Announcing VERSeFest 2016 : Ottawa's premiere poetry festival,

Six days, sixty poets, one festival. Celebrating written poetry and spoken word in English and French, VF ’16 brings you some of the most exciting poets on the planet. Twenty stellar showcases will present a range of talent from across Canada, Iceland, Ireland, Armenia, and Norway!

March 15-20, 2016

Amal El-Mohtar, Amy Iliza, Andre Duhaime, Anne Boyer, Annie St-Jean, Barâa Arar, Ben Ladouceur, Blue Louise Moffatt, Caroline Bergvall, Caroline Pignat, Cathy Petch, Christian Bök, Colin Morton, Daniel Groleau Landry, David Dufour, David McGimpsey, Doyali Islam, Élise Turcotte, Erin Dingle, Frances Boyle, Francois Turcot, Frédéric Lanouette, Gabriel Robichaud, Geneviève Bouchard, George Elliott Clarke, Gerald Hill, Gerður Kristný, Guy Perreault, Hector Ruiz, Jane Munro, Katherine Leyton, Kathryn Sweet, Kevin Matthews, King Kimbit, Leontia Flynn, Liz Howard, M. Travis Lane, Marilyn Dumont, Maurice Riordan, Mia Morgan, Natalie Hanna, Pamela Mordecai, Phil Hall, Rational Rebel, Rebecca Lea Thomas, Robyn Sarah, Sanita Fejzić, Sébastien Bérubé, Shannon Maguire, Sneha Madhavan-Reese, Sonia Lamontagne, Terry Ann Carter, Thierry Dimanche, Tina Charlebois, Vanessa Rotondo and Yusef Komunyaaka.

See the entire schedule for our sixth annual festival at: http://versefest.ca/year/2016/

Dina Del Bucchia and Daniel Zomparelli, Rom Com

Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence is your best friend, she makes you smile when the comical anvil slams down on your heart, and she told you once that you were all she needed. She taught you to dance when schizophrenia ghosted your body and garbage bag running suits tailored you in anger. Jennifer Lawrence saved a baby from a well once, took care of you while you had a fever, fixed a building after Hurricane Sandy. Jennifer Lawrence once saved you from a crumbling civilization. Jennifer Lawrence wrote a tell-all about your friendship, and told the world that you were the one who saved her. Jennifer Lawrence called to tell you she was thinking about you, late at night when you were certain the winter outside was leaking into your body, crystallizing your skin, turning your body into a plastic version of itself. Jennifer Lawrence taught you what love is, from a laptop glaring in the darkness, filtering through your eyes. The truth is, Jennifer Lawrence isn’t your best friend. You don’t have a best friend, just the rage sweating from your forehead.

From Vancouver poets and pop culture aficionados Dina Del Bucchia and Daniel Zomparelli come the wonderfully playful and dark poetry collaboration Rom Com (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2015). Del Bucchia, the author of Coping with Emotions and Otters (Talonbooks, 2013) and Blind Items (Toronto ON: Insomniac Press, 2014), and Zomparelli, author of Davie Street Translations (Talonbooks, 2012) [see my review of such here], also co-host the literary podcast Can’t Lit. Composed as a book “that both celebrates and capsizes the romantic comedy,” the poems in Rom Com are darkly comic, responding to a series of pop culture idioms, porn parodies, pop quizzes, actors and romantic comidies themselves (with repeated references to weddings, dicks and sex scenes), including poems titled “She’s All That,” “In a Movie about Weddings / No One Wants to Attend,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “Because You Watched 27 Dresses,” “Overboard” and “He Grasps at Emotion, or The Proposal.”

50 First Dates

You sang me a song

but I forgot.

You took me to the aquarium.

I forgot.

Took me on a boat.

Forgot.

I keep watching The Sixth Sense,

over and over again, waiting for the twist.

Every morning I wake up on a boat

next to a man

who tells me I love him

on a VHS

but I can’t remember.

Now the ocean surrounds me

and I never trusted

the open water.

Given their exploration into pop culture, humour and the sonnet, it would be impossible to think that the two haven’t been influenced by the work of Montreal poet David McGimpsey, author of his self-described “chubby sonnets,” especially through their five-poem “Sonnets for Supporting Roles,” that includes:

George, My Best Friend’s Wedding

For you, not for you, but for porcelain dolls

walking down the aisle. You are a cellphone

or an emergency lip gloss. You are the touch-up

rouge in her purse, you are the gay best friend.

The one who fusses over her hair, memorizes wardrobe,

waits in your apartment for whenever she is ready.

Filing nails, and sitting on your Barcelona chair,

watching Murder, She Wrote until she calls.

When she is ready, you snap fingers and make

jokes with flapping hands, tell her she has it all.

When she needed you most, you flew down

to save a dance at the wedding, a wedding you

could never have, legally, so instead you collapsed

back into a lipstick and a clasp purse.

They might be influenced by McGimpsey, but the poems here are far darker than his, and even their own individual works, writing out a sense of emptiness and loss behind so many of these poems composed for and after a series of light American movie fare, such as in the poem “So I Married a Poet,” that includes: “There was a time when romantic comedies were like jokes / about men versus women. They were everywhere.” One of my favourite poems in the collection has to be “A Series of Romantic Comedies / That Could Never Be Made,” dedicated to Winnipeg poet Jonathan Ball, that begins: “A woman dates every man on earth until she is too old to date. On her deathbed, she meets the man of her dreams: the doctor who pulls her off life support. “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette plays during the credits.” The poem ends with:

Kate and Steven never meet. They spend their entire lives just missing each other. One leaves a coffee shop just as another enters, one works the day shift, one works the night shift. They would fall in love if their paths ever crossed, but they never do. Love inhabits the spaces they never meet. It fills the blank spots.

This is an enormously smart and witty collection, playing with stereotypes and a love of bad film. And yet, are Del Bucchia and Zomparelli celebrating the genre or pulling away the curtain, and revealing its inherent shallowness? The answer, I think, is, somehow, incredibly, both.

Daniel Scott Tysdal, Fauxccasional Poems

Tell Me How

Composed by Buddy Holly, January 24, 1986, for his wife Maria Elena Holly, on the occasion of his flight home from New York after his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Originally published in the liner notes for Buddy Holly’s Greatest Hits: Volume 3. MCA, 1988.

“It’s magic!” squeals the boy across

the airplane’s aisle, his explanation

for flight. I couldn’t agree more, returning

to you. Each day, during this week apart,

I was a dark-trapped rabbit

eager to be revealed to the vast

applause of your smile. Tell me, how magic

is the airplane in making possible

this trick? How airplane-like is magic

with the flights of its surprise?
How upward lifting are the tricks

you perform? With a wave of your hand,

you transform all that ever was

for us and will be, every moment

in parting and mile apart, into the now

of our first and last touch

and every touch between.

It would be easy to feel overwhelmed by the expansive montage that makes up Toronto poet and critic Daniel Scott Tysdal’s third poetry collection, Fauxccasional Poems (Fredericton NB: Goose Lane Editions / icehouse poetry, 2015). Following his first two collections—Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method (Regina SK: Coteau Books, 2006) and The Mourner’s Book of Albums (Toronto ON: Tightrope Books, 2010)—Tysdal’s poems in Fauxccasional Poems are a wonderfully playful mix of pop culture, philosophy, historical detail, classical forms and tabloid parlance, much of which exist as framing for a series of lyric narratives that twist, cajole and even contain the occasional surreal shift. Tysdal composes sonnets, pantoums and other structured forms on subjects as diverse as the Taliban, Kermit the Frog, Buddy Holly, Nicholas Cage and T.S. Eliot. However playful and even outrageous at times his subject matter and framings might be, the poems themselves are classically formed, managing an intriguing blend of formal experimentation within highly conservative structures. Through his experimentation, Tysdal shows himself to be very much an admirer of the very forms he twists and collides, allowing new life and breath into structures that so rarely allow for the possibility of real experimentation. In this, for example, one could compare his work to that of Montreal poet David McGimpsey [see my recent piece on him in Jacket2 here].

Sleepless, I watch the clip of myself on my iPad,

the girls pressed tight as a pair of tires to the chassis

of my arms. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

plays chaste scares on the hotel’s flat screen. Sasha

“Da-ad!”s me into muting the NBC affiliate’s segment

on our Detroit campaign stop. I don’t need sound

to know the hope my image labours to radiate:

“One hundred years ago this very day, in this great

city, hardworking Americans like you built the first

Model T. The prodigious Mr. Henry Ford called it

the car ‘for the great multitude.’ What we need

to build together today, with the same fearlessness

and determination, is a better America for us all,

the still great multitude.” Even a glimpse

of the blueprints my image pretends to possess

would help me sleep, or a glance at Ford’s ancient plans.

Was it from ruins or raw material that he fashioned

new parts? Did he invent a new vehicle for the people

or from his creation were a new people cast? (“Detroit City Meets the Invisible Hand”)

Each poem is composed through a very distinct “voice” and for a particular purpose, including “Ballad composed on the occasion of the founding of the First Church of the Free Follower Fellowship,” “Composed by T.S. Eliot in April of 1926 on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the first War of Art victory by ‘The Waste Land,’” “Sestinaiku composed on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the Enola Gay’s refusal to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan” and “Recorded by war activist John Lennon in protest of the seventy-five years of involuntary global peace imposed at the end of the Great War.” Utilizing historical facts and figures, Tysdal’s deliberate twists and shifts in composing poems for occasions that, for the most part, could never have existed, is a curious set of “what ifs,” writing out the possibilities had a particular point in history turned one way, say, instead of another. His use of “voice” (composing poems that claim composition by another) is reminiscent, also, of some of the work by Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell [see my recent interview with him in Jacket2 here], whether in his most recent collection, Complete Surprising Fragments of Improbable Books (Toronto ON: Mansfield Press, 2013) [see my review of such here] or his prior collection, The Real Made Up (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2007). One might wonder what Tysdal is exploring through such faux occasions and historical fictions, but for what the best of speculative fiction writers could ever hope to articulate: a way to see through into the present with fresh, critical eyes.

There is something quite charming in the way that Tysdal composes his speculative fictions, even through his notes at the end of the collection that continue to perpetuate his created facts. There is almost a sense of Tysdal exploring history, just as much as poetic form, through his speculations of it. As he writes:

“Shell”: This poem is often misread as a response to the assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy. However, such a reading is not possible. “Shell” was composed a full year before November 22, 1963, and published four months before that tragic day. Not surprisingly, conspiracy-minded critics have read “Shell” as Munroe’s attempt to warn Jackie of her impending assassination, a plan Munroe knew about, these critics argue, due to her mob connections.

"Meteor" (new poem) : Cosmonauts Avenue,

I've a new poem, "Meteor," now online at Cosmonauts Avenue. Check out the new issue, which also includes new work by David McGimpsey (including an interview conducted by Mike Spry), Melissa Bull, Jennifer Sears, Andrew Purcell, Kevin Grauke, Coe Douglas and plenty of others. 

"David McGimpsey: three new poems," at Jacket2

My tenth 'commentary,' "David McGimpsey: three new poems," is now online at Jacket2.

Matthea Harvey, If The Tabloids Are True What Are You?

THE STRAIGHTFORWARD MERMAID

The Straightforward Mermaid starts every sentence with “Look…” This comes from being raised in a sea full of hooks. She wants to get points 1, 2 and 3 across, doesn’t want to disappear like a river into the ocean. When she is feeling despairing, she goes to eddies at the mouth of the river and tries to comb the water apart with her fingers. The Straightforward Mermaid has already said to five sailors, “Look, I don’t think this is going to work,” before sinking like a sullen stone. She’s supposed to teach Rock Impersonation to the younger mermaids, but every beach field trip devolves into them trying to find shells to match their tail scales. They really love braiding, “Look,” says the Straightforward Mermaid, “Your high ponytails make you look like fountains, not rocks.” Sometimes she feels like a third gender, preferring primary colors to pastels, the radio to singing. At least she’s all mermaid: never gets tired of swimming, hates the thought of socks.

Brooklyn poet Matthea Harvey’s remarkable new poetry collection is If The Tabloids Are True What Are You? (Graywolf Press, 2014), a work thick with full-colour photographs and artworks throughout by the author. One of the smarter and more playful of American poets I’ve seen playing within the structure of lyric narrative, Harvey’s previous books of poetry include Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (Alice James Books, 2000), Sad Little Breathing Machine (Graywolf, 2004), Modern Life (Graywolf, 2007) and Of Lamb (with illustrations by Amy Jean Porter; McSweeney’s, 2011). The poems in If The Tabloids Are True What Are You? are witty and whimsical, displaying a pop culture sensibility and wink to the camera, each composed in that nebulous boundary between lyric prose poem and postcard story. There is something of the pop culture sensibility in Harvey’s poetry similar to works by Montreal poet David McGimpsey, Toronto writer Lynn Crosbie, or even American writer and filmmaker Miranda July, pushing an earnest and knowing irony through tales of the hilarious, fantastic and impossible (and sometimes, perversely and desperately sad), especially in poems with titles such as “CHEAP CLONING PROCESS LETS YOU / HAVE YOUR OWN LITTLE ELVIS,” or “PROM KING AND QUEEN SEEK / U.N. RECOGNITION OF THEIR OWN COUNTRY… / PROMVANIA!”

USING A HULA HOOP CAN GET YOU

ABDUCTED BY ALIENS

We’ve never taken anyone

buttoned up and trotting from point A

to point B—subway to office, office to

lunch, fretting over the credit crunch.

Not the ones carefully maneuvering their

whatchamacallits alongside broken white lines,

not the Leash-holders who take their Furries

to the park three point five times per day.

If you’re an integer in that kind of

equation, you belong with your Far-bits

on the ground. We’re seven Star-years

past calculus, so it’s the dreamy ones

who want to go somewhere they don’t know

how to get to that interest us, the ones

who will stare all day at a blank piece of paper

or square of canvas, then peer searchingly into

their herbal tea. It’s true that hula hoops

resemble the rings around Firsthome, and that

when you spin, we chime softly, remembering

Oursummer, Ourspring and our twelve Otherseasons.

But that’s not the only reason. (Do we like rhyme?

Yes we do. Also your snow, your moss, your tofu—

our sticky hands make it hard for us to put

things down.) Don’t fret, dreaming spinning ones

with water falling from your faces.

It’s us you’re waiting for and we’re coming.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Harvey’s If The Tabloids Are True What Are You? is the way she has intricately blended and incorporated her poems into her wide array of artworks—including photographs, collage, erasures, needlepoint and tiny installations—into the collection. The artwork is an integral part of the work (making up more than half the book), and blend intricately with the poems, as opposed to being merely decorative or added-on (which so often happens, unfortunately, when artists/designers attempt to blend writing and art). There is almost a coffee-table book sensibility to what Graywolf has done with this book, if coffee-table books could be stunningly brilliant, smart, subversive and strikingly original (which, predominantly, they are not).

Sommer Browning, Backup Singers

I saw many many clocks, the clockman said of his first day. As the butcher cuts meat, the architect hides the sun; hesitancy blooms urge. Tonight, there is a horse in the painting above your bed. Tonight, a mole on the back of your love’s hand. At day’s end, the grocer pulls shutters across the glass complicating the thief’s anonymity.

There is an enormous amount of joy that comes with the announcement of a new work by Denver, Colorado poet and illustrator Sommer Browning, and the recent AWP in Seattle saw the release of Browning’s second trade poetry collection, Backup Singers (Birds, LLC, 2014). Given the amount of her quirky and hilarious comics were utilized as part of her first poetry collection, Either Way I’m Celebrating (Birds, LLC, 2011) [see my review of such here], I must say that a book by Sommer Browning without comics is unexpected (and even slightly disappointing). Still, there aren’t many contemporary poets with her penchant for tight lines and terrible jokes (Montreal poet David McGimpsey is a rare exception), and the results are absolutely stunning. Constructed in four sections, the first two sections are striking for the fact that they each contain groupings of single-page, untitled prose lyrics, collected in such a way that they could be read singularly, or as a narrative of accumulation, each poem acting and reacting against the ones that sit prior. One could say that her individual poems are also built accumulatively, each phrase and line pushing and piled, allowing for the oddest connections to exist in the reader’s imaginations. The rush of her prose also makes one wonder just how these poems might be heard, most likely as striking as how they appear. 

Goodbye fast-forward, goodbye alphabetical order, so long curlicue of the g’s tail looping on and on into each o and so on, icy line prismed into meaning: Varda on the absolute voyeurism of a door or the way the last drop releases the bottle into peaceful vacancy. Cassette tape roadkilled the DOT. On and on until the bun in the oven explodes golden over the Thanksgiving table, on and on stormy celluloid, on Donner and Blitzen, ontologically beautiful portmanteau Juneteenth, this most personal ecstasy drawing a monster from mythology.

There is a joyful, lively energy to her poems, one that can’t be diminished even through poems that might appear cranky, discordant or just damned odd; instead of wading through the dark, even her poems that work through some darker subject matter or references are radiant with energy (with some poems that rush at a near-manic level of urgency), one that is utterly intoxicating and impossible not to get caught up in. As one poem opens: “I told you he spanked me before work, how weird it was, how nearly non-sexy. Where did you go when I went to work?”

How long does it take to get to a funeral? The windshield wipers crazy across the window, out of pace so one runs over the other until the other careens so far to the left it hooks itself onto the edge of the car, the pathetic machine-sound of it straining to do its job. We pull into the Walgreens’ parking lot to search for tools. Since my first car needed pliers to open the window, I’ve always kept tools in the car. The bandage over the cure. Before this, we were received at an Irish pub by Sarah and her family and friends to celebrate the death of Sarah’s mother. Is celebrate the right word? I convince you to drive us back to New York so I could take another pill at the funeral. In the language of death, I want to say thank you.

Sommer Browning is one of a small number of contemporary American poets composing tight, observational lyrics on how to live in the world, all of whom utilize subversion, distraction, discomfort comfort and use of the straight phrase, and a blending of lightness against such very heavy dark subject matter. And when I suggest a list of such poets, I would include: Emily Pettit, Bianca Stone, Hailey Higdon, Hillary Gravendyk and Emily Kendal Frey. Browning uses terrible jokes more than most (far more subtle here than in her previous collection), but often as a distraction against more serious topics. In my mind, these are a grouping of poets who manage to say an enormous amount through allusion to far darker things; and when they do speak of such plainly, it can catch a reader off-guard, and nearly be missed.

Information

There is a reason

division is an operation.

A reason I know

the math behind the body.

It’s a girl

and the wires she needs

open her hands

before they’re fists.

The third section of Backup Singers is made up of the forty-one part sequence “Multifarious Array,” a space in which she’s able to stretch out and display her talent for composing, point by point by point, across a wide canvas. Part of what appeals about Browning’s writing (and comics) is in the way her unusual perspective and humour allows her incredible insight and observations, as “Multifarious Array” opens with: “A broken Xerox machine dominates the corner. It doesn’t reproduce mistakes, doesn’t allow gradual fade, it’s broken because it forces vividness.” The sequence even allows a perspective into Browning’s own work, existing as an extended lyric essay on the work of an unnamed poet, as Browning writes:

Her poems live between intimacy and devastation. After I read them, I marvel that within each, a feeling welled and filled me, then receded.

Conjured at a different angle, the worn memory becomes the missing piece.