some author activity: The Peter F Yacht Club, Martin, MillAr, mclennan, Markotic + Poe,

For the first time in years, we actually had a meeting of The Peter F Yacht Club! Pictured left to right are Pearl and Brian Pirie, Vivian Vavassis and Gwendolyn Guth, listening intently to an unseen (by the camera, at least) Laurie Fuhr; others in attendance included rob mclennan, Stephen Brockwell, Danica Brockwell and Christine McNair.

Camille Martin has a collage essay over at Talking Writing, and Jay MillAr is interviewed over at Canadian Poets Petting Cats; rob mclennan's "Daily Offerings: a note on 'Songs for little sleep,'" is now online at Branta, anticipating his newest trade poetry collection; Nicole Markotic has some new poems over at Numero Cinq, along with an afterward on her poems by Tammy Armstrong; and there's a new interview with Deborah Poe over at womens quarterly conversation.

Also, copies of Hugh Thomas and Michael Blouin/Elizabeth Rainer's bpNichol Chapbook Award shortlisted titles will be available at Toronto's Meet the Presses, as at the ottawa small press book fair on Saturday!

rob mclennan's above/ground chapbook, This, circular tower, is reviewed in Broken Pencil #57

Chris Landry was good enough to review my above/ground chapbook, This, circular tower (above/ground press, 2012) in Broken Pencil #57 (autumn 2012 issue). Thanks, Chris! There are a few copies still available, here, and copies of the Deborah Poe title I originally reworked, here, also. Although I admit to still not understanding why so many reviewers in Broken Pencil seem not to comprehend that not all folded/stapled are “zines.” Why can’t they call them chapbooks?

This, circular tower is as sparse and clean as the poems it contains. The cover image provides an entry point. It is an image from the mclennan family archive. Many of the poems invoke family history in a dry, chopped-up manner that suggests free association. In “Lineate,” mclennan lets drop fragments of sentences that bring to mind the geography of the prairies, great aunts and trees. It is this wistful looking-back where I enjoyed this the most. The barren expanse of the Canadian landscape is not unlike the gaps in memory in a family archive.

            At his best, mclennan alternates between the general and specific in an evocative and measured style like in the poem that gives this collection its title. Where I find some of these pieces lacking is where the words are just too general and the imagery too heavy-handed to give the reader much to hold on to. Or perhaps that was the point – it’s an attempt to capture the feeling of what is hard to capture: our fleeting memory.

The Factory Reading Series: some upcoming (December-March) events,

We at above/ground press and The Factory Reading Series know how excited you get about literary readings, so we thought we should let you know some of what is in the works for the next couple of months:

December 15: reading and chapbook launches by Roland Prevost, Shannon Maguire and Craig Calhoun
upstairs at The Carleton Tavern, 223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale) / 7pm doors; 7:30 reading

December 29: the annual Peter F Yacht Club reading/Christmas party/regatta
at The Carleton Tavern / 7pm doors; 7:30 reading

January 24: the launch of ottawater #9
at The Carleton Tavern / 7pm doors; 7:30 reading

February 22: Hugh Thomas and others tba
at The Carleton Tavern / 7pm doors; 7:30 reading

March 12-17: the third annual VERSeFest Poetry Festival
including The Factory Reading Series' annual lecture; readers and venue tba

March 28: reading and chapbook launches by Deborah Poe, Wanda O'Connor and tba
at The Carleton Tavern / 7pm doors; 7:30 reading

all lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Can you believe it? In January 2013 The Factory Reading Series turns twenty years old!

And the triumphant return of rob mclennan's poetry workshops at Collected Works! January to March. Spaces still available.

further information on any/all of these events tba; watch this space for details

Fenn Stewart's above/ground chapbook, An OK Organ Man, is reviewed in Broken Pencil #57

Justin F. Ridgeway was good enough to review Fenn Stewart’s above/ground chapbook, An OK Organ Man (above/ground press, 2012) in Broken Pencil #57 (autumn 2012 issue). Thanks, Justin! There are a few copies still available, here. Although I admit to still not understanding why so many reviewers in Broken Pencil seem not to comprehend that not all folded/stapled are “zines.” Why can’t they call them chapbooks?

Reading this poetry zine, I’ve come to the realization that I’m not quite poetry-illiterate. It makes me ask myself: Is this why I read fiction? Do I need it spelled out for me with sentences and paragraphs and familiar punctuation to hold my hand and read to me while I fall asleep where dreams are the closest thing to an imagination I have? As it turns out, this zine made poetry feel a little closer, a little more welcome, a little more familiar.

            Fenn Stewart’s zine follows a nature study club and a Classics club when they find themselves double-booked into one of those stuffy, wood-paneled university classrooms. Or maybe they are in nature – the Classics club, that is – and they’re discussing Lake Ontario, its fish and other aquatic species. Through the poems they describe the vegetation and the region’s life cycles in speech that sounds like humming birds, delicate but with determination and purpose, exhibiting a syntactical playfulness and careful word selection. One can only admire the precise angle through which a phrase is turned.

            Even as a poetry neophyte, this work drew me in, and I appreciated the amorphous quality of the atmosphere and setting.

some author activity: Poe, McKinnon, Anstee, Pirie, Brockwell, Maguire, Stewart, Butler, Barbour, macLean + Burke

Deborah Poe [who took the above photo, by the by] has some new work in the fifth issue of seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics; Barry McKinnon does as well, with his lecture from the 2nd annual VERSeFest Poetry Festival; a new series of lectures will be presented at a VERSeFest fundraiser on November 15th in Ottawa, by Cameron Anstee, Pearl Pirie and Stephen Brockwell, hosted by The Factory Reading Series; Shannon Maguire reads in Toronto on November 7 with Melannie Gayle and Katie Jordan to help Sarah Pinder launch her new Coach House Books poetry collection (you should totally go); and various authors from moons back, including Christine Stewart and Jenna Butler were part of Douglas Barbour's month-long TRUCK (they all had above/ground press chapbooks in the "Alberta Series," all of which appear online as free pdfs), as do kath macLean and Andrew Burke; and above/ground press makes the Tarpaulin Sky list of titles one can possibly review! (we choose to remain optimistic)

new from above/ground press: Cat., a poem by Mark Cochrane

Cat.

Mark Cochrane

$3

In the garden, haunches down

like a library lion, Enid

the grown kitten

gently parts

with paw, with claw,

the feathers

on some rare, yellow-breasted

chat, exposing a belly

she tears open

with needle teeth &

gory-sunwarm

                   deliberation.  And standing

at his French doors

Felix is aroused

to a horror.  Loving

birds as he does—

published in Ottawa by above/ground press

November 2012

a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Mark Cochrane lives in Vancouver, practises law, and teaches in the English Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. He wrote Change Room (Talonbooks 2000) a long time ago and “Cat.” not long after that.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Elizabeth Rainer and Michael Blouin's collaborative above/ground chapbook, let lie/, is reviewed in Broken Pencil #57

Lindsay Rainingbird was good enough to review Elizabeth Rainer and Michael Blouin's collaborative above/ground chapbook, let lie/ (above/ground press, 2012) in Broken Pencil #57 (autumn 2012 issue). Thanks, Lindsay! There are a few copies of their bpNichol Chapbook Award-nominated chapbook still available, here. Although I admit to not understanding why so many reviewers in Broken Pencil seem not to comprehend that not all folded/stapled are “zines,” perhaps never hearing the term “chapbook” in their lives. Why the disconnect?

This collaborative work, written over a year and a half and emailed back and forth from Vancouver to Kemptville, Ontario, is a glimpse inside a decaying relationship. What it lacks in punctuation it makes up for in vivid descriptions of the heart’s status. The prose pieces weave seamlessly together, like pages ripped from the same journal, and the endnote confessing “one marriage ended in the process. One survived,” lends a certain intrigue to the work that encourages the reader to delve deeper.

            There is longing, “I would be that cigarette that lighter because it is in your hands / I would be condensation on your glass where you wipe / I would be careful I would be discreet” and there is guilt, “I told you how I felt and the things that I said then I didn’t mean any of them and none of them were true / and remember the lights went off and we checked the window and the whole block was dark as if my own lies had been counted and I had reached my limit.” Then, there is acceptance: “You are what pulls me up / He doesn’t always do that / it’s okay it’s not His job all the time.” Let lie\ is a zine that will stay with you long after the close, and is well worth the $4 fee for even just a handful of the gut-punching lines contained inside.