Showing posts with label Michael e. Casteels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael e. Casteels. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part three : Jenny Wong, Michael e. Casteels + Barbara Caruso,

[see the first part of these notes here; see the second part of these notes here]

BC/ON: One of the most recent chapbook titles through Pinhole Poetry Chapbook Press is SHIFTINGS & other coordinates of disorder (2024), the chapbook debut by Jenny Wong, a poet who “resides in Canada near the Rocky Mountains.” There are some curious moments and silences across Wong’s lines—halts, and hesitations across first-person observational/meditational lyrics. “I come early / before sunscreen and sand / precipitate over miles of skin,” she writes, to open the poem “At Kitsilano Beach,” “before portable nets / catch spikes and volleys / of sunlit sound.” These poems hold such curious slownesses, and some intriguing lines amid striking images. “The lawns have begun to disintegrate / into brittle lessons about primary colors.” she writes, as part of “August Storms,” “Observe what happens to green / when there is no longer blue. Feel the prick / of parched dry yellow.” Certain of these poems could have used a bit of an edit, but I am interested to see what Wong publishes next; it does feel as though Wong is working to get at something that she hasn’t quite reached yet, but is certainly possible (and not that far off). As she writes to close the poem “Lactic Acid”:

Perhaps as we get older, our skeletons begin to show.

There is something inside me that eats away any desire for stillness. And so perhaps this is why I wander. Something in my bones.

Looking for home.

Michael e. Casteels + jwcurry, post-fair

Kingston/Cobourg ON: I’m always pleased to see a new title by Kingston writer Michael e. Casteels, and his latest is the prose collection A SUDDEN CHANGE OF SEASON (Proper Tales Press, 2024), a collection of thirteen pieces that sit in the realm of “postcard fiction.” I’ve been intrigued for some time with Casteels’ ongoing work, watching each project shift focus and framing between more narrative prose, prose poems and shorter poem-structures to collaborative and even visual works. With each new publication, I’m enjoying the fact that one doesn’t quite know what structures he might be working with until one opens to the first page. Are these short stories? Are these postcard fictions? Are these moments?

Monte and Me

My horse retrieved my moccasins from the saddle bags. I took off my boots and slung them onto the saddle horn. Then I donned the moccasins.

“What are you thinkin’?” he asked.

“Only one of us can make it. I’ll pin them down, you open that gate.”

For a moment he stood in the lemon light, inhaling deeply. Then he started down the hill, putting each foot down with equal care. Precious few moments were left.

Proper Tales Press (with Stuart Ross' works on the left + Anvil Press on the right,

Ottawa/Paris ON: A while back, Cameron Anstee produced a title by the late painter, publisher, collaborator and writer Barbara Caruso (1937-2009), her WORD HAPPENS POEM (Apt. 9 Press, 2023), a small title that opens with a “STATEMENT” by Caruso’s late husband (dated March 2018), the poet Nelson Ball (1942-2019) [see my obituary for him here]. As he wrote: “Barbara occasionally employed letter forms, numbers and sometimes words in her earliest paintings and drawings. Her paintings became exclusively non-objective around 1970, while in her drawings she continued to incorporate the forms of letters and numbers.” There is something lovely about Anstee working his sequence of archival projects, focusing his attention on the minutae of Caruso, as well as William Hawkins, whether through repeated issues, reissues or the collected poems that landed not long before Old Bill passed. There is such a delicate intelligence, out of complex, straightforward play in Caruso’s work, one that deserves a far larger attention (might a collected around pieces such as these, be worth considering?). Ball’s introduction continues, a bit further on:

Sometimes during such a period of respite she would make things, frequently working with small sizes. She was usually playful in what she produced. Word Happens Poem is an example. She made it around 1970 as a private gift to me. It was drawn with graphite pencil, employing stencils. Other examples of her “play” are the very small rubber hand-stamped presspresspress (1988-1998) booklets that she distributed selectively to friends, and a series of miniature ink drawings made in the manner of her larger non-objective drawings.

It was not Barbara’s intention to publish Word Happens Poem. She grew up in the town of Kincardine during the 1950s, a conservative era in Ontario. Even today, she may not have approved publication of several of the pieces. Nevertheless, the series is here complete.

Thursday, July 04, 2024

ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part two : Jason Heroux + Moez Surani,

[see part one of these notes here] Might we see you at the ottawa small press fair this fall? The event will be turning thirty years old, don’t you know.

Kingston ON: The latest by Kingston writer (and former Kingston Poet Laureate) Jason Heroux is the small Blizzard of None (2024), published through Michael e. Casteels’ Puddles of Sky Press. Heroux’s lyrics emerge as short, narrative sketches, short lines carved as gestures into stone. “The old broken fence,” the two-line “Damage Report” reads, “loves its brokenness.” Unlike the brevity of a poet such as the pointillist mode of, say, Ottawa poet Cameron Anstee, Heroux works a short form across these eight small poems, but one that still retains a structure of narrative, working with clear delineations of beginning, middle and end. “One definition of darkness is that it doesn’t exist / by itself as a unique physical entity but is simply / the total or near total absence of light.” the poem “Black Lamp” begins. According to the author biography at the back of this small collection, also, he has a collection of prose poems, Like a Trophy from the Sun, due out this fall with Guernica Editions, which I am very much curious about, and looking forward to.

Blizzard of None

Blizzard of none

you remind me
of something I’ve never seen.

Snowflake drifting from one
nowhere to another,
where is your home?

 

Michael e. Casteels, Puddles of Sky Press

Ottawa ON: I was fascinated by Moez Surani’s latest [see my review of his fourth full-length collection here], the chapbook The First Thousand Questions (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, 2024), a title that opens with this introductory note:

For about a year, I tracked the questions that my daughter, Zara, asked. I tried to record them exactly as she said them—with her grammar, omissions, nicknames, and diction. In the editing, I culled some of the redundant question, and I added referents or context in square brackets.

I had the idea for this work when my daughter was born, and waited as her brain, senses and identity developed. It was then that these inquiries began.

Set as an ongoing list of questions, there is something quite delightful in the narrative of these pieces, offering a trajectory of development that begins with Zara and circles out into the larger world. At the offset, Zara’s world is intimate, small (self, toys, parents) and moves with a wide-eyed and open-hearted curiosity through the simplest of inquiries that become, through the process, increasingly aware and increasingly complex. As the parent of three (and a former child as well, if you can imagine), it is very familiar to watch as Zara, through her father’s hand, works from “Mama say goodnight? // Did you play soccer ball? Did you win? // I peed in my bed and in my shirt. Why? // Where’s me? [Stuck in a sweater.] // Oh no, where’s my bath fruit?” into “Can I do it [plunge the Bodum]? // Who left it [newspaper] on the ground [driveway]? // Do you have any grapes Why [not]? // Will there be penalty shots? Where’s Jack Grealish? // How many fingers do you have? How many does Laiq have? // Are we going to Montreal next week? Gosh. I love Montreal-y.”

 

Monday, June 22, 2020

new from above/ground press: Scroggins, Casteels + Papaxanthos, Yang-Thompson + Harvey, Robinson, Mohammadi + the Black Lives Matter chapbook give-away,


Elegiac Verses
Mark Scroggins
$5

See link here for more information

ALL WE’VE LEARNED, WHICH ISN’T MUCH
Michael e. Casteels and Nicholas Papaxanthos
$5

See link here for more information

G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #11
edited by Elizabeth Robinson
with new work by Susanne Dyckman, Alice Jones, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Monica Mody, Ginny Threefoot, Jamie Townsend, Hazel White, Maw Shein Win + Kelleen Zubick
$6

See link here for more information

SkyMall
Ashley Yang-Thompson & Mikko Harvey
$5

See link here for more information

Dept. of Continuous Improvement
Ben Robinson
$5

See link here for more information

Solitude is an Acrobatic Act
Khashayar Mohammadi
$4

See link here for more information

Black Lives Matter : the above/ground press chapbook give-away
See link here for more information


keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each


To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles, or click on any of the extensive list of names on the sidebar (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

Here at above/ground press WORLD HEADQUARTERS, we are attempting to work through the backlog as safely and as carefully as possible. with forthcoming titles by Orchid Tierney, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Julia Drescher, derek beaulieu, Jérôme Melançon, ryan fitzpatrick, Dani Spinosa, Rose Maloukis, Sarah Burgoyne, Buck Downs, Paul Perry, Misha Solomon, Franco Cortese, Andrew Cantrell, Zane Koss, Dennis Cooley, Barry McKinnon + Kemeny Babineau etcetera, as well as a new Touch the Donkey in July, and new issues of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] edited by Jim Johnstone and Michael Sikkema (SEE HIS CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS HERE)!

And don't forget our summer/pandemic sale! And can you believe the press turns TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD in July?

And I am totally willing to backdate 2020 above/ground press subscriptions, if anyone is so inclined.

PLEASE BE SAFE AND HEALTHY OUT THERE!

 

Sunday, December 15, 2019

the ottawa small press book fair (part three,




Burlington/Kingston ON: Kingston writer and publisher Michael e. Casteels is becoming quite known for his work in small forms, one of the few contemporary poets I’m aware of focusing on such compactness in both text and visual works (other examples might include jwcurry, bpNichol and Gary Barwin, all of whom work or have worked with such, but not at this level of focus). Some of his text pieces were assembled to produce his first full-length collection, The Last White House at the End of the Row of White Houses (Halifax NS/Picton ON: Invisible Publishing, 2016) [see my review of such here], and I’ve been curious to see if there might be a subsequent volume focusing on more of  his visual works. For now, his latest publication is & Jetsam (Simulacrum Press, 2019), an assemblage of five visual poems described as “a loose-leaf collection of letraset concrete poems printed on 4″x5.5″ pieces of 100lb cardstock. Published in an edition of 45 numbered copies.” Casteels’ work clearly shares deep affinities with poets such as Cameron Anstee and the late Nelson Ball for their attention to the small, the densely-packed and the intricately detailed, so Casteels’ ability to shift this aesthetic towards visual work is quite fascinating. As Casteels himself writes of the work, included in the online catalogue copy:

& Jetsam is one half of a two-part visual poetry collection, with Flotsam (forthcoming from Timglaset) being the other half. Jetsam describes debris found in water deliberately thrown overboard by a crew in distress (often to lighten the load of a ship). The pieces for this collection were composed with a very limited set of Dry-Transfer sheets, which I purchased from Value Village. Presumably, they were donated by someone who was cleaning house, so in a way, the sheets themselves felt like Jetsam, floating through the thrift shop. The more I used each sheet, the fewer letters they contained, and the lighter they became. Now they are as transparent as the water on which a small vessel drifts slowly away, leaving these poems to be discovered by you.

Brooklyn NY: A slightly older title from Doublecross Press is O TOWN HEIGHTS (2012) by Chicago poet and editor Dolly Lemke, produced as a chapbook-length sequence of eleven fragments [I wrote of her briefly here, but this is the first solo publication of hers I've seen]. As the note at the back of the collection reads: “O Town Heights is an erasure/collage project. Text taken from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.” I’m amused to pick up a copy of this in Ottawa, given one of the nicknames to the city has become “O-town” (especially given the invention of the O-Train), and the effect of the poem, which gives the impression of being composed as a series of quick sketches, is intriguing. Out of three very different texts, Lemke provides a through line of home and being, of interaction and geographic foundation.

THIS IS OUR HOUSE—THIS IS OUR PILLAR

THE ONLY COTTAGE IN THE DEPOT
NATURALLY THE LIGHT IS DOWNSTAIRS

THIS IS OURS

O TOWN HEIGHTS is the first of Lemke’s chapbooks, followed by I’m so into you (plumberries press, 2013), Wyoming (dancing girl press, 2018) and DUET DUET#4 (with Kelly Lorraine Andrews; pitymilk press, 2018), and I’m intrigued enough by this that I am curious to know what some of the rest of her work looks like.

WE WROTE UP ALL THAT

WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF ME
            BUT I DON’T THINK OF YOU

FOR NOTHING





Sunday, November 24, 2019

Meet the Presses’ Indie Market (part two,


[Michael e. Casteels at the Puddles of Sky Press table, explaining]

See my first post here! And my posts writing on items from the weekend’s 25th anniversary of the ottawa small press book fair will begin soon!

Cobourg/Ottawa ON: Lately, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis has been asking chapbook publishers to challenge his work, and some have responded. Marilyn Irwin, for example, challenged him to write poems for cats [see my review of such here], and Proper Tales Press editor/publisher Stuart Ross challenged Dennis to work an erasure, which has resulted in his DIVINING: The Margaret Lawrence Poems (Proper Tales Press, 2019), a short assemblage of poems that take all their lines from the late Canadian writer Margaret Lawrence’s classic novel The Diviners (1974) [full disclosure: above/ground press has also issued Dennis a structural challenge, but I will not say what; readers will simply have to see if and when such a project is revealed]. Given Dennis has been writing and publishing pretty consistently since the late 1970s, the shift in his consideration is intriguing, and I am curious to see where his writing might evolve, beyond these bursts of formal experimentation. The eighteen poems included here are also part of a larger, full-length manuscript of pieces excised from Lawrence’s novel, and it would be curious to see the threads and strains that emerge from such an excision (I suspect part of the challenge of such a manuscript would be one of poem-order). Where else might Dennis’ experimentations lead?

No conviction

It used to take the bottle
You get the hell out of here
You gotta be kidding
It doesn’t mean much at the time
Not quite hostile, but nearly
Not writing, looking at the river
The birds liked the place
Who will tell old tales to children then
Like a snake shedding its skin every so often
No conviction in his voice

Toronto ON/UK: From American poet currently living in the United Kingdom, Alexus Erin [being interviewed over at poetry mini interviews this month], comes the chapbook Two Birds, All Moon (Gap Riot Press, 2019). The author of the chapbook St. John’s Wort (Animal Heart Press, 2019) and the forthcoming full-length collection Cartoon Logic, Cartoon Violence (Cervena Barva Press), Erin’s Two Birds, All Moon is made up of eight short, personal narratives composed as lyric monologues or even scene-studies, all of which I could imagine easily being performed from stage.

Crawling Toward Collina d’Oro

I return to a cold, full-sized bed, at the helm of the stairs –
there is grace, in a pink nightshirt
with wet hair. It is grace, smelling like gin, saying he will
miss me
when I go. I am going up the big hill. I thought I would
be carried out in valley rush light,
dead or sleeping, hissing
successive, heavy-lidded bullshit to no one at all
sermonic: my word as some unfortunate law
claiming the blackberry bramble, the African spear, the
            hospital corners, the dolls from Iran
I have been
asleep for six or seven days now
rather, very still
on the carpet, catching up.



Sunday, July 14, 2019

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part three,




Windsor/Toronto ON: I’m very taken—charmed, even—by the seventeen-poem sequence TEST CENTRE (Windsor ON: Zed Press, 2019), a chapbook by the collaborative MA│DE. As the author biography attests:

MA│DE is a collaborative gesture, a unity of two voices fused into a poetic third. It is the name given to the joint authorship of Toronto-based creators Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace, artists whose active solo practices differ quite radically from one another. MA│DE’s collaborative writing formalizes a process that began as an extended conversation between two people newly discovering one another. over a number of months, the pair messaged, texted, emailed, telephoned, conversed in person, left links on social media for the other to find, and mailed letters; their long, exploratory conversations opened up a language-space all their own.

With each poem, in the table of contents, named after a particular test—running from the Apgar Test and Bechdel Test to the Turning Test, Emergency Broadcast System and Rorschach Test—the poems in the body of the collection appear with number only, allowing for a smooth flow of sequence, even as an accumulation of self-contained pockets. As the third poem reads:

If coal is white / are some books black / words
cut with a knife / flow up a hill / as avalanches
do indeed descend mountains / and illiterate men
read romances for the Devens Literacy test

Kingston ON: Anyone paying attention to Michael e. Casteels’ Puddles of Sky Press will be well aware of his occasional illiterature, a journal of small poems. The latest issue is “eight and a half” (June 2019), edited and beautifully hand-printed (hand-stamped) by Casteels in an edition of one hundred and twenty-two copies, it includes wee poems by Kemeny Babineau, David Alexander, Cameron Anstee, Justin Patrick, Angeline Schellenberg, Conor Barnes and Charlotte Jung. His publications are very graceful, understated and carefully put together. You should be paying attention.

A narrow bridge
in the middle of the nigt
fanged (Conor Barnes)