National Poetry Month 2014: Helen Hajnoczky,

The Rubricator

as an aside, a wave caught mid crash

           ink stippled vellum,

     pricked for a fever.

                     but why should I whisper?

No blue blush of crustacean

a cup of ocean is clear,

            but drop upon drop it builds until blue

                        the rubricator begins to drool.

In the morning, the clouds run red.

In my dream, the water was red.

Boil the sea creatures,

                        their shells become red.

Helen Hajnoczky's first book Poets and Killers: A Life in Advertising was published in 2010 by Snare Books, an imprint of Invisible Publishing. She blogs http://ateacozyisasometimes.blogspot.ca/ and tweets @helenhajnoczky. Her most recent chapbooks are The Double Bind Dictionary from above/ground press, and in False Friends from No Press.

Amanda Earl: On Perfection in Poetry & the Need to Hoard One’s Poems

Amanda Earl posted a short essay, "On Perfection in Poetry & the Need to Hoard One’s Poems," over at her enormously clever blog.

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

National Poetry Month 2014: N.W. Lea,

Eyes

I get off the phone and feel

normal

for a while--inoculating conversation!

I ring

with a quiet wound.

I wear the pants of the sun.

My parts feel cold

and disturbed

and then echoic.

Nuts to your avatar!

I watch lawns bleed, snow

turn to cement. Basically,

I honour my eyes.

N.W. Lea lives and writes in Ottawa. He is the author of three chapbooks, light years (above/ground press, 2006), Actual Girl (The Emergency Response Unit, 2011) and Present! (above/ground press, 2014), as well as the full-length collection, Everything is Movies (Chaudiere Books, 2007).