Showing posts with label jwcurry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jwcurry. Show all posts

Friday, November 22, 2024

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part one: Rose Maloukis, Ksenija Spasić + Kristjana Gunnars,

By now you know we’ve come and gone through the 30th anniversary edition of the ottawa small press book fair [see my notes from the spring 2024 fair here and here, by the way], which was the largest (by a third or so) to date of our semi-annual event, which is quite remarkable. And all the vendors I heard from said it was the best in sales they’d ever had! So that is deeply exciting. And did you see this report Amanda Earl made after the event?

Be aware that our next two dates are already booked and confirmed! Saturday June 21, 2025 and Saturday November 22, 2025, again at Tom Brown Arena, just west of Ottawa’s downtown core. If you lose track of those dates, you can always check here, of course. And make sure to keep track of theoccasional posts at the (ottawa) small press almanac, our small collective of Ottawa-based small publishers, yes?

myself, Stuart Ross (Proper Tales Press) + Cameron Anstee (Apt. 9 Press)

Montreal QC: I’m a bit behind, clearly, in my reading of Montreal poet and visual artist Rose Maloukis’ work, only now catching her chapbook Offcuts (Montreal QC: Turret House Press, 2023), a follow-up to, among other titles, Cloud Game with Plums (above/ground press, 2020). Her chapbook-length sequence “Offcuts” suggests an element of collage, of stitching lines and sentences together, each page a self-contained burst of phrases held together with precise intent. “one / thousand / would that be / enough to send / into the world / to say,” she writes, early on in the sequence, “here / look at these / and just for / a moment / yield [.]” There is a curious way that Maloukis works her own ekphrasis, engaging through text her own ongoing visual practice, allowing the one side of her creative work to reveal itself through another form, akin to a kind of commentary or poetics of her visual art.

to save my life for eleven days
I made drawings
                            my body
                            smoked
the novelty

lay on the floor
under a table

burnt ultra-thin candles
not to flame the paper
                            only to mark
                            with soot

this dirty foul smoke
and dangerous wax
                            affirms

all the charred days
bring back
                            my thirst

Ottawa ON: I was intrigued to see that Jeff Blackman’s Horsebroke Press has expanded to include single-author chapbooks, with the new title, the beautiful the bearable by poet Ksenija Spasić (November 2024) appearing, according to the colophon, as “These Days #29.” There isn’t an author biography included for Spasić, although a quick online search reveals the Moscow-born author currently lives in Montreal, after studying at both the University of Toronto and Concordia University. Has she published anywhere else? Either way, the beautiful the bearable is a chapbook about family and war, offering ten first-person poems documenting response, aftermath and how one can never fully escape. Referencing The Complete Works of Primo Levi (2015) by the Jewish-Italian chemist, writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi (1919-1987), Spasić offers: “Levi writes madness, / but describes method / orderliness, the gears that make it go. / Like transposing the patterns of life/ to give intelligible form / to death.”

There are small gems within these poems, some of which really strike, and make me curious about what else she might be writing or working on. “Into these words,” she writes, to close the poem “Ritual,” “I take a part to flee the whole, / perform the ritual / that shrinks a shoreline or a man / into the beautiful, / the bearable.”

jwcurry, Room 3O2 Books

Toronto ON/Vancouver BC:
I’m frustrated to only now discover (via our small press fair “free stuff” table) Canadian poet and artist Kristjana Gunnars’ chapbook sequence At Home in the Mountains: A Report on Knowledge in Twenty Parts (Toronto ON: Junction Books, 2019) [catch the essay I did on her fiction a while back here]. As she writes at the offset: “I want to acknowledge the University of Alberta Department of English and Film Studies for hosting the writer-in-residence anniversary event in 2016, which became a precursor to these poems.” This is wonderful to hear, but frustrating, as I had also been part of that event, and had even produced a new chapbook of poems by Gunnars as part of it (and a further one since). I had no idea this existed! As Gunnars writes as part of her “PRELUDE AND INTRODUCTION” to the collection:

            Because I have fused the traditional poetry manuscript with the more academic or literary essay, with the attendant paraphernalia, I am thinking of this work as “essay-poetry.” Mixing genres can be illustrative of a way of thinking that is not strictly “according to rule” and doing so often opens up avenues otherwise left untouched. We are not living in the age of Rumi, or in the age of the chanting of lyrics, unless they come to us as musical presentations. We live in a textual age, brought on by the uses of the computer with all its tentacles. We are now used to seeing “hypertexts” and feeling comfortable with many layers of text and information coming to us at once. I have simply followed an inclination brought on by contemporary technology in creating the present manuscript, and I feel I am able to imply a great deal more this way, and allow some of the voices I have left out of the poems to enter the field.

A sequence of twenty poems, Gunnars moves through and across prose poems to the more traditional lyric mode, offering a sequence of meditations on writing, thinking, living and solitude. “and yet the life of everyday is nice; food and drink,” she writes, to open the poem “LOVE’S INEBRIATION,” “walking, sleeping, talking, regular life, as we know it; / how nice also for Milarepa when he returned home from the mystical heights / and the villagers spread for him a feast of food and happiness— [.]” I complain of a lack, and yet, if I could figure out where I put my copy of her more recent collection, Ruins of the Heart: Six Longpoems (Brooklyn NY: Angelico Press, 2022) [see my review of such here], this particular poem-sequence is most likely and completely included in there as well. Is my attention really that fractured?

without a word, without even a thought. I am trying to decipher
the botanical prints leaning against the wall, the faded cardboard
and singed edges of our hearts—the ones we have tried to read
like maps or graphs or mathematical formulas, our long-lost

perspective that hangs by a thread, and how we cannot say
the words. how speechless we are, how mute, how afraid we seem
of the possibility it will all be destroyed again: as it will, as it will


Sunday, December 08, 2019

the ottawa small press book fair (part two,


[jwcurry's Room 302 Books table]


Ottawa ON: I’m charmed by the array of small mini-chapbooks that Dessa Bayrock produces through her post ghost press, with some of her most recent offerings including the wishing well: a suite of found poems (2019) by Rose Hunter, brilliant blooming voices (2019) by mj santiago, Monster (Girl) Theory (2019) by Kanika Lawton, and Blessing (2019) by Victoria Nugent (and did you see they now also have poetry socks?). Producing more chapbooks over the course of a year than most, post ghost press focuses, it would seem, pretty heavily (but not exclusively) upon emerging authors (which is often the case with such enterprises; working to support and produce writing and writers not necessarily being supported otherwise). There is an energy to these small publications that is quite charming, from the DIY cut-up design to the confidence that only comes through from emerging authors. As Kanika Lawton writes in her small chapbook/sequence:

I am good enough to bring to your mother’s house.
I will eat from her china plates and wipe off the crumbs.
I will be the perfect false-daughter.

I am bad enough to show to your friends.
Don’t act so shocked. You know I only look innocent.
I promise I’ll only break your neck with my teeth.

Some of the strongest poems of this assemblage comes from mj santiago; for example, “Anything that emerges from my body / becomes my responsibility / the moment it is visible,” is just stellar. One can see the emergence of something working its way up to some very fine sharpness:

my mom says, this is how we die

For the fourth night in a row
I vomit overcooked meat onto the floor.
It does not slip out easily while I sleep
but is hacked out onto the tile
surrounded by my history made tangible
Through the lining of my esophagus.
Anything that emerges from my body
becomes my responsibility
the moment it is visible.
I dream all of the ways
I will clean up after fate.

Ottawa ON: I’ve been very impressed with the quality and attention of the literary and community work that Canthius journal has been doing over the past few years, whether in print, online (such as Manahil Bandukwala’s recent interview with Baseline Press editor/publisher Karen Schindler) or as part of one of their expansive multi-city launch parties. Managing editor/founder Claire Farley, with a recently-shifted assemblage of writers and editors in the editorial collective, have been working on their semi-annual “feminism and literary arts” journal long enough, now, to have released their seventh issue, featuring the work of Pearl Pirie, Sanna Wani, Jade Wallace, Terese Pierre, Kirby, M. Brett Gaffney, Annick MacAskill, Melanie Power, Kari Teicher, Sanchari Sur, Margaret Christakos, Émilie Kneifel, Karen Schindler, Jane Shi, Barâa Arar, Allie Duff, Natalia Orasani and Jesse Holth, as well as artwork by (and accompanying interview with) Rowan Red Sky. While I am familiar with more than half the names here, I am intrigued to be introduced to the luscious and powerful prose of Émilie Kneifel, such as the second half of the poem “Sharing Again,” that reads:

hanging silence, not even bye. you sit on his bed which holds in a breath. it collapses toward you; it tumbles him down. he of the drowsy hands, dulled-out reaching, pulls you to the peak of him. he clasps your head with the whole of his hand, your hair his veil, rumbling like a rock bed because you unleashed your old braids. he says i’m sorry like he always does like he always sleeps closest to the ground. which is its own kind of pattern. you nod, nod, nod. the dog tucks into the statue that still isn’t yours and you saddle your hand on him because he is just good. pungent as colour. your dad thumbs your steep face. arcs the crag of your nose. like a worry stone. says. “my pounpoun” (your oldest nickname. butchered french) “always so joyful on the outside, always so— thoughtful. on the inside.” he rustles your hair as your head accrues all the room’s static. “so many thoughts.” so he can see the roiling. “i wish i knew what they were” is what he mouths as you think it.

Part of the appeal of Canthius, apart from simply being a journal of some strong writing, is akin to what I mentioned in my notes on post ghost press: their continuing engagement with the work of emerging writers, and there are an enormous amount of writers from across Canada (and, occasionally, beyond) coming up that Canthius has been publishing and championing. The strength of Canthius comes from their ability to provide space for an array of literary voices, moving from the performance lyric to short bursts of prose to the boundaries of language poetry, holding their interest across a range of narratives and narrative lines, as Kari Teicher writes to open her poem “i told raw. –”:

he asks me for a story.

I can tell him anything, new or old
with Easter candy, we lie naked
feet-up, feet-down
and I tell him about the first grade

when Miss Moss sent me
to the principal,
made me show how I twisted
my shirt around, made my
tank top
into a
bra.
how to explain

Shania Twain is your idol.

Keep in mind, also, that this is one of the journals affected by Doug Ford’s government deciding to cut a section of funding to the Ontario Arts Council, which left Canthius without necessary funds to continue publishing, so I will suggest that, yes, you should totally subscribe.


Saturday, November 16, 2019

Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Small Press Market (part four,


[Gap Riot Press (my table faced the back of theirs)] 

See my first post on what I collected at the fair, here; and my second post here; and my third post here. Just how much did I even collect at this fair that you missed out on? There were so many things! And I am totally going to keep pushing these two other fairs: TODAY’S MEET THE PRESSES IN TORONTO and the 25th anniversary event for our own ottawa small press book fair nextweekend, on November 23rd (and pre-fair reading the night prior). I will see you at one of these events, at least, right? I mean: how can you resist such small press marvelousness?

Ottawa/Burlington ON: Part of what I’ve found intriguing about Ottawa poet nina jane drystek’s work over the past couple of years has been realizing the wide range of experimentation and formal/stylistic shifts she’s been exploring. I think it was Chris Johnson who had pointed it out to me, how one can’t necessarily get a handle on drystek’s ongoing work due to the wild, experimental shifts from prose to lyric to visual to sound: she refuses, it would appear, to hold to the same structures for too long, more interested in exploration than positioning. One of her latest publications is knewro suite (Simulacrum Press, 2019), a triptych of works for multiple voices: “wokern 3vs, kewro suite part one [ three voices ],” “krownervs, knewro suite part two [ two voices ]” and “3 noks werv, knewro suite part three [ three voices ].” From the first to the third piece, the three threads exist separately but concurrently, weave into each other, and then exist, again, side by side but with short breaks of breath and space.

drystek has been working with Ottawa poet jwcurry for a while now through the most recent incarnation of his ongoing Messagio Galore sound poetry ensemble [see my report on an earlier incarnation of such here], and curry is great for bringing people out of themselves, as well as encouraging participants to bring new, original works to the group for potential inclusion. One thing I know, also, is how curry has discussed the difficulty, as well as the openness, of attempting notation for sound works, given the lack (perhaps deliberately so, in some cases) of any kind of standardization in sound poetry notational symbols (I suspect even to attempt such a structure might be near-impossible, although not completely impossible). The lack of such a standardization means that different performers might perform even a singular piece entirely differently. I would be interested in hearing this work performed, not only once, but multiple times, and listening to hear both the differences, and the potential repetitions between performances.

Vancouver BC/Toronto ON: Vancouver writer, artist and editor (including for The Capilano Review) Matea Kulić’s second chapbook, following Frau. L (Perro Verlag Books by Artists, 2016), is PAPER WORK (Anstruther Press, 2019). PAPER WORK is an assemblage of short clever pieces that play with formality, paperwork and perspective, turning the daily grind of office labour into something that concurrently twists into the directly surreal and absurd, even if just by speaking plainly of what has long been taken for granted.

Weather [Drafts]

By the time you arrive back at the office your feet are soaked.
The sky—verging
opened up on top of you.
At your desk, the big left toe peeled off the right sock, the big right toe peeled off the left.
A man was washing himself in the window of a rundown shop—you recall now—
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes as you passed by & continued
            on the way
to your livelihood.

Kulić’s poems include a form letter for acknowledging, rejecting or accepting cultural works for production, responding to generic emails, an attempt to change marital status for GST payments, lunch breaks, forms, forms and more forms. These poems are absolutely delightful, and I want to see more of them.


Saturday, May 12, 2018

Kanada Koncrete: Material Poetries in the Digital Age


Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend much of Kanada Koncrete: Material Poetries in the Digital Age, the Canadian Literature Symposium at the University of Ottawa for 2018, organized by Robert Stacey and Claire Farley. I’ve been to a number of the annual conferences at the University of Ottawa over the years, from the Long Poem Symposium back in 1996, to conferences on Modernism, Al Purdy, Postmodernism and Robert Kroetsch, but this was far and away the most vibrant and exciting conference I’ve attended (and I was able, in case you hadn’t seen, to produce some chapbooks specifically for the conference – Derek Beaulieu, Amanda Earl, Arnold McBay + Gregory Betts and Tim Atkins – as well as some very recent titles by other participants (who hadn’t actually mentioned “I’ll be in your city two weeks after you produce that”) – Dani Spinosa, Kate Siklosi and Sean Braune – so the whole conference, between them and a variety of others, felt awash with above/ground press authors (Porco! Barwin! Baker! Anstee! Schmaltz! Davey!).

There were some remarkable papers presented, from Tim Atkins’ paper exploring some of bill bissett’s early, pre-Vancouver influences, Cameron Anstee’s paper exploring some of his ongoing work on the late artist Barbara Caruso (specifically her presspresspress), Zane Koss on the poetry networks of Louis Dudek and Marshall McLuhan in the 1950s, Natalie Leduc’s paper on Rupi Kaur as poetry activist (she presented a great argument for such), Paul Barrett on Sandra Djwa’s digital work from 1970, and Michael Nardone exploring the differences and constructs of digital archives vs. repositories, specifically UBU Web, PennSound and the Electronic Poetry Center.

What was impressive, as well, was the fact that there were so many performances, all of which (unfortunately) I managed to miss, due to overload (and the requirements of children), including an evening of some twenty-one poets performing (all of whom were also presenting papers at the conference), and sound poetry by Gary Barwin and Stuart Ross, and jwcurry’s sound poetry ensemble Quatuor Gualuor. It would be difficult to highlight every paper that struck me, as that really would be the bulk of what I saw, but some of what I did find quite amazing included: Jessica Bebenek’s work translating T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” into a knitting pattern, exploring the canon of the male genius through textiles; Amanda Earl and Eric Schmaltz’s artists talks, both of which focused on their own works, from Earl’s work-in-progress “The Vizpo Bible” to Schmaltz’s debut poetry collection, Depths of Surfaces (Invisible); and David Jhave Johnson’s “Aesthetic Animism: A Synthesis,” which moved at such a rate and depth of knowledge and information that it left all in the room reeling. While I did miss a handful of papers, including Johanna Drucker’s talk on Saturday afternoon, the Closing Plenaries on Sunday by Gregory Betts and Derek Beaulieu were spectacular, with Betts exploring the origins of Canadian concrete and visual poetry emerging almost entirely and organically from visual art and an interest in the multi-discipinary (and almost completely unaware of international movements concurrently happening worldwide), while Beaulieu went through a series of contemporary female practisioners currently exploring new realms of concrete and visual works, including Helen Hajnoczky and Erica Baum.

And of course, jwcurry brought some prints of concrete/visual poems to display around the space, including works by P. Cob, Daniel f. Bradley, Judith Copithorne and Michael e. Casteels, such as a piece printed directly onto a cinder block.

All in all, stellar. I’m just disappointed that they couldn’t get funding for this conference. How the hell does such a conference not get funding? A book needs to happen from this conference. There was too much going on that requires recording, reading and further discussion.

I’m abuzz after so much activity, myself.