Ottawa Public Library Poetry Workshops: Richardson, Ridley, O'Meara + Brockwell

The Ottawa Public Library is hosting four poetry workshops during the month of April to celebrate Poetry Month. All workshop are free. Register online with your public library card here: http://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/program

Poetry Workshop with Peter Richardson
Nepean Centrepointe Library 101 Centrepointe
Saturday Apr 06, 2013 (1:30 pm - 4:30 pm )

In a supportive, small-group environment, we'll look at technical aspects of the craft as they relate to your poetry. Participants will be encouraged to provide constructive feedback. Once you've registered, submit up to four pages of poems, two weeks in advance, (as well as any questions) to peter.richardson@videotron.ca. If you don't have email, drop off your poems labelled Poetry Workshop Spring 2013 NC at the Nepean Centrepointe Library by March 22. Peter Richardson: Widely published, he is the author of three poetry collections with Vehicule Press, including Sympathy for the Couriers which won the A.M. Klein award. A fourth collection, Bit Parts for Fools, is slated for publication late this autumn or early in 2014 with Goose Lane Editions.

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The Poetry Garage with Sandra Ridley
Rosemount Library 18 Rosemount Ave
Saturday Apr 13, 2013 (2:00 pm - 4:00 pm )

A two-hour session on fine-tuning the mechanics and dynamics of your poems. Your work will be read and discussed in a supportive small-group environment, facilitated by Sandra Ridley (winner of the 2009 Alfred G. Bailey Prize and 2010 Saskatchewan Book Award for Publishing, a finalist for the 2011 Ottawa Book Award, and shortlisted for the 2012 Archibald Lampman and ReLit Awards). All participants will be encouraged to provide constructive feedback. Once registered, submit three poems, up to a maximum of five pages, in advance; material to be workshopped will be selected by the facilitator. Material and contact info can be emailed to sandraridley@bell.net or dropped off labelled Poetry Workshop Spring 2013 RO at the Rosemount Library by April 5th.

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Poetry Workshop with David O'Meara
Carlingwood Public Library 281 Woodroffe Ave
Saturday Apr 20, 2013 (2:00 pm - 4:00 pm )

A two hour tear-down and refurbishment of your poem, this workshop will focus on structure and methods of narration. Be prepared to re-design (possibly jackhammer) your verse, discuss changes, and rebuild! Registered participants are asked to send three poems (up to five pages), two weeks in advance, to David O`Meara (dvdomeara@gmail.com) or drop them off at the Carlingwood Library labelled Poetry Workshop Spring 2013 CA by April 5th. David O'Meara is the author of three books of poetry, a play, and is the Artistic Director of VERSeFest (http://www.versefest.ca/news/), Canada's International Poetry Festival. His new collection, A Pretty Sight, will be published in fall 2013 by Coach House Press.

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Poetry Workshop with Stephen Brockwell

Alta Vista Library 2516 Alta Vista Library
Saturday Apr 27, 2013 (1:00 pm - 4:00 pm )

This poetry workshop will help poets invest more verbal energy into their poems. A single poem chosen from 3 submissions (up to five pages) from each participant will be workshopped to improve musical energy with a sharp focus on voice, tone, rhythm, syntax and line. Participants will be encouraged to share their work on a free social networking website prior to the workshop. Participants will be able to comment on each other's work in an encouraging environment moderated by the workshop leader Stephen Brockwell. The initial online collaboration will set the tone for an intense but positive three hour face-to-face workshop at Alta Vista Library. Please email your poems to sbrockwell@yahoo.com, or drop them off at the Alta Vista Library labelled Poetry Workshop Spring 2013 AL by April 12th. A list of suggested readings from previous workshops will be provided for reference. Stephen Brockwell is the Author of The Real Made Up (ECW) and his book Fruitfly Geographic (ECW) won the Archibald Lampman award. An installment of the work in progress, Excerpts from Improbable Books, was recently reviewed by Mark Frutkin here: http://www.ottawapoetry.blogspot.ca/2013/01/mark-frutkin-review-of-four-chapbooks.html.

Whatever Else: An Irving Layton Symposium | Registration Now Open

Registration is now open for “Whatever Else”: An Irving Layton Symposium, May 3-5, 2013.

You are cordially invited to attend “Whatever Else”: An Irving Layton Symposium, the 41^st installment of the annual Canadian Literature Symposium hosted by the Department of English at the University of Ottawa.  This will be 3-day gathering featuring paper presentations by 17 literary critics; a film screening and director’s talk by Donald Winkler (Poet: Irving Layton Observed, NFB 1986; Red Carpet for the Sun, Diversus 2002); a round-table discussion of Layton’s life and legacy with Layton biographer Elspeth Cameron, anthologist, editor and poet Seymour Mayne, and poet-critic George Elliott Clarke; a keynote address by Canada’s premier Layton scholar, Brian Trehearne; and an evening of literary readings and performances inspired by the Layton Reloaded poetry project.

Though he was once a towering figure both nationally and internationally, scholarly interest in Layton has dwindled since the mid-1980s. The goal of the symposium is to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Layton’s contribution to Canadian literature and society by way of an examination of his work from a variety of novel perspectives.

The registration cost is $90 for academics and full-time instructors ($45 for the under-employed and retirees).  There is no charge for graduate or undergraduate students, but they must register in advance of the symposium.  Registration forms can be downloaded from the Canadian Symposium website at www.canlit-symposium.ca

For further information, please contact Robert Stacey at rstacey@uottawa.ca or Cameron Anstee at cameron.anstee@gmail.com

Registration is now open for “Whatever Else”: An Irving Layton Symposium, May 3-5, 2013.
You are cordially invited to attend “Whatever Else”: An Irving Layton Symposium, the 41^st instalment of the annual Canadian Literature Symposium hosted by the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. This will be 3-day gathering featuring paper presentations by 17 literary critics; a film screening and director’s talk by Donald Winkler (Poet: Irving Layton Observed, NFB 1986; Red Carpet for the Sun, Diversus 2002); a round-table discussion of Layton’s life and legacy with Layton biographer Elspeth Cameron, anthologist, editor and poet Seymour Mayne, and poet-critic George Elliott Clarke; a keynote address by Canada’s premier Layton scholar, Brian Trehearne; and an evening of literary readings and performances inspired by the Layton Reloaded poetry project.
Once a towering figure both nationally and internationally, scholarly interest in Layton has dwindled since the mid-1980s. The goal of the symposium is to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Layton’s contribution to Canadian literature and society by way of an examination of his work from a variety of novel perspectives. The effect of the symposium will be two-fold: not only will it produce a credible and relevant body of original scholarship on the poet, it will also challenge and broaden the discourse of Canadian literary criticism by way of addressing a figure and a body of work that for almost two generations has proved resistant to the prevailing modes of critical analysis. The proceedings are balanced between papers and presentations geared towards the reappraisal of a career and those breaking new ground by reading Layton and his work in the context of questions and methodologies having emerged during the period of his neglect.
The registration cost is $90 for academics and full-time instructors ($45 for the under-employed and retirees). There is no charge for graduate or undergraduate students, but they must register in advance of the symposium. Registration forms can be downloaded from the Canadian Literature Symposium website at www.canlit-symposium.ca
For further information, please contact Robert Stacey at rstacey@uottawa.ca or Cameron Anstee at Cameron.anstee@gmail.com
We hope you can join us in May!
- See more at: http://www.canlit-symposium.ca/announcements.html#sthash.L0wEwb0s.dpuf

Registration is now open for “Whatever Else”: An Irving Layton Symposium, May 3-5, 2013.
You are cordially invited to attend “Whatever Else”: An Irving Layton Symposium, the 41^st instalment of the annual Canadian Literature Symposium hosted by the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. This will be 3-day gathering featuring paper presentations by 17 literary critics; a film screening and director’s talk by Donald Winkler (Poet: Irving Layton Observed, NFB 1986; Red Carpet for the Sun, Diversus 2002); a round-table discussion of Layton’s life and legacy with Layton biographer Elspeth Cameron, anthologist, editor and poet Seymour Mayne, and poet-critic George Elliott Clarke; a keynote address by Canada’s premier Layton scholar, Brian Trehearne; and an evening of literary readings and performances inspired by the Layton Reloaded poetry project.
Once a towering figure both nationally and internationally, scholarly interest in Layton has dwindled since the mid-1980s. The goal of the symposium is to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Layton’s contribution to Canadian literature and society by way of an examination of his work from a variety of novel perspectives. The effect of the symposium will be two-fold: not only will it produce a credible and relevant body of original scholarship on the poet, it will also challenge and broaden the discourse of Canadian literary criticism by way of addressing a figure and a body of work that for almost two generations has proved resistant to the prevailing modes of critical analysis. The proceedings are balanced between papers and presentations geared towards the reappraisal of a career and those breaking new ground by reading Layton and his work in the context of questions and methodologies having emerged during the period of his neglect.
The registration cost is $90 for academics and full-time instructors ($45 for the under-employed and retirees). There is no charge for graduate or undergraduate students, but they must register in advance of the symposium. Registration forms can be downloaded from the Canadian Literature Symposium website at www.canlit-symposium.ca
For further information, please contact Robert Stacey at rstacey@uottawa.ca or Cameron Anstee at Cameron.anstee@gmail.com
We hope you can join us in May!
- See more at: http://www.canlit-symposium.ca/announcements.html#sthash.L0wEwb0s.dpuf

Registration is now open for “Whatever Else”: An Irving Layton Symposium, May 3-5, 2013.
You are cordially invited to attend “Whatever Else”: An Irving Layton Symposium, the 41^st instalment of the annual Canadian Literature Symposium hosted by the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. This will be 3-day gathering featuring paper presentations by 17 literary critics; a film screening and director’s talk by Donald Winkler (Poet: Irving Layton Observed, NFB 1986; Red Carpet for the Sun, Diversus 2002); a round-table discussion of Layton’s life and legacy with Layton biographer Elspeth Cameron, anthologist, editor and poet Seymour Mayne, and poet-critic George Elliott Clarke; a keynote address by Canada’s premier Layton scholar, Brian Trehearne; and an evening of literary readings and performances inspired by the Layton Reloaded poetry project.
Once a towering figure both nationally and internationally, scholarly interest in Layton has dwindled since the mid-1980s. The goal of the symposium is to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Layton’s contribution to Canadian literature and society by way of an examination of his work from a variety of novel perspectives. The effect of the symposium will be two-fold: not only will it produce a credible and relevant body of original scholarship on the poet, it will also challenge and broaden the discourse of Canadian literary criticism by way of addressing a figure and a body of work that for almost two generations has proved resistant to the prevailing modes of critical analysis. The proceedings are balanced between papers and presentations geared towards the reappraisal of a career and those breaking new ground by reading Layton and his work in the context of questions and methodologies having emerged during the period of his neglect.
The registration cost is $90 for academics and full-time instructors ($45 for the under-employed and retirees). There is no charge for graduate or undergraduate students, but they must register in advance of the symposium. Registration forms can be downloaded from the Canadian Literature Symposium website at www.canlit-symposium.ca
For further information, please contact Robert Stacey at rstacey@uottawa.ca or Cameron Anstee at Cameron.anstee@gmail.com
We hope you can join us in May!
- See more at: http://www.canlit-symposium.ca/announcements.html#sthash.L0wEwb0s.dpuf

Announcing the VERSeOttawa Hall of Honour: William Hawkins and Greg Frankson

VERSeOttawa works constantly towards supporting poetry and the poetry community in Ottawa, but we are not the first to do this. There have been many important people who have helped create, shape and support this artform that we love and the community that has built up around it.

It is with this in mind that VERSeOttawa has decided to create the VERSeOttawa Hall of Honour. It is our way of recognizing the important contributions made to the Ottawa poetry community, whether through poetry itself or other methods of support (or, as is often the case, both). Each year a nomination committee will choose two worthy inductees whose work will be honoured that year, and into the future.

An induction ceremony will be conducted as part of VERSeFest. This year that will take place on March 17th.

The nomination committee this year has chosen two people to be the first inducted in to the VERSeFest Hall of Honour.

We are proud to recognize William Hawkins and Greg ‘Ritallin’ Frankson

““““““““`

As a poet, William Hawkins was nationally-known and regarded as Ottawa’s best and certainly most dangerous poet from 1964 to 1974. He published a number of books, including the infamous Ottawa Poems, published by Nelson Ball’s weed/flower. Hawkins appeared in the anthology New Wave Canada, edited by Raymond Souster as the last publication by Contact Press.

As an organizer/host, Hawkins ran Ottawa’s infamous coffeehouse Le Hibou through the 1960s with his wife. He hosted performances by Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and dozens, if not hundreds of others.

He was an advocate, writer and large presence during a period of Ottawa poetry that had very few of any of those; he was also a writer actively reading, writing and publishing, and connecting to a community far wider than that of the immediate city.

You can read more about him at his website, here:
http://www.wmhawkins.com/content/poetry.html

““““““““
Greg Frankson debuted as Ritallin in Ottawa in 2003. In 2004 he represented Ottawa at the Wordlympics (now known as the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word), and did so again in 2006. In addition to being a full-time professional artist, Greg recently was on the team that won the 2012 Canadian Slam Championships (though now representing Toronto).

Immediately following the Wordlympics in 2004, Greg co-founded Capital Slam, now one of the longest running monthly slam series in the country. He ran Capital Slam and the Capital Poetry Collective for 2 years where he created the template for a stable, supportive, inspiring slam series. He also founded the Bill Brown 1-2-3 series.

Before moving to Toronto, Greg co-founded the Ottawa Youth Poetry Slam. Creating this environment for young poets to come and share their work was a crucial step in the evolution of the spoken word poetry scene in Ottawa. The poets coming out of the slam have received great accolades, but even more important is the fact that it is a place where all youth can have a voice and share their art.

So while Greg’s work was crucial to help create the current Ottawa spoken word scene, through the Youth Slam his work is just as crucial to the future of the scene as well.

Greg’s website can be found here:
http://www.ritallin.com/

********

More information about VERSeFest can be found here:
http://www.versefest.ca/2013/

http://verseottawa.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/announcing-the-verseottawa-hall-of-honour/

Recent Reads: Brecken Hancock and Seth Landman

The Art Of Plumbing by Brecken Hancock

A Note on the Text by Seth Landman

Both titles published by above/ground press.

If the idea of a timeline marking the conception and evolution of the bathtub sounds tedious, Brecken Hancock’s oft-unfathomable history lesson will surprise you. Adopting ancient folklore, historical black-eyes and modern police files as some of her muses, The Art Of Plumbing date-stamps not only the Egyptian bathing tomb’s sophisticated rise to contemporary cast irons but the capacities of humanity, unflinching throughout the ages.

“1984 CE When his fishing trawler sinks, Gudlaugur Fridpórsson swims six hours in the North Atlantic off the coast of the Westman Islands. Two fellow fishermen die of hypothermia, but “the miracle man” somehow survives the cold and the Kraken by talking to mukki, sea birds, and unknowingly relying on his seal-like fat, found later to be three times thicker than usual for humans. Finally navigating the cliffs and crawling up onto an ancient lava field, Fridpórsson walks barefoot over two kilometres of terrain. His soles turn to ribbons that unravel across pumice humps of molten rock. He finds a bathtub meant to trough sheep and punches a hole through its ice, finally plunging his face in the fresh water to drink.”

And further along...

“2007 CE Tatsuya Ichihasi rips out the bathroom fixtures in his Tokyo sky-rise flat. After beating Lindsay Ann Hawker to death with an amputated faucet, he buries her in a bathtub of sand on his balcony. Two weeks later police find her, right fingertips exposed, pinned by weather to the rim.”

These two excerpts taken from the tub’s recent history – after all, The Art Of Plumbing begins in 3300 BCE – hint at the curious variety of Hancock’s selections while showcasing her authoritative but poetic voice, which leaves thought-provoking hooks, or a haunting pause, with each anecdote.

Hancock's tone further infiltrates her study by way of personal entries bookending the project: one a majestic prologue capturing the deep sea’s churning, primal order of things bubbling up through her “immaculate taps”, the other occurring here in 2013 with our historian allowing a bleak glimpse into her distressed evening by the bath. While The Art Of Plumbing’s bulk commemorates our humble tubs with a radiant chronology, Hancock's bookends serve a purposeful reminder that for all of its incidental cameos over the centuries, the bath symbolizes one of the very few places humankind can reexamine itself, blemishes and all.

Seth Landman’s unstoppable “text” runs through a knee-jerk network of abstract doubts and indifference. As if transcribing the minutes of every half-epiphany, the Northampton, Massachusetts native nevertheless unearths poignant communiqués from the fractured coda. Often meandering with an agenda, poems such as “A Great Deal” and “Slovenly” seem partial to navel-gazing self-analysis before unfurling into meditations of a more universal nature; ‘notes’ in the grey space between connection and isolation. Here’s an excerpt from the latter selection:

“go ahead and make me

dinner it’s this fantasy

I have a domestic life

but not really

real my life’s

just swell I keep

doing it every day

and some days

it feels like other days

it feels like an adventure.”

His insights are sharply worded but those line-breaks frequently catch me off-guard, the way he toys with tenses and splices one rich thought into a stanza of rudimentary, conflicting ones. But with each off-kilter revelation, A Note on the Text incites the reader to return again, blindfold loosened, to tread his murky logic more fluently.

This plainspoken but tricky approach resonates especially well when recollecting a narrative. The tumbling, possibly intoxicated “Sleep Tuft” and the winter-sick “A Note On the Text” reveal evocative bits of language through Landman’s cryptic lens. I can envision the restricted woods described in “Sleep Tuft” and the darkened cabin corners of “A Note on the Text” yet the author’s emotional proximity to these places – and to his companion, certainly – is coloured with intangibles. Amid notes and texts that plumb both idyllic and idle thoughts on love and loneliness, it’s Landman’s I-don’t-knows that prove the most memorable. From "Sleep Tuft":

"I'm having

a drunk sense of

past all over

transmission

calling it out

all night

I'm surprised

you can walk

the woods

without panic

what's the point

though we are 

in panic

we might not know

the hunting 

situation orange

panic forest

green gradient"

Recent Reads: Allison Grayhurst and Shannon Maguire

The River Is Blind by Allison Grayhurst

A Web Of Holes by Shannon Maguire

Both titles published by above/ground press, December 2012.

“He came. He is what everyone needs

But the pavement is thick

the ground beneath is rich

saturated with worms,

moving

thick

with worm motion

moving

at worm speed.”

This stanza, snipped from the tail-end of “In the Thighs”, illustrates an existential curiosity that courses through Allison Grayhurst’s latest collection. We’ll get to the “He” part in a minute. But first, it’s Grayhurst’s physical constraints that comfort us: a box sitting at the top of the stairs, housecats in states of wakefulness and sleep, the “snails and moss” that preoccupy her. Indeed, The River Is Blind situates itself firmly in the familial but imbues those relationships and domestic touchstones with a disembodied calm. Ambition and disenchantment linger along the fences of Grayhurst’s property but she remains candidly in the present:  embracing “the comfort of sweaters and knitted socks” for “First Snow of Winter”, “the child sitting and staring and waiting for the coin” in “Wallpaper Stars”.

In lesser hands, muses such as these might’ve resulted in verses of weak-kneed contentedness. But Grayhurst’s voice remains one of detachment, webbing daily pleasures into greater meditations on love and God – the “He” that churns The River Is Blind’s family soil. Through spiritual lens, poems like “Everything Happens” and “Flies” counteract steadfast faith with insights on the material world, a separate world; a place where people grind flowers for honey. From “Flies”:

“What faith was plucked with the flowers

as all their little tongues reached out to pocket

the short-term scent?”

Naturally it’s a tad intimidating when the first word of a first poem has you running for the nearest dictionary. But “epoché”, meaning to suspend our understanding of the external world in order to relate to phenomena on a purely conscious level, proves more an ideological gateway for Shannon Maguire than a term reserved for Greek philosophy. In A Web Of Holes, epoché operates as a palette-cleanser, an italicized provocation plopped down as if to ready us for enlightenment, however fleeting.

The delight of Maguire’s long verse doesn’t lie at the heart of some mystic truth but in the trail of crumbs by which we readers become seekers. Ringing true to my newfound understanding of epoché, her language prefers a disorienting narrative, one that repeatedly suspends our ability to find grounded context amid visceral and scholarly hurdles.

“external acoustic crunch

undulating forms wet with

reflex

yard line dirt around her waist

dodecahedron kiss

in with clock and guests

climbing desire

elongated, erect seconds”

Besides illustrating her palette for abstract sensuality and Greek imagery, this excerpt identifies A Web Of Holes as acrostic; E, U, R, Y, D, I, C, and E trafficking the bulk of Maguire’s verses in honour of Eurydice, wife of Orpheus. This opens up some juicy parallels between ancient lore and Maguire’s sharp insights on the ownership of femininity. A temperamental breakdown in syntax midway through introduces a conflict in reinterpreting Eurydice’s tale; a commentary on the myth-making roots of Greek literature, perhaps.

You may wish to keep that dictionary handy but A Web Of Holes wouldn’t be nearly as exciting without its obfuscations which, with a bit of a learning curve, unveil ephemeral gems of raw, almost carnal, beauty. To close, here’s an example of Maguire’s hard-fought harmony:

“Evening’s gaze, the limit of voice

Unison of suspension

Ritenuto.

You watch them

Dying

It is a bright and chilly morning

Collapse, there are still not

Enough independent girls

Eglinton at five am, floating

Ukiyoe

Rebuilt from a country road

You watch them dreaming

Date the world from those Cordova Street cherry blossoms

Ink brushes against her forehead

Cassanation of gossiping motors

Eviction notice floating, floating”

Bywords Cornerstone Fundraiser, January 27, 2013

Mark Frutkin: Review of Four Chapbooks from above/ground press

Review of Four Chapbooks from above/ground press

by Mark Frutkin

Selected Canticles by George Elliott Clarke
The Crawdad Cantos (Excerpts from Impossible Books) by Stephen Brockwell
Shikibu Shuffle by Andrew Burke and Phil Hall
Further to Our Conversation – Poems by Robert Kroetsch

A chapbook is by necessity a diminutive taste of poetry. A morsel of a poet’s work – a good introduction to someone you have not previously read or perhaps a reacqaintance, a revisiting with old friends.

I would consider George Elliott Clarke in the ‘old friend’ category, not literally but in the sense that I’ve read much of his poetry over the years (almost all of it, I think) and reviewed previous collections here and there (See http://markfrutkin.blogspot.ca/2011/08/book-review-17-blue-by-george-elliott.html). I would rank his book, Whylah Falls, in my list of top five Canadian collections of poetry, all-time. No other Canadian poet is so lavish with sensual detail and so bold about the physical world and the human body. And in Selected Canticles he delivers again, as he always does, giving us a marvelous slumgullion of a miniature feast, like a serving of appetizers so rich you don’t need to eat the impending meal.

Of course, Clarke always goes for the ear as well as the eye: “not even the squeal of a squall / as waves whacked rock,” or “blossoms blaze a branch.” And he can be humorous too. In ‘À Cristophe Colombe,’ he calls the Spain of Columbus’ day, “a comic-opera Empire”. One can almost picture a Gilbert and Sullivan musical based on Queen Isabella and her famous explorer. 

Of course, no one in Canada comes anywhere near Clarke’s ability to write frankly about sex – raw, graphic and straight-up as home-distilled whiskey. He doesn’t scruple to use the good old Anglo-Saxon sex words: fuck, cunt and anus appear liberally throughout these poems, several of which address the black man’s role as hard-driving lover of white women. In a sense, this becomes a trope of the payback for or escape from slavery. Clarke is always conscious of the black man’s position in our world and in history but these poems are not the least bit didactic. They’re the real thing.

No one joins poetry and science as fluidly as Stephen Brockwell. The Crawdad Cantos contains what has become one of my favourite Canadian poems. ‘A Primer for Drainage’ is from The Evangelical Handbook for Engineers, a wonderful conceit to pull together the world of the spirit and the material world of the engineer, builder, scientist. You could be an atheist and still delight in his take on God as inherent in platinum-iridium bars and krypton-86 emissions. The last few lines are so striking, I must quote them in full: “Among time and distances, he is the absolute constant, / the being that lets being be – and every culvert, / aqueduct, conduit, sluice, grate, trench and duct / merely drains the ephemeral projection of his eternal tears.” I think including the word ‘duct’ in that list is a sure sign of poetic brilliance as it resonates with the last word of the poem, ‘tears’.

There are other excellent poems here, especially ‘Parrots not in Cleveland’ (from Cantos of the 1%). Besides the fact that Cleveland, my birthplace, hardly ever appears in a Canadian poem, this poem has a humorous tone that I very much appreciate. Drinking banana daiquiris in Cleveland in March is odd enough as the subject for a poem but the poet also says he can imitate a parrot’s voice: “I’ll need a trumpet, / a trunk full of Hawaiian shirts, a pair / of holey sneakers spattered with blue paint, / a month of sunlight to give this snow the shaft”. ‘Sunlight’ and ‘shaft’ – once again, a brilliant juxtaposition that plays on the two definitions for ‘shaft’. And again, this poem ends with a striking image. But I urge you to pick up this chapbook to learn what it is.

In Shikibu Shuffle, two poets, Andrew Burke from Australia and Phil Hall from Perth, (who won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for his fascinating book, Killdeer) have collaborated to produce a collection of fifteen poems based on the five-line form used by the Japanese poet, Murasaki Shikibu (973-1014). Each poem here is ten lines long (with a few variations). It’s difficult, if not impossible, to determine who wrote what, and exactly how the process worked. In any case, the result is a kind of medieval Japanese jazz with a flowing series of riffs that sometimes connect and sometimes don’t. The musical play here reminds me somewhat of Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues (which was influenced more by hardcore jazz than what we now consider the blues). There’s a vibrancy and freedom to the images and their links here, in this back and forth ‘shuffle’, and sometimes the results are striking: “a Chinese dragon of smoke / wearing my dead friend’s clothes / above the marina” or “pale cuticle” (for the moon), or the exceedingly strange and suggestive “to weave submerged antlers / breathing blue at their tips”. This is a collection that can be read more than twice.

The very fine poet (and novelist), Robert Kroetsch, died in 2011. This small chapbook, Further to Our Conversation, consists of three letter-poems to friends, interspersed with three very short poems. The first letter-poem, ‘Dear John Lent’, reveals the wonderful line, “Our first cry is a poem that contains everything” and the intriguing phrase “Icarus in a car...” These actually do feel like thoughts that came to Kroetsch after a late-night conversation with a friend, a kind of soliloquy inspired by a dialogue. Kroetsch’s poetry was always wonderfully experimental and refused to hew to the straight and narrow furrows that characterize much of mainstream Canadian verse. I see him running his plough in all sorts of mad geometries across those prairie fields: ovals within ovals, spirals, secret divinatory crop circles of poetry. His sense of the comic is excellent: “Punctuation is a middle-class pretension. So is a toothache. In heaven you have to sit eternally staring at a bright light, so be sure to take your dark glasses.” (‘Dear Jeff Carpenter’) He ends the same poem with the wonderful lines: “I once travelled halfway across Spain to see St Teresa’s bent left elbow safe in a glass jar. We each write poems as we see fit. But then, what poem isn’t a relic?” (It makes me want to ask if St Teresa wrote left-handed!)

Another line in ‘Dear Jeff Carpenter’ makes light of the inevitable, and probably tells us much about what kind of person and poet Robert Kroetsch was. In four words that embody a kind of simplicity, acceptance and peace, he writes: “Death, that necessary pest.”

Smart & Pirie in A B Series at Raw Sugar January 10 2012

abseries.org

A B Series Presents

Pearl Pirie & Carolyn Smart

Reading
8pm
Thursday, January 10, 2012

Raw Sugar Café
692 Somerset West
Ottawa, Ont.

Pearl Pirie has poems in a number of chapbooks and in 2 poetry collections, Thirsts (Snare) and been shed bore(Chaudiere). She has 2 more looking for a good home where they will be fed and watered and taken for walks. She makes mini chapbooks with her micro press Phafours. She been organizing the Tree Seed Workshop Series for the Tree Reading Series since 2009. She tweets, photographs and verbs about Ottawa, the luckiest town for literature in most anywhere.

Carolyn Smart's fifth collection of poems, Hooked - Seven Poems was published in 2009 by Brick Books. An excerpt from her memoir At the End of the Day won first prize in the 1993 CBC Literary Contest. She is the founder of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging writers, and since 1989 has taught Creative Writing at Queen's University. Her work-in-progress is a series of poems about the Barrow Gang entitled 'Careen.'

bill bissett, Glenn Nuotio & friends - an A B Xmas Party!

abseries.org

A B Series presents its 2nd Annual Xmas Party with bill bissett! 

Featuring a musical set by Glenn Nuotio and friends!

With prizes to be won!

8pm

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Raw Sugar Café

692 Somerset West

Ottawa, Ont. 

bill bissett's charged readings, which never fail to amaze his audiences, incorporate chanting, sound poetry and singing, the verve of which is matched only by his prolific writing career: over 70 books of bissett's poetry have been published. An energetic "man-child mystic," bill bissett is living proof of William Blake's adage "the spirit of sweet delight can never be defiled." 

Combining chamber music and folk, Glenn Nuotio delivers unnervingly complex pop. As Ottawa Xtra! notes, "he channels it through an indie musician's paper heart and the results are invariably stirring." 

KATALIN LADIK & GERRY SHIKATANI

ABSERIES.ORG

On November 21 at Arts Court Theatre, join us for a multimedia extravaganza featuring the Canadian premiere of Budapest artist, KATALIN LADIK! Presented by A B Series, Ladik comes direct from Hungary for this exclusive engagement. Her performance will incorporate voice, multimedia and on-stage action.

GERRY SHIKATANI, Canadian innovator of multimedia poetry, joins Ladik on the program. Shikatani screens excerpts from his film, 'Kokoro is for Heart' as part of the event.

7:30pm

Weds, November 21, 2012

Arts Court Theatre

2 Daly Avenue

Ottawa, Ont.

Tickets available through the Arts Court box office in person at 2 Daly Avenue, by phone at 613 564 7240 and online at artscourtottawa.ca/en/events/

A polymath artist accomplished in theatrical, literary and visual disciplines, Katalin Ladik’s appearances incorporate voice, multimedia and on-stage action. Author of more than twenty poetry collections, Ladik’s work has been translated into a dozen languages. She is the winner of numerous awards including the bestowal this year of the Laurel Wreath of Hungary. Since her ground-breaking performance at the 10th International Festival of Sound Poetry in Amsterdam in 1977, she has been at the forefront of Europe’s vibrant sound-poetry scene. 

Gerry Shikatani’s most recent poetry collection, The Port's Seasonal Rental, was published last year by Mercury Press/Teksteditions. Shikatani’s diverse writing projects include poetry, prose, text-sound performance, concrete poetry as well as collaboration in experimental film. His journalism has involved sports, travel and international culinary criticism.

**

A B Series - Ottawa's Nexus for Global Poetry

BQJ Fall Launch & Editors' Reading

Sunday, November 4, 2012, 2-3pm

Collected Works, 1242 WellingtonW.

with music by Jesse Rose,

poetry from contributors

Sylvia Adams, Andre Narbonne,

Myrna Rootham & Matthew Walsh

& local editors Amanda Earl,

Claudia Coutu Radmore & Carol A Stephen.





Pearl Pirie w/ Donato Mancini, Beatriz Hausner, Steve Zultanski and bill bissett | Grey Borders Reading Series, Saint Catharines, ON

There’s a lot of history in the scuffed, wooden floorboards of the Niagara Artists Centre. The organization, now in its 43^rd year of serving Niagara’s artistic interests, has hosted countless literary heroes through its Grey Borders Reading Series alone, including the likes of Phil Hall, Catherine Owen, Stuart Ross and Dennis Lee. That eclectic venue in the heart of St Catharines’ fragile downtown earned a few more stripes last Wednesday when Donato Mancini, Beatriz Hausner, Steve Zultanski, bill bissett and Ottawa’s own Pearl Pirie convened for a celebration of wide-ranging poetry.

I was mostly drawn to the event because of Pirie, a familiar face in the crowd of bespeckled wordsmiths and enthusiasts, whose prolific output has always intrigued. After some time for book-buying, booze-finding and a fond eulogy for Raymond Souster, hosts Eric Schmaltz and Craig Dodman gave the brick-backed stage to the evening’s guests.

Establishing an unpredictable tone that would colour the whole event, Donato Mancini dropped a heady gauntlet of philosophical ideas, political buzzwords and household names in self-described “lists” that built up in momentum until they threatened to collapse at any moment. His compendium on Death Row inmates’ last meal choices and Dr Pepper – Texas’ beverage of choice – devolved into a lengthy list of doctors (some real, some imaginary). Flipping haphazardly through pages of his notebook, it was the uncertainty of Mancini’s sporadic jumps that ensured a vital, if occasionally bewildering, reading.

Beatriz Hausner followed with a selection of essay meditations and poetry inspired by her lover “Raccoon” and their nocturnal rites of passion. With her sensual approach to wordplay, Hausner won appreciative nods from many in attendance with “Loneliness of the Fashionista”, a rebuttal on the black leather and metal-pronged ugliness that seeks to identify bondage.

Steve Zultanski offered two rapid-fire examinations during his oft-comedic time onstage: the first, of yawning and its space-time relationship to those who know him most intimately, and the latter entertaining the cause-and-effect possibilities of pushing his friend into a pool. In reaching for outlandish strands of logic, Zultanski’s sly use of repetition and speed-reading unveiled tiny shards of brilliance that rendered his doubts, while dysfunctional, wholly relatable. Knowing laughs from the audience seemed to verify that everyone was strapped in for the ride.

To the untrained eye Pearl Pirie looked the relaxed participant, listening and taking the odd photograph. But speaking to me during intermission, Pirie admitted she was just as actively listening for the crowd’s reactions and amending some poem choices along the way. Her ensuing plan of attack, a loosely tied knot of rogue poems – some new and unpublished – provided a freewheeling test-drive of a unique literary voice.

Whether describing isolation and conversational fever in “We’ll Leave At Night For Thunder Bay” (from her mini-chapbook Sprockets Away) or an evocative landscape that flexes between the earthy and bodily on “River-High” (from been shed bore), Pirie’s language shined especially when read aloud, her rhymes emerging in stuttering successions that countered any straightforward pacing. One of the evening’s highlights was surely a poem (from Where There’s Fire) inspired by SlutWalk, capturing the air of sexual freedom spilling through a metropolis’ etiquette of suits and cigarettes. But just as intriguing were poems assembled from games of Scrabble and snippets of Hollywood dialogue, spun in reverse, which highlighted her creative playfulness. All of the five poets showcased their inventiveness with finished poems but Pirie’s willingness to discuss her work’s origins added to the event’s refreshing openness.

Although I was due to meet friends on the other side of downtown, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to hear bill bissett read from his previously out-of-print, post-modernist/ collagist manifesto Rush: what fuckan theory. It was a joy to behold. And as he chanted syllables around his essay of “the artist as a young man, an outsider” with a shaker in hand, I smiled at the thought of bissett’s revolutionary calls emanating through the NAC’s outdoor speakers and ricocheting down St Catharines’ chilly storefronts. With regards to each of last Wednesday’s poets, I can’t think of a better way to announce the latest chapter in Niagara’s understated literary history.

Andre Alexis, David O'Meara & Cameron Anstee

Thursday November 1, 2012, 7:30pm
Ottawa Art Gallery, Arts Court
University of Ottawa Writer-in-residence Andre Alexis, with David O'Meara and Cameron Anstee
No Cover

Apt. 9 Press Presents: Phil Hall, Rachael Simpson & Claudia Coutu Radmore

Apt. 9 Press presents:

Phil Hall – A Rural Pen
Rachael Simpson – Eiderdown
with special guest Claudia Coutu Radmore

Saturday 24 November 2012
Readings at 2:00pm
Raw Sugar Café (692 Somerset St. W.)
No Cover

Apt. 9 Press is overjoyed to celebrate the publication of two new chapbooks with a reading by three fantastic poets. Phil Hall will launch A Rural Pen, Rachael Simpson will launch Eiderdown, and Claudia Coutu Radmore will belatedly celebrate her Apt. 9 chapbook Accidentals winning the 2011 bpNichol Chapbook Award. We're spoiled by the quality of these books, and you'll be miserable if you don't get one before they're gone.

Raw Sugar Cafe, the best venue in town, is once again gracious enough to host us for an afternoon poetry. Be early, settle in, have a pint or a cup of coffee depending on the weather. Readings to start at 2:00pm.

Phil Hall is the 2011 winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry in English, for Killdeer, published by BookThug. His is also the 2012 winner of Ontario's Trillium Book Award for Killdeer. This book of essay-poems also won an Alcuin Design Award, & was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. He currently offers a manuscript mentoring service for the Toronto New School of Writing. This fall he isWriter-In-Residence at Queens University. Next fall, he will be a faculty member of the Wired Writing Program at Banff. He is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, & the League of Canadian Poets. He lives near Perth, Ontario.

Rachael Simpson's poetry has been published in Canada, the United States and abroad. Eiderdown is her first chapbook. She lives in Ottawa.

Claudia Coutu Radmore is known for her Japanese form poems, as well as for her lyric poetry. Her poem where language forms won second place in the 2010 Banff Centre Bliss Carman Awards and Accidentals (Ottawa: Apt. 9 Press, 2011) won the 2011 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Recent series have been Qui annus est?/ What year is this?, poems in response to 13 – 18, PHOTOGRAPHS BY OLIVIA JOHNSTON at the Red Wall Gallery (SPAO Ottawa), and saturation, the joy of, poems in response to TILT, ORCHID PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAKE MORRISON at the Orange Gallery (Ottawa).

COLIN SMITH & SANDRA RIDLEY

More info: abseries.org

8pm
Friday, November 2, 2012

Ottawa Art Gallery

Arts Court

2 Daly Avenue

Ottawa, Ont.

A B Series presents readings by two poets of razor-sharp intellect. Join us for this not-to-be-missed convergence of exceptional literary talent.  

2012 Archibald Lampman Shortlist Reading: Blouin, Ridley + mclennan,

Each year, Arc Poetry Magazine honours Ottawa poets. Arc is proud to present the three 2012 finalists for the Archibald Lampman Award for best book of poetry by a National-Capital author.

The award is named in honour of Archibald Lampman (1861 - 1899), one of Canada's finest nineteenth-century poets. Lampman moved to Ottawa in 1882, and much of his metaphysical nature poetry was inspired by the National Capital region.

Michael Blouin: Wore Down Trust (Toronto; Pedlar Press, 2011)

rob mclennan: Glengarry (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2011)

Sandra Ridley: Post-Apothecary (Toronto: Pedlar Press, 2011)

The three authors will be reading at Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeebar on Sunday, October 14, from 2-4pm.

http://arcpoetry.ca/2012/09/24/congratulations-to-the-2012-finalists-for-the-archibald-lampman-award/

The event will also include a reading of the 2012 Diana Brebner winning poem by Lauren Turner, this year's winner.

info: arc@arcpoetry.ca

Jenny Sampirisi & kevin mcpherson eckhoff

More info: abseries.org

Join us for an evening of visual poetry and poly-vocal performance!

8pm
Saturday, October 20, 2012

Ottawa Art Gallery
Arts Court
2 Daly Ave.
Ottawa, Ont.

Jenny Sampirisi is the author of the novel is/was from Insomniac Press. She is the former Managing Editor of BookThug and current co-director of the Toronto New School of Writing, a series of reading and writing workshops designed and facilitated by working writers. She teaches English Literature, Creative Writing and Composition at Ryerson University. She is the 2011 recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Literature. Croak, a libretto of hermaphroditic Frogirls, is her first poetry collection. It is a poetic narrative of love, loss, and compromise played out on a Beckettian stage. She will present a poly-vocal rendering of the text at the A B Series.

kevin mcpherson eckhoff equals rhapsodomancy plus easy peasy! Will he win the ReLit award this year? Join whobet.com to make it interesting. His bestfriend is named Jake Kennedy; together they enjoy art, popcorn, hugs, Open Letter, musick, kindness, whey protein, students at Okanagan College, clinamen, Tim & Eric, Denny's, pretend violence, and eventually finishing their community-written novel, Death Valley. kevin’s words have been made for real totes in-print, like, within West Wind Review, Fact*Simile and Descant. He lives & loves in Armstrong, BC, with some rescue dogs and a dog-rescuing super-lady, Laurel. She & he are merely weeks away from welcoming their first & craziest collaboration ever, which remains, as of yet, untitled.

More info: abseries.org