some author activity: Clayton, Boyle, Reid, Smith, Solomon, Dolman + Baker,

Conyer Clayton has some new work up at the ex-puritan, as does Frances Boyle; Clayton also has some new work up at Vallum magazine; Monty Reid had some poems up at The Dodge (that I hadn't noticed prior); Steven Ross Smith has a piece up in the "Tuesday poem" series; Misha Solomon has a poem up in the "Poetry Pause" series via The League of Canadian Poets; and did you see that Conyer Clayton, AJ Dolman and Jennifer Baker are reading soon in Kemptville, Ontario at the North Grenville Public Library?

some author activity: Archer, Collis, MacEachern, Niespodziany, Mody + The Free Nashville Poetry Library,

[above/ground press items seen in the wild at The Free Nashville Poetry Library; photo by Megan M. Garr] Sacha Archer is interviewed over at Artisanal Writer; Stephen Collis has a new poem up at the scales project; Jessi MacEachern has a new poem (audio and text) up at Vallum magazine; Benjamin Niespodziany has some new work up at Blue Arrangements; and Monica Mody has a poem up in the Tuesday poem series over at the dusie blog.

Bill Neumire reviews Gary Barwin and rob mclennan's collaborative SOME LEAVES (2020)

Bill Neumire was good enough to provide a first review of Gary Barwin and rob mclennan's collaborative SOME LEAVES (2020) over at Vallum magazine. Thanks so much! See his original review here. As he writes:

SOME LEAVES
GARY BARWIN AND ROB MCLENNAN
ABOVE/GROUND PRESS, 2020

In a collection with a title that rings Whitmanian, seasoned collaborators with over 50 books published between them, rob mclennan and Gary Barwin offer five brief pages of poetry that come closer to feeling very Bradburian, examining the the collision of nature and the technology of language. Though the collection is co-authored, there’s no clear indication how the authoring is split. This defensively layered distance provides shade from nature’s “extraordinary example” which can only be recorded, “screen-captured,” and played back on a loop while itself remaining wholly separate and intact. The poems alternate pages with images of a bird in varying poses whose head is covered by a blank dialogue bubble. So, what do the birds say in their silence? “Honestly, say the birds. You humans. It’s not about language.” The voice of the speaker/s is aloofly clinical: “One wishes not to speak of birds, their extraordinary example. / One takes out a photocopy of a bird.” This evasive voice remains throughout the book’s 10 brief sections (the sections range from 2 to 9 lines each), maneuvering to explain that “by ‘one’ one means ‘we’ or ‘forests’ or ‘birds.’” Humans often possess an anxiety-driven need to fill silence with words, to enter a space and begin claiming. The chapbook opens, “One takes one’s computer into the woods and types ‘bird.’” This exploration of reality versus reproduction is at the heart of these poems: “The yes of the mystery.” It reads like an investigation: “There’s a river. What does it mean, this river? / There’s a sentence. That’s what it means, this curve.” And the investigation is not without its findings, as the speaker states, “Listening is always beginning again.” An atomized mingling of time and state of being occurs, as “A tree has a premonition of being cut into ladders; a leaf // in the folds of a hundred books.” There is nature in its essence, and there is what writers and artists make of nature, and in Some Leaves Barwin and mclennan “make the distance philosophical.” The collection (really a single, flowing poem) is exactly that: a voice philosophizing on what it means to use artifice to convey nature. There is one final image that is not a bird, but instead a dialogue bubble containing only three ellipses points surrounded by two leaves—perhaps indicating the abandoning of language in the face of nature. In the end, mclennan and Barwin seek no epic project, but rather an ironic self-minimalizing, an attempt to ask how valuable language is, how much we fetishize it when, in the end, “A tree is always already music.”

Vallum magazine : Publishing in Canada: A Panel Discussion (archived,

In case anyone wanted to catch that publishing panel I was on, hosted by Vallum magazine, with other panelists Hazel and Jay MillAr, Dane Swan, Gail Scott, Ashley Obscura and Catherine Cormier-Larose, it is now very much online. See?

some author acitivity: Olsen, Johnson, mclennan, Hall + Mohammadi,

Geoffrey Olsen has some new work up at The Pi Review; Chris Johnson has a new poem up at The Quarantine Review; rob mclennan has a 'poem of the week' (text and video/audio) over at Vallum magazine; Phil Hall reads some poems via the Pedlar Press YouTube channel; Khashayar Mohammadi has a new poem in the "Tuesday poem" series up at dusie.

Bill Neumire reviews Gil McElroy's LAOS (Some Julian Days) in Vallum 16:1

Bill Neumire was good enough to provide the first review of Gil McElroy's LAOS (Some Julian Days) (2018) in Vallum 16:1, "Connections," which was just released at the beginning of the month. Thanks so much! To see the full review, you have to pick up a copy of the issue, but the three-page review includes:

The speaker of these poems, though framed in a clipped, military aura, is a judgmental observer offering a tint of sadness in abstraction. It’s musical and emotionally effective, and he even becomes touchingly connected, or at least desiring of connection in lines like, “[t]he / very knowing / of you…” and “[t]ouching, / touching the ugly / of each other” from section 2457712. The continuous structure rings similar to Leaves of Grass or other projects of continuation, but unlike Whitman, it’s not an inclusively democratic gesture; rather, the language is quirky, Cummings-like in its jarring utterances that remain committed to sound, to alliteration, internal rhyme, and slant rhyme.

some author activity: Hall, Landman, mclennan, Gray + Townsend,

University of New Brunswick writer-in-residence Phil Hall is written up in in the brunswickan; Seth Landman has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; rob mclennan answers the "12 or 20 questions," via Vallum magazine, and has a new poem up at his clever blog; forthcoming author Evan Gray has an essay in the "my (small press) writing day" series; and Jamie Townsend has new work in the second issue of baest : a journal of queer forms & affects.

some author activity: dueck, hastain, mclennan, Radmore + Manery,

nathan dueck has some new work in where is the river; j/j hastain and Juliet Cook have some collaborative work online via The Operating System; rob mclennan and forthcoming author Claudia Coutu Radmore participate in Vallum magazine's 2018 year in review; and Rob Manery is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

Eleni Zisimatos reviews philip miletic’s marginal prints (2017) at the Vallum blog

Montreal poet, editor and publisher Eleni Zisimatos was good enough to provide the first review of philip miletic’s marginal prints (2017) over at the blog for Vallum magazine. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

marginal prints by Philip Miletic is an accomplished book of avant-garde-type poetry that engages the reader fully. With expert control of his words, Miletic opens an exciting world to us, a world of spaces and meaning, couched within the avenues of a relationship. His poetry has a shifting range of forms, moving from poems like:

15

eyes erred

and edged;

soft-spoken script,

whispered periphery

to:

I thought of the passage

I thought of the passage in relation to you

I thought of the passage in relation to me

I thought of the passage and our shared conversation

I thought of the passage and our shared sense of ecstasy

marginal prints is a chapbook worth reading. Philip Miletic lives in Kitchener, ON and his book is published by above/ground press (2017).

some author activity: eckhoff, Earl + Abel,

kevin mcpherson eckhoff is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey, and again over at the Chaudiere Books blog for his inclusion in The Calgary Renaissance; Amanda Earl appears on the blog for Vallum magazine twice, included as part of Vallum 2016 Year in Poetry and as their first Poem of the Week for 2017; and Jordan Abel has a new poem in the "Indigenous Perspectives" issue of The Malahat Review, as well as an interview on their website.

Eleni Zisimatos reviews Kristjana Gunnars' snake charmers : a cycle of twenty poems (2016)

Eleni Zisimatos reviews Kristjana Gunnars' snake charmers : a cycle of twenty poems (2016) over at the Vallum blog. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here. Come out to hear Gunnars launch the chapbook tomorrow night in Edmonton!

Kristjana Gunnars’, “snake charmers: a cycle of twenty poems” is a rich body of poems strongly evocative of place and mysticism. Her writing style is fluid, with colourful description and emotional tenor:

There is that empty chair, forever.
I can almost hear it whisper:

alone in the middle of the ceramic
tile floor, the herringbone blue, white,
crossing forever, a tossing sea of earth
and a garden table with no cups
and no utensils or flowers, fanning
round in royal blue mosaic, a red
cushion slightly off center on the brown
wicker chair.

This is our courtyard
of existence: these are the things in it,

this dark chair, the pillow
askance, the warm air, heavy, still thick
with the trace of your shadow.

The entire book resonates with lines like these, and the reader is able to enter into an exotic landscape where not everything is as it seems. It is well-worth the read. /ez

some author activity: Anstee, Barkman, Christie + Robinson,

Cameron Anstee has two new poems in the new issue of The Steel Chisel; Carla Barkman (the former Carla Milo) has a new poem now up on the Vallum magazine website; Jason Christie describes his writing space on Amish Trivedi's Where Do You Write, My Lovely?; and Elizabeth Robinson has a new collaboration with Sasha Steensen now up at Likestarlings.

some author activity: Trivedi, Barwin, Earl, Anstee, Dennis + Reid,

Amish Trivedi has some new work over at OmniVerse; Gary Barwin has some new work online at Vallum; Amanda Earl has some new visual poems up at h&; Cameron Anstee and Michael Dennis' literary blogs are featured as part of an article over at Apt613; and Monty Reid gets a write-up by Bren Simmers as part of Brick Books' Celebration of Canadian Poetry.

Eleni Zisimatos reviews Dennis Tourbin's The Stream and other poems (2014) and The Peter F. Yacht Club #21

Vallum co-editor/publisher Eleni Zisimatos was good enough to review Dennis Tourbin's The Stream and other poems (2014) here, and The Peter F. Yacht Club #21 (2014) here. Thanks so much!