the first review of On Beauty, the Archibald Lampman Shortlist + upcoming shortlist reading,

In case you hadn't heard, my latest poetry title, World's End, (ARP Books, 2023), was recently shortlisted for the Archibald Lampman Award, alongside D.S. Stymeist's Cluster Flux (Frontenac House, 2023) and Sandra Ridley's Vixen (Book*hug Press) [see my review of such here]. Naturally, I've lost track of how many times (a handful, certainly) I've been up for the Lampman (always a bridesmaid, never the bride, as Bugs Bunny once complained as well), although the last time I was, ten years ago, it was also along Sandra Ridley (for those at home, keeping score). If you are so inclined, also, be aware that the three of us will be participating in a Lampman Award Shortlist reading this coming Monday at 7pm at Ottawa's SPAO: Photographic Arts Centre, 77 Pamilla Street (in Little Italy). In other news, Canadian writer J. Jill Robinson was good enough to provide a deeply generous first review of On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press) over at Goodreads! Thanks so much! Here's the link to where she posted the review, or you can read such, below:

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying reading and being challenged by rob mclennan’s fine new book of stories, On Beauty. It’s called ‘stories,’ but the author’s approach to narrative is largely unconventional, untraditional, and distinctive.

In mclennan’s work there is a fine balance between how each piece happens and what happens, which is a particular delight for readers who are writers: opportunities to learn craft from a master. Poetry and prose combine, and fuse. mclennan has the facility with language of a poet, uses compression like a poet, yet he also indulges a fondness for story. He uses brush strokes, wispy suggestions, evocative details, and graceful, often charming phrasing to convey meaning drawn from the domestic to the sublime.

At times mclennan speaks directly to writerly choices in craft: for example, “Who is the intended reader of the contemporary novel? Some books are composed to be intimate. Is that better, or worse? Perhaps an improvement to be spoken to directly, as opposed to listening in to a conversation between others.” Thus the frequent use of the close third person, and first person, drawing his readers near to his head, and his heart.

Each of the often brief stories, which are interspersed with fourteen “On Beauty” sections, is introduced by a quote that both informs each piece, and also illustrates how well-read mclennan is, how varied his influence are, seen through a wide range of writers including writers like Brossard, Auster, Kundera, Wah, Stein, Miranda July, Gunnars, and many others. A diverse bunch of language lovers.

Examples are surely the best way to convey the fineness of mclennan’s work. Here are a few of my favourites.

Before his son is born, the persona writes, with humour and delight:
I was beginning to see them more clearly, fleshy outline of baby-foot in my dear wife’s belly. There was something inside.

And then, on witnessing the birth of that son, the persona observes:
Stunned as our newborn pulled himself to the breast. Baby skin-to-skin as I quietly wept, and our new trio drifted from anxiety to relief.

Note how much he can convey in so few words, a quick character sketch of a wife as an domestic whirlwind: "Their mother a flurry of cupboards and movement"

And then there’s this, which follows a quote from Paul Auster: "What frightens us most isn’t death, but its result: absence"

Or, in “Translator’s note,” “I am shaped by these words, as I understand them.”

And here’s one of my favourites, in which a social media excerpt is incorporated:
On National Boyfriend Day, @adultmomband posted: that ex u still romanticize is just a concocted projection based off of everything they were never able to give you.”

The piece goes on to note: All of this is projection. All of this is created.

Throughout On Beauty mclennan provides the reader with the “delightful instruction” Aristotle speaks of. I would add that On Beauty is also of beauty, in beauty, from beauty, as well as being simply beautifully written, beautifully expressed. Lovers of language and of narrative will delight in this volume.

Congratulations, rob mclennan, on this fine book of intellectually and emotionally engaging work, work that skilfully uses the abstract and the concrete to entertain, touch, and move the reader with mclennan’s open mind and open heart.

VERSeFest 2024 : a report from the ground,

Our fourteenth annual poetry festival, VERSeFest: Ottawa's International Poetry Festival, happened last weekend, four venues across four nights, with more than two dozen poets [including Monty Reid, left, being introduced by Jennifer Baker], and was a resounding success, I don't mind saying. The festival got knocked around a bit across the Covid-era, so this is the first festival with myself as Artistic Director, with a brand-new board of directors for VERSe Ottawa, the organization that looks after the whole thing. And did you hear that three of our four nights held capacity crowds? Every night held incredible readings, without a low point across the board (although there were frustrations about accessibility across a venue or two).

Thursday, March 21, 2024: Avant-Garde Bar, 7pm
Anita Lahey, Monty Reid, Marjorie Silverman, Laila Malik
    hosted by Jennifer Baker / Arc Poetry Magazine,
Daniel Groleau Landry, nina jane drystek + MayaSpoken
    hosted by Allison Armstrong

Opening night held some strong readings, with returned-to-Ottawa poet Anita Lahey reading from her latest collection, offering an Ottawa poem or two. Ottawa poet Marjorie Silverman [above] not only offered a reading from her debut, and a Billings Bridge Mall poem, but her debut as a reader at VERSeFest! Laila Malik [left], another poetry and VERSeFest debut [see the recent interview here], startled the crowd with the strength of her reading (it is such a good book). And Monty Reid, longtime Artistic Director, anchored the whole first set with his own debut reading at VERSeFest (if you're staff or on the board you can't be scheduled, so we had to wait until he left, don't you know).

As part of the second set: it was good to hear new work from returning VERSeFest performer Daniel Groleau Landry; nina jane drystek did some very cool looped sound work (I know nina is shopping a full-length manuscript; once that is out, it is going to be incredible); and MayaSpoken is simply remarkable.

Friday, March 22, 2024 : Happy Goat, Laurel, door 7/reading 8pm
Amanda Earl, DS Stymeist, IAN MARTIN, Mary Lee Bragg
    hosted by Stephen Brockwell
Susan McMaster, Sneha Madhavan-Reese, Shane Rhodes
    hosted by rob mclennan

Amanda Earl, of course, is a stellar reader, and her new book is grand. DS Stymeist [above], also read from a new book, and, akin to Monty Reid, was also debuting as a VERSeFest reader, having spent time as President of the VERSe Ottawa board (and thus, unable to read until after he stepped down). MaryLee Bragg read from her own newly-published book, but the highlight of the entire event (sorry, everyone else) had to be Ottawa poet IAN MARTIN [left] (yes, the upper case is deliberate), who really did provide surreal humour and a quiet, odd warmth through their set. You should be paying attention.

The second set held a reading by the very sparkly Ottawa poet Susan McMaster, who has a new book as well. Sneha Madhavan-Reese provided a sharp and curled straight-lined performance for her latest title (which I've been hearing some very good things about). Hopefully this isn't Shane Rhodes' [left] final Ottawa performance before he and his family move to Australia later on this year (you knew about that, didn't you?). I've really been enjoying his settler-work, playing off the novel (and subsequent film) that provided him his name. (Don't go, Shane! Shane, don't go!)

Saturday, March 23, 2024 : Redbird, 8pm
Stephen Brockwell, Jaclyn Piudik, Chris Turnbull, Derek Webster
    hosted by rob mclennan
Sandra Ridley, David O’Meara, Madeleine Stratford
    hosted by Zishad Lak

Board member (and Ottawa poet) Stephen Brockwell [above] provided a shorter set as last-minute fill-in, reading for Mark Goldstein, who wasn't able to make the event (he's doing fine, but just couldn't make it). Chris Turnbull [see the recent interview here] opened her reading, launching her latest book, with some poems by Phil Hall, to acknowledge the new book Goldstein edited and published, celebrating Hall and his work. It was interesting to hear Jaclyn Piudik [left] read, a poet I've only started reading lately. She has a new book as well, and made a point of opening with some poems by Mark Goldstein. And Derek Webster was just great. He read a poem that played off the work of Al Purdy. Who wouldn't love that?

Sandra Ridley [left; see the recent interview here], launching her latest from Bookhug Press, was her usual evocative, coiled calm, enough to quiet any room. Working in both English and French (as well as translation, Madeleine Stratford's performance had a liveliness and humour across hushed tones. And Ottawa poet David O'Meara, another former VERSeFest Artistic Director (before Monty), reading a handful of new poems, was the anchor that held all in place.

Sunday, March 24, 2024: Spark Beer, door 7pm/8pm
AJ Dolman, Myriam Legault-Beauregard, Nduka Otiono,
    hosted by Madeleine Stratford
Rhonda Douglas, Jason Christie, Klara du Plessis + Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi,
    hosted by rob mclennan

Our closing night! It was great to hear Ottawa poet AJ Dolman [above; see the recent interview here] launching their long-awaited debut full-length collection, a box of which landed in just enough time to catch our event (there will be a proper, full launch coming up). And great to hear poet and Carleton University prof Nduka Otiono [left] for the first time! He had a critical selected poems not long back from Wilfrid Laurier University Press that was quite interesting. And lovely to catch a reading blending English and French from poet Myriam Legault-Beauregard from her new book, already leaning into a second printing!

Rhonda Douglas was good enough to provide a short opener of new poems (and curious for me to realize I've known her longer than I've known anyone else around here, having participated in a poetry workshop at the University of Ottawa alongside her and Joseph Dandurand, among others, during 1992-3). It was very nice to celebrate Ottawa poet Jason Christie's [left; see the recent interview here] last fall bpNichol Chapbook Award win through his reading, both from the award-winning chapbook as well as through a handful of new poems. I would think he's but the second Ottawa-based bpNichol winner, after Chuqiao Yang (I presume we'll have more, soon enough). And then, Montreal-based Klara du Plessis [see the recent interview here] and Toronto-based Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi [see the recent interview here] closed out the event, and the festival, through a stellar collaborative set, which included their own individual works, as well as them reading from their recently-published book-length collaboration. There's an incredible amount of activity going on with those two, both individually and combined, that is worth paying attention to. Wow.

You probably also saw the new issue of The Peter F Yacht Club that was launched as part of the festival, holding poems by numerous of our readers and performers? I also had copies of the soon-to-release tenth anniversary issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], given there were poems within by Amanda Earl and Conyer Clayton. We also had a basket of books leftover from our fundraiser, offering for the sake of donations (although it took two days, unfortunately, to discover that the QR codes we printed didn't actually work).

Given our hugely successful fundraiser, it didn't seem right to ticket all of the events, so three of our four nights were unticketed (honestly, so much of the fundraiser, whether time, books, chapbooks or cash came from at least half that crowd), but there were plenty of folk donating, still, across those four days, which is hugely appreciated by everyone on the board. Thank you so much to The City of Ottawa, Arc Poetry Magazine and The League of Canadian Poets for their ongoing support, and to Spark Beer, RedBird [left], The Happy Goat and Avant-Garde Bar for allowing us the use of their spaces. As many of you know, events such as these don’t occur in a vacuum, and I must thank the help of our current VERSe Ottawa board: Allison Armstrong, Frances Boyle, Stephen Brockwell, Éric Charlebois, David Currie (who really went above and beyond across the course of this entire thing, so thank you) and Zishad Lak for their ongoing and essential work. And Helen Robertson, who ran our book table! Helen is a delight. Of course, an essential thank you to outgoing director Avonlea Fotheringham for keeping the festival alive across the Covid Era, and Rod Pederson, who began this festival in the first place.

[left: Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi, Chuqiao Yang + Cameron Anstee mid-break, Closing Night] With our rebuilding year, this was a smaller and more Ottawa-localized festival than prior years (unable to cover hotels and travel, for example), so we are hoping to do another version of this in the fall ("fall into versefest," or something akin to that), as well as hopefully announce our next round of poets laureate at the same time. With luck, we can return next spring with a fully-rebuilt festival! And in case you are wishing to donate, you can catch the donate page on our website. Maybe we'll see you at our next event! Otherwise, you know you should be checking out www.bywords.ca for all Ottawa-area literary events, yes? Monthly calendar! New poems!

World Poetry Day : VERSeFest begins tonight! and interviews w Turnbull, du Plessis, Malik, Christie, Ridley, Mohammadi + Dolman,

Happy World Poetry Day! Our fourteenth annual edition of VERSeFest, Ottawa's International Poetry Festival, begins tonight, running through until Sunday. See the full schedule here. In case you hadn't caught, a variety of interviews with readers for this year's festival have been posting over the past couple of weeks over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. Conyer Clayton : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Chris Turnbull ; rob mclennan : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Klara du Plessis ; Manahil Bandukwala : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Laila Malik ; rob mclennan : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Jason Christie ; Margo LaPierre : 2024 VERSeFest interviews : Sandra Ridley ; rob mclennan : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi ; Amanda Earl : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: AJ Dolman ; we are hoping to see you! Of the four nights, be aware that the Saturday night show is ticketed, and bring cash for books! All books/chapbooks will be supplied by the authors. Huzzah!

Sandra Ridley, Vixen

 

Clover and laurel and thistle
velvet and sumac
muskroot and sundew and baneberry
crocus and cherrychoke
eyebright and bindweed
moonseed and coltsfoot
panic grass and bloodroot and hyssop
loosestrife and boneset
goldenseal and sedge and lady fern
devil’s bit and daisy and aster
violet and ivy—every leaf will wither.

 

You will suffer the same.
(“THICKET”)

For her fifth full-length poetry title, Vixen (Toronto ON: Book*Hug Press, 2023), Ottawa poet and editor Sandra Ridley blends medieval language around women, foxes and the fox hunt alongside ecological collapse, intimate partner violence and stalking into a book-length lyric that swirls around and across first-person fable, chance encounter and an ever-present brutality. Following her collections Fallout (Regina SK: Hagios Press, 2009) [see my review of such here], Post-Apothecary (Toronto ON: Pedlar Press, 2011) [see my review of such here], The Counting House (BookThug, 2013) [see my review of such here] and the Griffin Prize-shortlisted Silvija (BookThug, 2016) [see my review of such here], the language of Vixen is visceral, lyric and loaded with compassion and violence, offering both a languid beauty and an underlying urgency. “If he has a love for such,” she writes, as part of the second poem-section, “or if loathing did not prevent him. // A curse shall be in his mouth as sweet as honey as it was in our mouths, our mouths as / sweet as honey. Revulsive as a flux of foxbane, as offal—and he will seem a lostling. // He came for blood and it will cover him.”

Set in six extended poem-sections—“THICKET,” “TWITCHCRAFT,” “THE SEASON OF THE HAUNT,” “THE BEASTS OF SIMPLE CHACE,” “TORCHLIGHT” and “STRICKEN”—Ridley’s poems are comparable to some of the work of Philadelphia poet Pattie McCarthy for their shared use of medieval language, weaving vintage language and consideration across book-length structures into a way through to speak to something highly contemporary. As such, Vixen’s acknowledgments offer a wealth of medieval sources on hunting, and language on and around foxes and against women, much of which blends the two. A line she incorporates from Robert Burton (1621), for example: “She is a foole, a nasty queane, a slut, a fixin, a scolde [.]” From Francis Quarles (1644), she borrows: “She’s a pestilent vixen when she’s angry, and as proud as Lucifer [.]” Or, as she writes as part of the third section:

Find her in pasture till all pastures fail her like hawthorns. She will run well and fly.

She slips out of the forest and when compelled she crosses the open country. When she runs, she makes few turns. When she does turn to bay, she will run upon us and menace and strongly groan. And for all the strokes or wounds that we can do to her, while she can defend herself, she defends herself without complaint.

She will spare for nothing.

Take leave of your haunt and hunt her down—

Till nigh she be overcome.

There is something of the use of such language to allow a deeper examination into dark paths that seem unrelenting, and, as the back cover offers, “compels us to examine the nature of empathy, what it means to be a compassionate witness, and what happens to us when brutality is so ever-present that we become numb.” Her lines through each section, each individual poem-suite that accumulates into this full-length lyric suite, extend with such courage, grace and connective tissue as to be by themselves book-length. Saskatchewan born-and-raised Ridley has always worked with the structure of the long poem, and this collection further highlights an ongoing attention to lyric and structure, offering not a book but a poem, book-length; one that extends across a landscape that includes works by Sylvia Legris, Monty Reid, Andrew Suknaski and Robert Kroetsch, among so many others, reaching to see just how far that lyric landscape might travel. And yet, her poems also give the sense of a lyric folded over and across itself, lines that collect and impact upon each other from a multitude of directions and into a singular, polyphonic voice. This is a stunning collection, and deserves to be win every award. Approach with caution, please. Or, as she writes as part of the third poem-section:

Look not in the eyes of any creature. The same creature runs with different names: wolf, vixen, vermin, heathen, honey, harlot, bitch.

Ongoing notes: Meet the Presses (part five,

[the Gap Riot Press table]

It seems like I picked up rather a lot of publications at this year’s Toronto’s Meet the Presses’ annual Indie Literary Market [see part four of my notes here; and you see I’ve been posting on our more recent ottawa small press book fair as well, yes?], doesn’t it? Well, here’s another list of items. So there!

London ON: Ottawa poet Sandra Ridley’s latest, following her Griffin Prize-nominated Silvija (Book*hug, 2016), is the chapbook Quell (Baseline Press, 2018), a sequence “written in the late summer of 2016 [.]” As the acknowledgements offer, this small sequence of prose poems “began at Perth, Ontario’s ‘Framework: Words on the Land’ event in August 2016.”

The edge. Transposed. Turn yourself away from it. It’s impossible to know where your gaze begins and ends, even if you touched the trace of it. Drift. Wood. This slight shift—fetched when our gasp elongates. Takes shape in foxtail restlessness. Sweat. Rivulet. Wet behind the knees. All this time, each moment, we search for one true furrow. Thistle-blade. The dark is coming. Unalterable. Stars pull themselves up from the swamp.

Ridley is notoriously quiet about what she’s working on, with publications often appearing without much fanfare, but she has quickly emerged into one of the strongest poets working in Ottawa, as well as one of the most read. I’m enjoying Ridley’s shift into the prose poem, a form she’s been working in, around and through for some time, so fascinated to see her focus on the poetic sentence, while still aware of pace, and breath, and cadence, writing in and among the absences, and small cracks. Her poem begins in the woods, and moves further out, attempting to disappear even as the narrator attempts not to be completely overcome. Is there a middle? What is this quell?

No sleep, no aftershock, no afterimage, no ghosted silvering, no depth, no swamp, no murk, no lake, breath, no sleep. Weak pulse kiltered to the rustle. Awake. Awake. Nothing happened—but lack.

Cobourg ON: I’m enjoying the oddness that is Toronto writer Heather Birrell’s short story chapbook Dreaming Fidel (2018), produced by Stuart Ross’ Proper Tales Press. I clearly need to be reading more of Birrell’s work (I blame the distraction of small children). What is Heather Birrell doing writing about Fidel Castro, you might ask? Hers is a curious examination of revolution, the public Castro, and a variety of conjectures. With a clarity and an oddness, she offers that “Fidel appears to me in miniature, a tiny perfect replica of his human self [...].” As her story begins:

Castro as a young man looks like a clean-cut boxer with his knobby out-of-joint nose, then an imperfect chubby Errol Flynn when he grows the thin moustache, and later still, in profile, somewhat regal, more seasoned. As the beard comes, in the moustache grows to meet it; the fatigues fit like a second skin. And there are the hats: the peaked pillbox army cap he wears on the sports field and, while leaning close to hear the greetings of important heads of state, the revolutionary beret pushed to the back of his head like a relaxed tea cosy, the wide-brimmed straw sun hat he dons for cutting sugar cane with the campesinos. His eyes are not wide. When he is not smiling they are guarded and sad. When he begins to smile they soften like ripening fruit. Sometimes he uses them to peer up through the cigar smoke that rises from his like steam from a kettle.