2 new Pearl Pirie / been shed bore mentions

including a review by Sandra Stephenson, and a recommendation by Sandra Ridley on the Advent Books Blog.

Amanda Earl on Pearl Pirie

Amanda Earl on Pearl Pirie's been shed bore;

first review of Pearl Pirie's been shed bore

now up at the Ottawa X-Press; and an interview with rob mclennan on the Grey Borders Reading Series blog, anticipating their upcoming reading in St. Catharine's, Ontario.

Chaudiere launch; Pearl Pirie's been shed bore, November 7 at Dusty Owl

Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie launches her first poetry collection, been shed bore (Chaudiere Books) at the Dusty Owl Reading Series, Sunday, November 7 at 5pm;

Information now lives on the Chaudiere website here; Pearl's own website for such here.

three poems by Pearl Pirie

in This magazine;

Pearl Pirie + rob mclennan read with Gregory Betts + James Milhaven in St. Catharines

The Grey Borders Reading Series Presents...

rob mclennan

Pearl Pirie

Gregory Betts

+ James Milhaven

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 7:30pm

The Niagara Artists’ Centre 

354 St. Paul Street, St. Catharines 

905.641.0331  

 

Licensed, pay what you can

http://greyborders.blogspot.com 

 

Pearl Pirie's forthcoming trade collection is been shed bore (Chaudiere Books, 2010). www.beenshedbore.com. Her chapbooks include over my dead corpus (AngelHouse, 2010) and boathouse (above/ground, 2008). She blogs at pesbo, Humanyms, and a few other places. Poems have appeared thru dandelion, ditch, PRECIPICe, 1cent, Ottawater, unarmed, Peter F Yacht Club, Dusie and 17 Seconds, pooka press and gar.  She writes in Ottawa and lives in her head (with outings for chocolate).

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of some twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections gifts (Talonbooks), a compact of words (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), wild horses (University of Alberta Press) and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (www.ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), The Garneau Review (www.ottawater.com/garneaureview) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (www.ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com.

Gregory Betts is a poet, editor, essayist, and teacher born in Vancouver, raised in Toronto, now living in St. Catharines, ON. He is the author of four books of poetry including If Language (BookThug 2005), Haikube (BookThug 2006), The Others Raisd in Me (Pedlar Press 2009), and Psychic Geographies and Other Topics (Quattro Press 2010; also as ane-book) as well as several chapbooks and various bits of ephemera.

James Millhaven was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, in 1987. His first chapbook, Edges, was released by Grey Borders Books in July 2010. He is currently working on his second chapbook and a one-act play. He would generally include a witty (or at least half-witty) remark at the end, but this was written at the last minute. Sorry.

Chaudiere Books author Monty Reid featured at the In/Words Reading Series

In/Words Reading Series: October Edition
Wednesday, October 27
9:00pm - 10:30pm@ The Clock Tower Pub, 575 Bank St. (across from The Works)
open set + featured reader Monty Reid
***Will be asking for $1 donation at the door.***
Bean salad to top readers of the night.
Further info at bywords.ca

Chaudiere Books author Marcus McCann reads at the 2010 John Newlove Poetry Awards

Bywords' 2010 John Newlove Poetry Award Reading at the Ottawa International Writers Festival
Southminister United Church, 15 Aylmer
Monday, October 25, 2010, 6:30 pm- a free event
contact: amanda@bywords.ca

Launch of The Glass Jaw, a poetry chapbook by Marcus McCann, the recipient of the 2009 John Newlove Poetry Award. With readings by this year's honourable mentions and award recipient to be announced at the reading, and music by the Companionship Registry.

The annual John Newlove Poetry award, launched in the fall of 2004, commemorates the honest, poignant and well-written poetry of John Newlove, an Ottawa resident for almost twenty years and poet who died in 2003.

Amanda Earl
Managing Editor
www.bywords.ca

another review of Michael Bryson's The Lizard,

from Matthew Firth's Front & Centre;

Anne Le Dressay reads in Ottawa, November 6 at Bridgehead

You are invited to a poetry reading featuring Anne Le Dressay and Mary Lee Bragg on Saturday, November 6, at 7:00 p.m. at Bridgehead, 1277 Wellington St.

Anne Le Dressay has been publishing poetry since the 1970's. She has published two books, Old Winter (2007) and Sleep Is a Country (1997), as well as two chapbooks, Woman Dreams (1998) and This Body That I Live In (1979). She has worked as a professor of English Literature and creative writing. She now works for the government and is looking forward to retirement.

Mary Lee Bragg has published short stories in Canadian and American literary journals since the early 1990's, and won the Ottawa Citizen short story contest in 1992.  Her novel Shooting Angels was published in 2004.  Since retiring from the federal public service in 2006, she has begun writing poetry --  "now that I have time to concentrate."  She published a chapbook of poetry titled "How Women Work" in 2010.

This is the second in a new monthly series of coffeehouse events called the "SLOWest Coffee House @ Bridgehead." This event is organized by Sustainable Living Ottawa West ("SLOWest") in collaboration with our neighbourhood Bridgehead coffeeshop at 1277 Wellington St., Ottawa (the one just west of Holland Avenue see map here . Admission will be "pay what you can."

SLOWest is a new voluntary organization that describes itself as "A network in the west end of Ottawa discovering ways to live in an environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling way." SLOWest is exploring ways that the community can respond creatively to issues like climate change and "peak oil"; among other things, that means building a sense of neighbourhood and community, and promoting local, low-carbon approaches to daily living. This includes promoting a local arts scene on a human scale.

In a modest way, we’re hoping that the launch of SLOWest’s Bridgehead coffeehouse series (first Saturday of every month) will help our local community rediscover and reinvent the tradition of the coffeehouse as a place of community and connection, and a fertile ground for interesting conversations that matter. The idea is to have a regular, predictable time and place for community members to come together in a relaxed way, be entertained with some music, stories or poetry, and enter into conversations about the things that matter to them.

John Newlove review

in Canadian Literature;

Chaudiere Books at Word on the Street, Toronto!

come visit Chaudiere Books as part of the Literary Press Group table at Toronto's Word on the Street; http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca/wots/toronto

2 pre-been shed bore Pearl Pirie readings;

Anticipation for Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie's November 7th launch at the Dusty Owl Reading Series for her first trade poetry collection been shed bore (Chaudiere Books, 2010) continues.

On Thursday, Sept 16th, Pearl Pirie does a reading from selections from the manuscript at 7 pm for the vernissage at Blink Gallery with theBarely Their art show which is a collaborative poetry totem done by Pirie, Jean Jewer, Lynda Cronin and Maureen Sandrock.

On Saturday, Sept 18th, 2 p.m. outside Blink Gallery, a group reading with people including Pearl Pirie, TA Carter, Claudia Coutu Radmore, Sandra Ridley, Rona Shaffran, Sean Moreland, Margo Gallant, LM Rochefort, Gillian Wallace and Laurie Koensgen.

Chaudiere Books author Monty Reid & American poet Lea Graham at Dusty Owl, Ottawa

Chaudiere Books author Monty Reid, author of Disappointment Island (2006) and more recent Luskville Reductions (Brick, 2008) reads at the Dusty Owl Reading Series in Ottawa on Sunday, September 5, 2010 alongside American poet Lea Graham, author of the chapbook Calendar Girls (above/ground press) and the forthcoming first trade collection, Crushes. The Dusty Owl Reading Series, open set & featured reader(s); 5pm, Swizzles Bar & Grill, 246-B Queen Street, Ottawa; 1 block west of Bank Street, underneath the Green Papaya. & check out the above/ground press 17th anniversary reading/launch two nights earlier, hosted by Lea Graham.

Amanda Earl mentions Monty Reid's Disappointment Island (Chaudiere, 2006)

in a list of her favourite contemporary poetry titles;

another review (with odd factual errors) of Michael Bryson's The Lizard,

from the Maple Tree Literary Supplement;

Chaudiere Books author Michael Bryson's The Lizard

longlisted for this year's ReLit Award!

Proust Questionnaire with rob mclennan

up at Open Book Toronto;

Marcus McCann interviewed at Open Book Toronto

anticipating his reading at the Art Bar Reading Series in Toronto on Tuesday, August 10 with rob mclennan and Sandra Ridley;

Chaudiere Books author Michael Bryson

reading as part of the Toronto Small Press Fair, Friday, June 18 at the Victory Cafe;

another review of Michael Bryson's The Lizard,

by Spencer Gordon, originally in Broken Pencil, but posted here on his blog;

2nd review of Michael Bryson's The Lizard

The second review of The Lizard is new in the summer 2010 issue of On The Danforth magazine (PDF).
The reviewer found the book “a haunting work of hardship, adultery, neuroses and passion” and called it “a quick read, but definitely not light.”

a profile of Michael Bryson

from On The Danforth, a magazine done by the Centennial College Book & Magazine Publishing Program;

Chaudiere Books author McCann on Lea in the Globe;

Marcus McCann (Soft where) on Nicholas Lea (Everything is Movies) in the Globe & Mail books blog;

rob mclennan on Pearl Pirie

for the Globe & Mail books blog;

Marcus McCann's Soft Where shortlisted for Gerald Lampert!

Congratulations to Marcus McCann, whose Soft Where is shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, for best first poetry collection by a Canadian poet;

a profile of Michael Bryson

on the University of Waterloo Alumni site;

Michael Bryson review: Rebecca Rosenblum

Rose-coloured (Toronto author Rebecca Rosenblum) reviews Michael Bryson's The Lizard and Other Stories (Chaudiere Books);

Marcus McCann review: Soft Where It Counts

Soft Where It Counts

Poetry book hits all the right spots

by Ashly Dyck, originally published in The Leveller, February 2009

Take a roll in the sack with one of Canada’s sexiest young writers. Sexually, technically, and technologically charged, Marcus McCann’s poetry is invigorating and accessible to anyone with an imagination, no matter how buried it may be under normative behaviours.

As a gay rights lobbyist, editor for Xtra and Capital Xtra—Toronto's and Ottawa’s gay and lesbian newspapers—and openly “pro-polyamony, pro-sex work, pro-BDSM, pro-casual sex” blogger, McCann has nothing to hide and actively encourages others to bear all.

The Toronto-based University of Ottawa alumnus takes issue with what he sees as our culture’s cautious approach to sex and seeks to redefine the normal in his poetry and challenge mainstream shame. In a June 2009 interview with Guerrilla Magazine, McCann explained, “I do see a lot of people—from foot fetishists to Internet-daters—who express their sexuality in a particular way but have a lot of shame about it.”

McCann’s first full-length book Soft Where is published by and available for sale through Ottawa’s Chaudiere Books. The book contains works of mostly unmetered, unrhymed, and often prose-like verse; as such, it frequently draws unity through alliteration and repeated similar vowel sounds and is best appreciated when read aloud. As critic and author Ronnie R. Brown has already noted, “Lines such as ‘Your head’s employees/ call in a snowday, crescent of wrist stung/ like electrical tape was yanked off. Yowsa.’ cry for a stage and a mike.”

McCann is as experimental with grammar as he is with sex. His poetry reflects a playfulness toward language that can stem only from an extreme sense of familiarity with the tools of his craft.

In a Q&A with Ottawa poet and Chaudiere publisher rob mclennan, McCann explains, “In everyday English, we tend to use the same sentence constructions—subject, verb, object—over and over,” he says. “In my own work, I'm looking to stretch rather than break grammar... give English a chance to show off.”

The overt sexuality and confident language play of McCann’s lines are not off-putting or intimidating as one might expect but, rather, invite readers to join them on their romp. Personal reflection is interjected with bits of cultural context in a way that critic Ronnie R. Brown says “is reflective of most readers’ lives.”

In the poem “Three,” McCann writes,

Russell spoke of it like renting

a boat, a lovely

eventual consequence

of map-making and curiosity

and while our anxieties pinged, we cuddled, discussing—

and therefore the rough-scumbled peaks

of our urge spread like cake frosting

after a knife’s first gooey lump,

sweet and thin, hugging what might

otherwise crumble—until one afternoon

we were three men naked

in a bedroom.

The language and line breaks stop and start and seem to fumble like the frantic fits of passion they describe—the tension in carrying thoughts over several lines and stanzas brings readers back to their own moments of anticipation and ecstasy before release and express the writer’s openness about sex while not alienating those with more traditional sexual relationships.

“I’m not trying to tell anyone what to do,” McCann said to Guerrilla, “but I hope by talking about things like casual sex, I can get some people to feel less guilty about what they’re already doing. Because there’s nothing worse than a self-hating slut.”

In addition to the sexy side of things, McCann’s book also deals extensively with technology in both content and form, adopting computer syntax in lines such as, “The system has halted./ Is this what you remember?, send.”

“I think a lot of writers write about the trepidation they feel around sex and technology, rather than writing joyfully about them. Writing your fears and your anxieties is an interesting exercise,” McCann said, “but it’s not one that grabs me.”

Far from ostentatious, this book is an accessible, guilt-free celebration of current sexual and technological culture that gives readers plenty to occupy their minds and tongues.

a review of Marcus McCann's Soft Where (from Canadian Bookseller);

Poetry Corner

Canadianbookseller Volume 4 – 2009

SOFT WHERE

by Marcus McCann

Chaudiere Books

ISBN: 9780978342807

BY RONNIE R. BROWN

Described as a "first trade book, following a pile of chapbooks," Soft Where introduces the quirky, sexy, alliterative work of Marcus McCann, a young poet who also serves as the editor of Capital Xtra, Ottawa's gay and lesbian newspaper, to a far wider audience.

Using rapid-fire patter, with a rhyme thrown in here and there for good measure, McCann's poems revel in wordplay. Poems begin with catchy lines such as "The outing's disorientation/ session will commence immediately" and end with unanswerable questions like "What' elastic, if we don't/bend it?" As for the middles, well, how about "a brick sifthouse sieving/ the imminent filament/ uncovers the E-pocalypse"?

This is poetry for a new age; poetry that a reader can easily imagine being performed (to a transfixed audience) on stage. Lines such as "Your head's employees/ call in a snowday, crescent of wrist stung/ like electrical tape was yanked off. Yowsa.//" cry out for a stage and a mike. Given this, McCann is a perfect fit for (relative) publishing newcomer Chaudiere Books' fourth season lineup. (In fact, subtle echoes of Chaudiere's senior editor rob mclennan's own style seem to ring through.)

It's always good to know ‘where it’s at,’ and Soft Where shows one of the new and exciting places where poetry is headed.

Ronnie R. Brown is the author of five books of poetry; her fourth, States of Matter (Black Moss, 2005), was awarded the Acorn-Plantos People's Poetry Award, an honour for which her fifth book, Night Echoes (Black Moss, 2006), was also short-listed. A sixth collection, Rocking on the Edge, is expected out soon.

some recent Michael Bryson activity;

Chaudiere author Michael Bryson (The Lizard and Other Stories) has been pretty busy lately. Here's an interview with him by Lemonhound on reviewing, a profile on Open Book Toronto, a video to promote the book, a video made at Ottawa's TREE Reading Series back in November, and then there's his 12 or 20 questions from nearly a year back (in case you forgot). He even had some new fiction in the new online version of The Puritan, in case you're already hungry for more.

Michael Bryson reading in Toronto at Pivot;

Chaudiere Books author Michael Bryson reads at Toronto's Pivot Reading Series;

Wednesday, January 13, 2010
8 p.m. at the Press Club
850 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Hosted by Carey Toane
PWYC.

Michael Bryson is the author of three short story collections, the most recent of which is The Lizard and Other Stories (Chaudiere, 2009). From 1999-2009, he was the publisher and editor of the online literary magazine, the Danforth Review. His stories have appeared in Best Canadian Stories, the Fiddlehead, the Antigonish Review, and many other journals. He blogs at http://thenewcanlit.blogspot.com

Faye Guenther has written for Broken Pencil and the Danforth Review, and works as Joyland.ca’s editorial assistant. She has performed her poetry at reading series in Toronto and Montreal. Her short story “Bicycle Dreams” was published in Dandelion Magazine in 2009.

Bill Kennedy is the co-author of apostrophe with Darren Wershler-Henry (ECW, 2006). He has been the artistic director of the Scream Literary Festival since 2002, as well as a poetry editor for Coach House Books and a co-organizer of the Lexiconjury Reading Series.

http://pivotreadings.wordpress.com

Michael Bryson's collection of short stories, The Lizard

is now available from Chaudiere Books, here. To order copies, send $18 (+ $2 for shipping) to: rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7, or order through your favourite bookstore! Review copies and author interviews available upon request.