New Broadside

A new broadside of my poem "Grendel's Mother" has been prepared by Junction Books, and it will be on sale at the Meet the Presses Indie Literary Market in Toronto on November 19th.

A new review of DON'T LET IT END LIKE THIS TELL THEM I SAID SOMETHING:

There's a new review of DON'T LET IT END LIKE THIS TELL THEM I SAID SOMETHING by Margaryta Golovchenko writing in The Coil. Here's a sample:

"The collection is divided into six sections, the title of each one just as startling as the collection title. Moving through them creates a feeling of wading through time, in and out of the present moment, until the timeframe becomes hazy. Vermeersch interchangeably explores both personal and social destruction, convincingly demonstrating how the two coexist."

You can read the rest here.

New poem: "Bad at Flowers"

Writer A. G. Pasquella has started a new literary blog called Crap Orgasm: A Journal of the Literary Arts, and I am beyond proud to have my poem "Bad at Flowers" in it. Be sure to check out Gary Barwin's story "Owls", as well.

"Al Purdy's Star Wars"

Here's a little lark that arose out of an exchange with poet Kevin Spenst a few months ago. I don't see this poem going into a book -- or anywhere else, really -- so I'd thought I'd post it here, on Canada Day, just for fun.

AL PURDY’S STAR WARS

— say the names

Tatooine and Dantooine

Alderaan and Hoth

Coruscant and Mustafar

Geonosis and Naboo

On Tattooine they were moisture farmers

            scrap dealers and smugglers

desert men with senses welded shut by the sand

wandering the dunes, Jawa and Jedi

            dewback and bantha

            living on the verge of their thirst

            beyond the Jundland Wastes

On Hoth they froze

in their bunks

            toes curled so black not even

light could escape

but with the sun they laboured

against an empire while their sweat

turned to ice and the Tauntauns and Wampas

            remembered an age of lizards

that basked long ago

in subcellular sleep

— say the names

Tatooine and Dantooine

Alderaan and Hoth

Dagobah and Mustafar

Geonosis and Jakku

not the guttural names of the Hutt in Huttese

but in the beep and chirr of droids

in the startling whine

of a mynock

in an asteroid’s heart

On Dagobah the secret was kept

the darkness in the dark place that slumbered

in the thickness of its biomass

a long forgotten conscience

that roused to the laughter in the cave

— say the names

Dantooine and Tatooine

Hoth and Alderaan

Mustafar and Coruscant

Geonosis and Naboo

            a starfighter lands by the waterfall

in a hail of blaster fire

            and champions are fed to the wilds

of ceaseless appetite

            and the spies die like spies

and a lake of magma

boils and senators

vote on their own abolition

And Kashyyyk is distant and evergreen

And Mon Cala shines

like a disc-shaped orbital sea

There are drums that sound in the forest

            a city that waits in the clouds

            forgotten worlds

            forgotten republics

            a family scattered by war

            and reunited in the stars  

And Alderaan remembered. 

THE MODERNIST CANON (or, The Sanctioned Norm)

I have a new poem called "The Modernist Canon (or, The Sanctioned Norm) on George Murray's NewPoetry.ca website. Here is a clue as to what it is about:

Read the poem here.

New poems, new Puritan

The Puritan, one of Canada's best online literary journals, has a newly designed website, and the new issue has two of my latest poems: "Immortality" and "Hit Me, Hit Me, Hit Me, Hit Me, Hit Me with Your Laser Beams."

You check it all out here.

I recommend Even This Page Is White by Vivek Shraya

I've been thinking about Vivek Shraya's new book of poetry Even This Page Is White in the context of having read Claudia Rankine's Citizen. It's an over simplification to draw broad comparisons between these books, but they share a thematic concern about race, and they do so in ways that are original, timely, and without trying to fit into a canon. If you read Rankine's book and were compelled by it, then I urge you to get a copy of Shraya's book, too. Like Rankine's, it's a book that asks us to consider ourselves and our society in vital ways, and it is worth your time.

"Grendel's Mother" -- a new poem

Last weekend my poem "Grendel's Mother" was published in the Globe and Mail. You can read it here.

The poem is partly inspired by John Gardner's novel Grendel, a longtime favourite of mine. Telling the Beowulf story from the monster's point of view allows us to question the role of the monster in a narrative. I wanted to take that constructive revisionism one-step further and contemplate the mother's point of view. In Gardner's novel, Grendel's mother is a howling, mindless beast. In my poem, she is thoughtful and concerned about the mental state of her son.

I Got to Be a Guest on the My Summer Lair Podcast

I sat down with Sammy Younan at the Girth Radio headquarters in Toronto's Pacific Junction Hotel to talk about my poetry, publishing, and art projects, including my latest book, my visual art, and my "cryptoreligion" the Holy Order of the Sasquatch.

The series is called My Summer Lair and you can listen to it here.

New titles coming from Buckrider Books this spring.

I'm looking forward to launching the new titles from my Buckrider Books imprint this spring.

Learn more about:

Death Valley by Susan Perly

A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent by Stuart Ross

Kids in Triage by Kilby Smith-McGregor

The Holy Order of the Sasquatch

As if I don't have enough on my plate -- writing a new book, editing books for Wolsak & Wynn, teaching here and there, various art and poetry projects -- I have started a new creative project: a cryptoreligion called the Holy Order of the Sasquatch.

Members of this benevolent Order are called Knights, and in accordance with our rites and traditions, they uphold the value of the human imagination in order to create a better world. Messages from the Holy Order will be released periodically in the form of Epistles, i.e. comic-strip pamphlets containing the teachings of Saint Bigfoot, our patron.

To learn more and become a Knight of the Holy Order of the Sasquatch, visit www.saintbigfoot.com.