Nina Jane Drystek reviews Roland Prevost's Singular Plurals (2014)

Ottawa poet Nina Jane Drystek reviews Roland Prevost's Singular Plurals (2014) over at the Arc Poetry Magazine website. Thanks much! This is the second full review of Prevost's first trade collection (not counting a small mention by Pearl Pirie, here) after Douglas Barbour's review over at his electric ruckus blog. You can see Drystek's full review, here. And of course, copies of Singular Plurals can be ordered directly here.

Author spotlight #6 : N.W. Lea,

N.W. Lea, who formerly published under Nicholas Lea, lives and writes in Ottawa. He is the author of three chapbooks--light years (Ottawa: above/ground press, 2006), Actual Girl (Toronto: The Emergency Response Unit, 2011) and Present! (above/ground press, 2014)--and two full-length poetry collections produced through Chaudiere Books: Everything is Movies (2007) and Understander (2015).

A recent poem appeared over at the dusie blog, with another here, and even further at ditch. Kate Greenstreet did an interview with him shortly after the publication of Everything is Movies, and Marcus McCann wrote on him for the Globe and Mail book blog. A review of Present! lives here, and a recent interview conducted by rob mclennan lives here. A while back, rob mclennan even did a profile of N.W. Lea for Open Book: Ontario, and, more recently, Apt 613 did a short piece on the new collection.

His Everything is Movies can be ordered directly here, and his new collection, Understander, here.

Author spotlight #5 : William Hawkins,

Born in 1940 in Ottawa, Ontario, legendary poet and musician William Hawkins is one of the most important artists to emerge from Canada’s capital. After side trips to the West Coast and Mexico, he resides in the capital, pursuing enlightenment or a reasonable alternative thereto. Hawkins worked as a truck driver, cook, journalist and musician before settling on the taxi profession as a means of preserving integrity and ensuring near-poverty. He is now retired. His work appeared in the seminal anthology New Wave Canada: The New Explosion in Canadian Poetry (Toronto: Contact Press, 1966) edited by Raymond Souster and Modern Canadian Verse (Toronto: Oxford, 1967) edited by A.J.M. Smith. He published six books from 1964-1974, including Ottawa Poems (Kitchener: Weed/Flower Press, 1966) and The Madman’s War (Ottawa: S.A.W. Publications, 1974). Broken Jaw Press published his Dancing Alone: Selected Poems in 2005, and later chapbooks include the black prince of bank street (Ottawa: above/ground press, 2007) and Sweet and Sour Nothings (Ottawa: Apt 9 Press, 2010), as well as Wm Hawkins: A Descriptive Biography (Apt 9 Press, 2010). He attended the influential 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference, and organized poetry readings at Ottawa’s infamous Le Hibou Coffeehouse. An acclaimed songwriter, he wrote songs and performed in bands (with the likes of Bruce Cockburn, David Wiffen, Darius Brubeck, and others), and published widely in Canada’s most important little magazines of the 1960s before retreating into silence in the 1970s and working as a cab driver until his retirement in 2012.

A a tribute CD (Dancing Alone: The Songs of William Hawkins) was released in 2008, with The Children's first album released in 2013. In 2013, he was inducted into the VerseOttawa Hall of Honour [see Pearl Pirie's report on such here; Cameron Anstee's post on such here; see rob mclennan's introduction here]. Roy MacSkimming's introduction to Dancing Alone: Selected Poems lives here, as does an interview conducted by rob mclennan around the same time.

The Collected Poems of William Hawkins, edited by Cameron Anstee [an interview with Anstee on the project lives here], was released earlier this year, and gathers Hawkins’s complete output. His books are printed alongside previously unpublished and uncollected poems including early magazine publications, the long-lost book Sweet and Sour Nothings, poems from the time of his extended silence, as well as all work produced since his gradual re-appearance in the 1990s. This volume presents the generous, defiant, idiosyncratic, and compelling work of William Hawkins in its entirety. The Collected Poems of William Hawkins can be ordered directly, here.

A recent Apt 613 article on Hawkins appears here, as does a profile on Hawkins by rob mclennan at Open Book: Ontario. The audio of Hawkins on CBC Radio's All in a Day earlier this year lives here. Cameron Anstee posted a complete bibliography for Hawkins in 2014.

Christine McNair interviewed over at Touch the Donkey

Ottawa poet and Chaudiere Books co-publisher Christine McNair is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey around her work-in-progress second poetry manuscript, "Charm."

Amanda Earl : Where Do You Write, My Lovely?

Chaudiere author Amanda Earl has contributed to Amish Trivedi's series on writers and their spaces, "Where Do You Write, My Lovely?" You can see her contribution to his ongoing series here, as well as previous contributions by Jennifer Londry and rob mclennan.