvements for Greg Betts" http://angelhousepress.com/essays/monty_reid.pdf

in response to "Poets Against Authorship: A 5 minute Manifesto in 20 parts, 15 seconds each" by Gregory Betts, published in 17 Seconds, Summer 2011 Issue http://www.ottawater.com/seventeenseconds/issue3/PoetsAgainstAuthorship.pdf

Pearl Pirie responds to a Gregory Betts essay;

On her blog, Pearl Pirie responds to (among other things) an essay by Gregory Betts, recently posted in the third issue of seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry + poetics.

Pearl Pirie + rob mclennan read with Gregory Betts + James Milhaven in St. Catharines

The Grey Borders Reading Series Presents...

rob mclennan

Pearl Pirie

Gregory Betts

+ James Milhaven

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 7:30pm

The Niagara Artists’ Centre 

354 St. Paul Street, St. Catharines 

905.641.0331  

 

Licensed, pay what you can

http://greyborders.blogspot.com 

 

Pearl Pirie's forthcoming trade collection is been shed bore (Chaudiere Books, 2010). www.beenshedbore.com. Her chapbooks include over my dead corpus (AngelHouse, 2010) and boathouse (above/ground, 2008). She blogs at pesbo, Humanyms, and a few other places. Poems have appeared thru dandelion, ditch, PRECIPICe, 1cent, Ottawater, unarmed, Peter F Yacht Club, Dusie and 17 Seconds, pooka press and gar.  She writes in Ottawa and lives in her head (with outings for chocolate).

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of some twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections gifts (Talonbooks), a compact of words (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), wild horses (University of Alberta Press) and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (www.ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), The Garneau Review (www.ottawater.com/garneaureview) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (www.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 www.robmclennan.blogspot.com.

Gregory Betts is a poet, editor, essayist, and teacher born in Vancouver, raised in Toronto, now living in St. Catharines, ON. He is the author of four books of poetry including If Language (BookThug 2005), Haikube (BookThug 2006), The Others Raisd in Me (Pedlar Press 2009), and Psychic Geographies and Other Topics (Quattro Press 2010; also as ane-book) as well as several chapbooks and various bits of ephemera.

James Millhaven was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, in 1987. His first chapbook, Edges, was released by Grey Borders Books in July 2010. He is currently working on his second chapbook and a one-act play. He would generally include a witty (or at least half-witty) remark at the end, but this was written at the last minute. Sorry.