Best of 2016: beaulieu, Earl + Pirie

Given so much unpleasantness came through 2016, I thought it might be worth taking a moment to focus on some of the positive. With that, I put it to various Chaudiere Books authors and editors to each write a little blurb and/or list of their ‘best of 2016’ to post to the Chaudiere blog. After a year of such nonsense, chaos and stress, let’s take a moment to consider some of the positive aspects of the year before the New Year begins.

derek beaulieu, co-editor, The Calgary Renaissance:

The year in poetry was exemplified by 5 titles. Jordan Abel’s Injun (Talonbooks) continues his conceptual exploration of titles that have fallen out of copyright; each poem an excision and compilation of the occurrences of racist and troubling words and how they generate exclusion. Helen Hajnocky’s Magyarazni (Coach House) combines beautiful two-tone hand drawn visual poems with a Martyrology-like abecedarium of the Hungarian alphabet, each letter echoing with the memories of family and politics. Jordan Scott’s Night & Ox (Coach House) is a long poem of (most) single-word lines, threading out a meditation on fatherhood, voice and intimate moments of language. Moez Surani’s ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行 动 Oперация transforms the lyric subject where even the most innocuous words (“tulip”) conceals acts of barbarity and destruction. Surani’s book populates every shepherd’s field with landmines. Danny Snelson, in Radios (Make Now), uses every word from Ronald Johnson’s Radi Os to rewrite Johnson’s source text (Milton’s Paradise Lost), nothing is lost, the poet reconstructs the same castle from the ruins and rubble. He recently posted a similar list on his blog, here.

Pearl Pirie, author, been shed bore: Best of 2016

In some ways it’s been a very good year. Beyond all the death, disease and disasters, when I start to look back at the literary good, there’s an awful lot.

Fieldwork comes to mind. Susie Osler runs the art installation in the fields and woods and for the second year invited writers to respond to the art and place. It was only 3 days but came at the perfect time to step out of the workaday world. It felt weeks long in the best sense. Wonderful to not have the pressure to talk to people within a few minutes break in events but everyone just being around for a few days. To be in a place where you can see stars, tress, moss, and have solitude, with nothing to do but write was an enormous luxury. The meals were amazing, the writing produced at the finale amazing. Writers Fest sponsored it out by Maberly and it is a lasting memory.

In the world of workshops, a Tree Seed Workshop by Robert Stacey renewed me. I was adrift and skeptical and in a lousy mood and he reignited the passion for the sense of homophonic translation and the value of non-literal story poems as a whole. His enthusiasm and joy is contagious.

Discovering ArtsNight in Hintonburg was wonderful. The concept of pairing of a visual artist, a word artist and a musical artist at each event to do artists talk is a rich fodder for thought. The atmosphere there is friendly and supportive. And after years of watching Atwater from afar I got to go, and even read to the 100 or so people. A friendly warm crowd and I got to meet people I’ve only seen the paper of or online of, like Mary Di Michelle, and Gary Geddes who gave an utterly humble and practiced reading, at comfort with himself, the audience and his material, balancing introspective and world concerns through persona poems.

In great readings, Richard Harrison’s reading as well blew me out of the water. A pitch-perfect understated reading at height of articulacy, mixing knowledge with understanding, densely phrased but with clarity and insight, humour and depth. I’ve never heard of him but On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood on the page stood as well as the oral version. That was at Tree in October.

Sawdust is uplifting. I don’t get to it as much as I’d like but when I do the sense of community is palpable. Like a Cheers bar with the best bartender in town as well. At Sawdust in July, Sarah MacDonell knocked me out with her utterly compelling reading. She could have read all night and it would have felt like a minute. The way she puts ideas together and her leaps and cohesion of ideas is stunning.

Being at VERseFest inside the buzz of many people gathered in the name of poetry was fun. Also gratifying to see rob mclennan honoured with an award for community building. In the feel-good category, Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan Coyote, Bodymap by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and The Long and the Short of It by Liam G Greig and Hannah Scott-Talib, two Wakefield 13-year-old writers with an eye for the unity of humanity, crossing the boundaries to see the us. Having my cousin Asia Barclay come to my Factory reading when I launched Sex in Sevens was pretty cool. A delightful person. Getting a chapbook out with words(on)pages was good fortune and they did a gorgeous job on design. My little radish winning the Lampmen was a windfall of luck in a rich local scene.

Chatting with people you don’t get to see often enough is part of the good of literary events. In Toronto at Meet the Presses Indie Market, I could put names to faces, such as to Noelle Allen and Lillian Necakov. Seeing Nelson Ball win the bpNichol Award and hearing his amusing speech was a highlight. There, Hoa mentioned Knife Fork Book and said Kirby was interested in buying small press things for his new bookstore. https://knifeforkbook.com  Going over there was a beautiful thing. Another convening of book lovers and a wonderful curated selection. On top of that, about the nicest guy you could meet.

Most of the best things of the year are around community, that is to say, people who I’m happy to see and who are happy to see me.And those who welcome a stranger openly as tribe of book people.  Meeting the wide-eyed people who report having no idea this much is going on, which is part of what makes the ottawa small press fair and Indie Market so lovely. Selling and buying books are yummy too. (Too many good finds to mention but there was the intricate treasure of Michael Casteels illiterature issue.) Books to anticipate and ones you discover are equal measures of abundance. But it’s about one person to one person ultimately. As Marshall said, we should just leave the books at home and save our backs and just meet up. He was kidding but there’s some truth there too.

So far as books and communication, reading Non-violent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg gave some headway, exploring what transmits versus what was intended, being clear on distinctions between what you need, versus your interpretation of judgement and strategy. Also, how to listen compassionately for intention and need beyond the words.

Some of my reading has been in trying to understand the U.S. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Labour and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network by Ruth Romberg-Muñoz, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis with Michael D’Orso all lent perspectives on the state of the class divide is in the US and here. all of us, reticent, here, together by Stephen Brockwell was also an illuminating critical examination of self and relationship to world.

Also in the favourite memories of the year was the summer KaDo event. It was laid back and with a sense of ampleness of time set aside at Camellia Teas in the Japanese garden. We did a little ginko walk and gave our new compositions to the host Rebecca. Bryan arranged for a special dessert tray of Nirikiri. Mike Montreuil, Lumina Suse, and Witold Poplawski had new books, and brought news that Grant Savage and Guy Simser have new books on the horizon. All kinds of new project energies. Seeing a new press start is awesome. And then the exquisite thing put out by Natalie Hanna: Desiré, In Three Brief Acts by Sanita Fejzic (Battleaxe, 2016). Close to year end, and yet firm strong beginnings for what comes next.

Gustav Morin’s Clean Sails! What a fun summing all together of a bunch of his work.

Amanda Earl, author, Kiki: 2016: the Good Stuff

Starting The Small Machine Talks, a podcast that explores the poetry scene of Central Canada & beyond with a.m. kozak.

Editing poetry for the AngelHousePress Close Reading Service for New Women Poets.

Starting DevilHouseLive & hosting the first event at Venus Envy, a live reading of Emily Ramsay’s play, “Coffee with a Lesbian” with music by Marie-Josée Houle

Novel about an artist I’ve always been interested in: Dawn Tripp, Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe

Novel set in Montreal: Alice Yorn, Five Roses

Poetry Book for Dark Times:  Sandra Ridley, Silvja

Memoir: Diane Schoemperlen, This Is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications

Poem: Alessandra Naccarato, 100 Ways to Die in Yellowstone, in Arc 81, Art in the End Times, Fall, 2016

Feisty Punk Poetesse: Adèle Barclay

Interview: Phoebe Wang, “Always Becoming: Conversations And Correspondences With Jan Conn,” in The Puritan, Issue 35, Fall 2016

Online Series: Klara Du Plessis, editor: “Writing in English from a Multilingual Perspective” in The Town Crier, October, 2016

Poetry Reading: Caroline Bergvall at VERSeFest, March, 2016

Nonfiction Reading & Interview that made me cry: Joy Kogawa, Gently to Nagasaki, Ottawa International Writers Festival, Autumn, 2016

Fiction reading by a musician with a great ear for language: Kyp Harness reading from Wigford Rememberies at the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair pre-fair reading, spring, 2016

Darkhorse series of 2016: Sawdust – open all year with great readings, a wonderful & friendly ambiance, great bartending by Rhys (who will make Red Needles at a moment’s notice) at Pour Boy & door prizes!

Reading with a Cause: The bird, philomela, Sawdust, June, 2016 for the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre

Generous Heart: Natalie Hanna

Intense Reader: Joe Denham from Regeneration Machine at the Tree Reading Series

Chapbook: Anne Carson, Float (22 chapbooks!)

Lunch: Aroma Meze’s small plates

Café: Arlington Five, former punk rock house

Album: John Cale – Music for a New Society

Essay Collection: Margaret Christakos, Her Paraphernalia: On Motherlines, Sex, Blood, Loss and Selfies

Essay: Katherine Leyton, I’m riding towards an apocalypse—I think it’s mine in Arc 81, Art in the End Times, Fall, 2016

Fictional Essay – Jonathan Ball, Aleya in Arc 81, Art in the End Times, Fall, 2016

Coffee: Mocha Coffee at Bread & Sons; Rosemary & honey latte at Morning Owl Bank.

Best weather: the first weeks of November: balmy, beautiful light, golden leaves

Park: Dundonald Park—they’ve beautified it in the last few years

Radio show: CBC Radio 2’s Shift with Tom Allen – the special 2-hour show on Leonard Cohen after his death

Best radio segment: D is for Dinner on CBC 1’s All in a Day with Alan Neal

Film: Born to Be Blue

New musical discovery: Jack Pine and the Fire

Tea Experience: Gong fu cha infusion method; tasting Ali Shan 1999 Chabon at Camellia Sinensis in Montreal

Second Hand Treasures: A Fine Thing

Cover Album: Jherek Bischoff and Amanda Palmer - Strung Out in Heaven: A Bowie String Quartet

TV Show: Mozart in the Jungle

Trip out of town: all three trips to Montreal by train to visit a dear friend & feature at two readings (Resonance & Vallum)

Exhibit: Pompeii at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Montreal

Up and Coming Reading Series: In/Words at the Clocktower Pub with its attentive audience, combo of music, poetry, live painting, Bill, the bar tender.

Venue that’s growing on me: Gallery 101 for the Tree Reading Series

Favourite memory: staying with Gary & Beth in Hamilton & getting the rock star treatment at Lit Live. another attentive audience

Site: The Hardest Thing About Being A Writer – Sachiko Murakami’s interview site: http://www.writingsohard.com/

Mixtape: Aquarium Drunkard, I’m bored

Most unusual featured reading site of the year: Parliament Hill, having my underwire bra set off security alarm, but not having to remove it

Best chai tea: Blossom Vegetarian Café

Wine I’d like to drink right now: Trapiche Pure Malbec, 2014, Argentina

Ice wine I’d drink again if I had the money: Pilleteri Estates, Reserve Ice Wine Cabernet Sauvignon, Niagara-on-the-Lake

Ramen that doesn’t taste like those cheap variety store packages: Tonkotsu Black at Sansotei Ramen

Food Truck: Dosa, Inc.

Meals & Coffee Chats, etc with Marie-Josée, Carmel, Sandy, Christine & rob, Rob, Ron, Rachael, Tyler, James, Roland & Janice, Joshua, Marilyn, Aaron, Jennifer, Liam, Monty, Anita, Jason, Doug, Shalom, Patrick, Alex, Duncan

Chapbooks of mine published this year: firstwalks of the year (In/Words Press), Queen Christina (Ghost City Press), I owe Saint Hildegard the Light (unarmed).

Creative & Wondrous Display of excerpts from the Vispo Bible by Claire Farley at the University of Ottawa

Surprises: having my article on Pursuing Art and Sex at 50+ published over at Queen Mobs Teahouse.

Personal goal: getting non-erotic stories published: Fallen Angels & Other Broken People, in UnlikelyStories.org

Nail polish: Revlon’s Rags to Riches

Lipstick: Smashbox – Bing Matte

Music site: Bandcamp.com

Best tribute album: Air 28: Not the same old songs: a tribute to Motown

Surprising locale for good black tea served correctly: Bridgehead (Bank & Gilmour)

Gifts: Write Like A Motherfucker mug from RS; amber wood Purple Urchin candle from CF

Things I’ve learned in 2016: I’m partial to the mandolin, men with bullet wound scars, Toronto Romeos, Montreal comedians

Looking forward to: Ron Sexsmith’s NAC concert in April; Kate Greenstreet’s new poetry collection; the opening of Art House Café on Somerset W., VERSeFest and the Ottawa International Writers Festival’s 2017 festivals

Amanda Earl : new poems at Unlikely Stories and 2017 Inaugural Poem

Chaudiere Books author Amanda Earl has some new poetry up at Unlikely Stories and Stuart Ross' 2017 Inaugural Poem.

The Calgary Renaissance: an interview with Nikki Sheppy

Edited by derek beaulieu and rob mclennan, and designed by Chaudiere co-publisher Christine McNair, The Calgary Renaissance highlights some of the diverse and astonishing experimental poetry and fiction that has emerged out of the past two decades of Calgary writing. An essential portrait of some of the most engaged and radical of Canadian writing and writers from one of the country’s most important literary centres. You can order a copy directly, here.

For further (ongoing) interviews with contributors to The Calgary Renaissance, check out the link here.

Nikki Sheppy is a poet, editor and arts journalist. She has a doctorate in English literature from the University of Calgary. Her book reviews have appeared in Uppercase Magazine, Alberta Views, and Lemon Hound, and her poetry in Event, Matrix, Jacket2, Dusie and Touch the Donkey. She serves as Managing Editor of filling Station Magazine, Calgary’s experimental literary and arts magazine, and a Director of the Board of Alberta Magazine Publishers Association. Sheppy’s Grrrlhood: a ludic suite won the 2013 John Lent Poetry-Prose Award and was published as a letter-pressed chapbook (Kalamalka 2014).

Q: How long have you been in Calgary, and what first took you there?

A: I moved to Calgary from Edmonton when I was six years old, in the 70s. My mom was finishing her PhD and got hired on as a sessional instructor in the French Department at the University of Calgary, where she later became a tenured professor. Since then, I’ve been elsewhere and then back in town again: Ottawa when I was young; Jakarta for grade six; Edmonton for a year of university; London for my Master’s degree; and Havana with my then-partner. I always make my way back. Calgary is where my mother, my dog, my friends and a large chunk of my writing community reside.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community in Calgary?

A: I started writing very young. First, when I was four, I demanded that my mother teach me to read. I wrote a short poem soon thereafter, which hilariously, I still have somewhere. It reads:

A little mouse lived in a house

By the trees and the seas

Her mother said her father is dead

Then she was crying & drying her tears

In the little town

My father was fine and we lived in the prairies, but I seemed to believe that poetry required both rhyme and dramatic tension.

I wrote quietly at home for most of my life, publishing journalism and filing poems in shoe boxes. I became involved in the writing community in Calgary when I started my PhD at the U of C in the early aughts. For a long time, I simply attended events, bought books and read, orbiting the University of Calgary English Department & filling Station magazine. As soon as I defended my PhD in 2012, I went to the Banff Centre for a writing program led by David O’Meara and then in 2013 for the Writing Studio led by Karen Solie. That’s how I began formally engaging. It’s a very Alberta story, I suppose: U of C Creative Writing, filling Station, and the Banff Centre.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? What did Calgary provide, or allow?

A: While doing my PhD, I met other writers orbiting or producing either dANDelion or filling Station, because they were also students in my department. It was a terrific, eclectic group: Jonathan Ball, David Bateman, derek beaulieu, Kyle Buckley, Brea Burton, Jason Christie, Chris Ewart, Aaron Giovanonne, Aaron Grach, Mark Giles, Jill Hartman, Cara Hedley, Larissa Lai, Janet Neigh, Nikki Reimer, Jordan Scott, Natalie Walschots, Erin Wood... The list is too long to name, though I’ve clearly given it a go... There were others who had already graduated or who went to school elsewhere but published or did editing stints at filling Station, like Ryan Fitzpatrick, Frances Kruk, Jani Krulc, Ian Samuels, and Natalie Simpson. We hung out at readings, parties, and filling Station Blow-outs. Meanwhile, Writers-in-Residence streamed through (sometimes staying to join our ranks): Natalee Caple, Marcello di Cintio, Charlotte Gill, Eden Robinson, Jaspreet Singh, Sina Queyras... Also orbiting our events were Faculty members like Christian Bök, Nicole Markotić, Suzette Mayr, Aritha van Herk, Tom Wayman, and Fred Wah.

This meeting had an enormous impact on me. Everyone was writing and making things: the literary magazines filling Station and dANDelion, but also creative writing panels, creative-critical dialogues, and chapbooks through edits all over, housepress, semi-precious press, and Yardpress. They were publishing their first or second books, and we were all meeting over drinks at Jason Christie’s YARD reading series. I still remember sawing his couch in half to get it into his basement suite, then listening to a reading in the backyard there.

For a long time, I was an attendee more than anything. I think this was partly because I was streamed as a ‘critical’ not ‘creative’ student, though such boundaries were continually perforated. Even though I wasn’t reading or publishing myself, I think the dye was cast. It was a done thing. Dr. Murray McGillivray had a printing press hauled up to the English Department and literary broadsides emerged. derek was printing housepress from his Capitol Hill garage studio. David B was reading poetry in drag and then Stavros was belly-dancing. Jill made business cards giving us all “poetic license.” It was clear that one could McGyver literature. Eventually, finally, a decade in, I decided that could include me. Calgary had (has) a very inclusive community. I hope this inclusion just keeps expanding.

Q: Perhaps you’ve already answered part of this, but what do you see happening in Calgary that you don’t see anywhere else?

A: Because I’ve never been part of any other literary community, I’m not in a great position to make an informed comparison. I have heard from visiting writers that Calgary has a very friendly writing community. I hope that’s true. It certainly has been my experience. I suppose I would say that the synergy between the Creative Writing program at the University of Calgary, typographical art & poetry courses at ACAD, and publishing venues like filling Station magazine, Nōd, formerly dANDelion, and micropresses like No Press, edits all over, 100 Têtes, Space Craft and semi-precious, among others, has fostered a very receptive public space for experimental writing. In recent years, Calgary has also benefited from the addition of The Insurgent Architects’ House for Creative Writing (TIA House), a Canada Research Chair-sponsored program dedicated to the intersection of social justice and innovative writing practice. The result is a really great substrate with which to nurture innovative writers. With all this going on, it remains a mystery to me why Calgary does not boast a small press publishing experimental literature. Maybe we’re just really into grassroots micropress publishing.

All that said, Calgary has many other ‘scenes,’ including a really exciting Spoken Word community that performs very well in national slam competitions and that hosts terrific festivals and year-round events in town. There are also plenty of lyric poets, eco-poets, writers incorporating music into their practice, and fiction-writers of every stripe.

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements there?

A: I’ve certainly been influenced by the spirit of trial and error that many Calgary writers have embraced, and also by their willingness to engage passionately with the sonic, visual and critical dimensions of poetry. I think of writers like Natalie Simpson, Erina Harris, Weyman Chan, derek beaulieu, Eric Zboya, and newly arrived in Calgary, Shannon Maguire. One of my long-term projects, begun in the summer of 2012, unexpectedly resonates with some aspects of Christian Bök’s Xenotext, inasmuch as my book (initially entitled Bugonia, then Eurydike) treads the same mythological terrain. This happenstance is in keeping with the project itself, my most intertextual work, embracing such writers as Rilke, Ovid, Jorie Graham, Don Patterson, Meredith Stricker, Garry Thomas Morse, Virgil, The Derveni Papyrus, and on to visual studies like Bee, microscopic photographs by Rose-Lynn Fisher.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’ve been revising for publication a book manuscript called Fail Safe, which explores responses to vulnerability: sheltering in failure, contending with precarity, elaborating on written words to express speechlessness through other codes, for instance. Some of the pieces revel in the materiality of words, as in one long poem about safeguarding language by exploring its tactility in the mouth.

Alongside individual poems, it collects pieces I wrote as sequences, some as long as 10 pages. Several of them are little lab experiments I ran. One, for example, re-imagines English as a language with better abstract smell-words. We have so few adjectives to describe odor that we usually resort to simile: something smells like garbage, like rain, like sex. Another is an ekphrastic series responding to architectural drawings of St. Michael’s Retreat in Saskatchewan in order to reflect on the notion of refuge, of sequestering oneself. As a whole, the manuscript re-imagines vulnerability as a resource for creation: for saying and inventing.

The Calgary Renaissance: an interview with Naomi K. Lewis

Edited by derek beaulieu and rob mclennan, and designed by Chaudiere co-publisher Christine McNair, The Calgary Renaissance highlights some of the diverse and astonishing experimental poetry and fiction that has emerged out of the past two decades of Calgary writing. An essential portrait of some of the most engaged and radical of Canadian writing and writers from one of the country’s most important literary centres. You can order a copy directly, here.

For further (ongoing) interviews with contributors to The Calgary Renaissance, check out the link here.

Born in England, Naomi K. Lewis grew up in Washington, DC and Ottawa, and has since lived in Toronto, Fredericton, Edmonton, and Calgary. She wrote the 2008 novel Cricket in a Fist and the 2012 story collection I Know Who You Remind Me Of, which was shortlisted for the George Bugnet Award for fiction and the Alberta Readers Choice Award, and won Enfield & Wizenty’s Colophon Prize. With Rona Altrows, she co-edited the award-winning 2013 anthology Shy. In Edmonton and Calgary, she worked as a magazine editor for ten years, and her magazine journalism has been shortlisted for provincial and national magazine awards. Naomi teaches creative writing, and served as the Calgary Public Library’s writer in residence in 2011. In 2016, she was writer in residence at the University of New Brunswick but has since returned to Calgary.

Q: How long have you been in Calgary, and what first took you there?

A: I moved to Calgary in 2009, for a job. I was living in Edmonton before that, but I’m from Ottawa.

Q: You were already involved with a literary community prior to your arrival. What was your experience upon arriving in Calgary? What sort of communities did you become involved with, and how did they differ from what you were involved with in other cities?

A: When I arrived in Calgary in 2009, I started attending readings, and I was amazed at how friendly I found the literary community – several literary communities, in fact. I quickly formed connections with talented and hard-working literary and commercial fiction writers, poets, and journalists, and found my time with all those groups, separately and in their overlaps, edifying and encouraging. I’d never known so many writers whose work I admired, or found a community so welcoming. When my story collection I Know Who You Remind Me Of was published in 2012, I felt incredibly supported, once again. The Calgary writing scene is just wonderful.

Q: What do you see happening in Calgary that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Calgary provide, or allow?

A: In Calgary, I’ve found a huge variety of literary communities, from conceptual poets to spoken word artists to literary journalists to novelists and short story writers. I haven’t found such a diverse literary community anywhere else. My exposure to all these diverse voices has motivated me to try different genres myself, and branch out from fiction to non-fiction in particular.

Q: What prompted your move away, and what kind of effect has the shift made in your work? How is it now that you’ve returned?

A: I spent the winter of 2015 as writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick, and the summer in Kelowna, BC, where my partner was working. During those eight months, I spent a lot of time alone writing, rather than spending time with other writers. Returning to Calgary, I’ve realized what a vibrant community we have here, and how important it is to find a balance between engaging with peers and spending time alone with my work.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Right now I’m working on a travel memoir. In the summer of 1942, my Jewish grandfather fled the German-occupied Netherlands to southern France. He left a journal detailing those 14 days, which my family found only after his death. In the summer of 2015, I followed his route, travelling to the same places on the same dates. My book interweaves my grandfather’s journal with my own.