Ryan Pratt's Recent Reads: Ottawa's Poets & Presses

Ottawa writer and blogger Ryan Pratt posted a nice note on his blog yesterday, in response to a package of chapbooks I handed him at a recent talk Pearl Pirie and I did for the OIW. Thanks, Ryan! He's also recently become one of the (ir)regular contributors to the ongoing ottawa poetry newsletter blog, so hopefully we might see a bunch more write-ups by him in the future. See the original post here.

Any writer who has spent time in Ottawa can attest to its reputation for literary excellence. For my part, shopping at the biannual Small Press Book Fair and attending readings around town have resulted in the cozy “local section” of my home library. Among the manifold stapled spines that jut out in all colours and sizes, I’ve collected publications from Bywords (their Quarterly Journals plus two chapbooks from John Newlove Poetry Award winners), Apt. 9 Press, AngelHouse Press and above/ground press.

The two titles I’d purchased from above/ground, a press created and operated by rob mclennan, were totally unique to one another: Green Wind, by Ken Norris, details the foreign and domestic sides of a trip abroad with straightforward yet poetic prose, whereas mclennan’s own 16 Yonge presents a long-form poem that analyzes Toronto’s concrete edge at the docks.

On account of someone’s generosity and kindness, I’ve wandered into a deluge of above/ground press chapbooks to further clutter my reading nook. There’s Stephen Brockwell’s Excerpts from Impossible Books, The Crawdad Cantos, a compilation that should be of particular interest given that Stephen will be hosting a writing workshop in Ottawa July 7th, and several of rob mclennan’s recent titles to choose from. I’m taking them in one at a time but it doesn’t help when Goldfish: studies in fine thread, a kaleidoscopic look at happenstances that reveal a relationship beyond the fish tank, rewards constant revisiting.

Besides above/ground, I’ve been introduced to a smattering of other authors and presses: Monty Reid’s Contributor’s Notes (Gaspereau Press), some unarmed chapbooks (journal #64: Unwanted Unarmed includes a crowd of wonderful writers), and poems working in conjunction with the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa (featuring Sandra Ridley and Pearl Pirie, among others).

Needless to say, I haven’t had the opportunity to dive into most of these works with the attention they deserve, but what I’ve read so far, even in passing, warrants mention. Support these chapbook presses by seeking out their treasures online or by checking out your local Small Press Book Fair (I know Ottawa’s Spring Edition will be happening June 30th – details here).

"poem" broadside #294: Incidental Kill, by Monica Kidd

Friend, I've been thinking about that day on Temperance Street, before you packed up, before any of it, when Ken sat at your table to eat whale. All dark glasses and skinny elbows, drunk on the place. His homecoming. A Fogo Island minke, caught by someone's father, was the story. Wrong time, wrong place: how she goes. Mason jars marked with a letter and passed from kettle to coat pocket. How he grinned. The meaty greasy on his plate, the fork in his ham-fist. He wanted a picture and I took one. His serious stare. His joy bursting.

We all climbed Topsail Bluff later and I still look for myself in his poem. And still I find: your hand, his cigarette, even my faded red truck. Wrong place, wrong time. Incidentally, did you ever tell him the W on that jar was really an M? Someone's bottled moose forgotten in your bachelor fridge? How that piece of lead shot stuck in your teeth like a little white lie?


Incidental Kill
by Monica Kidd
above/ground press broadside #294

Monica Kidd is the author of four books, including Actualities (poetry from Gaspereau Press, 2007). A former biologist and journalist, she lives and writes in St. John's, Newfoundland, where she now works as a physician.