Fifty words for Gwendolyn : a new pamphlet via The Blasted Tree

My poem "Fifty words for Gwendolyn," a wee piece recently composed for Gwendolyn Guth's birthday (part of my work-in-progress "THE BOOK OF SMALLER"), has been newly produced as a limited-run pamphlet by Kyle Flemmer's The Blasted Tree. In case you aren't up to ordering a copy (or, if you take too long and they run out), the poem is also available on their website. Yay poems!

Ongoing notes: mid-August, 2012

 

Here’s a photograph that Luminita Suse was good enough to take of Christine McNair and myself reading a month ago at The Dusty Owl Reading Series, a pic of the two of us doing the first reading of our work-in-progress collaboration, launching the little chapbook that went along with same. Some fifty days to our wedding, if you can believe it. Apparently the countdown occurs every time she logs into the wedding website.

If you’re in Montreal tonight, Christine launches her BookThug title alongside Andrew McEwan, at Argo Bookshop. I’ll be there too, but as audience only. You should totally come. And don’t forget to keep checking Halvard Johnston’s TRUCK during August, as I’m curating an entire month’s worth of poems. Who could ask for anything more?

Calgary AB: I’m noticing that a number of the items derek beaulieu has been producing recently under his NO press are looking more and more like a number of the works he made back when he was still producing housepress. Have the two presses, current and former, simply merged? Either way, I always appreciate seeing new work he’s produced, easily the best Canadian source of experimental concrete, conceptual and/or visual poetry, among other works. Sina Queyras’ “Let Your Poem Go” is a lovely single-page piece that ends “The poem / wants what it wants: / to be passed along, / memorized, spoken // by more and more / new and beautiful / tongues.” Even with two babies in tow, might we have much longer to wait for a new trade collection of poems? Other works in this NO press mailout include “Perspired by Iceland’s Sweat: A Report,” Steve Gaisson’s “Je Suis Un Véritable Artiste,” Vanessa Place’s “Like Something in the United States,” and “PANTONE 185C: A Poem from Jon Paul Fiorentino,” that begins:

There is a mostly red, cylindrical ashtray. Right there. On a picnic table. Concentrate. It is mostly empty. You will notice there is one half-smoked cigarette in it. A Viceroy. The red ashtray on the picnic table is in the park and so are you.

Does the ashtray belong to someone? No. It did but it doesn’t. What kind of red is it? You don’t know the name for it yet. It’s similar to what’s left of the red on your nails. You tell yourself Pantone 185C. It is Pantone 185C.

The package also includes the expansive Helvetica Neue by Emma King, a beautifully produced book composed as “a series of visual compositions created using individual letters of the alphabet. Each composition is made from a single uppercase letter taken from the sans serif typeface Helvetica Neue. This book is a collection of typographic experiments that celebrate both the form of the letter itself and the character of that typeface.” Still, the real highlight of the whole envelope has to be The Lungs: A Draft by bpNichol, for the new information presented in the colophon; a piece “Excerpted from bpNichol’s Selected Organs: Parts of anAutobiography (Black Moss Press, 1988) which is slated for a new edition shortly […].” Really? From whom is this new edition coming, and when?

Ottawa ON: At this past edition of the ottawa small press book fair (check over the next month for dates and details on the fall 2012 edition), I picked up a small mound of tiny chapbooks produced by Pearl Pirie’s phafours, including Gwendolyn Guth’s Late Plate (2012), Pearl Pirie’s Sprockets Away (2012), Luminita Suse’s Avid Walls (2012), Gary Stark’s Self-Portrait (2012) and Louisa Howerow’s Voices, Choices (2012).

cloudmind

dream

drear:

clean

clear

dear

 leer

 bar.

 ban

 barn

 harm

 ham:

 bam

 born:

 loom

 loam

  dam

  clam

  cairn

   earn

    ear:

    eat

    cat

    oat

    oaf

     of

The works here are varied, producing small works you could fit in the palm of one hand, and Pirie’s own even introduces some of her visual/concrete works, which have the same playful flavour of her other works, expanding her ouvre into a variety of forms as she explores just where her writing might end up next.

for R.W.E

and as you say—

it takes so little

and then we live for a time

on boiled grass and the broth of shoes

corruptible dull grub

mincing and diluted

as the speech of bygone women

disenfranchised by time

**

another me

lies wide around, with wings

transparent eyeball

the wind whistles through

for courage (Gwendolyn Guth)

For some time, there are a number of people waiting on a first poetry collection by Ottawa poet Gwendolyn Guth, and her chapbooks over the years have been few and far between, including The Flash of Longing (Friday Circle, 2001) and Good People (above/ground press, 2010), so any poems by her are a good thing. This small chapbook exists nearly as a teaser to further work, and even reclaims a poem from that older chapbook. We can only hope for something further, longer, soon.

Beijing/Detroit MI: From the desk of derek beaulieu, came Saginaw no. 3, a journal featuring the work of Stephen Ratcliffe, Ariel Goldberg, J.D. Michell-Lumsden and Derek Beaulieu. Apart from beaulieu’s own visuals, some of which also appeared in ECONOMIES OF SCALE: rob mclennan interviews derek beaulieu on NO PRESS / derek beaulieu interviews rob mclennanon above/ground press. (above/ground press, 2012), some of the works that struck were Stephen Ratcliffe’s poems, “from Continuum,” that includes:

2.6

pink cloud in pale blue sky above plane

of ridge, jet passing above pine branch

in foreground, wave sounding in channel

            objects lined up on picture

            plane, a wooden table

            which goes by a single name,

            once asked, “can one”

silver of low sun reflected in channel,

circular green pine on tip of sandpit

There is obviously a larger structure here, intrigued to see how far it goes, and how large. Just how vast might a Continuum be?

The reading I did at 17 Poets, New Orleans LA now posted on-line,

On Thursday, May 10, 2012, Stephen Brockwell and I read as part of 17 Poets, a reading series the husband and wife team of Megan Burns and Dave Brinks run in New Orleans at the Gold Mine Saloon. Who wouldn’t want to read at a saloon in the middle of the French Quarter? This was actually the second trip Brockwell and I had made to New Orleans, after a reading we did in February in Lafayette, and we’ve been scheming to get down there even further, with this trip including our partners, Christine McNair and Gwendolyn Guth. Might we be able to get readings for them at some point, also?

A magnificent event, we were joined by a local, the poet Laura Mattingly, launching a new book at the event, her The Book of Incorporation (New Orleans LA: Language Foundry, 2012). The book was produced in an edition of fifty, with letterpress covers by J.S. Makkos. Her reading, the first of our three, is posted here.

Her long sequence of poems, she writes, “were inspired by a close reading of the 1960 Oxford University Press edition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead or The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Rendering compiled and edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz.”

XIV. A MOTHER IS APPROACHED BY A SEER AT HER PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT

MY GAZE RESTS in her oddly shaped breast bone, as if her heart were a bowl to fill

I like your green dress

Thank you—I found it in a trash can

She places one skull bead and a carved teak wood pipe onto the counter to buy

Are you accustomed to people telling you strange things?

Yes, of course

The air, just becoming summer, clings to us like change, like a lover possessed

There is a dead man following you and he is very eager for your baby to be born

He is a young man, which is unique. Maybe early thirties. Most of the people who talk to me are very old. But this man is young. He is happy for you. He thinks the baby will be a girl.

She asks whether or not we sell small dark feathers individually—the type that dangle from our magenta leather dream catchers made in China

No, but occasionally they carry whole peacock feathers next door

That’s not the variety of feather I’m looking for, but thank you

Stephen Brockwell read from his ongoing “Excerpts from Impossible Books” work-in-progress, sections of which have appeared as the above/ground press chapbooks Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment) (2010) and Excerpts from Impossible Books, The Crawdad Cantos (2012). His reading, to end our three-set feature, is posted here on YouTube.

from Cantos of the 1%

Hemmingway’s Bistro, Oak Park, Illinois

Maples in Oak Park Illinois: their keys spin

like the finger of a girl obsessively twirling a strand

of brown hair while reading a hardbound book

or watching cartoons on the tube.

Wisconsin venison tastes as good as it sounds:

fattened with grain, it lacks that gamey tang

but butters the teeth with blood, pepper and marsala wine.

If this country stopped coddling its youth like meat

how happy the world would be: the lovely

babies laughing in Kirkuk, the Roma

dancing in Prague, the Innu throat-singing

in Madison, the Sunni spinning in Trieste.

Garcon, Peter, you fled Krakov for Chicago.

What broken man or woman did you abandon via Paris

for this nation of occasional courtesy, fine wines,

V8 boneyards and ambitious health insurance saleswomen?

I read a lengthy prose-poem work, titled “Texture: Louisiana,” the result of an American trip with Stephen Brockwell, February 22-25, 2012. During that time, we were in and around New Orleans and Lafayette, Louisiana, in part for a reading we did together at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette on February 24, 2012, organized and hosted by poet Marthe Reed. This piece is dedicated to both Brockwell and Reed, with many thanks, and gratitude to Camille Martin and Megan Burns for generous feedback. The poem is part of a larger manuscript-in-progress, titled “How the alphabet was made,” a work constructed out of a small selection of sections, each working different aspects of the prose and lyric sentence.

I’ve been interested more over the past couple of years in the prose poem, finally setting some attention aside about eighteen months ago to begin a proper exploration of the form, as author, reader and researcher. The American prose poem has some interesting directions, many of which I don’t see in the Canadian form, which appears to have an entirely different history, one I am slowly attempting to map out. I suspect much of the Canadian form comes more from French sources, both European and Canadian, than the American, thusly accounting for the increased lyric abstract quality our versions have, as opposed to the Russell Edson short story-esqe narratives of the American. But who can say? I am still working the archaeology of the Canadian form.

My reading exists entirely on YouTube now, thanks to Megan Burns. My poem “Texture: Louisiana” (unpublished, as of yet) begins:

Confess our sins. We strive, to ash.

Arrive in New Orleans. They hose down streets and other surfaces, the clear. The following morning, everyone repaints. The hotel lobby, bars along Bourbon Street.

The grease from poles, to keep the crowds from climbing. Straddled, this long-distance horse.

In a second hand bookstore, a poetry collection by Norma Cole, inscribed to Andrei Codrescu. Apparently he had too many books.

Confess our sins. The riverboat wash.

~

In 1821, Jean Mouton bestowed Vermilionville. A designate, along Vermilion River. Renamed for war hero General Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette. A Frenchman, aiding the American Army during the American Revolution.

A bastion of French, both language, culture. Cajon, Creole, Acadian.

I am translucent skin.

The Battle of Vermilion Bayou, April 17, 1863. Third in a series running between Union Major General Nathaniel Prentice Banks and Confederate Major General Richard Taylor. What had we to say.

Am a tourist through these pages. I have no right.

Birds could never fly this high. Capital to capital.

Drop down in New Orleans. We flood, we persevere. We drown.

Already scattered notes have formed for an accidental follow-up piece, “The Fall of New Orleans,” subtitled “[some field notes],” extending the “How the alphabet was made,” manuscript.

One part of the evening that was entirely cool was the fact that Christine McNair and new New Orleans resident Lisa Pasold both participated in the open set, and both with new books. Pasold read from her third poetry collection, Any Bright Horse (Frontenac House, 2012), which she will be touring later this fall across Canada, and Christine did the first reading from her first trade poetry collection, Conflict (BookThug, 2012), which officially launches for the first time at the big BookThug event in Toronto on May 22, 2012.

Now the only question is, how do we all get back down there?

Stephen and Gwendolyn playset;

This is the Stephen and Gwendolyn Playset diorama I made for Gwendolyn Guth’s birthday back in February, sitting here in Stephen Brockwell’s dining room. I made it with the idea that whenever he was away on one of his business trips, she could use to miss him less; do you think it’s working? It even comes with a rob and Christine in the background (notice, though, mine is the only character holding a glass of wine; and can you see the dog peeking out from the kitchen?).

Stephen became convinced (especially after discovering I designed and did all of this in front of the television one evening, capturing the interior of his house from memory) that I should do such for money; do you think such is a possibility? Seems somehow unlikely. Although I did have an awful lot of fun designing the instructions (below). I made a point of including them in multiple languages in 8-point font (this all fits on one sheet of 8 ½ x 11 paper, of course), with English instructions included last. How could one expect anything else?

It makes me wonder: what should I be making next...?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stephen y Gwendolyn Playset™

El Wile lejos las horas con Gwendolyn Guth™ y Stephen Brockwell™ en su muy posee Stephen y Gwendolyn Playset™, y celebra el cumpleaños de Gwendolyn Guth's™, o cualquier día, en estilo lujoso.

Cómo jugar con su Stephen y Gwendolyn Playset™

Fije en el área principal de la casa de Stephen Brockwell's™ en la vecindad de Lindenlea de Ottawa, usted puede mirar como Gwendolyn Guth™ marca los papeles, los cocineros de Stephen Brockwell™, la parte dos una cena iluminada por velas romántica y botella apropiada de vino (por supuesto) o se prepara por vacaciones raras al ™ de Cayman Islands (Stephen y Gwendolyn Cayman Islands Playset™ vendido por separado). ¿Nico el dog™ golpeará sobre cena con todo otra vez? ¿Cualquiera de ellos parará el trabajar y conseguirá nunca abajo al negocio de la vida? ¿Usted podrá caminar Stephen Brockwell™ o Gwendolyn Guth™ a través de una sola puerta sin Nico el dog™ inmediatamente en sus talones, amenazando a su equilibrio e incluso a su cordura? ¡Oh no, Nico!

Стефан и Gwendolyn Playset™

Wile прочь часы с Gwendolyn Guth™ и Стефан Brockwell™ в их очень имеет Стефан и Gwendolyn Playset™, и празднует день рождения Gwendolyn Guth's™, или любой день, в роскошном типе.

¡Recoja a sus muchos amigos!

También disponible para su Stephen y Gwendolyn Playset™ incluya: robe mclennan y Christine McNair™ (guitarra incluyendo y autoharp), Rolando Prevost y Janice Tokar™ (guitarra incluyendo), Steve Zytveld y Cathy McDonald-Zytveld™ (goggles™ incluyendo de la poesía y tres botellas del cuarto de galón de cerveza), Juan Lavery™ (guitarra incluyendo y gavilla de papel), Marilyn Irwin™ (guitarra incluyendo) y Monty Reid, Sarah y Frances™ (guitarra incluyendo, violín y cochecito de bebé).

Cómo mantener su Stephen y Gwendolyn Playset™

Subsistencia fuera del alcance de animales. Subsistencia lejos del fuego o del agua. Subsistencia lejos del viento, del hielo y de la nieve. No caliente sobre 40º cent3igrado o debajo de 0º. Contiene pequeñas piezas. Subsistencia fuera del alcance de niños. No para los niños bajo edad de 20. No toque su Stephen y Gwendolyn Playset™. Mantenga fuera del alcance de cada uno.

Si cualquier parte de sus roturas de Stephen y de Gwendolyn Playset™, piezas es disponible pero extremadamente costosa. ¡Goce de su Stephen y Gwendolyn Playset™! ¡Guarde el jugar de la caja fuerte! Coma las manzanas.

Как сыграть с вашими Стефан и Gwendolyn Playset™

Установите в главную район дома Стефан Brockwell's™ в районе Lindenlea Оттава, вы можете наблюдать по мере того как Gwendolyn Guth™ маркирует бумаги, кашевар Стефан Brockwell™, дол 2 романтичный candlelit обедающий и соотвествующи бутылк вина (конечно) или подготовляете на редкая каникула к ™ Cayman Islands (Стефан и Gwendolyn Cayman Islands Playset™ проданное отдельно). Nico dog™ будет стучать над обедающим но снова? То из их всегда будет останавливать работать и будет получать вниз к делу жить? Вы будете погулять или Стефан Brockwell™ или Gwendolyn Guth™ через одиночную дверь без Nico dog™ немедленно на их пятках, угрожающ их баланса и даже их психического здоровья? Oh нет, Nico!

Соберите их много друзей!

Также имеющеся для ваших Стефан и Gwendolyn Playset™ включите: разбойничайте mclennan и Кристина McNair™ (включая гитара и autoharp), Рональд Prevost и Дженис Tokar™ (включая гитара), Стив Zytveld и Cathy mcDonald-Zytveld™ (включая goggles™ поэзии и 3 бутылки кварты пива), Джон Lavery™ (включая гитара и сноп бумаги), Мэрилин Irwin™ (включая гитара) и Monty Reid, Сара и Frances™ (включая гитара, скрипка и прогулочная коляска младенца).

Как поддерживать ваши Стефан и Gwendolyn Playset™

Содержание из достигаемости животных. Содержание далеко от пожара или воды. Содержание далеко от ветра, льда и снежка. Не нагрейте над 40º Celsius или под 0º. Содержит малые части. Содержание из достигаемости детей. Не для детей под временем 20. Не коснитесь вашим Стефан и Gwendolyn Playset™. Держите из достигаемости каждого.

Если любая часть ваших проломов Стефан и Gwendolyn Playset™, частей имеющаяся но весьма дорогая. Насладитесь вашими Стефан и Gwendolyn Playset™! Держите сыграть сейф! Съешьте яблока.

Stephen and Gwendolyn Playset™

Wile away the hours with Gwendolyn Guth™ and Stephen Brockwell™ in their very own Stephen and Gwendolyn Playset™, and celebrate Gwendolyn Guth’s™ birthday, or any day, in luxurious style.

How to Play with your Stephen and Gwendolyn Playset™

Set in the main area of Stephen Brockwell’s™ house in Ottawa’s Lindenlea neighbourhood, you can watch as Gwendolyn Guth™ marks papers, Stephen Brockwell™ cooks, the two share a romantic candlelit dinner and appropriate bottle of wine (of course) or prepare for a rare vacation to the Cayman Islands™ (Stephen and Gwendolyn Cayman Islands Playset™ sold separately). Will Nico the dog™ knock over dinner yet again? Will either of them ever stop working and get down to the business of living? Will you be able to walk either Stephen Brockwell™ or Gwendolyn Guth™ through a single door without Nico the dog™ immediately at their heels, threatening their balance and even their sanity? Oh no, Nico!

Collect their Many Friends!

Also available for your Stephen and Gwendolyn Playset™ include: rob mclennan and Christine McNair™ (including guitar and autoharp), Roland Prevost and Janice Tokar™ (including guitar), Steve Zytveld and Cathy McDonald-Zytveld™ (including poetry goggles™ and three quart bottles of beer), John Lavery™ (including guitar and sheaf of paper), Marilyn Irwin™ (including guitar) and Monty Reid, Sarah and Frances™ (including guitar, fiddle and baby stroller).

How to Maintain your Stephen and Gwendolyn Playset™

Keep out of reach of animals. Keep away from fire or water. Keep away from wind, ice and snow. Do not heat over 40º Celsius or below 0º. Contains small parts. Keep out of reach of children. Not for children under the age of 20. Do not touch your Stephen and Gwendolyn Playset™. Keep out of reach of everyone.

If any part of your Stephen and Gwendolyn Playset™ breaks, parts are available but extremely expensive. Enjoy your Stephen and Gwendolyn Playset™! Keep playing safe! Eat apples.

Copyright © 2011, rob mclennan industries, Canada (a division of rob mclennan worldwide)

2 new above/ground press chapbooks: Stephen Brockwell + Gwendolyn Guth

Good People,
poems by Gwendolyn Guth
$4

Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment)
Stephen Brockwell
$4

with 2011 subscriptions available;

above/ground press 17th anniversary reading/launch/gala!

lovingly hosted by American poet Lea Graham
above/ground press seventeenth anniverary gala!
with readings & new chapbooks by:

Stephen Brockwell
Gwendolyn Guth
& rob mclennan

Friday, September 3, 2010;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern, 223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

Stephen Brockwell most recent book is The Real Made Up (Toronto: ECW Press, 2007). The first installment of his Impossible Books project was delivered at the Olive Reading Series in December 2007. Brockwell is trying to find a way to run a small IT company and write poems without going completely mad. Stephen recently moved to the charming Ottawa neighbourhood of Lindenlea just north of Beechwood Avenue. He will be launching Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment).

Gwendolyn Guth, mother of three active boys, notes that super mom and super model have far less in common than their assonance would suggest.  She has the enviable privilege of talking about literature for a living, at Heritage College in Gatineau.  She is a long-time supporter of and participant in Ottawa literary ventures, including Bywords, above/ground, Ottawater, yawp, Friday Circle, Rideau Review, etc.  Her chapbook, Good People, anticipates her first trade book, due any year now and fiercely successful in her dreams.  She craves inner peace but settles for outer calm.

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 Glengarry (Talonbooks), 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 (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (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 robmclennan.blogspot.com. He will be spending much of the next year in Toronto. He will be launching the chapbook 16 Yonge.

abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

Lea Graham is the author of the chapbook, Calendar Girls (above/ground press). Her poems, translations, collaborations, reviews and articles have been published in or are forthcoming in journals such as Notre Dame Review, American Poetry Journal, American Letters & Commentary, The Capilano Review, and Shadow Train. Her work was included in two recent anthologies, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry in the 21st Century and The Bedside Guide to the No Tell Motel - 2nd Floor. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her first trade collection, Crushes, will be published in spring 2011 with No Tell Books. Lea Graham reads in Ottawa with Monty Reid on September 5, 2010 at the Dusty Owl Reading Series.
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