Ryan Pratt's Favourite Poetry of 2015 : Amanda Earl and N.W. Lea

Ryan Pratt has posted his "Favourite Poetry of 2015" list, and was good enough to include Amanda Earl's Kiki (2014) and N.W. Lea's Understander (2015) as part of his ten-title list of books and chapbooks. Thanks so much! And of course, copies of these and many more (all, even) of our titles are still very much available, and can be ordered directly through All Lit Up.

Amanda Earl : Sessions from the Dream House Aria

Amanda Earl has a new poem as part of her "Sessions from the Dream House Aria" newly posted over at The Kitchen Poet.

A new poem by Marcus McCann : The Steel Chisel

Marcus McCann has a new poem in the December issue of The Steel Chisel.

Happy Christmas! from Chaudiere Books,

Happy Christmas from everyone at Chaudiere Books! including Christine and rob, Rose the Intern (with a new intern forthcoming in April), and even Grumpy Santa. Wishing the best for 2016.

Amanda Earl : two sex columns (Berfrois + Queen Mob's Teahouse,

Chaudiere author Amanda Earl, author of Kiki (2014), now has two new sex columns posted online: "A Year In Sex" at Berfrois, and "Why I'm Open About Sex" at Queen Mob's Teahouse.

Amanda Earl : A Celebration of Canadian Visual / Concrete Poetry : Brick Books

Amanda Earl's expansive two-part post, A Celebration of Canadian Visual / Concrete Poetry, is now online as part of Brick Books' ongoing Celebration of Canadian Poetry. As part of her post, she features statements and work by Chris Turnbull [pictured: her "I, ecotone"], Jordan Abel, Gary Barwin, Derek Beaulieu, Michael e. Casteels, Judith Copithorne, Helen Hajnoczky, Donato Mancini, Billy Mavreas, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, gustave morin, michèle provost, a rawlings, Shane Rhodes, Eric Schmaltz and Eric Zboya.

See part one here and part two here.

Amanda Earl collaborates with Ikenna Onyegbula (OpenSecret)

Chaudiere author Amanda Earl has some new collaborative work produced with Ikenna Onyegbula (also known as Ottawa spoken word performance poet OpenSecret).

Apartment613 : 2015 gift guide of local (Ottawa) books: Hawkins,

Apartment613 has just released their 2015 gift guide of local books, highlighting Chaudiere titles by William Hawkins (see their review of his book here) and N.W. Lea (see their review of his book here), as well as a whole slew of other Ottawa-based literary activity. Thanks so much!

Pearl Pirie on Anne Le Dressay : Brick Books' Celebration of Canadian Poetry

Pearl Pirie was good enough to do a short write-up on Anne Le Dressay as part of Brick Books' ongoing Celebration of Canadian Poetry. Thanks so much! She also wrote on Le Dressay's second trade collection, Old Winter, as part of her "95 Books" project, here. And of course, copies of Old Winter are still very much available.

upcoming (Ottawa) poetry workshops by Pearl Pirie + rob mclennan

Both Pearl Pirie and rob mclennan are running eight-session poetry workshops in January-February 2016.

For information on Pirie's workshops, click here.

For information on mclennan's workshops, click here.

Chris Turnbull launches w/ Roger Farr in Vancouver, December 16, 2015

Chris Turnbull launches continua with Vancouver poet Roger Farr as part of Lunch Poems at SFU in Vancouver on Wednesday, December 16 at noon.

Simon Fraser University (SFU) at Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 5K3

CHRIS TURNBULL lives in Kemptville, Ontario. Her recent book, continua (Chaudiere Books 2015) is a multi-voice and visual piece that screens and casts historical, landscape, artefact, and bodily transitions and movements onto page. Textual and spatial elements are "within each other without ever touching"; the "page" is object and projection. Previous work includes [ untitled ] in o w n (CUE Books 2015), alongside work by Heather Hermant and angela rawlings. She publishes poems on trails through her footpress, rout/e.

ROGER FARR is the author of three books of poetry, most recently IKMQ (New Star, 2012), which was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Prize. His writing is concerned with the relationship between radical social movements, aesthetics, and everyday life. Currently he is carrying out psychogeographical research in Vancouver and Nanaimo in preparation for a new book. He still teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Capilano University.

Facebook invite here: https://www.facebook.com/events/196525860684222/

a video of William Hawkins' recent reading/launch at The Manx Pub,

Joseph Hickey was good enough to record Ottawa poet William Hawkins' reading from this past weekend, where he performed as part of the big Chaudiere Books fall poetry launch. Thanks to all who came out to support our three fall poetry titles (Weaver, Londry, Turnbull) and Hawkins, who wasn't able to participate in a launch this past spring (and you know about tonight's Toronto launch, right? Hawkins won't be able to attend, but the other three will be reading a selection of his poems alongside their own) And of course, copies of The Collected Poems of William Hawkins, ed. Cameron Anstee (2015) are still very much available.

Jennifer Londry (w/ Carolyn Smart + Jeanette Lynes) : Kingston (triple) Book Launch, December 14, 2015

Jennifer Londry launches her new Chaudiere title, Tatterdemalion, in Kingston at Novel Idea Bookstore on Monday, December 14, 2015, as part of a triple book launch alongside poets Carolyn Smart and Jeanette Lynes.

Novel Idea Bookstore
Monday, December 14, 2015
156 Princess Street, Kingston ON
7-9pm

Book Launch and Reading, with music by Roger Dorey, a Kingston singer/songwriter, and Brockville musician Bob Londry.

See the facebook invitation here: https://www.facebook.com/events/656142104527344/

Cameron Anstee and Apt. 9 Press featured in Ottawa Life Magazine

Ottawa poet, editor and publisher Cameron Anstee, editor of The Collected Poems of William Hawkins [a book we celebrate this Saturday at The Manx Pub, as part of our fall poetry launch] and his Apt. 9 Press are featured in a recent article over at Ottawa Life Magazine. Congratulations, sir!

Roland Prevost interviews Gil McElroy,

Chaudiere Books author Roland Prevost interviews Colborne, Ontario poet, curator and arts critic Gil McElroy over at Queen Mob's Teahouse.

Poets Online Talking About Coffee : Amanda Earl,

Amanda Earl is interviewed over at Queen Mob's Teahouse, as part of their series "Poets Online Talking About Coffee."

Bryan Sentes on John Newlove

Montreal writer and critic Bryan Sentes has posted his essay, "A Class of One’s Own: an all-too-brief appreciation of the poetry of John Newlove," over at his blog. And of course, copies of A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove can be ordered directly here.

Chaudiere Books big fall poetry launch (Toronto): Londry, Weaver + Turnbull

The Chaudiere Books FALL POETRY LAUNCH makes its way to Toronto! With launches by Kingston poet Jennifer Londry (Tatterdemalion), Kemptville poet Chris Turnbull (continua) and Toronto poet Andy Weaver (this).

[and don't forget our upcoming Ottawa launch as well!]

Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Doors open at 7:30pm / Readings begin at 8:00pm

Videofag, 187 Augusta Avenue, Toronto, Ontario
http://www.videofag.com/

Books will be available for purchase
Cash bar

Andy Weaver has published two previous books of poetry, Were the bees (NeWest Press, 2005) and Gangson (NeWest Press, 2011), and a recent chapbook, Concatenations, through above/ground press. He teaches contemporary poetry and poetics at York University.

For more information on this, including ordering: https://alllitup.ca/books/T/this

Chris Turnbull lives near Ottawa. Her short opti/surface work, “[ untitled ],” is one of a trio (with angela rawlings and Heather Hermant) in o w n (Vancouver: Cue Books, 2014). continua is her first full collection of poetry.

For more information on continua, including ordering: https://alllitup.ca/books/C/continua

Jennifer Londry is the author of two previous books of poetry: Life and Death in Cheap Motels, which was adapted for stage, and After the Words, which was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award. A featured reader at the 2009 Kingston Writers’ Festival and at the 2011 Sweetwater 905 in Northern BC, she has also facilitated and organized a literary event for Alzheimer’s Awareness. Jen has taught creative writing and recently was a judge for Words from the Street, a creative writing competition, which gives a voice to the downtrodden, in association with The Toronto Writers’ Collective. She is also a contributor to the anthologies: A Crystal through which Love Passes, Glosas for P.K. Page (Buschek Books, 2013), Where the nights Are twice As long, Love Letters of Canadian Poets (Goose Lane Editions, 2015), and has work forthcoming in the Alzheimer’s anthology, A Rewording Life, editor Diane Schoemperlen, creator Sheryl Gordon. Currently Jen is collaborating with the documentary filmmaker Sarah Turnbull at the Carleton School of Journalism and Communications to produce a mental health video.

For more information on Tatterdemalion, including ordering: https://alllitup.ca/books/T/Tatterdemalion

generic pronoun : Andy Weaver on Robert Duncan

Andy Weaver guest-posts over at generic pronoun with the essay "Robert Duncan: Reading as Divine Insurrection."

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/

Chaudiere Books at the ottawa small press fair; this weekend,

We will once again be participating in the semi-annual ottawa small press book fair, which will be held on Saturday, November 7, 2015 at the Jack Purcell Community Centre with all three of our new fall titles available, as well as our entire back catalogue! Might we see you?

Chaudiere Books featured at All Lit Up!

Chaudiere Books is featured in the All Lit Up series "In House," a short spotlight on some of our activities and adventures over the past few years. Thanks much!

Jennifer Londry (w/ Carolyn Smart) launches in Saskatoon, November 4

Wednesday, November 4 at 4 p.m. in Arts 217, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon

Poets Carolyn Smart and Jennifer Londry will read from their new poetry collections, respectively, Careen and Tatterdemalion, as part of the MFA in Writing's Po-Vember poetry series.

For more information, contact Jeanette Lynes: (306) 966-2781, jeanette.lynes@usask.ca

http://artsandscience.usask.ca/news/articles/134/Poetry_Reading_Tattered_Outlaws

recent videos: Amanda Earl + Monty Reid,

The video of Amanda Earl's recent feature at The TREE Reading Series has been posted online. Also, the ottawa international writers festival has been posting a series of "talking about stories" posts, including one with Amanda Earl, and another with Monty Reid.

Pearl Pirie reviews Anne Le Dressay's Old Winter (2007)

Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie does a short write-up on Anne Le Dressay's Old Winter (Chaudiere Books, 2007) as part of her "95 Books" project [see Pirie's original post here]. Thanks so much! And of course, copies of Old Winter can be ordered directly, here.

149. Old Winter by Anne Le Dressay (Chaudiere, 2007)
Le Dressay has been a poet I’ve followed for nearly 2 decades, watching for specks. I like her cadence, her worldview, her development of ideas.

A reread. Funny how the poems I previously marked, I’m not sure why and poems I didn’t bookmark strike me more now. I bookmark different poems. Here, a meditation on the daily takes a deeper significance without feeling forced but like truth found by reflecting backwards inside the poem itself a piece of thought. Sometimes there seems to be too much meat around the nut of the poem but still the nut itself is insightful. For example.

p. 77

    the In memorium card
    your father hands out to all the staff
    after the funeral.

    Here you are, your photo, your name,
    your age at time of death (18 years
    and 5 months

    [...] he came back to work brittle
    and brave and tearless, as id required of men.
    He gave us each a card with your photo.

    Here you are, smiling in the sun
    over 30 years later, still in the world
    in some form. And that, perhaps,

    is what your father wanted.

She keeps in these poems the habit of looping back with a finishing stitch to bind the poem’s knot. She persists in ending lines in mid-grammatical phrase to push it forward. It seems well enough done to be a functional choice, even though the line-end type often jars me, it doesn’t where she applies it.

These poems go in a long-reach back and point ahead as well. There’s something of a chronological order but I can’t hold it against them. One of the early poems gets at a larger truthiness. For some reason menstruation is a shame. Half the planet does its bloody business in silence. I remember talking with a male friend who had a poem which he considered violent and shocking because there was a blood in the toilet and I said that’s a quarter of women’s daily life, about as common as soap in a bathroom. I don’t read blood as violence. But maybe I was being obstinate as well. There is a violence to blood in hushed tones. To have a period and shame is the cause of kids who happen to be female quitting school. My aunt was told she had blood on her clothes as a little girl and she had no idea why. In a family of 14, no one gives a head up or explanation. A generation later, I thought a pad and strapping would be worn like a holster and my thigh would split open. My body looking ready a couple years before school got around to mentioning anything lucid.

So, all which is to say her poem, “First Blood” stuck me. She ends it with “First blood” and a matter-of-fact thought:Well, there it is“. Admitting powerfully in the poem, silence as the least safe thing.

Chaudiere Books' 2015 Fall Poetry Launch! Londry, Turnbull, Weaver + Hawkins, November 28, 2015

The Writers Festival is pleased to be hosting a special Fall launch for Ottawa’s own Chaudiere Books!

Co-publishers rob mclennan and Christine McNair, have another great slate of books coming your way! Join us for readings and launches by Andy Weaver (this), Chris Turnbull (continua), Jennifer Londry (Tatterdemalion) and William Hawkins (The Collected Poems of William Hawkins).

The Bywords 2015 John Newlove Poetry Award Reading and Ceremony, October 26, 2015

Monday, October 26, 2015, 6:30pm - the Bywords 2015 John Newlove Poetry Award Reading and Ceremony at the Ottawa International Writers Festival, Maxwell's, 340 Elgin Street. Free! Join us for the launch of Heel by Matthew Walsh, the Bywords 2014 John Newlove Award Recipient. Featuring readings by this year’s honourable mentions and award recipient (to be announced at the reading), plus music by Marie-Josée Houle. This is a night to celebrate the fine poetry of John Newlove, a poet who lived in Ottawa for the last twenty years of his life. We are also celebrating Bywords.ca, which is in its 12th year, all the volunteers, contributors, readers, event organizers and others who ensure that the site provides poetry and information to help residents of Ottawa and environs to be part of our city's rich literary culture.

Contact Info: Amanda Earl, Managing Editor, Tel. 613-868-1364; e-mail: amanda@bywords.ca

John Newlove (1938-2003) was an award-winning Saskatchewan poet who spent his last years in the City of Ottawa. In 2007, Chaudiere Books published A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove, edited by Robert McTavish. Copies can be ordered directly, here.

our fall poetry titles now available for order!

Our fall poetry titles are now available for ordering! Check out Andy Weaver's this, Jennifer Londry's Tatterdemalion and Chris Turnbull's continua, with all the rest of our titles also available (obviously). And of course, review copies of all are available upon request! Just send an email to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com

rob mclennan : an interview,

Chaudiere author and co-publisher rob mclennan was interviewed recently by Brock University student Hayley Malouin on his first collection of stories, The Uncertainty Principle (2014). Copies of the book, of course, can be ordered directly here.

Jacqueline Valencia reviews Amanda Earl's Kiki (2014)

Jacqueline Valencia was good enough to review Amanda Earl's Kiki (2014) as part of a group review over at All Lit Up. Thanks, much! You can see her original review here.

This is the sixth review of Kiki, after Anne Burke reviewed such via The League of Canadian Poets, "Indiereadergirl" reviewed such over at her indiereadergirl0329 blog, Jonathan Ball reviewed such over at the Winnipeg Free Press, Douglas Barbour reviewed such over at his blog, and Matthew J. Hall was good enough to review such over at The Small Press Book Review. 

And of course, copies can be ordered directly via All Lit Up!

Amanda Earl : Queen Mob's Teahouse and Matrix

Amanda Earl has a new piece, "MISFIT DOC: JAZZ (parts 1V, V, VI and V11)," now online at Queen Mob's Teahouse in their "misfit documents" series. An earlier part of the same series, "MISFIT DOC: JAZZ (parts 1, 11 and 111)," appeared here.

Another poem of hers appeared online recently via Matrix magazine.

Cameron Anstee hosts N.W. Lea and BookThug author Josh Massey

Amanda Earl : Queen Mob's Teahouse

Amanda Earl has a new piece, "MISFIT DOC: JAZZ (parts 1, 11 and 111)," now online at Queen Mob's Teahouse in their "misfit documents" series.

A short interview with Andy Weaver

Andy Weaver has published two books of poetry, Were the bees (NeWest, 2005) and Gangson (NeWest, 2011), and a recent chapbook, Concatenations, through above/ground press. He teaches contemporary poetry and poetics and York University in Toronto. His third book of poetry, this, appears in October through Chaudiere Books.

Q: What was the original impulse for this?

A: I’ve been working and thinking a lot on theories of the sublime in relation to contemporary poetry. Specifically, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years working through Jean-François Lyotard’s theorizations of the immanent sublime. Basically, the sublime is something we can encounter or think of, but we can’t present an example of it to our minds—“the present moment” is one that Lyotard thinks about a lot. this is an attempt to work through “this-ness” in the sense of an immanent sublime; something we know exists, but something we can never really understand. So, I was trying to think about this-ness, not in the sense of “this present” or “this idea,” but “this this,” whatever that might be, and how that idea could be represented and worked through in language.

Q: Your work has been increasingly geared toward an exploration towards language itself. Why do you think this is, and whom have your models been? I know you’ve spoken of earlier influences such as Mina Loy and Robert Duncan, for example.

A: Yes, there’s definitely been a growing focus toward investigating language as language in my work. I don’t know that there's a simple answer for why. My scholarly work has moved more in that direction, and there always seems to be a direct link between my creative and scholarly interests. I guess it’s just what has captured my attention. Certainly, a lot of the people I’ve been reading over the last ten years or so have elements of investigating or highlighting language as language. Robert Duncan is a good example of that, though he’s also very careful not to go down the rabbit hole, so to speak. All of the Black Mountain writers walk that line, and they all work as influences in different ways, especially Duncan and Creeley. John Cage is also central. Daphne Marlatt and Fred Wah are both important to me, because they receive but also work to modify that Black Mountain influence. Erín Mouré’s work, especially how she manages to reinvent herself as a writer, is always in my mind. And I tend to spend a lot of time reading work by Harryette Mullen, Juliana Spahr, Lisa Robertson, Susan Howe, and Robert Kroetsch. I’m probably forgetting a lot of names. I’ve been reading a lot of H. D. and Charles Reznikoff over the last year or two, though I don’t know that they will directly influence my writing. I’ve read a fair amount of Language Poetry in the past, and they were really important to me when I was writing were the bees and gangson, but they weren’t direct influences on this. Adam Dickinson is a close friend and essential sounding board for me, and I love reading his work. That’s a wide-ranging list, but I think they all share an interest in the workings of language itself, though not always to the same degree or in the same ways.

Q: Your list includes a number of poets who utilize and engage with theory throughout their poetry, from the more overt poem-essay by Spahr, Moure and Robertson, to far more subtle explorations. Separate to your specifically scholarly works, where do you feel your writing fits along the nebulous spectrum of the poem-essay, and what do you feel your work can bring to larger conversations on form?

A: I don’t think of my work as very essayistic, but I do think my work is very idea driven—I guess it shares that with a lot of poem-essays. I’ve been reading Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, which is absolutely astonishing. That book maneuvers the divide between poem and essay in a way I can’t. Phil Hall’s Killdeer exists at that divide, too, though in a very different way. I think a poem-essay tends to work through ideas in the body of the poem, in a meditative way—it documents the process of working through an idea. My work tends, I think, to enact a thought, but with little meditation in the poem itself. The work of meditating on an idea is something that happens outside the poem for me, and the poem works as a process of enacting a thought, rather than meditating on a thought.

As for the conversation on form, I don’t know that I have anything very new to offer. Robert Duncan always referred to himself as a derivative poet, by which he meant that he was an amalgamation of the poets who influenced him; Duncan is very much the central influence on my writing and thinking, but—as he did—I try to adapt and string together different, sometimes seemingly incompatible influences. So, I try to write in a way that acknowledges the work of those writers who have influenced me: Black Mountain, TISH, Language, while being open to outliers (A. R. Ammons, for instance, or H.D., Charles Reznikoff, Mouré, or even someone very stylistically different, like Alden Nowlan). I like to think that my form is an amalgamation of those different elements, along with whatever idiosyncratic aspects I might bring to the mixture.

I think one of the things that often frustrate me about more conventionally lyric poems is that they’re written as though they don’t have a form, or as though form is a natural, secondary concern to the content. I tend to like poetry that is consciously very aware that writing a poem is a very formal activity, one based in artifice. In my mind, there’s nothing natural about writing a poem.

Q: I’ve always been curious about your attachment to Robert Duncan. What is it about his “writing and thinking” that has so deeply influenced your own?

A: I have a lot of favourite poets, but Duncan really does stand above the rest for me, and he has since I first encountered his work in the late 1990s. I think he had one of the great ears of the century—his work is beautifully crafted at the level of sound and rhythm. But there are a lot of poets with great ears out there, and lots that write interesting stuff. I think I always return to Duncan because his politics and his aesthetics are so rich, and they generally agree with mine. I feel that I write as a derivative poet in the same sense that Duncan always stated he was a derivative poet—meaning that he wrote by reading, he wrote by engaging with other texts. I love how he views the world as an organically interrelated whole, and how his notion of rime plays with that. Politically, I love his anarchism and his arguments against hierarchies. I love how he argues that syncretism, the gathering together of disparate ideas, beliefs, and elements, is the basis for writing and a basis for ethics. I love that Duncan always viewed aesthetics as political. So, his writing gives permission to engage with the world on physical, textual, ethical, etc., levels in a way I find extremely productive.

Having said all of that, Duncan had a strong mythical/spiritual side that doesn’t really agree with my worldview. I sometime get a bit lost or uninterested by his writing when he moves firmly into those elements. But I generally try to remain engaged with his writing even then and work to struggle through to see what engaged him about those elements. I think that challenge is a big part of why I love Duncan: for all of the things I love about his work, there are still elements that I really don’t agree with, and that mixture always intrigues me.

Q: The work I’ve seen of yours since the appearance of Gangson (2011), including this and Concatenations (above/ground press, 2014), have engaged more obviously with sound, meaning and visual play, resulting in pieces that look far less like traditional “poems” than the work in your first two books. What might have prompted this shift in structure, or was it always on the horizon?

A: One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about since Gangson is the role of artifice in poetry. Some writers want to downplay it in favour of a more “natural” expression, but throughout this I wanted to emphasize artifice in many ways, and sound and visual play was a major part of that. Emphasizing artifice was important to the work because the book focuses on such an abstract construct: this-ness. The work is an attempt to imagine this-ness, which for me is tied up intricately with the presentation of presentation itself. In order to try to imagine this-ness, it’s important to defamiliarize it as much as possible. We live inside the “this” and so we can never really conceptualize it; all we can offer ourselves are examples of what different this-nesses (different present moments) were once those this-nesses have past. We can’t truly understand an experience or moment while we’re inside it, so this-ness is always something we’re retroactively working to understand—but we can’t experience a moment from the outside, so crucial information of each moment is impossible to regain when we’re trying to understand it. The information we have of past moments is all artificial (it’s memory of information, or it’s imposed information based on other experiences, etc., but it’s not the information itself), and so artifice is necessary in the work in order to emphasize that all attempts to present this-ness are necessarily artificial. For example, “Concatenations” (one section of this) is a series of 26 poems, each made up of 26 alphabetical words, each poem starting with a different letter. The challenge is to say something while dealing with the artifice of language—but that artifice is always there; there’s nothing natural about language, and the poems are just more obviously artificial. The spacing on the page, where words are placed according to visual rules (certain letters on certain lines order the writing by lining up vertically), is just another example of artifice structuring our thought and expression.

Julia Polyck-O'Neill reviews N.W. Lea's Understander (2015)

St. Catharines, Ontario poet Julia Polyck-O'Neill reviews N.W. Lea's Understander (2015) over at her enormously clever blog. Thanks much! This is the second full review of Understander, after Rob Thomas did his write-up over at Apt613. You can see Polyck-O'Neill's full review, here. And of course, copies of Understander can be ordered directly here.

an interview, a bibliography and a talk: mclennan, Pirie and McCann

Chaudiere author and co-publisher rob mclennan was interviewed "On the Art of the Literary Interview" over at The Town Crier, Pearl Pirie has compiled a contemporary list of "Ottawa's Literary and Book Scene," and Marcus McCann recently gave the most amazing talk to the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Class of 1975.

Elizabeth Hay on John Newlove

Ottawa writer Elizabeth Hay was good enough to write on the late poet John Newlove, specifically A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove (Chaudiere Books, 2007), as part of the Brick Books year-long celebration of Canadian poetry. And of course, the book can be ordered here (and is actually on sale right now). You can see her essay here. Thanks so much!

On Tatterdemalion, by Jennifer Londry

The book opens with a scene from the fabled town of Blue, a failed community. A place stuck in time. A colony of lunatics. Plenty represents the shifts in society and its nefarious arc: Christianity, the beneficiaries of the industrial revolution, the advent of product branding to the economic boom of the 1980s. Sadly, More is the result of too much greed, addiction and self-indulgence. We bury our dead like we bury out towns.

What follows, in one way or the other, inevitably circles back to the towns of Blue, Plenty, and More. The poems are a philosophical commentary on society as seen through the eyes of Patience, an inhabitant of Blue, as she journeys from home. What she discovers isn’t exactly the happiness she had hoped for, but, rather a world fraught with anxiety and complicated forms of devotion. A legitimacy to despise our opposites.

People are suspicious by nature—voodoo, spells, unexplained deaths. There were enough crosses in the old days to nail every sinner twice to its wood. Children sexually abused by their caregivers.  The trauma is too much burden for their small bones to carry. The 1900s saw youngsters shoved into chimneys and coalmines to work, and yet upon their deaths they were immortalized in funeral photographs. Good money spent on a picture for the mantel.  

Like it or not we are all tethered to antiquity and science, neither of which seems to have advanced our humanity much over the years. For the most part we say we want common good, but we also want autonomy whilst our finger is pressed firmly against the trigger. So, where does the Tatterdemalion fit in? In the hearts of innocent children lost to the wreckage of time.

Jennifer Londry is the author of two books of poetry: Life and Death in Cheap Motels, which was adapted for stage, and After the Words, which was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award. A featured reader at the 2009 Kingston Writers’ Festival and at the 2011 Sweetwater 905 in Northern BC, she has also facilitated and organized a literary event for Alzheimer’s Awareness. Jen has taught creative writing and recently was a judge for Words from the Street, a creative writing competition, which gives a voice to the downtrodden, in association with The Toronto Writers’ Collective. She is also a contributor to the anthologies: A Crystal through which Love Passes, Glosas for P.K. Page (Buschek Books, 2013), Where the nights Are twice As long, Love Letters of Canadian Poets (Goose Lane Editions, 2015), and has work forthcoming in the Alzheimer’s anthology, A Rewording Life, editor Diane Schoemperlen, creator Sheryl Gordon. Currently Jen is collaborating with the documentary filmmaker Sarah Turnbull at the Carleton School of Journalism and Communications to produce a mental health video. Her third collection, Tatterdemalion, is due this fall with Chaudiere Books.