Ongoing notes: TIFA’s Small Press Market (part two: Lannii Layke + Janette Platana,

the moment Ken Norris met ryan fitzpatrick

[see part one of my notes here] Here’s another accounting of some of the titles I picked up at the most recent fair in Toronto!

Toronto ON: I’m fascinated by the debut chapbook by Toronto-based poet Lannii Layke, their Os (knife|fork|book, 2022), a gracefully-sleek collection of exploratory poems. There is an intriguing narrative layering to Layke’s lines, offering line upon line upon fragment, a hush, and a halt. Their author biography at the end of the collection offers a couple of intriguing details: “They attend to crafting memory and fine jewellery. In French, os is bone.” The poems here are crafted but not precious: precise, and deft in their resolve, offering eight first-person poems that seek, seek out. “we have those secrets that stick us,” the poem “Sister” offers, “like our / talk  and hate  and / waxing piss onto our man [.]” There is such graceful, absolute beauty in Layke’s searchings, one that sparkles not just through discovery, but revealing and remarking upon what was already known.

Plum

                    My frequency
  factors  in the cloning of plums
The rib of plum
in the posture of plum line    a smaller Sweat
       is that same salt    collecting so

Toronto ON: There’s a wonderful sense of play and language across the nine poems of Peterborough writer Janette Platana’s chapbook New Fairious (Anstruther Press, 2023), each offering short narratives, akin to character studies, to a list of alternate fairies, from “The Shame Fairy” and “The Literary Fairy” to “The Fairies Feify & Deify” and “The Truth Fairy.” “They are not twins, these two,” the poem “The Fairies Reify & Deify” begins, “but reciprocating parasites who // rfuse to play host. / Yet each outstrips the other // in unxious luxury.” There’s a delight of sound and meaning through her word choises throughout these poems, offering an unexpected richness line by line by narrative line, all of which rolls along into a sequence of impossibility. How Platana is a writer I hadn’t heard of previously, although her author biography offers that her short story collection, A Token of My Affliction (Toronto ON: Tightrope Books, 2014), “was a Finalist for the Ontario Trillium Book Award.” Oh, how I wish to see more poems by Janette Platana.

The Shame Fairy

Her dust encauls you in nausea.

Until the ignosecond of Her enclaspment
you did not even know
She was a thing. Now, you are filled
with Her shitty gift. Now, you bob
inside Her gassy bubble
like you are the grinning bonhomme
in one of those oversized inflatable snow globes
in the parking lot of the biggest big box store
when your anchor cable has sprung
and you bounce between parked cars,
legless, footless, as well as entrapped,
head blog
indignant and indistinguishable
from bottom blog.

It would be funny if it weren’t forever.

 

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.

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

[this is what Gary Barwin looks like while reading the latest chapbook by MLA Chernoff] 

See my first post on what I collected at the fair, here; and my second post here. And I am totally going to keep pushing these two other upcoming fairs: Meet the Presses in Toronto on November 16th and the 25th anniversary event for our own ottawa small press book fair 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?

Toronto ON: I’m intrigued by the earnestness and the directness of the lyric narratives that make up Toronto poet and editor Terese Mason Pierre’s debut chapbook, Surface Area (Anstruther Press, 2019). There is a meditative calm in Pierre’s lyrics, one that is inquisitive, careful and considered, such as the poem “Cold Feet,” that begins: “Three in the morning, I am / awake under cloth and commitment [.]” Her poems work to articulate and unpack complicated emotions, whether the small moments of awareness before a partner wakes, or in the midst of family during a funeral. As she writes to end the poem “Swell”: “I’m learning to like when my hair / gets in my eyes when our skin // swells. I’m trying to be a person / who can be built from sand.”

Lines

You know where you’re going,

but this city is unfamiliar to me.

Every story you tell has its own

highways and cul-de-sacs,

leading to laughs you cut short,

a brief peer over the hedge

to the green on the other side,

or a welcome overstayed

on purpose. It is irrational

to envy the time before I existed.

In the attic of your childhood home,

I see you in the orange glow

of a lack of someone to please.

I put my hand over yours

as you hold a photo. I do not

recognize any of the thousand words.

Peterborough/Toronto ON: Subtitled “found poetry constructed from psychic scam junk mail addressed to previous tenants” is Peterborough poet and fiction writer Katherine Heigh’s latest, the chapbook To the People Who used to Live Here (Gap Riot Press, 2019). The author of the chapbook PTBO NSA (Peterborough ON: bird, buried press, 2019) [see my review of such here], Heigh has now produced two chapbooks constructed out of found materials, shifting and collaging, although this particular project feels less a straightforward “found” than her debut; perhaps this assemblage is more prompted and propelled by found materials than specifically constructed by them. Either way, the poems are curious short bursts of lyric narrative—with intriguing line breaks and cadence—that explore how one finds place in the world. Her rhythms are hypnotic, and her short narratives are fascinating. I would be interested to see how these poems, structurally, differ from her short prose.

Grandmother Moon Calls

She is offering all this to you, a Golden Legacy

            specifically

intended for you. Providence has replied to

resurrection of the ancestral.

It’s quite natural. Please receive what must be

            long to you.

Going to bathe in an ocean of multiple and

            infinite joys

isn’t that life-changing. Your name appeared in

            the last lunar phase.

Say goodbye to your desires.

At the end of this, you can no longer be a

            person.

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

See my first post on what I collected at the fair, here (it was a good fair!). And might we see you at either of the upcoming fairs, whether Meet the Presses in Toronto on November 16th (which I am most likely attending, dependent upon Christine’s health and energy) or the 25^th anniversary event for our own ottawa small press book fair on November 23^rd (and pre-fair reading the night prior, obviously)?

ON/Fredericton NB: From Jim Johnstone’s Anstruther Press comes the chapbook debut culminate / knot (2019) by Brooklyn Park MN poet and musician (currently studying at UNB) CL Johnson. The chapbook culminate / knot is made up of two poems—the three-sectioned “physical media / gravities,” and the fifteen-sectioned “multum in parvo for my fitness pal.” I am very taken with the cadence of these poems, how they roll and flow and patter across an impressive density of form and language. As the first section of the first poem reads:

1. Pool

Single file up the stairs and through a narrow doorway, everybody came together, loitered on cement. They listened for the whistle, plotting wild-eyed critieuqes of patience, birdcall, depth, and tongue. They cannonball’d, and bottomed out, beluga whale’d through carbonated teal. Their lexical Atlantic with cape and bluff enmeshed, the tile coast unititing see with sea, with seethe, with scene, with seamless. And through a duct, they swallowed seethe because perception to their vessel bound a suffocating tide, and seamless, for that tide also crawled on deck. Scene and sea included, each, a movement sure to nauseate resemblance. When stairs confirmed exhaustion was a shadow on the atmosphere, their diving board and strand of flesh, that vision skewed —

Toronto ON/Vancouver BC:

It was the summer of 1966, you probably weren’t born yet, and I was travelling in a new Volkswagen beetle with the sweetly evil poet David McFadden, eastward in southern Europe. It was the first time either of us had been in the old world, so we were taking advantage of the opportunity to transform our young Canadian lives into legend. He was carrying a book of poems by Charles Baudelaire, and I was carrying an anthology of notable works by English poets. He kept looking up things in my book because, as much as he adored Baudelaire, he could not read French.

And so begins Vancouver writer George Bowering’s DAVID IN BYZANTIUM (Proper Tales Press, 2019), a short travelogue through Europe from his travels with the since-departed David W. McFadden. In quick prose, this is a charming series of recollections that blends the lyric with the historic with a variety of comedy routines, with each of them taking their comic turns, whether as call-or-response, or as one relegated to straight man. Bowering (see his piece celebrating Proper Tales Press here) is long known for his journal writing, some of which has been reworked into a variety of poetry, fiction and non-fiction works, but I am curious to know how much of this is lifted from those same journals, or lifted from his own recollections from the period, some fifty-plus years ago (the text does mention a journal he is writing in, but Bowering is known for his fictional shifts). Part of the pleasure of this short travelogue is the sharp wit and humour on display, something he and McFadden shared, as well as the homage to McFadden through the semi-fictional travelogue as well, a form McFadden explored extensively, from this trilogy of novels around the Great Lakes (A Trip Around Lake Ontario, A Trip Around Lake Erie and A Trip Around Lake Huron, a series he rewrote for Talonbooks’ eventual reissue Great Lakes Suite), as well as his more straightforward (comparatively) travel books: An Innocent in Ireland, An Innocent in Scotland, An Innocent in Newfoundland and An Innocent in Cuba (after his first volume, I had suggested he shift the title for the second volume, “A Scoundrel in Scotland,” but he wasn’t going for it; I mean, how long can one remain innocent, even ironically so?).

This is the sort of chapbook you will absolutely love or absolutely hate, depending on what you might think of Bowering’s sly reportage, involving puns, bad jokes and the occasional groan-inducing moment. I, myself, would be curious to see Bowering write further in this direction, reporting on his travels and adventures with other writers over the years. Just what else might those infamous journals of his actually hold?

            We had left the dusty heckhole that is Thessalonika farther and farther behind. We had been welcomed into the dark cool air of Lake Koronia. Now for the first time in Greece I felt a little pleasant, so I was determined to entertain David, and to instruct him simultaneously. As we were still within stories Hellas, I told him the legend of the Three Fates of Greek lore: Athos, Mythos, Portugal and D’Artagnon

            “I sense the approach, however, of the mysterious East,” said David, sticking his head out the Volkswagen’s window.

            “Your senses do not waver in their loyalty to you,” I said.

            “The scent of cinnamon and rose petals!”

            “The fragrance of running sewers and rotting meat!”

            “The thin, faint sound of little golden bells on a thousand dancing feet!”

            “The equally faint but distinguishable report of oxen shit hitting the sunlit pavement!”

            We were in our twenties, remember. It takes some time for subtlety to develop.

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

Thanks to Kate Siklosi, I recently participated in the first ever small press fair organized through TIFA (the Toronto International Festival of Authors, an event formerly known as IFOA: International Festival of Authors), carting an assemblage of new and recent above/ground press items to fill an entire table at Harbourfront Centre (they even provided tablecloths! Classy). It was a grand event! There were nearly a dozen exhibitors, lovingly curated by poet, editor and Gap Riot Press co-publisher Kate Siklosi, including Baseline Press, Simulacrum Press, Invisible Publishing, Augur Magazine, serif of nottingham, Anstruther Press and Proper Tales Press. After our small fair, I was even able to on-stage participate in a panel discussion on small and smaller press that Siklosi moderated, alongside Dani Spinosa, Stuart Ross and Terese Mason Pierre.

There are two further fairs over the next few weeks, in case anyone is so inclined: Meet the Presses in Toronto on November 16^th (which I am most likely attending, dependent upon Christine’s health and energy) and the 25^th anniversary event for our own ottawa small press book fair on November 23rd (and pre-fair reading the night prior, at the Carleton Tavern by the Parkdale Market). Might we see you at any of these?

Here are a couple of items I picked up during that TIFA event:

London ON/Vancouver BC: I picked up a copy of the eagerly-awaited chapbook debut by the remarkable Vancouver poet, editor, interviewer, writer and critic Isabella Wang, On Forgetting a Language (Baseline Press, 2019). I even managed to snag one of the final copies of the first edition (produced in an edition of eighty copies, the chapbook has already gone into a second printing). Composed, as she writes in the acknowledgments at the back of the collection, “in my last year of high school, from September 2017 to August 2018” (yes, the author has yet to turn twenty years old; deal with it), the poems in On Forgetting a Language present a clear, narrative lyric, one that shows an impressive confidence and capability.

You thought you’d be happy

now that you are doing fine.

This past summer in bed

you pictured yourself falling

out of an open window

to nowhere—your first summer

spent away from home.

She said she wouldn’t watch you

throw your future away,

waste seventeen years of

thankless upbringing

on the impracticalities of writing.

If you are going to do it, she says,

leave. So you did.

And anyway, she tells you,

you’ll never find work as a writer. (“MOTHER EXPLAINS MEN”)

What becomes curious through the process of this collection is in being already aware of a small handful of her poems composed since the pieces presented here, and her writing is already quickly improving in leaps and bounds (there was a ghazal she wrote a while back that I was particularly taken with, for example). If you aren’t paying attention to and supporting the work of Isabella Wang, you won’t have the opportunity to delight in the strength and the vibrancy of her writing, and a curiosity exploding in every direction that has already accomplished a great deal.

Cobourg/London ON: As part of Proper Tales Press’ 40th anniversary year comes London, Ontario writer Amelia Does’ latest, AMSTERDAM: THE ABBA VERSION (2019). Does is a new author to the Proper Tales roster (see her essay on the press’ anniversary here), but has self-published three prior titles as well.

HANGING MOON

Me with you

in the fields

dark clouds

hanging moon

there is a bird

in your hair

you do not

believe it

There is an odd straightforwardness to this collection that is delightfully bent, and often moving in more than one direction simultaneously. Her poems move easily from the short lyric to the short prose poem, each propelled by a particular kind of narrative that might bend or twist, or break off at the end.

TRUE TALE OF TWINS AT THE WEDDING

A set of short, long-bearded, alcoholic twin brothers lived in my building. Well, one did and the others elsewhere. I heard tales of their ramblings. Once they were invited to a wedding in a small rural hotel. They started the evening drunk, before the reception. Soon one fell over. The other dripped with beer.

Soon they were forced to leave, and placed in a hotel room next to the banquet hall. Soon they got angry, and started to toss bottles. Soon one broke through the wall, back into the party, with a table let; the other, a chair.

Toronto ON: From Gap Riot Press comes MLA Chernoff’s latest title, the joyfully confident TERSE THIRTY AND OTHER KISSES (2019), following on the heels of their debut, detet this (Hybrid Heaven, 2018). The poems here are wild, deliberately pilfering, breaking apart and reassembling Charles Olson’s work as their own, existing as both satire and savage critique, composing something new out of the old. There are some incredibly vibrant fireworks across the full spectrum of Chernoff’s performative lyrics, one that exists as a response to a prior work, and a poetics that was seen, for a very long time, as radically new and different. Chernoff responds to this work in a new way, easily, seeking out their own position and newness in such an overworked and overwrought space as literature and poetics, and they may just have found it.

Pometics are not manifested into manifesting toes: we don’t want Nietzsche’s Warhammer 40K collection; we don’t want Kant’s hands because they’re so dry from Purelling themselves all the dang time that they don’t even exist and it just sounds like a bit too much unpaid emotional labour for our liking; we don’t want Hegel’s dirty feet because wow just wash ‘em urself, mate; most of all, we only kinda want Marx riding a donkey at some Occupy event in ’08, but mostly, we desire the donkey’s life story and a few hyperlinks to some hot pics that the donkey feels comfortable sharing with us in encrypted group chat after the revolution: it’s neither a utopia nor a Cocteau Twins-scord Fruitopia commercial—perhaps heaven and Las Vegas.

In short, don’t offer more breathy men, give us the pometics of taking pride in the self-satisfying narcissism of loving but not knowing of emotionally encountering the All through the boing boing circuit of erotically encountering the All through the boing boing circuit of desire kissing illegibility at the margins of too many books we have gifted each other but never cared to gloss because being roommates is more than enough and we’re scared and you’re scared of forgetting to remember and remembering to forget; that is to say, enacting anxieties and anxieties in action.