I was happy to do the design on Monty Reid‘s Garden: November Unit (Sidereal Press, 2013). It’s an edition of 100 which you can get from him. Here’s one of the dozen poems in there:
1. November
Presence is the ghost of snow.
The dog of frost chews its bone.
On an old black walnut stump in the corner of the garden
a pumpkin waits wit its carved-up face
and its one sweet tooth.
It spent one night on fire
and is now abandoned by the light.
But even on the first day of November, with no one to see
it’s still laughing.
His poems have that characteristic cadence, unfolding in plain speech and good-natured humour mixed with a suggestion of the transcendent. They’re unrushed but going somewhere but not where you might expect. There’s a cosmic and comic reach, grounded in the real, words placed carefully, succinctly and yet reach past the quotidian.
Each piece of the poems meditating on the garden has been spread for a few years among Reid’s chapbooks out various small presses. Corrupt Press has December, Red Ceilings Press has January, Grey Borders Books has February Obvious epiphanies press has July, above/ground has September.
He has a few projects on the go, beyond being Managing Editor of Arc Poetry Magazine. He plays guitar and mandolin in the band Call Me Katie. And as for writing, there’s his intelligence operations sequence, his parasite poems, and other (perhaps stand alones) like Site Conditions (Apt. 9, and sold out) and moan coach (above/ground).
I aim to own all his books. I think I’m only missing The dream of snowy owls and Dog Sleeps.
Here’s a video clip of him reading from Luskville Reductions.
