Amanda Earl reviews ottawater #10

Amanda Earl was good enough to write a review of the tenth issue of the Ottawa poetry pdf journal ottawater over at her fine blog, focusing on submissions by Patti Normand, Scott Fairchild, Sylvia Adams, George Elliott Clarke, JM Francheteau, Richard Froude, Karen Massey, Justin Million, Colin Morton, Roland Prevost, Armand Garnet Ruffo and Matthew Walsh. Thanks, Amanda!

Helen Hajnoczky : On Poetry: Publish However Much You Want

above/ground press author Helen Hajnoczky has posted a wonderful response and rebuttal to Michael Lista's "On Poetry: Publish Less" National Post column on her increasingly clever blog. We salute you, Helen!

Although it seems baffling to me that Lista holds himself up as an example of restraint for publishing a second collection five years after his first. Isn't that the average for poetry?

some author activity: McFadden, Earl, Christie, Massey, Robertson + Armantrout,

Rusty Priske posted a lovely response to David W. McFadden's recent Ottawa appearance at VERSeFest (which was incredible, by the way); Amanda Earl has some visual work published over in the UK; Jason Christie has some new work up in the fourth issue of N/A; Karen Massey has an erasure poem posted online at Silver Birch Press; Lisa Robertson interviews Etel Adnan for BOMB Magazine; and there is an interview with Rae Armantrout over at the Writeliving's blog.

Ryan Pratt reviews Dennis Tourbin's THE STREAM and other poems (2014) and Camille Martin's Sugar Beach (2014)

Ryan Pratt was good enough to review Dennis Tourbin's THE STREAM and other poems (2014) and Camille Martin's Sugar Beach (2014) over at the ottawa poetry newsletter. Thanks, Ryan! This is the second review of Martin's Sugar Beach, after Jack Goodall's review over at the Flat Singles Press blog.

"poem" broadsheet #327: Birthday: forty-four, by rob mclennan

    Disturbed. My body follows
    me around.
        Rosmarie Waldrop, Love, Like Pronouns

Endless, numbered. An accidental thought. Geometry of calendars, reflect. We interrupt. Collapse punctuation, sulphur, deoxygenated blood. Intention. Were we not traffic, clipped. Misplaced, adjacent. As prepositions. Endless, snow. The very thing. I refuse. I take my distance. Forty-four years, equally distributed. Uncertainty of facts, persist. These grainy pronouns. Mother, may I. Tilt, a noise, distracts. Narratives, out of details. Question: falsehoods. To be born. Who are you, comma. Consequences, approach. Make a point of. I have less to say.

Birthday: forty-four,
rob mclennan
March 15, 2014
above/ground press broadside #327

rob mclennan’s most recent titles include numerous chapbooks, as well as the trade books notes and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press, 2014) and The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014), as well as the forthcoming poetry collection If suppose we are a fragment (BuschekBooks, 2014).

some author activity: Pirie, Barwin, hastain, Barton, Douglas, McKinnon, Simpson, Abel,

Pearl Pirie has a new poem in the March issue of Bywords.ca; Gary Barwin offers the fourth "first reading" of M. NourbeSe Philip's 'Zong' #6 over at Jacket2; j/j hastain responds to Jennifer K. Dick's series of essays on the fragment; John Barton has two new poems up at TRUCK, near the end of Colin Morton and Mary Lee Bragg's month curating March, as does Rhonda Douglas; Paul E. Nelson writes on Barry McKinnon; Rachael Simpson participates in the "My Writing Process - blog tour" interview; and Sean Cranbury interviews Jordan Abel for 49th Shelf.

"poem" broadsheet #326: On Water (from Elizabeth to Jenny), by Elizabeth Robinson

It touches its own body to measure ambiguity.

Where do I go, asks the hand of the touch:

gas, liquid, solid.

I am not who I am.

What was once blue, was green, white, black, translucent.

And is so again. 

Water mates with itself, a lover falling hard through

soft,  betraying through trustworthy,  torrent through

opacity.

All that we knew of each other in our form,

where do I go, blunt and insinuating.

The touch paired with itself.  A humid air.

The point of contact as it bathes and thirsts.

A hand on a real body, its mutable fact.

On Water (from Elizabeth to Jenny)
by Elizabeth Robinson
above/ground press broadside #326

Elizabeth Robinson’s must recent books are the hybrid essay On Ghosts and the poetry collections Counterpart and Blue Heron.  Robinson is a co-editor of Instance Press and the literary periodical pallaksch.pallaksch.