I genrally am consuming 20-30 books in parallel. In this snapshot I present current top of pile reads, with a menu pairing of recent meals.

Where and When Am I? In the 2300s, mostly a city on Mercury, on Saturn and Jupiter’s moons and transit between in: 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit, 2012)

Menu: Chinese leek potstickers with green onions, white sweet potatoes, and grilled paneer

Where and When Am I? 33 AD among Celtic tribes in what is now Ireland: Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott (Bantam, 2003).

Menu: hard-boiled eggs and bread.

Where and When Am I? Dalston, London, contemporary, at an artists cooperative, anarchist bookstore, and with a street artist: Painted in the Margins by D_Cocca  (AO3, 2025)

Menu: Veggie wonton soup with carrots, broccoli, and turnip

Where and When Am I? In the Igbo desert lands of sorcerer and sorceresses: One Way Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (Daw, 2025)

Menu: Hawaiian plantain with pomegranate molasses 

Where and When Am I? At the start of the AIDS crisis in the gay community in NYC, 1981: A Friend of Dorothy’s by Richard Willett (First Magic Show Press, 2025)

Menu: Veggie burger with fries

Where and When Am I? Late life, contemporary Canada as people die & suburban calm sits juxtaposed to world crisis: The Time of Falling Apart: poems by Wendy Donawa (Harbour, 2025)

Menu: Roasted delicata squash, mashed lentils and couscous

Where and When Am I? 2015, Beaufort, New Hampshire, in a university marching band: In His Hand a Burning Coal by klikandtuna (AO3, 2025)

Menu: Cream of cauliflower and mushroom soup with rice cracker and cream cheese

Where and When Am I? Chicago, Illinois, 20 years ago: Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books, 2004, 2016)

Menu: Whole wheat french toast with sweetened greek yogurt and raspberries

Where and When Am I? Skimming centuries and continents: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen (Biblioasis, 2024)

Menu: Polenta with mac and no cheese, nutritional yeast white sauce, mushrooms and roasted chestnuts and avocado, green salad

More books are around of course and more en route. Each at a time according to time available and mood. As I fill up for one type of appetite I switch.

I have apparently been doing this pesbo blog for 20 years now. Some have tried to give it cachet and called in the Pesbo Journal. Take prestige if you need it.

And I have been doing book reviews in various places for 15 years.

Oddly the League of Canadian poets seems to have deleted their review archive and no longer offer member the option to get their books reviewed. Not that I’m a member anymore. Perhaps it’s behind a member paywall. At any rate I’ve pulled the reviews that used to be there and put them here as back posts on pesbo, all listed in the link above.

(The only good web host in your own damn server. Internet archive can’t do it all.)

Self-reliant is best. (Unless of course you back up to DVD which you then promptly lose, as in the case of a decade of my photos.) Apparently Flickr now believes it not for permanent storage. (Must find the largesse around the Arg.) Must stop shaking fist at clouds.

My goal for the last few years has been to review 10% of the titles read. I did it last year, nearly did it the year before.

By now, that would be about 24 reviews for 2025. And I am at 12 reviews.

So can I go for broke and do 12 more in 2 months? (I could add to the count one line raves at AO3. Hardly equivalent.) To keep pacing under my own control, I could do the remainder here, rather than a magazine that may plan 6 months or a year ahead. Am I talking to myself? Very well, am talking with myself.

The point of reading, writing, reviewing, living is the exploration and engagement, the being present and attentive, not the numbers racked up. (Kind of sounds like a relationship instead of collecting followers online doesn’t it. )

I want to go deeper rather than bigger.

I have been doing my small press since 2007. (That means it’s an adult press as of November.) I have been doing a reader’s log since 2012. Next year will be 14 years.

It’s funny how there are no constants in this chaotic universe. Sure, spiders have 8 legs, except when they’ve lost 3 and continue on. Water freezes at 0 degrees, unless salty. I read Feel Happier in nine seconds: poems by Linda Besner (Coach House, 2017) and I couldn’t enter it. I return the better part of a decade later and it isn’t hard. I has a sort of Eunoia about it. Constraints cinched hard. Still a pointing.

I read To Assemble an Absence by John Levy (above/ground, 2024) and was utterly wowed. How hadn’t read this before? Except I had 18 months before and it was kinda meh then. I wonder if I should reread Guest Book for People in My Dreams by John Levy (Proper Tales Press, 2024) and it too might improve from very good.

I dropped the spreadsheet tracking number of poems written. It’s muddy, one poem becoming another. There’s no clearly defined way to count.

Part of poetry is wondering how far you can push or pull (or drag) the rope. ~~~~~ Ceci n’est pas une corde.

I hope this fall and this spring I’ll publish with phafours press again. Maybe in 2027 I’ll go to Montreal and Toronto book fairs, although with 1/62 people in Ontario having Covid still I’m not super eager to travel. Except in pages.

Each title averages 135 pages, as opposed to 118 pages last year. I’m running 52% of reading list being free, whether library, little free library, gift, free download, or review copy. In comparison 67% last year, probably skewed by scuba dive through fan fiction. About 10% BIPOC against 9% last year.

The ziplock of summer fruit is emptied.

I did 3 readings and an author’s day. I sent 2 submissions, and 3 of 4 reviews that I have on tap. I repaired a few book bindings, read a whack of things, located 2/3 mislaid books. I’m averaging a title read every 5 days, some 16 pages, some 400+. I found a new contest judge for next year for the haiku contest I coordinate for Haiku Canada. I’m talking with two poets who might let me publish a chapbook of their poems this fall and spring. Taking a page from Tanis I’m taking names and seeing if we can start a local silent book club. Humming along.

I’d put more poems here if it weren’t such a bother of manually making it back to single spacing.

Cathrine Walker has made a lovely review of We Astronauts with her really getting it. I’m fortunate in reviews, this being my second active listening feedback.

I write in fragments whose centre has not been found. Or isn’t needed.

I might do a couple day vacation next week.

Emily Austin is delightful and has a new novel coming out. I’m going all completist on her.

Gay Girl Prayers by Emily Austin (Brick, 2024) is fabulous. And now shortlisting for the Lampman Award as it should.

Maybe you have to be born into Christian fundamentalism and be out the other side to find this redemptive, funny, poems to salve your soul from the scarring and jump scare of hell and brimstone 

It may be my fav poetry book ever. (Or Seed Beetle: poems by Mahaila Smith.) Read each three times. At least it made me feel healed and happy & vindicated & I paused and laughed & had my mind delightfully tickled as I read it the first time entirely too fast.

Some play within particular verses but I think this book might be more accessible to anyone queer-leaning and feminist.