Marianne Bluger, Ottawa poet, 1945-2005

a sad note from E. Russell Smith:

"It is with deep sadness that I pass on the news that Marianne Bluger died this Saturday, October, 29 th, ( 11:00 a.m. ) at home with her husband Larry Neily and her good friend, Ronnie R. Brown, near her. There will be no funeral. At her request, there will be a small ceremony of the Burial of the Dead for close family only.

She requests no flowers. She'd say lets use that money to help the poor. Please make any donations to one of her special causes: the Tabitha Foundation (Canada), Box 65057, Merivale Postal Outlet, Ottawa, ON K2G 5Y3 or to the Canadian Writers' Foundation Inc., Box 13281, Succ. Kanata Stn., Ottawa, ON K2K 1X4."

A beloved Ottawa poet, she was a member of the Writers Union and the League of Canadian Poets, and had a page up at the University of Toronto site.

An obituary can be found at her website.

Capital Slam's 1st Anniversary - Tomorrow at Gap of Dunloe

Capital Slam Celebrates One Year of Performance Poetry!

The Capital Poetry Collective (CPC) presents Capital Slam: The 1^st Anniversary Edition on Friday, October 21 at the Gap of Dunloe, 263 Bank Street.

Fresh from a third-place finish in the team competition at the 2005 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, the Capital Slam Team is back and ready for a great show celebrating this important milestone in the history of Ottawa spoken word!

Here to share the moment with us are two of Canada’s best performers:

Katherine Blenkinsop a.k.a. Lady Katalyst is a multidisciplinary street artist with a rich creative background that includes poetry, street dance, radio production and historical journalism. She performs a cappella, with DJs, live musicians, beat boxers and other vocalists. For the last two years she’s been a featured poet with Coco Café and Kalmunity Vibe Collective.

Brendan McLeod is a spoken word artist and musician based out of Vancouver. He is the winner of the National Individual Final at the 2004 Canadian Spoken Wordlympics and the 2005 Vancouver Grand Slam Champion. He has toured extensively in North America and Europe as both a solo performer and member of the spoken word/music troupe The Fugitives. He finished second in the world at Holland's Word Slampionship in June 2005.

Capital Slam: 1^st Anniversary Edition
Friday, October 21 – Doors open @ 8 p.m., show starts @ 8:30 p.m.
Featuring Katalyst and Brendan McLeod
Gap of Dunloe (263 Bank Street at Cooper)
$7 at the door
*Prizes awarded to the top poets on the night*

Only one person can leave as the Monthly Champion ... who will it be?

Capital Slam is held at the Gap of Dunloe on the second Friday of every month.

For more information, contact us at info@capitalslam.com or visit our website at www.CapitalSlam.com.

The Peter F. Yacht Club, reading/regatta

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa)
presents

The Peter F. Yacht Club

first ever
reading / regatta

with readings of poetry & prose by Stephen Brockwell, Anita Dolman, Clare Latremouille, rob mclennan, Max Middle, James Moran, Jennifer Mulligan, Sandra Ridley, Wanda O'Connor and Vivian Vavassis.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
The Carleton Tavern (upstairs), Parkdale Market (at Armstrong)
doors open at 7:30pm / readings start at 8pm
hosted by your lovable captain, rob mclennan

biographical information:

Stephen Brockwell spent the first half of his life in Montreal and the second half in Ottawa. Where he will spend the third half of his life is uncertain. He recently published Fruitfly Geographic (ECW Press, 2004), which won the Archibald Lampman Award, and, with Peter Norman, Wild Clover Honey and the Beehive (Rideau River Press, 2004).

Anita Dolman is an Ottawa poet and freelance writer and editor, and was the founding managing editor of Poetics.ca. Her work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Grain Magazine, Geist, Utne, The Fiddlehead, Prism International, Ottawater.com, Yawp and The Antigonish Review. Her first chapbook, Scalpel, tea and shot glass, was published by above/ground press in fall 2004.

Clare Latremouille lives secretly in Ottawa, about a half block away from the Carleton Tavern. Her work has been published in numerous places, including the anthologies Written in the Skin (Insomniac Press, 1998), Shadowy Technicians: New Ottawa Poets (Broken Jaw Press, 2000) and Groundswell: best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (Broken Jaw Press, 2003), and her poetry chapbook I will write a poem for you. Now: appeared a long time ago with above/ground press. Her first novel is scheduled to appear in fall 2006 as part of the first season of titles from Ottawa's Chaudiere Books.

rob mclennan is the author of ten trade poetry collections, with two more forthcoming: name , an errant (Stride, UK, 2006) & The Ottawa City Project (Chaudiere Books, 2007). He is currently editing collections of essays on George Bowering, John Newlove & Andrew Suknaski for Guernica's "Essays on Their Works" series, & has been contracted by Arsenal Pulp Press to write the non-fiction Ottawa: The Unknown City. Working desperately to finish a novel, he often says things on his clever blog.

Max Middle is a freedom loving anarchist. He is also a broccoli consumer & founding member of the music, sound, poetry & performance experiment known as the Max Middle Sound Project. The latter has staged five feature performances since their debut at the 2004 Ottawa Fringe Festival, including one in spring 2005 at the Ottawa International Writers Festival. More about him can be gleaned online at www.maxmiddle.com & an interview along with some poems appear in ottawater.

James Moran promises that none of the "Sentences Not to Include in Your First Novel" will actually appear in his horror novel. Moran's fiction and poetry have appeared in Algonquin Roundtable Review, The Peter F. Yacht Club, the Bywords Quarterly Journal, Spire Poetry Poster, Another Toronto Quarterly, dig and Blue Moon. James Moran directs Ottawa's TREE Reading Series, one of Canada's longest-running literary series, which has earned him fame and fortune. Along with Jennifer Mulligan, Moran edited 25 Years of Tree, an anthology which BuschekBooks published in fall 2005.

Jennifer Mulligan does most of her living in the Ottawa area. She has been involved with the Ottawa writing community for over five years, helping to run The TREE Reading Series since early 2000, and has recently co-edited the twenty-fifth anniversary TREE anthology, 25 Years of Tree (BuschekBooks), with James Moran, Director of The TREE Reading Series. Her highly abstract and technical day job affords her the luxury of sharing a studio space. When not working, she is also trying to bring a publishing company to life. She began writing in January, while watching CBC News Sunday. Her previous work has appeared in YAWP, the University of Ottawa Undergrad Poetry Journal.

Short-listed in 2004 for Lichen's 'Tracking A Serial Poet' competition, Sandra Ridley's recent publications include Bywords, Yawp, Jalapeno Diamond, and as a Leaf Press Monday's Poem. Forthcoming work will also be included in the anthology, Poetry Night in Muskoka. Always a wheat-farm girl, this writer currently lives in Ottawa.

Originally from New Brunswick, Wanda O'Connor recently moved to Montreal from Ottawa, where she had spent ten years (we hope she will return to us one day), to participate in the creative writing program at Concordia. Recent publications include the chapbooks If the skin is CRISP: eat it (2005) and So you’re thinking of reproducing (2005), both published by Impress; in the chapbook anthology winter (2005, above/ground press), and in the journals papertiger (AUS), Yawp and Shampoo; and as a couple of above/ground press broadsides. She likes to play the horses.

Vivian Vavassis has published in Arc and a couple of other mags, and recently took over the managing editor position of Poetics.ca. She grew up in Montreal.

The Peter F. Yacht Club; irregular writers group publication, with each issue produced by different members of the group. The fifth issue was produced & edited by rob mclennan as a larger issue, September 2005, to coincide with the ottawa international writers festival, with a third of it the group, a third readers at the festival itself, and the other third poets around Ottawa I thought were doing interesting things (note: The Peter F. Yacht Club does not take unsolicited submissions).

Previous issues still available (possibly) at $5 each. Issue #1, August 2003, edited by rob mclennan; Issue #2, April 2004, edited by Anita Dolman (out of print); Issue #3, September 2004, edited by Peter Norman and Melanie Little. Write rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7, or email az421 (at) freenet (dot) carleton (dot) ca

Next issue: "a Calgary issue" -- to be lovingly edited by Laurie Fuhr

Allan Briesmaster and Colin Morton at Collected Works, Oct. 21

Allan Briesmaster and Colin Morton read at Collected Works Bookstore, 1242 Wellington St. West, Ottawa
7:30 p.m. Friday, October 21

A few years ago I conducted a poll on a listserve of poets to see what the current best-sellers were in Canadian poetry. Topping the list by a wide margin was Allan Briesmaster’s book Unleaving (2001). Of course, in this unscientific poll, having just held a large book launch in Toronto, where for a decade he organized the popular Art Bar reading series, gave Briesmaster an unbeatable advantage. But on reading the book I understood why so many poets shelled out to have Unleaving.

In poems of wide reference and meticulous observation, Briesmaster combines elegant, sometimes elaborate syntax with an attention to line breaks that sets up a contrapuntal tension, releasing sparks of language that survive briefly in the mind as fragments of meaning before submerging again in the surge of language. Now, these are matters of sound, rhythm, tone and diction that concern poets a great deal and other readers hardly at all; so there is some reason to think of Briesmaster as a "poet’s poet."

He is a poet’s poet, also, in that a number of his poems, especially in the "Voice-After" section of Unleaving, take their impetus or inspiration from poems by Rilke, Pound, Neruda, Paz and others. Briesmaster domesticates the poems to Canadian landscapes, though, and follows Pound’s call to "make it new."

Nature is always new; the nature poet is never short of subjects to write about, and Briesmaster is above all a nature poet. The landscapes of suburban Toronto can be as stimulating to this poet of nuance and detail as are dramatic ocean or wilderness scenes. At the Collected Works reading, he will be reading from a new book (one of two for him this year), Galactic Music (2005), in which the nature he examines is truly out of this world.

Astronomy and astrophysics have given poets some mind-blowing new images, concepts and language to explore. It’s a challenge, of course, to reconcile the scientific with the poetic notion of "measure," and to bring along readers for whom the latest scientific discoveries aren’t yet part of the fund of common knowledge poets like to riff on. Ottawa audiences familiar with Stephen Brockwell’s Cometology, however, will have no difficulty following the interplanetary imagery of Briesmaster poems like "Terraformers" and "Methane Rain." As with all poetry, readers and listeners will learn more about themselves than about the facts and hypotheses of science.

In addition to his writing, Allan Briesmaster is a poetry editor; in fact, he edited my most recent book, Dance, Misery (2003) for Seraphim Editions. He is an attentive and respectful editor and, best of all for the author he is working with, he communicates. In my part of the Collected Works reading, I will read a brief excerpt or two from that book, as well as prose-poems from my forthcoming book, The Local Cluster.

- Colin Morton

Betsy Struthers and Ronnie R. Brown launch books Oct. 15

Book launch by Black Moss poets Betsy Struthers and Ronnie R. Brown
2 - 4 p.m., Saturday, October 15, National Library, 395 Wellington, Ottawa
(Brown and Struthers will also read from their new books at:
Sasquatch, Royal Oak, 161 Laurier E., 2 p.m., November 13, and at
Sunnyside Library, 1049 Bank Street, 7 p.m., December 15.)

Most of Ottawa's poetry audience is familiar with Ronnie R. Brown, who has been practising her characteristic poetic exhibitionism in Ottawa for over twenty years now. Listeners who have liked her performances will want to check out her new book States of Matter.

Ronnie Brown never flinches from the seamier or the messier side of everyday life, and neither does Peterborough poet Betsy Struthers, who is briefly living in Ottawa this fall.

Struthers’s first book, Censored Letters, (1984) documents an ancestral archetype: the tentative long-distance love affair of two people separated by World War I, conducted through letters subject to the military censor’s eye. Since then (with three mystery novels on the side), Struthers has produced a series of frank, personal books in the post-confessional mode, including her previous books from Windsor's Black Moss Press, Driven (2000) and Still (2003), winner of the Pat Lowther Award last year. Struthers brings her readers revelations of the poetry to be found in the minutiae of daily life, the lived details of love, family, home, as well as the ominous threats that lie, most of the time, just beneath the surface of existence.

Homes, gardens, nature at its most fertile, the lineaments of gratified desire: these are familiar scenes in the poems of Betsy Struthers. If I’m using the word correctly, the post-confessional poet mines these rich seams, less concerned with the narrative of trauma and recovery than with epiphanies that affirm our common humanity, our shared passions and fears.

Her new book, In Her Fifties, offers a new selection of poems from the middle of a domestic life. The themes will resonate for many readers: aging, menopause, grief for lost parents, care for aging ones, worries about children’s safety, the consolations of friendship, the courage at the heart of a lifelong marriage. The new poems are preceded, though, by a substantial collection of prose vignettes, recollections of childhood, called In the 50s. Though written in lapidary prose, these two and three page stories read less like prose poems than novella chapters. Together, they make up a fictionalized memoir of a lost age, recapturing the sensations, the fears and confusions of childhood with the feel of direct memory, though mixed, as the author acknowledges with an equal part "fabulation."

In the poem "The Jungles of Borneo: Just So" Struthers reflects on her approach to writing and on the importance of storytelling in the shaping of human communities.

"We all want a story, to be
told, to be part of, to be taken into, shared
language bringing us together."

For Betsy Struthers, as for Ronnie R. Brown, poetry is direct speech, fully engaged with everything life places in the way. Their accessible poems lead us readers to reflect more deeply on the familiar surrounding of our own lives. Not bad for a Saturday afternoon outing. And you can catch the launch at the National Library on the way to or from the Small Press Book Fair.

- Colin Morton

Observations of an Ottawa spoken word artist

I have read Max Middle's posting with increasing interest several times. He makes some very provocative statements about the state, purpose and effectiveness of spoken word poetry. I'm going to share some of my reflections here as a practitioner of the form. Hopefully my words will stand as a stimulating counter-point to Max's comments.

First of all, I think it necessary to make the strong distinction between spoken word as a full genre of literary art and poetry slam as a subset of spoken word. The things that many people dislike about slam -- their competitive nature, the prize money often associated with "winning" the slams, the strictures of time limits, the unwritten conventions that often prize performance over literary merit of the work being recited -- all these are valid criticisms. However, not all spoken word is presented in this way, and not all spoken word artists participate in slams.

This may seem like a relatively straightforward thing to say. However, there are many who do not understand that most spoken word does not rely on rhythm, message, story, regular metre, etc. to get its message across. No, let me restate that -- most spoken word does not rely on rhythm, message, story, regular metre, etc. any more than "traditional" page poetry does. To criticize the false dichotomy between 'page' and 'stage' poetry without then accepting that the conventions of both forms are actually similar is to reinforce as fact what is ostensibly being dismissed as fiction.

There is no substantive division between poetry meant for aural enjoyment and writings meant to be consumed by your eyes. However, there are very different ways for presenting such information.

What makes slam poetry so compelling is that the energy expelled by artists and audiences alike delivers the outcome people want at a slam -- to be entertained. Many people want to think about what is being said as well, but the slam poet's primary objective is to entertain through the clever (and sometimes formulaic) use of words. This is no different than other art forms that primarily seek entertainment as the means of sustaining themselves (such as theatre, radio, movies, television -- even books). Slam poetry uses a particular methodology to entertain that does not appeal to everyone, in the same way that boxing is disgusting bloodsport to one observer but a lifelong passion for another.

There is a powerful diversity of voices, styles and content in Ottawa spoken word that is reflected at poetry slams. Those who choose to slam take on a variety of topics in ways that are both familiar to slam observers everywhere and also unique to our community's poetic culture. Many of our best slam poets locally would not do well at an international slam precisely because we do not, as a group, subscribe to the broader conventions of slam. There is a worldwide movement that includes Ottawa slam poetry but the way we do it would not be considered "mainstream" in most places.

I do not feel sadness at this fact. Indeed, I wear it as a badge of pride. Ottawa spoken word artists provide a breath of fresh air when others who have been bombarded with conventional slam poetry hear our artists recite their work. It is interesting that in the aftermath of this year's Toronto International Poetry Slam (on Labour Day weekend) that people were not only talking about the winner (Jamal St. John from New Jersey, an unconventional performer reciting about conventional topics) , but also about Kevin Matthews, an Ottawa poet whose poem "Love Song of Roy G. Biv" is a literary tour de force that received lousy scores from the judges. Stepping outside the norm has consequences with the judges but still leaves an indelible mark on the listeners.

Ultimately, that is the purpose of slam -- to affect the audience. The judges are just five people randomly selected from that grouping and may not reflect the overall view of the crowd. The feedback received by people who are moved by your work usurps any negativity you receive from your scores. A poet participating with the real purpose of slam in their hearts will always seek this outcome.

But money corrupts, and just like with actors, singers, athletes and others who require a public stage to utilize talents that ultimately pay their bills, there are some arrogant, greedy, gluttonous vultures who feed on the system for purely selfish purposes. But people will always be people. There are unpleasant authors who write books of poetry, too. That should not be permitted to detract from the overall beauty of the expression.

Spoken word is a big tent. I personally prefer to participate in events that allow for the free flow of my work, which usually means a featured set rather than slam performances. In those moments I use my methods and personal conventions of writing and performance to move the people in the crowd, to have them think about issues I believe matter in this world. People leave inspired or with the desire to let off steam in much the same way as the slam. But I don't believe the release of such positive energies is ever a negative thing, whether that energy is directed towards an identifiable goal or not.

Spoken word is more than slam. Slam cannot be more than spoken word. And poetry lives in your ears, your eyes, your heart and your mind -- no matter how it is delivered.

“ottawa” by Judith Fitzgerald

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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.

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

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

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