[Chris Johnson and Natalie Hanna at the Arc Poetry Magazine table]
So
many notes! And of course, see my prior notes here, as well as my ongoing notes on Meet the Presses, also.
Ottawa ON: I’m very pleased to
see dream punk (A Bywords
Publication, 2016), a first chapbook of poems by Ottawa poet and clinical
psychologist Ron Seatter, produced as part of The John Newlove Poetry Award Chapbook Series, judged by Matthew Rader and run annually by Bywords.ca.
I
like the meditational quality of Seatter’s poems, the quiet subtlety of his
observations. The poems are strongest when they are direct, precise and exploratory,
rippling outward in a slow and quiet manner.
no i in
buffalo
and
no we
in sagittarius
saucy riders
wing
border guards
compensate
interstates of
salt
together
buds
ok, there is an ‘us’
admitting the zodiacal
fraternity
lingual nodules
bitter
tons of lawlessness
but deliberate
on chewed highways
[Cameron Anstee, Apt. 9 Press and William Hawkins' typewriter]
Ottawa ON: Natalie Hanna’s battleaxe press, along with producing chapbooks, has been producing small
single-poem pamphlets as a broadside series that, at least for now, focuses on
Ottawa poets, most of whom I really haven’t read much by. The first four in the
series are “I don’t but she do but she ain’t so I won’t” by Liam Burke, “The
Child Who Didn’t Make A Sound” by Jennifer Pederson, “the ‘pataphysics of
internet dating” Amanda Earl and “civilian” by Mia Morgan, each produced in
editions of one hundred copies. The designs for such are rather straightforward
(which isn’t a bad thing), and produced on far better paper than most chapbooks
I’ve seen lately. I’m intrigued by these, and curious as to see where the
series might go next. The end of Morgan’s three-page poem reads:
daddy will always think
in walls
them versus me
us versus them
dividers
like the ocean
there versus here
barrier-enclosed
fence-secured
and
still
[what some random kid typed on the late William Hawkins' typewriter]
Kingston ON: I’m intrigued by the
very small chapbooks that Michael e. Casteels’ Puddles of Sky Press has been
producing lately, some of which include but a single poem on a single page. Some
of the most recent in the series include Alice Burdick’s CHORE CHOIR (2016), Nick Papaxanthos’ Very Uncomfortable (2016), Lillian Necakov’s ASK (2016), derek beaulieu’s VEXATIONS
2: XEROX WORKCENTRE 5755 (2016), Dale Tracy’s What It Satisfies (2016) and Casteels’ own The Shape of Things to Come (2016), each produced in runs of
seventy-five copies.
A black cloud swirls over our city, flies so
thick they block out the sun. No one sleeps for the ever-present drone. The moment
dinner is served they descend and ravage the meal. We’re left making thin soups
with whatever bones we can find. Our repellents are futile. Our coils of
flypaper remain bare. We swat at them, but they zip past like tiny spaceships
at red alert. They’re evolving faster than we are and soon we’ll be the ones
buzzing around the streets looking for something to believe in. (Michael e. Casteels)
There
is something quite lovely about the very small chapbook, and not many
publishers work to embrace such publications. Obviously, derek beaulieu’s No Press produces such, as did damian lopes’ fingerprinting inkoperated (a press
that recently has been known to release the occasional item again, after a
break of a decade or more), but they are few and far between. These little items
are quite striking, in part because they contain so little text, and thusly,
demand a great deal of attention.
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