So you say you’re a writer, so write. Write or Die is a tool for free writing, brainstorming, stream of consciousness, first draft, what have you. You set the time limit (whether 7 minutes or 2 hours) and the penalty (does the screen turn red or make a dogawful racket or start erasing what you have written) should you stop typing. There’s a free sample in the right sidebar or you can download the software for a nominal fee.
Getting the brain and fingers moving can make for a lot of nonsense to comb thru compared to a long sit and think for a single phrase, but if you go fast enough you can outrun your inner censor and come out with things you didn’t expect. I set it to 700 words in 15 minutes at kamikaze level because I’m masochistic I suppose. Still, interesting brain space to get a burst of thoughts down and see by the page what’s in your head or can be grabbed from ambient air and surfaces.

The Ottawater 7 launch was a full house on Friday. The annual pdf magazine clocks in at 80-odd pages this issue. (There are pics on Fb if you’re there.)
There were readings by a.m. kozak, Amanda Earl, Monique Desnoyers, rob mclennan, Pearl Pirie and Chuqiao (Teresa) Yang.

Chuqiao (Teresa) Yang reading at the launch of Ottawater 7 Jan 28. The Prairie lady has been Ottawa just over a year. She published recently in Grain, with upcoming works in filling Station and on CBC Saskatchewan.
Here’s an excerpt from one of her poems in the issue entitled (self)-portrait, p. 83

your daughter is a fenced line, is a sunset.
the police kicked your bundles away, said loitering was forbidden
I thought about flashing my passport, how it might work like a stop sign here.
how canadian of me.
the shoe polisher in the fashion district tells you here,
we make a living out of anything because we must.

Such a lovely cadence and enjoyable turns in her poems, of phrase and image.
If you’ve ever sat thru a reading you found painful, the series of poems by Rhonda Douglas, page 26-27 might delight you. Lovely mix of consternation, humbling, impatience and how does it end as it turns about? You have to read for yourself.
Peter Norman has some poems in the issue as well including “Manual for a Partial Machine”, p. 66. An excerpt of it to end on:

To start, press start.
(The button should be there
within a year, at most.)
Run your fingers through the absences.
Enjoy the perks and luxury
of promise.

payday evening comes crashing
from bars muffled shouts,
articulate cusses thickening up
my organ around the organs,
what pata-biology would call
a conjectured black matter of
memory, a sort of static storm
in the dark cling of the stomach’s
windbreaker. the pliable 1.5mm
permeable shell is a sheen
around the spleen, a high
frequency vibration, meta-cortices
of mental vortices of blame spasming.
its corset-yank is a tummy ache,
real and figurative gut, clenched.
nothing detectible to the left brain’s
diligent peephole. ether’s feather twists.
See all the One Single Impression responses to the prompt.

Geof Huth‘s NTST. What a laugh out loud delight at some of these minimalist poems, pwoermds. This collected has a best of from his last 25 years. p. 17

kmowlwdgw

That does a special mind trick of being so immediately readable. Maybe we’re so used to those changeable signs and how the 3 gets swapped in for so much that it doesn’t seem distinct as it once did.
p. 20

blo(ss)om

I love words embedded in other words. That he would have seen this pair and for them to nest so well is beautiful. Such attentiveness to the letter.
p. 34

shadowl

Love the portmanteau’s unity of making the boundaries between two indistinguishable. It even calls up a time of day in 7 characters for when owl and its shadow become merged.
p.40

unneceszxzsary
itemn

That is the way we should spell unnecessary henceforth, just to underscore the point.
Nardi Reeder Champion’s Mother Ann Lee, Morning Star of the Shakers (UPNE, 1990),
Aboard a ship in 1774 Ann and her followers crossed from the poorest mill-life of Manchester, England to the new life in New York. It was an exciting 3 months for both the devout who did daily worship much of the day and for the sailors who were alternately and simultaneously condemned and urged to join them. The captain threatened to put them all in leg irons or throw them all overboard. As he said so, story goes, a plank of his ship opened up and they started taking on more water than they could bail. (p. 46-47) Told the bad news,

Mother Ann said, Captain, be of good cheer. There shall not be a hair of our heads perish. We will all arrive safe in America. I just now saw two bright angels of God standing by the mast, through whom I received this promise.
She then encouraged the seaman, and she and her companions zealously assisted at the pumps. Shortly after this, a large wave struck the ship with great violence, and the loose plank was instantly closed to its place.
[…] Ann Lee did not rely on the promise of help from two bright angels; she manned the pumps as well. Linking hard work to devout worship was a vital aspect of Shaker belief. “Put your hands to work and your hearts to God.”

rob mclennan’s Kate Street (Moira Books, 2011) (unnumbered pages)

1. a short essay on intent
the black dog barking mute behind
the kitchen window
I stagger statement stain
the pounding sun
blood vessels pump & lift the line
tween index, thumb
I was well enough to get the water
from her blackened fridge
I have a package
I am an engineer

I have a weakness for ideas surrounding black dogs, literal or Churchill’s figurative one. There’s a lovely music of sounds that’s drawing it forward. Such a pleasure of sound. There are leaps that surprise and yet somehow hang near enough by that make a kind of right-brained sense like the compression in “I stagger statement stain” or the bounds among the last few lines. The lift connecting blood and the connection of pulse to page is a lovely and fresh way to tie the two ideas.
Edwin A. Abbott’s novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884)

The birth of a True Equilateral Triangle from Isosceles parents is the subject of rejoicing in our country for many furlongs around. After a strict examination conducted by the Sanitary and Social Board, the infant, if certified as Regular, is with solemn ceremonial admitted into the class of Equilaterals.

It goes on to say that the round class (the priesthood caste) favors such ascent to the higher class from isosceles. It prevents revolutions from fomenting to have the hopeless lower class getting one of theirs promoted now and then. It’s beautiful satire. So many lurvely lines and figures. Man was on the pulse of human psychology.
Also reading thru:
The Broadview Reader
Margaret Christakos’ Sooner
Susan Holbrook’s Joy Is So Exhausting (Coach House, 2009)
A.R. Ammons’ Selected
Camille Martin’s Sonnets (Shearsman, 2010)
rob mclennan’s 52 flowers
Currently Listening:
David O’Meara at the Atwater Library.
Sound poetry at EPC like Paul Dutton
John Cage on Silence. He says there in part (not quotes in order): nothing needs to be added to it. sound can be not talking about feelings and ideas and ideas of relationships. Sound isn’t talking, it’s acting. I’m satisfied. I don’t need sound to talk to me. Just sound is sufficient. I love sounds just as they are. I have no need for them to be more than they are. They don’t need to be psychological or to be president or to be in love with another sound. It can just be a sound. It doesn’t need to mean anything to give us deep pleasure.

I’ll be reading for a few minutes at this.
Date: Friday, January 28 · 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Location: The Carleton Tavern, upstairs
223 Armstrong (at Parkdale)
Ottawa, ON
doors 7pm, readings 7:30; with as many contributors as will fit in the building;
Ottawater: Ottawa’s annual pdf poetry journal published every January at ottawater.com (now live)
lovingly edited, published & hosted by rob mclennan,
lovingly designed by Tanya Sprowl, phivedesign.com
issue 7 is featuring new writing by:
Cameron Anstee, Michael Blouin, Jamie Bradley, Stephen Brockwell, Ronnie R. Brown, Faizal Deen, Monique Desnoyers, Rhonda Douglas, Amanda Earl, Laura Farina, Jesse Ferguson, Mark Frutkin, Katia Grubisic, Elisabeth Harvor, William Hawkins, a.m. kozak, Ben Ladouceur, Naomi K. Lewis, rob mclennan, Alcofribas Nasier II, Peter Norman, Roland Prevost, Monty Reid, Michael Eden Reynolds, Shane Rhodes and Chuqiao Yang,
as well as interviews with:
Ben Ladouceur, John Lavery, Marcus McCann, Pearl Pirie and Sandra Ridley.