Mansfield Press has it’s Ottawa launch Monday, December 3, 7 pm at Raw Sugar Café, 692 Somerset (near Bronson and the the Chinatown Arch)
Readings by:
– Sarah Dearing, from her mesmerizing third and long-awaited novel, The Art of Sufficient Conclusions
– Paula Eisenstein, from her strange and wonderful debut novel, Flip Turn
– Jason Heroux, from his third, ant-filled, dreamy poetry collection, Natural Capital
– Jim Smith, from his … I’m not sure how many books he’s published … new and audacious poetry collection, Happy Birthday, Nicanor Parra
Hosted by Mansfield Press editor Stuart Ross

We may even do a Q&A; we’ll see how it goes. The Toronto launch was just amazing: this is a great quartet of writers/readers!
The authors’ books will be for sale, as will a lovely selection of Mansfield’s recent backlist.
Mansfield is so happy to be coming back to Ottawa (and I sure am personally!).

And if you can’t get to Ottawa, there’s December 4 at the Grad Club in Kingston. 7 pm and also free!

You did know that Collected Works has a Friday night open mic, didn’t you?

Friday, December 14
Open Mic at Collected Works – 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
So far in our relaunched Open Mic series we’ve had the world premiere first concert of a local folk band, the return of the Guitar Gods, an amazing fifteen-year-old girl’s first live performance (that wowed EVERYBODY) some interesting political poetry, some stand up comedy and something that sounded like a barn yard after hours that I am assured were bag pipes and therefore, a legitimate form of artistic expression. We also had a visit from a guy who sounded more then a little bit like Elvis. Lord only knows what’s going to happen this week.

They have a whack of other readings happening most days of the month, see? Even Corey Redekop of Gooselane with his Zombie thingee tonight.

Because I count, I counted the Schrödinger’s Poet Readings where people step forward and say, if you don’t know about this poet, you should and gives a 5-10 minute spiel on the life, times and works of a poet.
What is up is not a statistically significant size of sample to not have coincidental errors. And not all got recorded. But, there’s an odd disproportionality that intrigues me to speculate what could cause a pattern if there is one. Presuming each gender presentation as identity of featuring and featured poet,
Of the 38 on record,
males read males: 20
females read females: 9
females read males: 7
males read females: 2
What might account for this? Resonance? Are we collectively taking as heroes same-sex literary models because of there is some nature to gender and voice that causes resonance? Is that evidence for gender of subjects or dialect existing?
Or can it be attributed to the weight of history led to knowing more males than females that skewed?
Or unconsciously one gender noticing the pattern unconsciously and playing by team and against team?
Or might it be a sort of a variation of the law of advertizing that males want to look at females and females want to look at females; in literature males want to read males and so do females?
Not everyone, not absolutely, but as a greater than statistical chance tendency.
There’s never one reason, and is particular reasons, such as timeliness of anniversary of a birth or death.
Get enough data and obvious patterns fall apart but more complex patterns rise.
I’ll have to keep watching for the next 30 years and see what the next 690 data points do.

Phil Hall and Rachel Simpson were launching their new Apt 9 chapbooks Nov 24th at Raw Sugar.

Claudia Coutu Radmore also launched her last Apt 9 chapbook, Accidentals, which won the bpNichol Award. Cameron has put together 1100 items of fine literature to date with his press, each chapbook handsewn with love and grace.
If you missed the Apt. 9 launch, you missed the season’s books because the two new titles sold out the last copies at the launch. But, thanks to the recording wizardry of Cameron and crew, you can hear the readings here.

Also in November, there were pre-launch readings at Tree. Daphne Marlatt read some of her already published wonderfulness but also sneak peaks at her new spring 2013 Talon book, Liquidities, Vancouver Poems Then and Now and the process of writing it from the 1970s version of the poems. She’s in her 3 city tour ending in Toronto. David O’Meara was reading excerpts from his future collection of 2014 from Brick.

There was a quite a line-up for autographs after. (More were waiting to the side chatting while the line shortened.) The night also had open mic including Guy Simser, including a poem of entering a church wherein he wrote, “I am undressed by liturgical harmonies”

Vivian Vivassis read a new poem at open mic. Louise Carson read from her collection, Rope. You can see the open mic with Tree videos, for those who didn’t opt out.

Rod Pederson is stepping down after 3 years as sole artistic director. Margaret Zelinski is one of the new artistic directors.

Deanna Young will be one of the Artistic Directors. Carol Stephen will be the new treasurer and the third artistic director.

Likewise, after the pre-fair reading, Michael Lithgow (left) reading from Waking in the Tree House at the Carleton Tavern above/ground reading Nov 16, 2012 sold out all his copies but the stores and press have more. A quote? “I liked that we could reach back past ourselves with gestures more subtle and ridiculous than we were.” Christian McPherson was reading from Cube Squared (This sequel will be coming from Nightwood 2013-14).

David Blaikie won the Tree Reading Series chapbook contest in 2011 for his entry, Farewell to Coney Island, which appeared with Tree Press in 2012. He read from new work, including this tidbit: “a parade of all we are and all we aren’t at any given moment”. Rachael Simpson’s chapbook Eiderdown (Apt 9 Press) appeared and disappeared in Fall 2012. A fragment? “Preservation is disruption”.

There was all kinds of good and goods to be had this round with local and regional writers or publishers and a few out-of-towners. Every year there’s a switch over of it seems about 1/3 of faces behind tables. The next one is towards the end of June 2013. But this year first…

Lydia Peever of Night Face a vampire fiction in second edition (as well as typicalcallydia, ottawa horror and HoraMorior) shared a table with Heather E Thomson with her chapbook Memoirs of a Bookshop Girl.
I missed making it over to some tables. It’s always complex when also manning a table. 8th House Publishing was there with a couple books. Sylvia Stojek Martin brought ebooks on CD and used books and vintage comics. room 302 was there with some older stock. Grunge Papers I just forgot to take a photo of. Sonia Saikaley was back but already featured her picture at the June small press fair. Some, like chrysalis zine and BuschekBooks I mentioned in the previous post.

Some people i pictured on the flyby like with Christina Maxwell with her Journeying Home and her fair neighbour the fortune teller who seemed to keep up a fairly regular stream of people.
Funny how some years have absolute dead times and crazy peaks but this time once it was 1 o’clock it seemed pretty steady all afternoon, even with people arriving near closing.

I don’t seem to have taken many pictures of the passing crowd this year. Some are stopped here at Ferno House, in from Toronto with his anthologies and chapbooks.

Patricia McCarthy with her Crimson Vampire series, part 5, all with an Ottawa setting. There tends to be a range of offerings at the fair from novels to paper art to Christian S Aluas with his Masterpiece Art School info and some images for sale.

Dwight Williams was also there with Words, Art, Comics, Portraiture and in other artistic flair, Jenn was there with Apt. 9‘s broadside and chapbooks. Pictured is Bardia Sinaee’s broadside. Hear an interview of Cameron and the other Apt. 9 folks here.
There was some cyberpunk at SkyRock Forest Arts Inc. Sun Falls Press had some graphic comics too.

The freebie table was loaded this year with issues of This, Broken Pencil, other magazines and books. Some are from people who couldn’t come and some are from people with tables.

Christine was making bows over the afternoon that went around the room, their strings swinging from books stacks people were buying. Conflict from Christine McNair is to the left. Sandra Ridley and Christine are reading in Perth this Saturday at the first edition reading series.

Even tiny zombies like to read, see? At the “Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies” table, I missed the caution tape in this shot.

Secret Selves won the bronze at the Independant Publisher Award for 2012. It’s a story of how the mental health lives of two children changed the mother. Her blog challenges the idea of choice when it comes to transgender and gay.
Jamie Johnson was also at the ottawa small press fair with her book and Hidden Lives: coming out on mental illness, an anthology (Brindle and Glass) of personal essays and the novel Jellicle Girl by Stevie Mikayne.

Here I am, with my traditional jar of pickles.
It was sort of a middling year for sales for me but my new were mostly $1 items and Where There’s Fire for $12. I made about $80 over the afternoon which, since it was just me would work out to minimum wage, assuming no inventory costs. To not haemorrhage money, it would have to be good sales to cover travel costs to another town, but then, part of it is not bottom line. Part of the benefit is seeing what’s new with other publishers, a chance to chat and catch up.

Wish I’d asked for a photo op since the two at this booth had matching t-shirts of “I write comics”. Here Nathan Bowler is putting up some of his Superanndom Comics.

The Ottawa Press Gang had a table with pretty items from various letterpress members like Greyweathers.

There are usually one or three booths of kids books too. This year: The Booger Ball book by Thomas Jardine and Josée Lindsay’s Superspark.

rob was there with with some he was the publisher of via above/ground or Chaudiere Books and his newest out “songs for little sleep,” from obvious epiphanies and Arc Magazine.

Twigs & Leaves and their press Broken Rules came in from Ste. Anne de Bellevue. (I’m in their CD of season 4’s chapbook/CD combo.)

Bywords had their Mecca of info and the pretty chapbooks that they make.

Last but not least, AngelHouse and Amanda Earl made poems.