review of Clare Latremouille's The Desmond Road Book of the Dead

by Laurie Anne Fuhr
(originally published in filling Station)

The Desmond Road Book of the Dead
By Clare Latremouille

What if you decide to write a book, your first book, about several generations of women in your family at different stages of their lives so they won’t be so easily forgotten? To be true to this idea you will have to include yourself, at least sometimes. Okay.

You will go back and forth in time and between speakers, give dates where there are shifts, but confuse the reader slightly as they notice similarities between the voices of each generation because they are related and made of one another, forward and back in time, while horses get wheels or cars grow legs around them.

You will describe the most beautiful and most painful moments of each life from the perspective of each life, choosing the moments how memory chooses – some obviously significant, others significant to memory in a way less known to the mind.

Children will describe in a sparse, childlike, poetic prose and grandmothers will describe in sparse, childlike, but omniscient prose and adults will be allowed to achieve narrative when they are self-conscious. Because it’s likely more like how minds work.

And you say hey, why not see if I can’t just keep it real despite the fact that every now and then I will see about dropping in some lines of poetry that could just rival some of the best lyric poets writing?

You will be as honest as possible, no matter how painful the details; when someone cries out with the pain of dying, child or old woman, their voices will be heard in this book, and when someone laughs, no matter the reason, their laughter will also be heard.

As you write, you don’t care what anyone thinks of your subject matter, or what the current writing trends are, because this is a book you have to write, and you’re just going to have to write your heart out, because you got that heart from the people you’re writing about.

When you’re finished, there’s a good bet you have written The Desmond Road Book of the Dead, a first novel by Clare Latremouille and the first offering from Ottawa’s Chaudiere Books.

John Newlove documentary screening & book launch, SaltSpring Island

Hosted by Brian Brett, with readings/talk by Brian Brett, poet/critic Jay Ruzesky and poet Joe Rosenblatt;

Wednesday, April 16, 2008; 8pm
ArtSpring, 100 Jackson Avenue, SaltSpring Island

John Newlove Documentary Screening / Book Launch on Salt Spring Island

Filmmaker/editor Robert McTavish in attendance.
Garry Oaks Winery Wine Tasting 7pm
Co-sponsored by ArtSpring.

Come celebrate the life and work of poet John Newlove with a screening of the documentary What to make of it all? The life and poetry of John Newlove, and the Salt Spring launch of Chaudiere Books' A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove.

About What to make of it all? The life and poetry of JohnNewlove: ' Robert McTavish provides a deeply textured portrait of the great Canadian poet of the sixties. Sometimes as sparse yet dense as Newlove's poetry, the film uses floating text, family photos, conversations with fellow poets, friends and family as well as late-life interviews with Newlove to capture the complex soul tormented by depression and alcoholism, yet still able to write with, as George Bowering says, a 'confidence and sufficiency that is so beautiful.'' -- Globe and Mail

About A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove: "A Long Continual Argument, the first comprehensive edition of Newlove's poems to be published since his death in 2003, is a fitting monument to the poet's consummate craftsmanship, and a cause for national celebration." -- Globe and Mail

A Long Continual Argument is the comprehensive statement of an acknowledged poetic master craftsman. From his first chapbook in 1961 to his final epigrammatic poems of the late 1990s, Newlove has been a quiet poetry dealing with unquiet themes. A poetry that, in thewords of Phyllis Webb, 'doesn't struggle for meaning. It emerges out of his thinking.'

John Newlove (1938-2003) was born and raised in Saskatchewan. He began publishing while working various jobs in Vancouver in the 1960s. His many honours included the 1972 Governor General's Award for his book Lies, and the Saskatchewan Writers Guild Founders Award. His works have been internationally published and translated.

'Newlove was the best of us, the great line, the hidden agenda, tough as nails and yet somehow with his heart on his sleeve. There was always a double-take involved when reading his work. His lyrics, such as 'The Weather' were faultless. I devoured and loved his work. --Michael Ondaatje

To call him 'the voice of prairie poetry' misses the target by as broad a margin as if you called John Milton 'the voice of Cromwell's London.' This was the voice of a man who knew what it was like to almost drown, to gasp for air, to almost drown again. His poetry delivered a blow to the head then, and it does now. It will be see again for what it was, and is: major in its time and place. --Margaret Atwood (from John Newlove: Essays on His Works, forthcoming)

For information on the Salt Spring event, contact Robert McTavish at rmctavish@hotmail.com
or check out www.artspring.ca

For information on the book, contact the publisher, rob mclennan, at az421@freenet.carleton.ca

Ordering information on the book here:http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2007/09/long-continual-argument-selected-poems.html

an interview with Michael Bryson (12 or 20 questions),

soon-Chaudiere Books author (2009);

an interview with Robert McTavish,

editor of A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove, up at The Danforth Review.

John Newlove reviewed in The Globe and Mail

by Toronto poet/editor Paul Vermeersch;

[...] John Newlove was a major poet whose life's work has long deserved such careful attention, and thanks to editor Robert McTavish, it has finally received it. A Long Continual Argument, the first comprehensive edition of Newlove's poems to be published since his death in 2003, is a fitting monument to the poet's consummate craftsmanship, and a cause for national celebration.
In its time, not long ago, Newlove's poetry was among the most commanding work being written in Canada. It is stark, brutally honest and deceptively complex. As such, it is a lot like the man who created it. In his introduction, McTavish describes his first impression of that man: "I found him self-deprecating and sly, his low tone punctuated with cigarette pauses." The same could be said for a great many of Newlove's poems, like the fretful Blue Cow Phrases: "If I'm disgusted with my life I'm disgusted with yours too./ All we do is invent blue cow phrases dripping thin vapid milk."

Newlove never attempted to hide his disappointment with the world, at least not in his poetry. He often expressed an antipathy that many people feel but lack the nerve to express themselves. He was the pinch-hitter for our secret bitterness, the darker and more forthright part of our conscience. His raw material was the ugly truth; from it he forged poems that demonstrate the intrinsic beauty of all human emotions, not just the comfortable ones, and he understood, as Aristotle and Shakespeare did, that the grandest of them all, the most poetic, is our melancholy. Few have given voice to human sadness as eloquently as Newlove did, as he demonstrates in his poem She:

She starts to grow tears, chemical beast

shut in a dark room with the walls closing

behind her eyelids, all touches hateful,

the white sweep of clean snow death to her,

the grey naked trees death to her. [...]

some Chaudiere Books author activity

Max Middle + John Lavery read as the Max Middle Sound Project at the Factory Reading Series (Ottawa) on Thursday, February 28; Stephen Brockwell reads March 2 at the Dusty Owl Reading Series (Ottawa); rob mclennan launches Ottawa: The Unknown City on March 15 at Nicholas Hoare Books (Ottawa);

two new links;

an interview with Monty Reid, and a note on John Newlove by Zach Wells;

some new visual poems by Max Middle

Some new visual poems by Max Middle (decalogue: ten Ottawa poets) now up at Other Cl/utter;

a review of John Newlove

in Vancouver's Georgia Straight; in the Simon Fraser University student paper, The Peak;

Emily Falvey on CHUO

Tune in to Click here Wednesday at 5 pm, on CHUO-FM89, for an interview and live reading with writers Emily Falvey (decalogue 2: ten Ottawa fiction writers) and Jay MillAr [see his 12 or 20 questions here], reading in Ottawa this week. Also, Montreal band Kid Sentiment.

Click here is a one hour interview-based programme broadcast on CHUO-FM89 (and at http://www.chuo.fm/) Wednesdays at 5 pm. It deals with the arts, socio-political issues, and community events.

You can find out more about Click here by checking out our web site at: http://web.ncf.ca/fk055
Mitchell Caplan
Producer/host
Click here

John Newlove article

in the Vancouver Sun;

Nicholas Lea + Anne Le Dressay open for Edmonton author Alice Major (U of A Press);

Chaudiere Books presents:
a reading/launch by Edmonton poet Alice Major
launching her newest poetry collection, The Office Tower Tales (University of Alberta Press)

with opening readings by Chaudiere Books' authors Nicholas Lea + Anne Le Dressay

Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 2pm; free
at mother tongue books, 1067 Bank Street (at Sunnyside), Ottawa (link to map)
info: 613 730 2346

Alice Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a weekly newspaper reporter in British Columbia. She has published eight poetry collections and a novel for young readers. She is a previous winner of the Malahat Review's long poem contest and Broken Jaw Publishing's manuscript contest, "The Poets' Corner Award", as well as runner-up for awards such as the Pat Lowther award, the City of Edmonton Book Prize and the Stephan G. Stephanson Award (Writers Guild of Alberta). Her work has appeared widely in Canadian periodicals and she has read across Canada as well as in the U.K. and Australia.

Alice has been active in the writing community for two decades. She is past president of the Writers Guild of Alberta and of the League of Canadian Poets. She was the second chair of the Edmonton Arts Council and was appointed to a two-year term as the city's first Poet Laureate in June, 2005.

The Office Tower Tales takes as its starting point The Canterbury Tales, but transforms it to a northern city in the final year of the second millennium. Instead of being told by pilgrims en route to Canterbury, the tale-telling takes place in a contemporary office tower, by women on their lunch and coffee breaks. Through the lighthearted interplay of Chaucer, the 1001 Nights and other literary touchstones, readers meet receptionist Aphrodite, Pandora (expectant grandmother from accounting) and Sheherazad, the girl from public relations. The stories that come as pilgrims to Sheherazad range over genres and centuries, from office gossip and urban legend to wildlife documentaries and historical narratives. They explore the intricate relations between men and women, power and love, individual and society.

some upcoming chaudiere author activity;

Ian Roy (decalogue 2: ten Ottawa fiction writers) [see his 12 or 20 questions here] is the featured reader at the TREE Reading Series, Ottawa, on Tuesday, February 12; Emily Falvey (decalogue 2: ten Ottawa fiction writers) and Monty Reid (Disappointment Island) read with Toronto poet Jay MillAr [see his 12 or 20 questions here] as part of Ottawa's AB Reading Series #5, Feburary 15; Chaudiere author/publisher rob mclennan (The Ottawa City Project) reads at the University of Calgary on Monday, February 11, with his "return to Ottawa" reading already scheduled for June 8 at the Dusty Owl Reading Series; Chaudiere Books friend Amanda Earl (an above/ground press author) reads as part of "Ottawa International Development Week" along with Ray Deonandan, Lise Careau, Betty Warrington-Kearsley and Cyril Dabydeen on February 4 at 4pm in Room 509, Arts Bldg., 70 Laurier Ave. East,University of Ottawa (ph. 613-230-7854); the Vancouver launch/documentary screening of John Newlove's A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove happens February 8th;

Edmonton Journal article

on the John Newlove book launch/documentary screening by Todd Babiak.

a new review of the John Newlove selected by Douglas Barbour, Edmonton Journal

here.

some Chaudiere Books author activity

not only do we have the Vancouver and Edmonton John Newlove screenings/launches, but decalogue: ten Ottawa poets author Michelle Desbarats is reading at the Dusty Owl Reading Series in Ottawa on January 20th, and various others are involved in the ottawater fourth issue launch at the Ottawa Art Gallery on January 24th; will we see you at one of these?

a review of John Newlove's A Long Continual Argument

A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove. Ed. Robert McTavish, afterword Jeff Derksen. Chaudiere Books, 2007. 251pp, pbk. ISBN 978-0-9781601-9-7.

Kane X. Faucher

Chaudiere Books has released a new selection of poems by John Newlove which includes all of the poems appearing in the 1993 Porcupine’s Quill edition (Apology for Absence: Selected Poems 1962-1992) with 37 additional poems to better give the reader a more compelling and intimate portrait of a frank observer and modest poetic innovator. What is particularly striking about this collection is the nearly palpable trajectory of development, closely indexed to the fragmented events of his life. Beyond following the same chronology as the 1993 collection, the Chaudiere Books edition appends a handful of other poems during that period as well as Newlove’s post-1993 work.

He presents a raw, uncooked version of the Canadian landscape by way of particular instances that demonstrate his aversion to the stereotypical poetic fare, staging a quiet rebellion. The candour and honesty comes to the fore in such moments as when he admits the revolution’s failure in how the energy to prevail was confused with hypocritical self-aggrandizement and brazen disregard: “It was too late. My eyes/were closed. Freedom, summer,/never seemed to be what we wanted.” (The Cities We Longed For) – In this way, there is a connotative cut between dissatisfaction with the buoyancy of the ideal and the grim outcome of the real. But to label Newlove a poetic realist is to commit a treasonous blunder – rather, he could more appropriately called a clever lyricist with strong realist tendencies.

Despite his occasional lapses into incendiary and anguished subjects that border upon polemic, Newlove’s remarkable gift is in the scrupulous generousity he brings to bear in his playfully punning lines, stripped of the overbearing sentimentality and rigid structures of poetic form. Behind his playfully mendacious cynic’s sneer there is the burbling undertow of a fleeting litany (pronounced in “Notes From and Among the Wars”) that runs through his more vitriolic asides, but his primary target for attack does not spare the poet himself, and it is the involved rather than the high voice that does not posture as the objective outsider looking in. The modesty in his approach would decline any claim to his poems standing as generational anthems, but are instead carefully elusive in not being fixed as being the rallying cry of any group or ideologically myopic plan.

Newlove’s work is an implied testament against vertiginous utopian strategies and the overbearing largesse of poetry manifestoism. It is not so much that he is averse to theory or disinclined to take an ideological stance, but that it can too easily interfere with and impede upon allowing the work to speak itself, such a practice being the domain proper of the documentation- and process-obsessed conceptualists. In place of nesting such conceptual prejudices within the works themselves, Newlove presents us with a kind of desordre d’etabli replete with teasing margins, loose ends, vignettes, and cul de sacs. There is an uncanny kinship here with bpNichol’s epistolary fragments insofar as Newlove illuminates all the personal effects of candour into verse-form, veering from the 60s poetic predilection of couching concrete vision in impenetrable obscurity. Perhaps Newlove would even shy away from such a lofty term like “vision” since that would suggest a unified project, limited in its particulars by the demands of an inflexible form from which all is to be derived.

Newlove has but traces of a poetic inheritance, and what makes the work still so relevant and fresh today is that there seems to be no firm historical precedent installed that would otherwise lead to the etiolation and reduction of his work to crude literary canonization. These traces may betray his reading influences, but never do they actually come to dominate his work and make him culpable as an emulator by any stretch. However, neither do his poetic innovations have the flashy, visceral pizzazz of his contemporaries that tried to reflect the social turbulence of their times through shocking phonetic or overtly concrete visual matrices. Instead, Newlove opted for a marked subtlety in his inventions, making modest appeals to how the poem can be re-envisioned and disseminated. He handles the ageless Canadian leitmotifs with a deft, playful, and unique manner, not relying on the stale tropes of his poetic forbearers. There are moments of lubricious potency in his imagery, but this trades blows with an earthy realism with all the blemishes.

Just a step behind the imagery resides the paradox of Newlove and his “doubles”. There is crouching behind each poem the high-stakes interplay between product-persona and person-producer, but this carries off well in a kind of self-deprecatory way that nuances the poems with a jesting similitude, giving them the characteristic raw beat with a snap to its tempo readers of Newlove have come to recognize and admire. The collection is quite aptly named “A Long Continual Argument”, for although an informative editor’s preface by Robert McTavish and an afterword by Jeff Derksen bracket the works, even then the fisticuffs of Newlove’s solo argument breaks out of these confines to be renewed again in their sanguineous strife. With a sort of Borgesian flourish, he makes even of his own life an inset fiction, blurring the line between work and life, highlighting the absurdity of uniting the bios and the graphein with complicity: “I can remember very little of my life. What I do remember I am suspicious of. I may have invented it” (Being Caught, Author’s Preface to Apology for Absence). Newlove shared the keen insight through his many capsule “autobiographies” that a life is always double or more, eternally irreducible with an infinite remainder. Although we may all be a “sack of wet shit” (Death of the Hired Man), in the end we “make the world” (The Cat). It is these stark contradictions of misery and joy, lies and half-truths, that populate the terrain of the poet and the person, and these are the contentious issues of Newlove’s continual argument with himself.

For those discovering Newlove’s poetry for the first time, readers will delight in his trademark parting shot nested in the pithy last line and the unapologetic poetic reportage, as in “The Fat Man”, that does not hide behind a wall of whimsy or false sympathies. Stylistically, Newlove’s poetry has always remained approachable and never prohibitive or exclusive.

originally appeared in ottawater #4, January 2008; see in the same issue, interviews with Chaudiere authors Nicholas Lea + Anne Le Dressay...

a new piece on John Newlove in Jacket (AUS)

The first review of the John Newlove selected, by John Cunningham in Australia's Jacket magazine; a nice addition to the Newlove stuff in the previous issue...

John Newlove documentary screening & book launch, Vancouver

John Newlove Documentary Screening / Book Launch
Hosted by Jamie Reid, with readings/talk by Jamie Reid and Jeff Derksen [read Derksen's afterword to the book here].
Filmmaker/editor Robert McTavish in attendance.

8pm, Friday, February 8th
The Western Front (303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia)
$5 admission, $3 students and unemployed. cash bar.

Come celebrate the life and work of poet John Newlove with a screening of the documentary What to make of it all? The life and poetry of John Newlove, and the Vancouver launch of Chaudiere Books' A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove, edited by Robert McTavish.

About A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove:

A Long Continual Argument is the comprehensive statement of an acknowledged poetic master craftsman. It includes all the poems John Newlove chose for his previous selected poems with substantial additions from all his major collections. All of his later poetry has been included, as well as integral, critically-acclaimed works such as the long poem "Notes From And Among the Wars," and many of the cynically lyric poems that established his early reputation. From his first chapbook in 1961 to his final epigrammatic poems of the late 1990s, Newlove has been a quiet poetry dealing with unquiet themes. A poetry that, in the words of Phyllis Webb, "doesn't struggle for meaning. It emerges out of his thinking."

John Newlove (1938-2003) was born and raised in Saskatchewan. He began publishing while working various jobs in Vancouver in the 1960s. His many honours included the 1972 Governor General's Award for his book Lies, and the Saskatchewan Writers Guild Founders Award. His works have been internationally published and translated.

"Newlove was the best of us, the great line, the hidden agenda, tough as nails and yet somehow with his heart on his sleeve. There was always a double-take involved when reading his work. His lyrics, such as "The Weather" were faultless. I devoured and loved his work. --Michael Ondaatje

To call him "the voice of prairie poetry" misses the target by as broad a margin as if you called John Milton "the voice of Cromwell's London." This was the voice of a man who knew what it was like to almost drown, to gasp for air, to almost drown again. His poetry delivered a blow to the head then, and it does now. It will be seen again for what it was, and is: major in its time and place. --Margaret Atwood (from John Newlove: Essays on His Works, forthcoming)

For information on the event, contact Jamie Reid at dadababy@shaw.ca
For information on the book, or anything else, contact the publisher, rob mclennan, at az421@freenet.carleton.ca
Ordering information on the book here; information on the Edmonton launch here;

John Newlove and Max Middle

I wouldn't have necessarily put them in the same phrase, but Chaudiere authors John Newlove and Max Middle (as well as a few other Canadian poets) were recently referenced on the British reviews blog Intercapillary Space.