Jennifer Londry (w/ Carolyn Smart + Jeanette Lynes) : Kingston (triple) Book Launch, December 14, 2015

Jennifer Londry launches her new Chaudiere title, Tatterdemalion, in Kingston at Novel Idea Bookstore on Monday, December 14, 2015, as part of a triple book launch alongside poets Carolyn Smart and Jeanette Lynes.

Novel Idea Bookstore
Monday, December 14, 2015
156 Princess Street, Kingston ON
7-9pm

Book Launch and Reading, with music by Roger Dorey, a Kingston singer/songwriter, and Brockville musician Bob Londry.

See the facebook invitation here: https://www.facebook.com/events/656142104527344/

Cameron Anstee and Apt. 9 Press featured in Ottawa Life Magazine

Ottawa poet, editor and publisher Cameron Anstee, editor of The Collected Poems of William Hawkins [a book we celebrate this Saturday at The Manx Pub, as part of our fall poetry launch] and his Apt. 9 Press are featured in a recent article over at Ottawa Life Magazine. Congratulations, sir!

Roland Prevost interviews Gil McElroy,

Chaudiere Books author Roland Prevost interviews Colborne, Ontario poet, curator and arts critic Gil McElroy over at Queen Mob's Teahouse.

Poets Online Talking About Coffee : Amanda Earl,

Amanda Earl is interviewed over at Queen Mob's Teahouse, as part of their series "Poets Online Talking About Coffee."

Bryan Sentes on John Newlove

Montreal writer and critic Bryan Sentes has posted his essay, "A Class of One’s Own: an all-too-brief appreciation of the poetry of John Newlove," over at his blog. And of course, copies of A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove can be ordered directly here.

Chaudiere Books big fall poetry launch (Toronto): Londry, Weaver + Turnbull

The Chaudiere Books FALL POETRY LAUNCH makes its way to Toronto! With launches by Kingston poet Jennifer Londry (Tatterdemalion), Kemptville poet Chris Turnbull (continua) and Toronto poet Andy Weaver (this).

[and don't forget our upcoming Ottawa launch as well!]

Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Doors open at 7:30pm / Readings begin at 8:00pm

Videofag, 187 Augusta Avenue, Toronto, Ontario
http://www.videofag.com/

Books will be available for purchase
Cash bar

Andy Weaver has published two previous books of poetry, Were the bees (NeWest Press, 2005) and Gangson (NeWest Press, 2011), and a recent chapbook, Concatenations, through above/ground press. He teaches contemporary poetry and poetics at York University.

For more information on this, including ordering: https://alllitup.ca/books/T/this

Chris Turnbull lives near Ottawa. Her short opti/surface work, “[ untitled ],” is one of a trio (with angela rawlings and Heather Hermant) in o w n (Vancouver: Cue Books, 2014). continua is her first full collection of poetry.

For more information on continua, including ordering: https://alllitup.ca/books/C/continua

Jennifer Londry is the author of two previous books of poetry: Life and Death in Cheap Motels, which was adapted for stage, and After the Words, which was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award. A featured reader at the 2009 Kingston Writers’ Festival and at the 2011 Sweetwater 905 in Northern BC, she has also facilitated and organized a literary event for Alzheimer’s Awareness. Jen has taught creative writing and recently was a judge for Words from the Street, a creative writing competition, which gives a voice to the downtrodden, in association with The Toronto Writers’ Collective. She is also a contributor to the anthologies: A Crystal through which Love Passes, Glosas for P.K. Page (Buschek Books, 2013), Where the nights Are twice As long, Love Letters of Canadian Poets (Goose Lane Editions, 2015), and has work forthcoming in the Alzheimer’s anthology, A Rewording Life, editor Diane Schoemperlen, creator Sheryl Gordon. Currently Jen is collaborating with the documentary filmmaker Sarah Turnbull at the Carleton School of Journalism and Communications to produce a mental health video.

For more information on Tatterdemalion, including ordering: https://alllitup.ca/books/T/Tatterdemalion

generic pronoun : Andy Weaver on Robert Duncan

Andy Weaver guest-posts over at generic pronoun with the essay "Robert Duncan: Reading as Divine Insurrection."

Marilyn Irwin reviews Andy Weaver's this (2015)

Ottawa poet Marilyn Irwin was good enough to provide the first review of Andy Weaver's this (2015) on her blog; thanks so much!

You can find the link to this and many other of her reviews here.

Of course, copies can be picked up either at this weekend's ottawa small press book fair, online at All Lit Up, or at our big fall poetry launch at the end of the month!

Andy Weaver, This. Ottawa, ON: Chaudiere Books, 2015

Typeset in Courier and Minion by Chaudiere Books co-publisher Christine McNair, the visual aesthetic flows and disrupts beautifully as poems alternate from text block heavy to more terse, angular, drifting shapes on the verge of or what is undoubtedly vispo, depending on the piece.

The careful selection and attention to the placement of each character, word and line as though right click + delete not yet a thing,  as though the author tapped away at a typewriter. Love letters to language, the English alphabet, wordplay, experimentalism, abcedarian, Creeley, Kroetsch. Offerings.

The very word “this” and its connotation quickly becomes a present-tense mantra for Weaver and borrowed lines that contain the word by notable (quoted) others. This: replacement – anonymous either because indescribable or intentionally otherwise – for a name, a feeling, a place, a segue, a war, an event, the implications, the result, the end… Why this and not that? Why this at all? Why, underlined.

Some stream of consciousness type poems with seeming disconnection read like internal monologue which is constantly self-disrupting but so well-written that nearly each line holds the grandeur of a title of a (not yet written) poem. Others are beautiful hybrids of contrasting prose-poems within a single prose-poem. Weaver’s cat. Well-worth re-reading to attempt to connect the dots within and between pieces.

If I had read Guns, Germs, and Steel, I would draw a link by way of homage.

What follows is one in a series of poems entitled Politics, sardonically philosophical with humanity.

Politics

The oak tree doesn’t care
whose lot its leaves fall on.
Say what you will about Freddy Krueger,
it’s nice to see a man take pride in his work.
Don’t you think it’s suspicious no one’s ever
seen Karl Marx and Bill Gates in the same place
at the same time? I mean, I’m not saying.
I’m just saying. Even when the mind
isn’t minding, the brain is still braining.
After the long days of rain,
the first robins begin to sing.
By all means, write beautiful testimonials to love.
Standards of economy dictate that a girl
dead at five has lived a whole life.
He’s got money to burn
you. Let’s bomb them back to the Flintstone age.
Who knows why democracy doesn’t work?
The earthworm lobby wants to know
when last week’s rainstorm and every
grade twelve biology class will be declared
a state of emergency. Perhaps Marx’s great
insight was that a scared world is really not
different from a scared one. I take great comfort
in knowing that when I die the multinational
corporations will go on without me.

A thoroughly refreshing read. You can buy your copy online via All Lit Up , by visiting Chaudiere Books at the ottawa small press fair this Saturday, November 7th at the Jack Purcell Community Centre (upstairs), between noon and 5, or visit Chaudiere Books’ website for more information:  http://www.chaudierebooks.com/

Chaudiere Books at the ottawa small press fair; this weekend,

We will once again be participating in the semi-annual ottawa small press book fair, which will be held on Saturday, November 7, 2015 at the Jack Purcell Community Centre with all three of our new fall titles available, as well as our entire back catalogue! Might we see you?

Chaudiere Books featured at All Lit Up!

Chaudiere Books is featured in the All Lit Up series "In House," a short spotlight on some of our activities and adventures over the past few years. Thanks much!