Chaudiere Books at Prose in the Park : this Saturday!

Chaudiere Books will be participating in this year's Prose in the Park in Ottawa! From 11am to 6pm on Saturday, June 4, Chaudiere Books' "junior intern" Marilyn Irwin will be in charge of the booth, selling as many copies of our titles as possible, and author/editor/publisher rob mclennan will be around as well, participating in the Poetry Panel from 5-6pm. Will we see you there?

Marilyn Irwin reviews Andy Weaver's this (2015)

Ottawa poet Marilyn Irwin was good enough to provide the first review of Andy Weaver's this (2015) on her blog; thanks so much!

You can find the link to this and many other of her reviews here.

Of course, copies can be picked up either at this weekend's ottawa small press book fair, online at All Lit Up, or at our big fall poetry launch at the end of the month!

Andy Weaver, This. Ottawa, ON: Chaudiere Books, 2015

Typeset in Courier and Minion by Chaudiere Books co-publisher Christine McNair, the visual aesthetic flows and disrupts beautifully as poems alternate from text block heavy to more terse, angular, drifting shapes on the verge of or what is undoubtedly vispo, depending on the piece.

The careful selection and attention to the placement of each character, word and line as though right click + delete not yet a thing,  as though the author tapped away at a typewriter. Love letters to language, the English alphabet, wordplay, experimentalism, abcedarian, Creeley, Kroetsch. Offerings.

The very word “this” and its connotation quickly becomes a present-tense mantra for Weaver and borrowed lines that contain the word by notable (quoted) others. This: replacement – anonymous either because indescribable or intentionally otherwise – for a name, a feeling, a place, a segue, a war, an event, the implications, the result, the end… Why this and not that? Why this at all? Why, underlined.

Some stream of consciousness type poems with seeming disconnection read like internal monologue which is constantly self-disrupting but so well-written that nearly each line holds the grandeur of a title of a (not yet written) poem. Others are beautiful hybrids of contrasting prose-poems within a single prose-poem. Weaver’s cat. Well-worth re-reading to attempt to connect the dots within and between pieces.

If I had read Guns, Germs, and Steel, I would draw a link by way of homage.

What follows is one in a series of poems entitled Politics, sardonically philosophical with humanity.

Politics

The oak tree doesn’t care
whose lot its leaves fall on.
Say what you will about Freddy Krueger,
it’s nice to see a man take pride in his work.
Don’t you think it’s suspicious no one’s ever
seen Karl Marx and Bill Gates in the same place
at the same time? I mean, I’m not saying.
I’m just saying. Even when the mind
isn’t minding, the brain is still braining.
After the long days of rain,
the first robins begin to sing.
By all means, write beautiful testimonials to love.
Standards of economy dictate that a girl
dead at five has lived a whole life.
He’s got money to burn
you. Let’s bomb them back to the Flintstone age.
Who knows why democracy doesn’t work?
The earthworm lobby wants to know
when last week’s rainstorm and every
grade twelve biology class will be declared
a state of emergency. Perhaps Marx’s great
insight was that a scared world is really not
different from a scared one. I take great comfort
in knowing that when I die the multinational
corporations will go on without me.

A thoroughly refreshing read. You can buy your copy online via All Lit Up , by visiting Chaudiere Books at the ottawa small press fair this Saturday, November 7th at the Jack Purcell Community Centre (upstairs), between noon and 5, or visit Chaudiere Books’ website for more information:  http://www.chaudierebooks.com/

some photos from last night's spring poetry launch;

Here are some photos from last night's big spring poetry launch for The Collected Poems of William Hawkins, ed. Cameron Anstee, and N.W. Lea's Understander. Thanks everyone for showing up, to Jesse Patrick Ferguson for his brilliant acoustic sets, and to Raw Sugar Cafe for their continued support! 

Stephen Brockwell and Bob Hogg (with Marilyn Irwin in the background

Jesse Patrick Ferguson,

 

Nina Jane and Vivian Vavassis

Cameron Anstee, reading in William Hawkins' stead,

INVENTORY! (Happy Canada Day!

While most might be out and about celebrating Canada Day around Ottawa, we're deep in the midst of re-organizing, as the indomitable Marilyn Irwin is down in our basement waist-high in counting, sorting and shelving all of the Chaudiere inventory! (We know. Today, right? But she was the one who suggested it.) The last of the wayward boxes of inventory arrived a few weeks ago from our former co-publisher, and were beginning to fill up the living room, the dining room, etcetera. After years of disorganization, our re-building year will now feature actual knowledge of how many copies of our dozen or so titles we have on hand.

Don't worry: we're going to let her off the hook around 3pm with drinks, home-made gazpacho and all the veggie burgers she can carry.

National Poetry Month 2014: Marilyn Irwin,

straight, forward

it’s funny

how we prioritize

the cats of Tashirojima                        are feral, hungry

outnumber the humans                        by eyes, wanting

paw watches                                        ferry times

the frequency of a domestic cat’s purr

matches the frequency

muscles and bones self-repair

clowders convene                                for Neko-jinja

death by    

buried under    

safe in

rock   

tribute    

human err of hope

it’s funny

how we prioritize

the silkworms spin their                      silk the mice eat the silk

worms the cats eat                               the mice

no dogs                                                allowed

it’s funny

how we prioritize

The International Court of Justice       Japan can no longer kill whales

in the name of science                         in Antarctica

i once slept in the belly of a sleeping whale

i didn’t want to wake

Japan was to determine                       commercial whaling of some species

without danger                                    of extinction   

when he moved, i moved

when he woke, i was better

he fell back asleep

it’s funny

how we prioritize

Marilyn Irwin’s work has been published by above/ground press,  Arc Poetry Magazine (where she is a Contributing Editor), Bywords, In/Words, and New American Writing, among others.

A graduate of Algonquin College’s Creative Writing program and winner of Arc’s 2013 Diana Brebner Prize, she has three chapbooks: for when you pick daisies (2010),  flicker (2012), and little nothings (2012). for when you pick daisies was reprinted in full in the collection Ground rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013. 

She is currently shaping her first full-length collection.

Ground Rules launch: a report,

On Saturday, December 7, 2013, we celebrated the publication of the first title in our Chaudiere Books re-launch at The Manx Pub. Thanks so much to David O'Meara and The Manx Pub for hosting the event, and Sean Wilson and the Ottawa International Writers Festival for their sponsorship, and ongoing support. Lovingly hosted by myself, we launched Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 [see ordering information here] to a packed house with readings by contributors Marilyn Irwin, Stephen Brockwell and Sharon Harris. We even had copies available of the limited-edition chapbook I simply began: above/ground press at 20 [an interview with rob mclennan] (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, August 2013), a lengthy interview with myself on the beginnings and history of the press that Cameron Anstee conducted [read an excerpt of such here], as well as the previous above/ground press anthology, Groundswell: the best of above/ground press 1993-2003 (Fredericton NB: Broken Jaw Press, 2003).

Marilyn Irwin has been doing quite well lately, from her 2013 Diana Brebner Award win to poems in this year's issue of New American Writing. Part of her reading included a new poem longer than a single page (as she said during her reading, anyone familiar with her work would know exactly how shocking an idea like that is). Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good picture of her (but hopefully someone else did).

Stephen Brockwell, while reading from his reprinted chapbook, Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment), included in the new anthology, was good enough to read a poem in the anthology by Stephanie Bolster. Brockwell's chapbook was an earlier work-in-progress excerpt (one of two such fragments of the same work produced through above/ground press) from what has newly appeared as The Complete Surprising Fragments of Improbable Books through Toronto's Mansfield Press. Notice, too, if you skim the crowd behind this photo of Stephen Brockwell, you can catch glimpses of Brian and Pearl Pirie, Cameron Anstee, Ben Ladouceur, Christine McNair and Monty Reid, among others.

Toronto writer and artist Sharon Harris read from a scattering of works, including her "more fun with 'pataphysics," originally produced by above/ground press as an issue of STANZAS and reprinted in the anthology, as well as a number of pieces from a couple works-in-progress. Harris is originally from Sarnia, Ontario, and read a couple of poems composed on and around her hometown (including some stories that don't seem restricted to those from Sarnia, and could easily be Ottawa Valley stories).

Writer, book conservator, designer and new co-publisher Christine McNair, who is also my lovely wife, designed and produced the book (which is absolutely gorgeous). If you can imagine, two weeks plus earlier, she managed to approve cover stock for the anthology from her hospital bed in the midst of a thirty-seven hour labour. We were enormously happy that she was able to be on hand for the event with our other co-production, two-and-a-half-week-old Rose, making this the baby's first public outing (basically, her first non-baby outing) and first literary reading. We suspect there might be many more such readings in her future!

If you were unable to make the event, fret not; the entire reading was recorded, and will be posted come spring as part of the first Chaudiere Books podcast. Expect to see at least one more Ottawa launch with different readers around the same time, and schemes are cooking to see launches in Toronto, Montreal and even Calgary. Have you joined our Facebook group yet, to keep apprised of updates? And of course, we will be announcing our Indiegogo campaign in the New Year, as well as our 2014 forthcoming titles. Stay tuned!

book launch! Ground rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013

Produced to begin the re-launch of Ottawa literary publisher Chaudiere Books, co-publishers rob mclennan and Christine McNair invite you to the launch of Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013.

Co-sponsored by our friends at the Ottawa International Writers Festival and The Manx Pub, the event will feature readings by three of the book’s contributors: Sharon Harris (Toronto), Marilyn Irwin (Ottawa) and Stephen Brockwell (Ottawa). The event will be (lovingly) hosted by Chaudiere Books co-founder, editor and co-publisher rob mclennan.

5pm, Saturday, December 7, 2013

The Manx Pub

370 Elgin Street, Ottawa

Sharon Harris [pictured] is a Toronto artist/writer whose poems have been anthologized in The Broadview Introduction to Literature, The Last Vispo, and Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry. She is the author of chapbooks from bookthug, In Case of Emergency Press, and above/ground, and her first full-length collection, Avatar, was published by The Mercury Press. She has written articles for Geist, The Globe & Mail, and Open Book Toronto;  is a past contributor to Torontoist and Word Magazine; and her work has been published in The National Post, dANDelion, The Capilano Review, Drunken Boat, The Volta, broken pencil, and Vallum. I Love You Toronto, her exhibition of photographs, appeared in newspapers, magazines, and on radio and television across Canada.

Marilyn Irwin’s work has been published by above/ground press, Arc, Bywords, and New American Writing. A graduate of Algonquin College’s Creative Writing program, she has three chapbooks: for when you pick daisies (2010), flicker (2012), and little nothings (2012). She won Arc Poetry Magazine’s Diana Brebner Prize this year.

Stephen Brockwell cut his writing teeth in the eighties in Montreal, appearing on French and English CBC Radio and in the anthologies Cross/cut: Contemporary English Quebec Poetry and The Insecurity of Art (both VéhiculePress, 1982). George Woodcock described Brockwell's first book, The Wire in Fences (Balmuir, 1987) as having an extraordinary range of empathies and perceptions. Harold Bloom wrote that Brockwell's second book, Cometology (ECW Press, 2001), held rare and authentic promise. Fruitfly Geographic won the Archibald Lampman award for best book of poetry in Ottawa in 2005. His Complete Surprising Fragments of Improbable Books is newly out from Mansfield Press. Brockwell currently operates a small IT consulting company from the 7th floor of the Chateau Laurier and lives in a house perpetually under construction.

Working out of Ottawa, poet and publisher rob mclennan’s baby, above/ground press, marks a second decade of the production of broadsheets, chapbooks, magazines, and anthologies that trace out the best shapes of the best of contemporary Canadian (and, increasingly, international) poetry. From the span of that second ten of years, he has compiled this book of traceries: a selection of work by writers ranging from the likes of the late Artie Gold, and Robert Kroetsch, to the living derek beaulieu, Rachel Zolf, Eric Folsom, Natalie Simpson, etc., all collected here as representative of a decade’s aesthetic count.

                        from Gil McElroy’s “Introduction: An Integral”

Edited by rob mclennan, with an introduction by Gil McElroy, Ground Rules features writing from the second decade of one of the most active micro publishers in Canada, selected from a series of hundreds of publications lovingly edited, produced and distributed by editor/publisher rob mclennan. A follow-up to Groundswell: best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (Broken Jaw Press, 2003), Ground Rules includes a wide range of work by Artie Gold, Mark Cochrane, Suzanne Zelazo, derek beaulieu, Stephanie Bolster, Amanda Earl, Nathanaël, Lisa Samuels, Rachel Zolf, Sharon Harris, D. G. Jones, Julia Williams, Eric Folsom, Gregory Betts, Natalie Simpson, Aaron Tucker, Monty Reid, William Hawkins, Emily Carr, Cameron Anstee, Helen Hajnoczky, Marilyn Irwin, Stephen Brockwell, Robert Kroetsch and rob mclennan.

Copies of the book will be available at the event. See the OIWF link to the event here.