The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 15: Sherwood, Reid, Hamilton, Baglow + Rodrigues,

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

The Factory Reading Series
the pre-small press book fair reading
celebrating THIRTY YEARS of the ottawa small press book fair

featuring readings by:

Claire Sherwood (Montreal)
Monty Reid (Ottawa)
Seymour Hamilton (Chelsea QC)
John Baglow (Ottawa)
+
Tazi Rodrigues (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 15, 2024
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
Anina’s Café, 280 Joffre-Bélanger Way

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Tom Brown Arena]

Claire Sherwood [pictured] is a Montreal writer, visual poet, and oral storyteller. Her short fiction has appeared in Minority Reports: New English Writing in Quebec (Vehicule Press), and her poetry in Kola Magazine (The Black Writers’ Guild), Zettel Magazine (Underbridge Press), carte blanche magazine (QWF online), Helios (Ediciones de la Salamandra Negra), My Island My City (sitting duck press), What Lasts (2 Susans Poetry Circle). Her new chapbook Eat Your Words was published by Montreal’s Turret House Press.

Monty Reid was born in Saskatchewan but has made his home in Ottawa for the past 25 years. He has published a dozen books of poetry, most recently Garden (Chaudiere, 2014) and Meditatio Placentae (Brick, 2016). He has also published award-winning non-fiction and more than 20 chapbooks with publishers in Canada and abroad. His work has won National Magazine Awards, the Lampman Award, the Stephansson Award (3 times) and has been short-listed 3 times for the GGs. Magazine publications include The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Grain, CV2, The Puritan, Train, Dusie, Manoah and many others. His latest chapbook Vertebrata was published by Montreal’s Turret House Press.

Seymour Hamilton lives in Chelsea, Quebec with his wife Katherine. He is much happier writing stories than he ever was before he retired from ordinary work-work, which in his case involved a lot of marking, editing, and writing in the academic world and the civil service.  He has written eight books of fiction, six of them a post-apocalypse science fiction trilogy that got out of hand and spun off three sequels, with a seventh coming soon.  He also wrote a novel about 1960s back-to-the-land hippies in Nova Scotia, and a collection of inter-related stories called The Laughing Princess, which feature dragons of great power and authority.

John Baglow is a former union executive officer (PSAC), and presently writes and lives in Ottawa. Baglow has published three books of poetry, Emergency Measures (Sono Nis Press, 1976), Journey Under Glass (Penumbra Press, 2004), and more recently, Murmuration: Marianne’s Book (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023). He has also written a critical study of the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, The Poetry of Self (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987). His poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, nationally and internationally.

Tazi Rodrigues (she/her) is a writer and aquatic biologist. A second/third-generation-settler from Treaty 1 territory, she lives in Ottawa on the unceded land of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. She placed second in the 2023 Kloppenburg Hybrid Grain Contest for her essay on learning Portuguese and listening to fish, and won the 2024 Diana Brebner Prize for her poem on looking for bees. Other writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, CV2, and Canthius. She is currently writing about ecological sound, caring for the worms and foster cats who live with her, and counting bugs at her neighbourhood pollinator garden.

Karen Massey wins the 2020 Diana Brebner Prize

Clearly, I'm behind on my information, having discovered only today through reading Arc Poetry Magazine #95 (summer 2021) that Ottawa poet and above/ground press author Karen Massey won the annual Diana Brebner Prize last October (I'm completely willing to blame Covid-distractions on all of this) for the "best poem written by a National Capital Region poet, who has not yet published in book form." The prize was judged by BC writer Susan Musgrave. A belated congratulations! Musgrave selected Karen's “Mary Oliver in the Hereafter” for the $500 grand prize; Dessa Bayrock’s “What Do You See” was named the honourable mention for this year’s prize.

Here’s what Susan Musgrave had to say about “Mary Oliver in the Hereafter”:

First of all, I loved the title. And then I loved the first line. And then…anon. I like the Big Philosophical Questions the poem asks but doesn’t answer. That’s what a good poem will do. It doesn’t give you any answers, just unanswerable questions. I also love the way the poem uses abstractions — hope, joy — but renders them concrete. By the time I get to the last line, I feel lighter, the grass smells sweeter.

Karen Massey's poetry has been published online and in anthologies and journals in Canada, the United States and the UK, including Aesthetica, Arc, subTerrain and experiment-o. She has two chapbooks-to-date with above/ground press, Bullet (1999) and STRANGE FITS OF BEAUTY & LIGHT: Erasure Poems from Archibald Lampman’s Sonnets (2014), and she was part of the anthology Decalogue: Ten Ottawa Poets (Chaudiere Books, 2006). And Karen isn't the first above/ground press author to win such, as Marilyn Irwin won the same prize back in 2013, and natalie hanna had an honourable mention in 2019!

And if such prompts, they are currently taking poems for this year's competition! Pay attention!

natalie hanna receives diana brebner prize honourable mention

above/ground press author natalie hanna, publisher of battleaxe press, was recently announced as the honourable mention to this year's annual Diana Brebner Prize. Congratulations! above/ground press has been fortunate enough to publish three chapbooks by hanna over the years, including “this evidence against you,” produced as STANZAS #21 (October 1999; copies are available, but extremely limited) as well as the more recent dark ecologies (2017) and CONCEALED WEAPONS / ANIMAL SURVIVORS (2018), both of which are still very much available.

natalie hanna is a queer, feminist, ottawa lawyer, of middle-eastern descent working with low income populations. her writing focuses on feminist, political, and personal themes. She runs battleaxe press (small poetry press) / is the Administrative Director of the late lamented Sawdust Reading Series / served as newsletter editor and board member at Arc Poetry Magazine. She has published nearly a dozen poetry chapbooks to date, and her work, interviews, have appeared online and in print in various publications, including with Literary Landscapes, In/Words Magazine, phafours press, Hussy Press, Bywords, the Dusie Blog, the Chaudiere Books Blog, Canthius, shreeking violet press, and Peter F. Yacht Club, among others.

The Diana Brebner Prize [see my 2012 profile on the award here] is awarded yearly for the best poem writ­ten by a National Cap­i­tal Region poet, who has not yet been pub­lished in book form. The prize hon­ours the late Diana Breb­ner, an award-winning Ottawa-based poet who was devoted to fos­ter­ing lit­er­ary tal­ent among new, local writers.

This year the judge for Arc’s Diana Brebner Prize was Ian Letourneau. As the winner of the $500 prize, he selected Dawn Steiner’s poem “Morning Walk,” as well as choosing Natalie Hanna’s “light conversation” for the honourable mention. Dawn Steiner had work in the above/ground press workshop anthology assignment: zero (2015).

The poets will be honoured and will read their poems at the 2019 Lampman Award Shortlist Reading, on October 3rd, 2019.

The Lampman Award Shortlist + Diana Brebner Prize reading, October 17, 2013

The annual Archibald Lampman Award shortlist reading happens in Ottawa on Thursday, October 17, 2013 at Raw Sugar Cafe (692 Somerset W., Ottawa) at 7:30pm, with readings by the authors of the three shortlisted works: Christine McNair, Conflict (BookThug), Nina Berkhout, elseworlds (Seraphim) and E. Russell Smith, Petroglyph Beach (The RightEyedDeer Press). The evening will also feature a reading by recent Diana Brebner Award winner and above/ground press author Marilyn Irwin.

The 2013 Archibald Lampman Award will be presented on October 22, at the Shenkman Arts Centre, in conjunction with the City of Ottawa Book Awards.

Marilyn Irwin wins the 2013 Diana Brebner Prize

above/ground press author Marilyn Irwin has won the 2013 Diana Brebner Prize for her poem “this is a silent”! Administered by Arc Poetry Magazine, this year's award was judged by Sue Sinclair, and Irwin's prize-winning poem will be featured in Arc #71, due on newsstands any day now. As the press release states:

With “its rich and unusual word combinations, this... complex short poem" was selected for the best poem written by an emerging National Capital poet in 2013.

A graduate of Algonquin College’s Creative Writing program, Marilyn Irwin has three chapbooks: for when you pick daisies (above/ground press, 2010), flicker (above/ground press, 2012), and little nothings (2012). Her work has been published by above/ground press, Bywords, ottawater, Peter F. Yacht Club, among others; and most recently, the Canadian section of New American Writing #31.

See the “Poets in Profile” on Irwin at Open Book: Ontario here, her "12 or 20 questions" here, and poems up at Truck, and as an above/ground press "poem" broadside. See a profile on the Diana Brebner Prize (including last year's winner) at Open Book: Ontario here. Congratulations Marilyn!

Lauren Turner's Factory Reading in the Kitchissippi Times

Pearl Pirie was good enough to send along this clipping from the April 11th issue of the Kitchissippi Times, with a small write-up and photo of recent Factory Reading Series reader and Kitchissippi resident Lauren Turner.