ottawa
he descended the fire escape
with the coffee in my hand
and a guitar in his
was running down
my white wrist
you are sleeping
in ottawa
it’s another hot night
after the fashion
of steam and tendrils
the humidity and stains
hamper the delight
you take in your fingers
the audience has claims
on these hands
paul chartier
was on the steps
of the commons
while i was thirteen
in a gallery chair
his face was red
it was april and the washroom
was the high note
in his history
for that split second
stains and humidity
hang in this air
resembling war wreaths
the dried blood
angles its journey
down the porcelain wall
the body was changed
by its explosion
he jacked off with a bomb
the prime minister went white
the arm was holding
the back of the head splinter style
in perfect vertical symmetry
you are sleeping in ottawa
were sweating in fine hair
it gets god-awful hot
sometimes in those bars
and directly above
the spick and span urinals
paul chartier’s body comes violently to rest
I’ve always liked the kind of poetry that shoves itself into you and tears your heart out, and for that, Judith Fitzgerald is easily one of the best poets of the bunch, Canadian or otherwise. Writing a highly literate, emotional and musical lyric for years, she has been influenced heavily by both poetry and song, and by authors such as George Bowering and Leonard Cohen. The author of over a dozen collections of poetry, including The River (ECW Press, 1995), which was up for the Trillium Award, and the more recent collections Adagios: Iphigenia’s Song (Oberon Press, 2003) and Adagios: Orestes’ Lament (Oberon Press, 2004), the poem “ottawa” is from my favourite of her collections, lacerating heartwood (Coach House Press, 1977).
It was through this piece that I first heard the story of Paul Chartier, called “the mad bomber of Parliament,” and the focus of a brand new book on the subject, The Mad Bomber of Parliament, by Ottawa author James Fontana (Borealis Books, 2005). There are suggestions that had the story of Paul Chartier been American, there would have been five books and a movie out by now, instead of the first book on the event appearing only a few short months ago. Canada’s Guy Fawkes, but without the whole “burning in effigy” thing. The story is simple: he went in to the Parliament Buildings to blow up the House of Commons as it was sitting, and, as he went into the women’s washroom to fiddle with it, he succeeded only in blowing himself up. Why do they never discuss these things on the tours? Why is it these are the stories that almost never get told?
Editor Frank Davey wrote about the poem in the introduction to her Given Names: New and Selected Poems 1972-1985 (Black Moss Press, 1985):
Hidden subversively in the lyric collection Lacerating Heartwood is the poem “Ottawa,” which re-tells Paul Chartier’s self-destruction in his attempt to bomb the House of Commons. Fitzgerald depicts Chartier as a guitarist, the lyric performer, who takes “delight” in his “fingers,” and as the Narcissus who, oblivious to women, destroys himself with self-love.
[. . . ]
For Fitzgerald this story seems to inscribe the death of the lyric poem, the focussed song of unhappy male delight. In her work after this book, “poetry,” a discrete product of phallocentric male creativity, yields to “writing,” a process that transcends genre in the writer’s attempt to constitute or fictionalize her self (“First Persona Regular,” “First Persona the Second”) in words.
Always glossed over for being the Capital City, in the poem “ottawa,” Fitzgerald writes the things that Ottawa has always had but has never been known for, including bohemian tendencies and immutable heat, writing the “steam & tendrils” of any part of July or August, with her own personal mix of sex and violence. From her first book, Victory (Coach House Press, 1975), a long poem on a stripper in the Victory strip club, to her Edith Piaf in Beneath the Skin of Paradise (1984) and her more recent versions of Iphigenia and Orestes, Judith Fitzgerald has written through a deep sense of loss, and those that have been lost, from that dark underbelly of the heart. Through her poem from the capital, she works around and through that, from a place not known widely for its dark side; Fitzgerald’s “ottawa” encapsulates a real, and human, part of the city in quick succession, writing a brief moment that includes the whole world of the heart.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Friday, August 26, 2005
John Barton reads at Collected Works, September 8
Victoria poet John Barton will give a reading from his work at Ottawa’s Collected Works bookstore, on Wellington street at Holland, on Thursday, September 8, at 7:30 pm. The evening’s readings will pair Barton, former editor of Arc magazine, with poet Anita Lahey, who has edited Arc since Barton’s departure from Ottawa nearly two years ago.
Born and raised in Alberta, John studied with Robin Skelton at the University of Victoria and recently returned to the West Coast as editor of The Malahat Review. Employment with some of the top national museums kept him in Ottawa for two decades, though, and in that time he contributed enormously to the capital’s literary culture: helping to organize Tree readings and the Wilde about Sappho festival; co-editing Arc with Rita Donovan: keeping alive the Archibald Lampman Award for the best book each year by an Ottawa poet.
Residence in Ottawa was also a time of personal growth for Barton, who arrived in the city shortly after publication of his first book (The Poor Photographer, Sono Nis, 1981), followed by his his celebrated poetic portrait of Emily Carr, West of Darkness (Penumbra, 1985). In Ottawa, his writing tackled the issues of sexual identity ambiguously hinted at in his 1984 chapbook Hidden Structure (Ekstasis Editions). With Great Men (Quarry, 1990) Barton emerged as a writer who celebrates gay sexuality while delving with ever greater maturity into the emotions of love, loss, abandonment and anger, universal feelings, whether one is male or female, straight or gay. In the poem "Patriarchy" (Designs from the Interior, Anansi, 1994), for example, the poet finds in his own capacity for violence and cruelty "the patriarchy that I thought/ in loving men, I would escape."
Ambiguity; complexity; fluent, even beautiful verses; that’s plenty to merit a visit to Collected Works for a poetry reading on September 8. There’s more. In recent years, Barton has extended the scope and scale of his work, as if adding to the verbal artistry he learned from American poets like Louise Glück some of the structural experimentalism associated with fellow Albertan Erin Mouré.
There’s also a trickster side to John Barton, evidenced in his adding the subtitle to Arc: Canada’s National Poetry Magazine. It’s a parody of the Globe and Mail’s claim of being a national newspaper. The ironic humour tends to be lost on most readers, but then, there isn’t much anyone could do to make Canadians see Ottawa as a poetry capital rather than a depository for taxes and resentment. Under John Barton’s leadership, Arc reached its 25th year as an established magazine of reliable quality and attractive design, one of the few sites in print for serious reviewing of Canadian poetry.
After editing a special issue featuring Ottawa Poetry Now, perhaps he felt it was time to skip town. About the only promotion available to him, among Canadian literary magazines, was the editorship of The Malahat Review, which he assumed last year. The half-time job has allowed him to return to the West Coast, where he says he feels most at home, and leaves him time to write. Since returning to the West, he has continued his prolific record of publication and solidified his national reputation with the publication of two new books from Frog Hollow Press, In the House of the Present and The Strata.
Born and raised in Alberta, John studied with Robin Skelton at the University of Victoria and recently returned to the West Coast as editor of The Malahat Review. Employment with some of the top national museums kept him in Ottawa for two decades, though, and in that time he contributed enormously to the capital’s literary culture: helping to organize Tree readings and the Wilde about Sappho festival; co-editing Arc with Rita Donovan: keeping alive the Archibald Lampman Award for the best book each year by an Ottawa poet.
Residence in Ottawa was also a time of personal growth for Barton, who arrived in the city shortly after publication of his first book (The Poor Photographer, Sono Nis, 1981), followed by his his celebrated poetic portrait of Emily Carr, West of Darkness (Penumbra, 1985). In Ottawa, his writing tackled the issues of sexual identity ambiguously hinted at in his 1984 chapbook Hidden Structure (Ekstasis Editions). With Great Men (Quarry, 1990) Barton emerged as a writer who celebrates gay sexuality while delving with ever greater maturity into the emotions of love, loss, abandonment and anger, universal feelings, whether one is male or female, straight or gay. In the poem "Patriarchy" (Designs from the Interior, Anansi, 1994), for example, the poet finds in his own capacity for violence and cruelty "the patriarchy that I thought/ in loving men, I would escape."
Ambiguity; complexity; fluent, even beautiful verses; that’s plenty to merit a visit to Collected Works for a poetry reading on September 8. There’s more. In recent years, Barton has extended the scope and scale of his work, as if adding to the verbal artistry he learned from American poets like Louise Glück some of the structural experimentalism associated with fellow Albertan Erin Mouré.
There’s also a trickster side to John Barton, evidenced in his adding the subtitle to Arc: Canada’s National Poetry Magazine. It’s a parody of the Globe and Mail’s claim of being a national newspaper. The ironic humour tends to be lost on most readers, but then, there isn’t much anyone could do to make Canadians see Ottawa as a poetry capital rather than a depository for taxes and resentment. Under John Barton’s leadership, Arc reached its 25th year as an established magazine of reliable quality and attractive design, one of the few sites in print for serious reviewing of Canadian poetry.
After editing a special issue featuring Ottawa Poetry Now, perhaps he felt it was time to skip town. About the only promotion available to him, among Canadian literary magazines, was the editorship of The Malahat Review, which he assumed last year. The half-time job has allowed him to return to the West Coast, where he says he feels most at home, and leaves him time to write. Since returning to the West, he has continued his prolific record of publication and solidified his national reputation with the publication of two new books from Frog Hollow Press, In the House of the Present and The Strata.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
a boy's first poetry slam
“If it hadn’t been for the traffic lights, I would’ve taken a different route.” T.J. Whalebotham
went to my first slam & read in it too. it was strangely exhilarating. not believing that poetry is a competitive sport & knowing that what i do isnt 'spoken word' (despite the verisimilitude of me speaks to me utters), i took the stage in the Ottawa Fringe Festival tent & performed an abbreviated performance poetry piece. the slam was hosted by the most graceful of hosts, Oni the Haitian Sensation. i spoke some words & read some letters off a page. the others had their pieces memorized. the intented crowd seemed to appreciate my performance despite its difference to the other presentations. & i enjoyed the heedy word filled tent atmosphere that was Oni's slam. there was a lot energy contained in that tent the night of June 22nd, 2005.
it's that frenetic energy that the spoken word form restrains with its undeclared structures/strictures. what i've learnt from reading & talking to the involved is that many spoken word poets hope to return poetry to its long abandoned roots in orality. accordingly, the relatively recent corruption of poetry is the result of the printing press & its progeny, photocopiers & computers etc. i've also noticed in talking to well minded, literate humans that some perceive a division between the performance & the page. does one require a text to observe a reading‑performance? usually not: altho one might be curious to see the printed page, one wdnt walk away feeling as tho one had been deprived. with spoken word, the live performance is fundamental & resulting textual sediment is derivative. since, spoken word practitioners envisage such centrality for the spoken word, writing is insignificant. this artificial division between literature & its reading (or performance & its literature) has led to a rendering of the text & its composition as insufficient.
an attitude has emerged in which the literary text is viewed as incomplete if it is deemed a basis for performance. seems that it has seeped into consciousness that there is something essential in the performance of a literary work that cannot be represented on the page. this may be a truism? is the literary merit of a text abnegated if performance/reading takes ink on page as a point of departure? this is a very recent shift in thinking about poetic practice: that there is a poetry of the page & a poetry of performance.
returning poetry to its fundamentals strikes me as a futile exercise. rather than reforming poetry according to its essence, spoken word poetry has developed into a subgenre with its own conventions, codes and criteria for production/exposition. as a literary practice that claims preeminence for the spoken word, spoken word deepens an illusory division between the poetry of the page & the poetry of performance.
is there something irreconcilable between the orality of spoken word performance & printed literature? there doesnt seem to be anything intrinsically in conflict between the printed page & the spoken word poetry pieces that i've heard/seen performed. seems that many of the spoken word pieces i’ve heard, wd be well suited to presentation on the printed page; some works better suited to the page than others. it is possible to consider any text an invitation to oralization. a text neednt appear score‑like as a prerequisite for performance. a cooking recipe (score‑like in a sense) wd be ideal raw material for a performance reading. on the page, a text designed for spoken word performance wdnt necessarily distinguish itself as such.
most spoken word pieces that i've seen performed (at this slam & at readings) message a politic or moral that often has to do with a witnessed form of injustice by which the performer & by extension the listeners have been repelled. the spoken word form with its unwritten code of convention that relies on techniques such as rhyme, message, story & a regular meter bridles the energy incited by outrage. repulsion with the horror of late capitalist existence is channeled into a form that functions concomitantly as discharge & restraint. it seems that if the anger at injustice werent suppressed by the straightjacket of the form that the energy directed at those injustices might just be directed somewhere instead of being circulated around, acknowledged & ritually dismissed. everyone goes home relieved of a degree of discontentedness & nothing changes. this is to say that what you speak isnt of much consequence; it's what you do that matters. an art work that identifies an injustice & stands still, safe within its form is just that safe within its form. seems that's why the winner of the aforementioned poetry slam, a visitor from California, won. cuz he satirized the form by presenting a piece comprised of a series of self‑reflexive propositions each one starting with ‘this is MY spoken word piece...' the form, tho unofficial, is so well understood by its audience and practitioners that sarcastic, self-satirization yields highly entertaining results.
the spoken word art form, as an unofficially code bound form assimilates its resistances & naturally ossifies under the weight of its popular conventions. clearly, it is by countering formulaic approaches that innovation in consciousness, culture & art can be achieved. perhaps the popularity of the spoken word form is due to its quotation & imitation of more popular forms of culture? furthermore, rather than confronting the represented injustice, poetry slam competitions reinforce the ‘merit’ based hierarchies & competitive ethos of social life under late capitalism.
went to my first slam & read in it too. it was strangely exhilarating. not believing that poetry is a competitive sport & knowing that what i do isnt 'spoken word' (despite the verisimilitude of me speaks to me utters), i took the stage in the Ottawa Fringe Festival tent & performed an abbreviated performance poetry piece. the slam was hosted by the most graceful of hosts, Oni the Haitian Sensation. i spoke some words & read some letters off a page. the others had their pieces memorized. the intented crowd seemed to appreciate my performance despite its difference to the other presentations. & i enjoyed the heedy word filled tent atmosphere that was Oni's slam. there was a lot energy contained in that tent the night of June 22nd, 2005.
it's that frenetic energy that the spoken word form restrains with its undeclared structures/strictures. what i've learnt from reading & talking to the involved is that many spoken word poets hope to return poetry to its long abandoned roots in orality. accordingly, the relatively recent corruption of poetry is the result of the printing press & its progeny, photocopiers & computers etc. i've also noticed in talking to well minded, literate humans that some perceive a division between the performance & the page. does one require a text to observe a reading‑performance? usually not: altho one might be curious to see the printed page, one wdnt walk away feeling as tho one had been deprived. with spoken word, the live performance is fundamental & resulting textual sediment is derivative. since, spoken word practitioners envisage such centrality for the spoken word, writing is insignificant. this artificial division between literature & its reading (or performance & its literature) has led to a rendering of the text & its composition as insufficient.
an attitude has emerged in which the literary text is viewed as incomplete if it is deemed a basis for performance. seems that it has seeped into consciousness that there is something essential in the performance of a literary work that cannot be represented on the page. this may be a truism? is the literary merit of a text abnegated if performance/reading takes ink on page as a point of departure? this is a very recent shift in thinking about poetic practice: that there is a poetry of the page & a poetry of performance.
returning poetry to its fundamentals strikes me as a futile exercise. rather than reforming poetry according to its essence, spoken word poetry has developed into a subgenre with its own conventions, codes and criteria for production/exposition. as a literary practice that claims preeminence for the spoken word, spoken word deepens an illusory division between the poetry of the page & the poetry of performance.
is there something irreconcilable between the orality of spoken word performance & printed literature? there doesnt seem to be anything intrinsically in conflict between the printed page & the spoken word poetry pieces that i've heard/seen performed. seems that many of the spoken word pieces i’ve heard, wd be well suited to presentation on the printed page; some works better suited to the page than others. it is possible to consider any text an invitation to oralization. a text neednt appear score‑like as a prerequisite for performance. a cooking recipe (score‑like in a sense) wd be ideal raw material for a performance reading. on the page, a text designed for spoken word performance wdnt necessarily distinguish itself as such.
most spoken word pieces that i've seen performed (at this slam & at readings) message a politic or moral that often has to do with a witnessed form of injustice by which the performer & by extension the listeners have been repelled. the spoken word form with its unwritten code of convention that relies on techniques such as rhyme, message, story & a regular meter bridles the energy incited by outrage. repulsion with the horror of late capitalist existence is channeled into a form that functions concomitantly as discharge & restraint. it seems that if the anger at injustice werent suppressed by the straightjacket of the form that the energy directed at those injustices might just be directed somewhere instead of being circulated around, acknowledged & ritually dismissed. everyone goes home relieved of a degree of discontentedness & nothing changes. this is to say that what you speak isnt of much consequence; it's what you do that matters. an art work that identifies an injustice & stands still, safe within its form is just that safe within its form. seems that's why the winner of the aforementioned poetry slam, a visitor from California, won. cuz he satirized the form by presenting a piece comprised of a series of self‑reflexive propositions each one starting with ‘this is MY spoken word piece...' the form, tho unofficial, is so well understood by its audience and practitioners that sarcastic, self-satirization yields highly entertaining results.
the spoken word art form, as an unofficially code bound form assimilates its resistances & naturally ossifies under the weight of its popular conventions. clearly, it is by countering formulaic approaches that innovation in consciousness, culture & art can be achieved. perhaps the popularity of the spoken word form is due to its quotation & imitation of more popular forms of culture? furthermore, rather than confronting the represented injustice, poetry slam competitions reinforce the ‘merit’ based hierarchies & competitive ethos of social life under late capitalism.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
random notes
Toronto writer and fhole publisher Daniel f. Bradley has been finding a bunch of references online to Ottawa poet and publisher jwcurry lately, even though curry doesn’t want to be on the internet.
The fifth issue of Poetics.ca is finally up, including the introduction that Roy MacSkimming wrote to Ottawa poet William Hawkins’ selected poems, Dancing Alone. Outgoing managing editor Anita Dolman will soon be replaced by Vivian Vavassis, and web designer Paul Dechene also leaves for parts unknown.
Former Arc editor and current editor of The Malahat Review John Barton returns to Ottawa on September 8th to read at Collected Works Bookstore (sponsored by the small press action network – ottawa). Opening will be current Arc editor Anita Lahey. The reading is free and starts at 7:30pm.
Melanie Little and Peter Norman leave this weekend for ten months of Calgary, where she will be Writer-in-Residence for the Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers Programme at the University of Calgary, replacing last year’s Writer-in-Residence, Toronto writer Natalee Caple. We wish them well! Little also recently won the 2004 PRISM International Short Fiction Contest, with her winning entry “Wrestling” in the summer issue of the magazine, along with some poems by myself.
There's a new chapbook press apparently looking for full-length poetry manuscripts. Check out littlefishcartpress.
I’m again doing poetry workshops at Collected Works Bookstore this fall, 8 weeks of Wednesday nights (over more than 8 weeks from September to November), $200. Email me at az421 (at) freenet (dot) ca to find out about specific dates and spaces.
Here are some poems of mine online.
The fifth issue of Poetics.ca is finally up, including the introduction that Roy MacSkimming wrote to Ottawa poet William Hawkins’ selected poems, Dancing Alone. Outgoing managing editor Anita Dolman will soon be replaced by Vivian Vavassis, and web designer Paul Dechene also leaves for parts unknown.
Former Arc editor and current editor of The Malahat Review John Barton returns to Ottawa on September 8th to read at Collected Works Bookstore (sponsored by the small press action network – ottawa). Opening will be current Arc editor Anita Lahey. The reading is free and starts at 7:30pm.
Melanie Little and Peter Norman leave this weekend for ten months of Calgary, where she will be Writer-in-Residence for the Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers Programme at the University of Calgary, replacing last year’s Writer-in-Residence, Toronto writer Natalee Caple. We wish them well! Little also recently won the 2004 PRISM International Short Fiction Contest, with her winning entry “Wrestling” in the summer issue of the magazine, along with some poems by myself.
There's a new chapbook press apparently looking for full-length poetry manuscripts. Check out littlefishcartpress.
I’m again doing poetry workshops at Collected Works Bookstore this fall, 8 weeks of Wednesday nights (over more than 8 weeks from September to November), $200. Email me at az421 (at) freenet (dot) ca to find out about specific dates and spaces.
Here are some poems of mine online.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Hello Serotonin, by Jon Paul Fiorentino
Hello Serotonin, by Jon Paul Fiorentino, 2004. Coach House Books. ISBN: 1-55245-136-4 Price: CDN $ 16.95
From the author of transcona fragments and resume drowning, comes Hello Serotonin. This is Jon Paul Fiorentino’s most recent book of poems, and his M.A. thesis from Concordia University.
This collection is a bottle of poetic stimulants amidst a sea of Canpoetry barbiturates. Here, Fiorentino has crafted a witty, often delightfully sardonic collection.
Hello Serotonin is distinctive in its reclaiming of the language of science for poetry. This move is not without its precedents (think Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”) but Fiorentino takes the move into the twenty-first century, grappling with it, making it his own. Terse pieces, like “Dopamine Song,” speak to the surrealism of even the mundane when we experience life on medication:
… snap.
Let every neuron
fire and misfire.
Cut.
Underdress with a tourniquet.
Slam your way into sleep.
Many of the most memorable pieces in this collection succeed in bringing the reader into the claustrophobic world of the heavily medicated, into the emotional fluctuations of those whom medicine labels “unbalanced.”
Some poems, however, particularly in the section subtitled “Neurotransmissions,” take the scientific language too far for the average reader to follow. Poems, like “Let’s Hear it for Hydroxythryptamine!” choke on an overabundance of medical jargon, such as: “serotonergic agents,” “cholinergic neurons,” “parysympathomimesis” and “platonic agonists.” Diction like this is difficult enough even to pronounce, let alone comprehend, and for the average reader these mammoth terms serve only to frustrate. Much more successful (and numerous) are Fiorentino’s poems in which the scientific terminology is less ostentatious.
The other sections of the book deal less in the scientific language and more in the conventions of the personal lyric, but nearly all the poems allude to the paranoia and surrealism of an over-medicated culture. Even those readers who have never taken mood altering drugs (prescription or illicit) will recognize in Fiorentino’s vacillation between sardonic wit and paralysis a senitivity to the tonic chord of our age.
From the author of transcona fragments and resume drowning, comes Hello Serotonin. This is Jon Paul Fiorentino’s most recent book of poems, and his M.A. thesis from Concordia University.
This collection is a bottle of poetic stimulants amidst a sea of Canpoetry barbiturates. Here, Fiorentino has crafted a witty, often delightfully sardonic collection.
Hello Serotonin is distinctive in its reclaiming of the language of science for poetry. This move is not without its precedents (think Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”) but Fiorentino takes the move into the twenty-first century, grappling with it, making it his own. Terse pieces, like “Dopamine Song,” speak to the surrealism of even the mundane when we experience life on medication:
… snap.
Let every neuron
fire and misfire.
Cut.
Underdress with a tourniquet.
Slam your way into sleep.
Many of the most memorable pieces in this collection succeed in bringing the reader into the claustrophobic world of the heavily medicated, into the emotional fluctuations of those whom medicine labels “unbalanced.”
Some poems, however, particularly in the section subtitled “Neurotransmissions,” take the scientific language too far for the average reader to follow. Poems, like “Let’s Hear it for Hydroxythryptamine!” choke on an overabundance of medical jargon, such as: “serotonergic agents,” “cholinergic neurons,” “parysympathomimesis” and “platonic agonists.” Diction like this is difficult enough even to pronounce, let alone comprehend, and for the average reader these mammoth terms serve only to frustrate. Much more successful (and numerous) are Fiorentino’s poems in which the scientific terminology is less ostentatious.
The other sections of the book deal less in the scientific language and more in the conventions of the personal lyric, but nearly all the poems allude to the paranoia and surrealism of an over-medicated culture. Even those readers who have never taken mood altering drugs (prescription or illicit) will recognize in Fiorentino’s vacillation between sardonic wit and paralysis a senitivity to the tonic chord of our age.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Sky Gilbert at the TREE Reading Series
On Tuesday, June 14th, Hamilton resident Sky Gilbert did a featured reading at the TREE Reading Series in Ottawa. Why can’t writers learn from theatre folk how to read? One of the most entertaining readings I’ve been to in a long time, it’s always the playwrights who really know how to perform anything, even if they’re just reading from a basement chair in a pub (I remember how good Jason Sherman was after he won the Governor General’s Award a number of years ago; the theatre folk always blew the others out of the water at those readings).
Reading from his fourth novel, An English Gentleman, published by Cormorant, he also read a number of poems, including this one that we requested, from his first poetry collection:
Why Kathie Lee Gifford Is Just
Like The United States Of America
She’s mean
She’s greedy
She’s very very pretty
And of course she’s a lying hypocrite
And of course she’s on TV every morning
And just like America, Kathie Lee Gifford is a drag queen
And what’s a drag queen?
Well, someone who just can’t stop drawing attention to
how pretty they are – I mean Kathie Lee, every time she
moves her legs or bats an eye or touches her hair, she
reminds you, in that subtle way she has, of how beautiful
she is and yes okay so she is beautiful but more than that
each gesture says I’m beautiful, so beautiful. And that I’m
barely, just barely, conscious of it. And on top of that I’m
intelligent (questionable) and vicious. I can be vicious. If
I have to, I can defend myself against anything and I’ll
still be beautiful: oooh I’m just stamping my little high
heels right now and removing a stray lock of hair with
my long long dangerous fingernails. Yes I can stand up
for what I believe and be glamourous too
And I believe in America (which means myself)
Kathie Lee Gifford
And I believe in fidelity and marriage and love (and all
the other lies)
And even when you find my husband’s fat hairy wrinkly
old dick up some forty-five-year-old Exercise Queen in a
hotel I can pull my life back together and lie
Like drag queens and the United States of America
I can lie
I can exploit Latina women in sweat shops and then I can
appear with President Clinton and I can lie
And you will love me, Kathie Lee Gifford
You will
But most of all, you will watch me on TV
Because that’s the way mornings are
Inescapable, the beginning of all that treachery and
drudgery and then there’s me, being more beautiful than
you’ll ever be
Look at me
I’m Kathie Lee
I’m some kind of an achievement
from Digressions of a Naked Party Girl (1998, ECW Press)
There is something quite brilliant about a Sky Gilbert poem; a dry, furious wit that tears through whatever he sets his eye on, from Kathie Lee Gifford to more recent poems about Winnipeg in his second collection.
All over theatre for a number of years, Gilbert helped found Buddies in Bad Times in Toronto, the first gay-only theatre company, and was artistic director for its first seventeen years. More recently, he’s not only published a number of plays, but four novels, and a couple of poetry collections.
Apparently there’s some review that appears in The Danforth Review about how Sky Gilbert isn’t a real poet because there isn’t any wordplay? Oh, get over yourself already.
Recently celebrating 25 years of operation, the TREE Reading Series is supposedly one of the oldest continuing reading series in Canada (with Harbourfront in Toronto & another in Montreal supposedly being older). The organizers, James Moran and Jennifer Mulligan, are currently putting together an anniversary anthology to be launched this fall to celebrate the series’ first quarter century.
The next TREE features Edmonton poet Andy "Mustang" Weaver launching his first solo collection, Were the Bees (NeWest Press), and Montreal fiction writer Nairne Holtz. One of my favourite humans, this will be Weaver’s first Ottawa reading in some time, and a long time after his first reading here, when he was mixed up with QWERTY magazine out of the University of New Brunswick and read at the National Archives in 1997 (a span-o event, even way back then). Apparently they have videotape of some of the activities at the time. Ask Andy or even Paul Dechene about that sometime.
Reading from his fourth novel, An English Gentleman, published by Cormorant, he also read a number of poems, including this one that we requested, from his first poetry collection:
Why Kathie Lee Gifford Is Just
Like The United States Of America
She’s mean
She’s greedy
She’s very very pretty
And of course she’s a lying hypocrite
And of course she’s on TV every morning
And just like America, Kathie Lee Gifford is a drag queen
And what’s a drag queen?
Well, someone who just can’t stop drawing attention to
how pretty they are – I mean Kathie Lee, every time she
moves her legs or bats an eye or touches her hair, she
reminds you, in that subtle way she has, of how beautiful
she is and yes okay so she is beautiful but more than that
each gesture says I’m beautiful, so beautiful. And that I’m
barely, just barely, conscious of it. And on top of that I’m
intelligent (questionable) and vicious. I can be vicious. If
I have to, I can defend myself against anything and I’ll
still be beautiful: oooh I’m just stamping my little high
heels right now and removing a stray lock of hair with
my long long dangerous fingernails. Yes I can stand up
for what I believe and be glamourous too
And I believe in America (which means myself)
Kathie Lee Gifford
And I believe in fidelity and marriage and love (and all
the other lies)
And even when you find my husband’s fat hairy wrinkly
old dick up some forty-five-year-old Exercise Queen in a
hotel I can pull my life back together and lie
Like drag queens and the United States of America
I can lie
I can exploit Latina women in sweat shops and then I can
appear with President Clinton and I can lie
And you will love me, Kathie Lee Gifford
You will
But most of all, you will watch me on TV
Because that’s the way mornings are
Inescapable, the beginning of all that treachery and
drudgery and then there’s me, being more beautiful than
you’ll ever be
Look at me
I’m Kathie Lee
I’m some kind of an achievement
from Digressions of a Naked Party Girl (1998, ECW Press)
There is something quite brilliant about a Sky Gilbert poem; a dry, furious wit that tears through whatever he sets his eye on, from Kathie Lee Gifford to more recent poems about Winnipeg in his second collection.
All over theatre for a number of years, Gilbert helped found Buddies in Bad Times in Toronto, the first gay-only theatre company, and was artistic director for its first seventeen years. More recently, he’s not only published a number of plays, but four novels, and a couple of poetry collections.
Apparently there’s some review that appears in The Danforth Review about how Sky Gilbert isn’t a real poet because there isn’t any wordplay? Oh, get over yourself already.
Recently celebrating 25 years of operation, the TREE Reading Series is supposedly one of the oldest continuing reading series in Canada (with Harbourfront in Toronto & another in Montreal supposedly being older). The organizers, James Moran and Jennifer Mulligan, are currently putting together an anniversary anthology to be launched this fall to celebrate the series’ first quarter century.
The next TREE features Edmonton poet Andy "Mustang" Weaver launching his first solo collection, Were the Bees (NeWest Press), and Montreal fiction writer Nairne Holtz. One of my favourite humans, this will be Weaver’s first Ottawa reading in some time, and a long time after his first reading here, when he was mixed up with QWERTY magazine out of the University of New Brunswick and read at the National Archives in 1997 (a span-o event, even way back then). Apparently they have videotape of some of the activities at the time. Ask Andy or even Paul Dechene about that sometime.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Uncredited interview with William Hawkins (1978)
An uncredited interview with Ottawa poet William Hawkins from the long-defunct Ottawa literary magazine Sparks: Poetry Newsmagazine (January 1978, Volume 1, No. 11):
When you think of William Hawkins, you think of many things. Mordant wit. A presence in the Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. Ottawa. Some would add a certain madness.
The poet is tallish, solidly built, with a vague air of being ready for anything. (A fight? A revelation?). He wears a Fu-Manchu moustache and a Depression Era cap with a silver Maple Leaf stuck into it. Present occupation: Taxi driver. A man who works ten hours a day, and more.
There is a certain grimness there. Times are hard.
Hawkins was often in the public eye during the Sixties and early Seventies. Books of poetry. Rock and roll records. Sojourn with Ginsberg on the West Coast. Canada Council grant.
Surrealistic year in Mexico. Lately, he has not been heard from too often. Mention this to him and be the victim of a carefully-selected Hawkins grin (suggestions of the shark in Jaws and a character in a Dostoyevsky novel).
"I am retired."
"Already?"
"I am 37, but I have been retired since I was 33."
"Motive?"
"Boredom."
"Thirty-three, eh? The age of Christ . . ."
"I am anything if not a good Christian . . ."
Hawkins’ verbal thrust into Christian symbolism is not pressed further. He is not a mystic, but a flower child a dozen years older. Somewhat bitter. Almost never unfunny. The sardonic humor of the Irish is always a hovering presence. Hawkins will not deny the ethnic connection, one of the two sides of that divided, eloquent nation: the Protestant side. He is named after King Billy. (There is an English connection, too. Hawkins’ middle name is Alfred, for Alfred the Great, a fact revealed by Sparks, possibly for the first time. . .).
Hawkins is an Ontarian to the core, the dark, surprising other side of the province’s bland coin. His present literary project is to write a history of the Lebreton Flats, drawing from newspaper clippings, remembered tough guys, pool hall lore, etc. Part of his childhood and youth were spent in the area and he has an affinity for it, or at least its memory. But Hawkins’ reach as a writer and musician is at least federal. A long poem about Louis Riel is in his arsenal of poems-to-be. (Of course his reach is universal. How un-Canadian can you get than King Kong in Saudi Arabia?).
The presence in Ottawa of the man who went to Vancouver so long ago and then on to points south, may seem surprising.
Hawkins chuckles. "I told everybody that I went west, but I stayed right here." Recently, he has been acting definitely un-retired, having given readings in the Ottawa area that have convulsed audiences with laughter, often laughter with pain, a la Lenny Bruce.
Supporting himself in these non-boom times is a struggle and Hawkins does not skim lightly over it. But poetry is always easy. "I have never had to work at these things. When I wanted to write a song or a poem, it was just there."
So Hawkins stays, for now, at the center of Canadian federalism (or of folklore). He is not a weeping prophet. "I am not all that enthused by the state of the world," he admits. "Maybe I am a comic realist."
When you think of William Hawkins, you think of many things. Mordant wit. A presence in the Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. Ottawa. Some would add a certain madness.
The poet is tallish, solidly built, with a vague air of being ready for anything. (A fight? A revelation?). He wears a Fu-Manchu moustache and a Depression Era cap with a silver Maple Leaf stuck into it. Present occupation: Taxi driver. A man who works ten hours a day, and more.
There is a certain grimness there. Times are hard.
Hawkins was often in the public eye during the Sixties and early Seventies. Books of poetry. Rock and roll records. Sojourn with Ginsberg on the West Coast. Canada Council grant.
Surrealistic year in Mexico. Lately, he has not been heard from too often. Mention this to him and be the victim of a carefully-selected Hawkins grin (suggestions of the shark in Jaws and a character in a Dostoyevsky novel).
"I am retired."
"Already?"
"I am 37, but I have been retired since I was 33."
"Motive?"
"Boredom."
"Thirty-three, eh? The age of Christ . . ."
"I am anything if not a good Christian . . ."
Hawkins’ verbal thrust into Christian symbolism is not pressed further. He is not a mystic, but a flower child a dozen years older. Somewhat bitter. Almost never unfunny. The sardonic humor of the Irish is always a hovering presence. Hawkins will not deny the ethnic connection, one of the two sides of that divided, eloquent nation: the Protestant side. He is named after King Billy. (There is an English connection, too. Hawkins’ middle name is Alfred, for Alfred the Great, a fact revealed by Sparks, possibly for the first time. . .).
Hawkins is an Ontarian to the core, the dark, surprising other side of the province’s bland coin. His present literary project is to write a history of the Lebreton Flats, drawing from newspaper clippings, remembered tough guys, pool hall lore, etc. Part of his childhood and youth were spent in the area and he has an affinity for it, or at least its memory. But Hawkins’ reach as a writer and musician is at least federal. A long poem about Louis Riel is in his arsenal of poems-to-be. (Of course his reach is universal. How un-Canadian can you get than King Kong in Saudi Arabia?).
The presence in Ottawa of the man who went to Vancouver so long ago and then on to points south, may seem surprising.
Hawkins chuckles. "I told everybody that I went west, but I stayed right here." Recently, he has been acting definitely un-retired, having given readings in the Ottawa area that have convulsed audiences with laughter, often laughter with pain, a la Lenny Bruce.
Supporting himself in these non-boom times is a struggle and Hawkins does not skim lightly over it. But poetry is always easy. "I have never had to work at these things. When I wanted to write a song or a poem, it was just there."
So Hawkins stays, for now, at the center of Canadian federalism (or of folklore). He is not a weeping prophet. "I am not all that enthused by the state of the world," he admits. "Maybe I am a comic realist."
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Wanda O'Connor's recent poems
If you’ve been paying attention at all, its been obvious that Ottawa poet Wanda O’Connor has been writing increasingly interesting poems over the past six to eight months. At the ottawa small press fair on June 18th, I picked up her most recent chapbook, So you’re thinking of reproducing (ImPress). A six page poem delivered in small fragments, it begins:
these are the slender points
sneaking in with dirty magazines, repeating
things we weren’t taught to say
fastened by teeth, it begins like this
you fled from
victory
and it was close, too
you were a boat then
an angry thing, forming after your
rallying for salient kisses
O’Connor works through love and need at the same time she writes of resisting it, moving from "They say Jean Shrimpton ("the shrimp") dressed / like a bag lady. She invented the mini / skirt. It was scandalous." to a few lines later, writing "Don’t marry a rodeo superstar. / They will only break your heart." (n.p.). How to have all this want when you know it might not be good for you, as she writes of "an escape plan / enough music to drown in // my heart is an anchor" (n.p.).
A romantic at heart, she has been working a series of love / broken love lyrics for some time, slowly working out into the larger world. The small chapbook ends with this, the strongest fragment in the collection:
America we’ve been informed of your
exceptional talent.
America we are in love.
Your calcitrant hues of red and golden
yellow
the anticipation of opposites
is what we love.
America you have beautiful legs.
With her poetry increasingly informed by the work of Robert Creeley, Lisa Robertson, Anne Carson, Robert Kroetsch, Daphne Marlatt and Barry McKinnon (see my brief piece on her contribution to the "sex at 31" phenomenon), you can see the shifts as they develop in her line breaks, over the course of the poems she’s been publishing intermittently on her blog. Some move as breath, and others, as variations on the breath. It has been interesting to watch her move.
Through recently creating the chapbook / ephemera press ImPress, O’Connor been publishing odd little pieces by not only by herself, but by other local scribes, including Jesse Ferguson, Max Middle, Seymour Mayne and Sarah Ruffolo. Her own single poem sheet, "Proof in canon," is a long block of scattered lyric that echoes versions of the locus, another in her series of love / broken love lyrics that begins:
one day i’d like to. a long
economic. live in stretches
and skin. breaks of flocking,
the pancake of love. beast as
birds, as appearing to, in the
locality of sleep, in the
moment stalled of air.
Apparently off to Montreal this fall, O’Connor will be participating in the Creative Writing Program there. It will be interesting to see how she develops, amid the likes of Jon Paul Fiorentino, David McGimpsey and Stephanie Bolster. One can only hope that after ten years of living in the capital, she might eventually come back to us someday. At least for now, you can still get a hold of her through her Ottawa address, c/o 89 Spadina Avenue (upstairs), Ottawa Ontario K1Y 2B9 or by emailing her at ew702@freenet.carleton.ca
these are the slender points
sneaking in with dirty magazines, repeating
things we weren’t taught to say
fastened by teeth, it begins like this
you fled from
victory
and it was close, too
you were a boat then
an angry thing, forming after your
rallying for salient kisses
O’Connor works through love and need at the same time she writes of resisting it, moving from "They say Jean Shrimpton ("the shrimp") dressed / like a bag lady. She invented the mini / skirt. It was scandalous." to a few lines later, writing "Don’t marry a rodeo superstar. / They will only break your heart." (n.p.). How to have all this want when you know it might not be good for you, as she writes of "an escape plan / enough music to drown in // my heart is an anchor" (n.p.).
A romantic at heart, she has been working a series of love / broken love lyrics for some time, slowly working out into the larger world. The small chapbook ends with this, the strongest fragment in the collection:
America we’ve been informed of your
exceptional talent.
America we are in love.
Your calcitrant hues of red and golden
yellow
the anticipation of opposites
is what we love.
America you have beautiful legs.
With her poetry increasingly informed by the work of Robert Creeley, Lisa Robertson, Anne Carson, Robert Kroetsch, Daphne Marlatt and Barry McKinnon (see my brief piece on her contribution to the "sex at 31" phenomenon), you can see the shifts as they develop in her line breaks, over the course of the poems she’s been publishing intermittently on her blog. Some move as breath, and others, as variations on the breath. It has been interesting to watch her move.
Through recently creating the chapbook / ephemera press ImPress, O’Connor been publishing odd little pieces by not only by herself, but by other local scribes, including Jesse Ferguson, Max Middle, Seymour Mayne and Sarah Ruffolo. Her own single poem sheet, "Proof in canon," is a long block of scattered lyric that echoes versions of the locus, another in her series of love / broken love lyrics that begins:
one day i’d like to. a long
economic. live in stretches
and skin. breaks of flocking,
the pancake of love. beast as
birds, as appearing to, in the
locality of sleep, in the
moment stalled of air.
Apparently off to Montreal this fall, O’Connor will be participating in the Creative Writing Program there. It will be interesting to see how she develops, amid the likes of Jon Paul Fiorentino, David McGimpsey and Stephanie Bolster. One can only hope that after ten years of living in the capital, she might eventually come back to us someday. At least for now, you can still get a hold of her through her Ottawa address, c/o 89 Spadina Avenue (upstairs), Ottawa Ontario K1Y 2B9 or by emailing her at ew702@freenet.carleton.ca
Sunday, June 19, 2005
REVIEW: Words for Trees, by Barbara Folkart, Ottawa Poet
Words for Trees by Barbara Folkart
Reviewed by Jesse Ferguson.
Beach Holme Publishing. Trade paper 120 pp ISBN 0-88878-436-8 $13.95 CDN $9.95 US.
Folkart’s first book of poetry consists of many finely crafted and sensuous poems; the collection as a whole attests to the sensitivity and uncompromising linguistic control of a seasoned poet.
The book is comprised almost exclusively of free-verse, yet the poems are carefully controlled. Folkart’s diction is sophisticated, yet accessible, and unlike many poets who seem to judge a piece’s worth by its abstruseness, she espouses a more natural aesthetic, letting each poem dictate its own linguistic elevation. In “Flight into Egypt,” she writes of “the angry roil of mountains in the dusk, / the sea glaciered / into a heat death all its own.” In contrast with this lofty diction are such lines as “a nice warm fuck in a nice warm bed” (from “View from the Void”). Folkart is willing, when the situation demands it, to use everyday speech in all its bluntness.
The rare instances in which Folkart’s language fails occur in such poems as “The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian,” when her alliteration draws too much attention to itself. Lines like “bondaged / to bare blue bark” are slightly distracting. Aside from two or three such instances, Folkart delivers poem after poem filled with well-turned phrases that often lead the reader to repeat lines in admiration.
For the most part, Folkart’s images are precise and simple. Except on rare occasions she resists the urge to belabor an image with superfluous adjectives or other types of lofty, imprecise language. Thus, in “A Sudden Cold,” the effect of an early frost is described precisely in the lines
… Soon
they’ll be lunging to their knees,
the sunflowers, like the vertical
corpses in Sicilian catacombs
crumbling inside their Sunday-best.
Rarely does Folkart deliver a metaphor that does not bear scrutiny. One such rarity occurs in the poem “Sunday Morning in Fallowfield,” which closes on the lines “all morning the air boisters / through the big maples…. And underneath it all, eternity sieves grain by grain through the branches” (my emphasis). The poet, for the most part, avoids such terms as “eternity” and “infinity,” which are widely used by other poets, yet are difficult to employ in any fresh way.
Thematically, Folkart draws heavily upon the realms of visual art and music, with a special affinity for the French traditions. “Deux Déjeuners sur l’Herbe” plays on two paintings by French impressionist artists, employing the same softness of tone used by that school of art. Thankfully, however, Folkart’s poems are seldom as fuzzy and imprecise as the works of many impressionists. Thus, in the same poem, the female subject is described in precise terms as having “a plain and competent body— / stable, large-footed, with the big toe sticking out.” Folkart’s poetry reveals her deep love and understanding of many types of art; many of her best poems borrow from the languages of painting, music and even photography.
Above all, Words for Trees seeks to articulate the intense longings of the average human, longings that can be brought to the surface by even the most commonplace of occurrences. In “Clarinet Flesh,” the narrator remembers of a fellow musician, “it was Andy’s reedy grace / I wanted, his astringent / Slavic cheekbones, his pectorals.” In the poem “Id,” the speaker laments a disconnect with sexuality, saying,
for some, desire is the way back in:
… [but] my longing stands outside me, angel
of fire posted at the gates of me
to keep me out.
Often, Folkart projects the yearning of her personae onto trees, flowers or other elements of nature, but does so subtly, leaving the reader to put the pieces together.
In conclusion, Folkart’s poems bear the mark of an astute editor, of an uncompromising artist. One may wonder whether the poems are at times too crafted, too controlled, and that they might be more exciting if they contained more linguistic ‘wiggle room.’ The poems, however, are generally engaging both intellectually and emotionally. This collection is the perfect companion to a good bottle of French wine and one of Debussy’s préludes on a lazy summer evening.
If you would like to have something of yours reviewed by Jesse Ferguson, then email him at fergusonjesse@hotmail.com.
Reviewed by Jesse Ferguson.
Beach Holme Publishing. Trade paper 120 pp ISBN 0-88878-436-8 $13.95 CDN $9.95 US.
Folkart’s first book of poetry consists of many finely crafted and sensuous poems; the collection as a whole attests to the sensitivity and uncompromising linguistic control of a seasoned poet.
The book is comprised almost exclusively of free-verse, yet the poems are carefully controlled. Folkart’s diction is sophisticated, yet accessible, and unlike many poets who seem to judge a piece’s worth by its abstruseness, she espouses a more natural aesthetic, letting each poem dictate its own linguistic elevation. In “Flight into Egypt,” she writes of “the angry roil of mountains in the dusk, / the sea glaciered / into a heat death all its own.” In contrast with this lofty diction are such lines as “a nice warm fuck in a nice warm bed” (from “View from the Void”). Folkart is willing, when the situation demands it, to use everyday speech in all its bluntness.
The rare instances in which Folkart’s language fails occur in such poems as “The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian,” when her alliteration draws too much attention to itself. Lines like “bondaged / to bare blue bark” are slightly distracting. Aside from two or three such instances, Folkart delivers poem after poem filled with well-turned phrases that often lead the reader to repeat lines in admiration.
For the most part, Folkart’s images are precise and simple. Except on rare occasions she resists the urge to belabor an image with superfluous adjectives or other types of lofty, imprecise language. Thus, in “A Sudden Cold,” the effect of an early frost is described precisely in the lines
… Soon
they’ll be lunging to their knees,
the sunflowers, like the vertical
corpses in Sicilian catacombs
crumbling inside their Sunday-best.
Rarely does Folkart deliver a metaphor that does not bear scrutiny. One such rarity occurs in the poem “Sunday Morning in Fallowfield,” which closes on the lines “all morning the air boisters / through the big maples…. And underneath it all, eternity sieves grain by grain through the branches” (my emphasis). The poet, for the most part, avoids such terms as “eternity” and “infinity,” which are widely used by other poets, yet are difficult to employ in any fresh way.
Thematically, Folkart draws heavily upon the realms of visual art and music, with a special affinity for the French traditions. “Deux Déjeuners sur l’Herbe” plays on two paintings by French impressionist artists, employing the same softness of tone used by that school of art. Thankfully, however, Folkart’s poems are seldom as fuzzy and imprecise as the works of many impressionists. Thus, in the same poem, the female subject is described in precise terms as having “a plain and competent body— / stable, large-footed, with the big toe sticking out.” Folkart’s poetry reveals her deep love and understanding of many types of art; many of her best poems borrow from the languages of painting, music and even photography.
Above all, Words for Trees seeks to articulate the intense longings of the average human, longings that can be brought to the surface by even the most commonplace of occurrences. In “Clarinet Flesh,” the narrator remembers of a fellow musician, “it was Andy’s reedy grace / I wanted, his astringent / Slavic cheekbones, his pectorals.” In the poem “Id,” the speaker laments a disconnect with sexuality, saying,
for some, desire is the way back in:
… [but] my longing stands outside me, angel
of fire posted at the gates of me
to keep me out.
Often, Folkart projects the yearning of her personae onto trees, flowers or other elements of nature, but does so subtly, leaving the reader to put the pieces together.
In conclusion, Folkart’s poems bear the mark of an astute editor, of an uncompromising artist. One may wonder whether the poems are at times too crafted, too controlled, and that they might be more exciting if they contained more linguistic ‘wiggle room.’ The poems, however, are generally engaging both intellectually and emotionally. This collection is the perfect companion to a good bottle of French wine and one of Debussy’s préludes on a lazy summer evening.
If you would like to have something of yours reviewed by Jesse Ferguson, then email him at fergusonjesse@hotmail.com.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Ottawa Literary Awards Winners Announced: Stephen Brockwell wins Archibald Lampman
Not only has Ottawa a rich literary history, but also an active writing community. Just ask local Ottawa literary archivist Steve Artelle, who recently told me a little about the lit history of the city, “Ottawa's literary environment arguably goes back to aboriginal oral traditions, though it was Samuel de Champlain's 17th-century journal entries that kick off a local Euro-Canadian literary tradition. In terms of poetry, the contemporary scene usually traces its roots back to the arrival of Archibald Lampman in the city in 1883.” Steve also provides historical literary walking tours in Ottawa’s downtown, and can be reached at ottawaliterary@yahoo.ca.
Given this history, it’s no surprise that the city honours area writers through an annual literary appreciation ceremony. Ottawa arts representative Faith Seltzer told me that the Ottawa Book Awards, one award portion of the literary ceremony, was introduced in 1986 through the old Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton Government Council. The awards origins were formed from the “Ottawa Literary Awards Ceremony, originally a culminating event of the Ottawa Valley Book Festival, a 10 day literary festival”. Each year an annual $2,500 prize is awarded in 4 categories: English fiction, English non-fiction, French fiction and French non-fiction. Two of this year’s winners were Poached Egg on Toast by Frances Itani and From Telegrapher to Titan: The Life of William C. Van Horne by Valerie Knowles. The ceremony also acknowledged the best of show among the evening’s 10 different categories, such as the Canadian Authors Association National Capital Writing Award, this year presented to Betty Warrington-Kearsley, the Duncan Campbell Scott Non-Fiction Prose Contest, given to local musician and writer Alex Mortimer for his entry The Unsweet Science: Secrets of Semi-Pro Weight Guessing (a tale of how to make it as a carnival weight guesser), and the Ottawa Public Library Short Story Contest, awarded to John Blackmore, who reminded us to renew our library cards and to regard any unpleasant hike in the yearly tax assessment as our contribution to reading and supporting the library network. An articulate grade 8 student, Bushra Sultana Khan, wowed the crowd with her acceptance speech, winning in the young adult short story category for The Black Veil. Adult short story winner Gertrud Baer’s piece, written after immigrating from Germany, lingered for years in a drawer before she translated it to English, polished it up and submitted.
The literary awards also recognize the best book of poetry published in the capital each year, named after Archibald Lampman, former Ottawa first-rate metaphysical poet, and was bestowed upon local poet Stephen Brockwell for his collection Fruitfly Geographic. Accepted by Ronnie Brown, Stephen made special note of Ottawa being a very center of writing, and thanked the Ottawa International Writers festival and other local poets for making it so. Stephen tells me he received the news that he'd won by e-mail. I asked him if the award changed the way he views his writing or affects his placement or statement as a poet. He answers, "No...but there is a Vegas aspect [to] any such award: three jurors are not likely to pick your book because few books please everbody. Anyone who wins is fortunate... their work pleased the judges at that moment in time. I think it's important to be genuinely honoured--because the other work is also excellent." Brockwell also expanded on the difficulty of the judge's process and of those Ottawa poets that have been unfairly looked over, "In past years I've been personally astonished that so-and-so has not been on the short list, or that so-and-so didn't win. The judges have a tough job. And the editors of Arc have a tough job too. I'd personally like to see more awards for iconoclastic poets who step on toes and push boundaries. But that's my personal taste and if I'm ever on a jury and a book comes along that's strong and satisfies that aspect of my aesthetics, maybe I'll give it my vote. As far as my place... maybe it will result in Fruitfly having a readership of two hundred people!"
Of the awards winners, some of the winning entries will appear in the public library’s Preview, the Ottawa Citizen, and local publication Gristmill. For further information on the award categories, or the 2005 nominated authors, visit the City of Ottawa Web site at www.ottawa.ca/arts.
Congratulations Stephen!
Wanda O'Connor
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
the return of jwcurry's 1cent
After a break of nearly two years, Ottawa poet and publisher jwcurry (through his Room 302 Books) has started producing 1cent publications again, his series of small handprinted and/or gestetnered publications sold for a penny. New publications include pieces by Max Middle, Nelson Ball and William Hawkins. Annual subscriptions to the 1cent series can be had for $10 ($15 for American destinations, and $20 for outside that), by writing jwcurry c/o his new address at Room 302 Books, #302-880 Somerset St West., Ottawa, Ontario K1R 6R7. What I’m really looking for is the appearance of a new newsnotes, his review / rant publication. It’s been quite a long time.
With piles of backlist of 1cent publications and other publications, including Industrial Sabotage and his newsnotes, I’m sure he would mail a catalog if you asked nicely. Small publications by bpNichol, Stuart Ross, jwcurry, Chris Turnbull, Richard Truhlar, Randall Brock, Steve McCaffery, Mark Laba, David Aylward, Marco Fraticelli, Peggy Lefler, Don Garner, david uu, Daniel f. Bradley, John Riddell, Steve Ross Smith, Shant Basmajian and hundreds of others. Check out the piece I wrote on the 1cent series in Open Letter (Little Literary Serials, guest edited by Stephen Cain; Eleventh Series, Number 6, Fall 2002).
Otherwise, I know he’s planning to participate in both the toronto small press fair on May 21st, and the ottawa small press book fair on June 18th. How can you say no to something that costs only a penny?
rob mclennan
With piles of backlist of 1cent publications and other publications, including Industrial Sabotage and his newsnotes, I’m sure he would mail a catalog if you asked nicely. Small publications by bpNichol, Stuart Ross, jwcurry, Chris Turnbull, Richard Truhlar, Randall Brock, Steve McCaffery, Mark Laba, David Aylward, Marco Fraticelli, Peggy Lefler, Don Garner, david uu, Daniel f. Bradley, John Riddell, Steve Ross Smith, Shant Basmajian and hundreds of others. Check out the piece I wrote on the 1cent series in Open Letter (Little Literary Serials, guest edited by Stephen Cain; Eleventh Series, Number 6, Fall 2002).
Otherwise, I know he’s planning to participate in both the toronto small press fair on May 21st, and the ottawa small press book fair on June 18th. How can you say no to something that costs only a penny?
rob mclennan
Monday, May 02, 2005
ottawa poetry newsletter
with the 150th anniversary of The City of Ottawa, what better time to start a site for reviews, interviews & calls for submissions involving Ottawa writers & writing. the site will include various submissions from a range of correspondents on a number of topics. enjoy!
rob mclennan
rob mclennan
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