rob mclennan will run more poetry workshops in Ottawa starting in just over a month. I’ve taken a few rounds of it and gained some orientation into what’s happening in poetry past the middle liberal lyrical center. It’s also a chance to encounter some like-minded fellow poets as some resources, and access some sharp editing eyes.
Next ones: Collected Works Bookstore (Wellington & Holland) on Wednesday nights 7 – 9 pm: September 22, 29; October 6, 13 & 27; November 3, 24 & December 1. ($200 for 8 sessions.)
More info.

Sept 16-19th, Blink Gallery (that little stone building in the north side of Major Hill’s Park across from the National Art Gallery) will be having a group show this September entitled Barely Their. The artists are Jean Jewer and Lynda Cronin. I’m collaborating with them to make a poem-sculpture.
The idea is to be a female contemporary response to the heavy geometric male columns of Tony Smith with a lightness of forms and put words back to the sculpture.
On the show’s opening night, Thurs., Sept 16th, 7 p.m. at the base of the column, I will do a short reading and the artists will give an introduction to the exhibit. (The show will be a column on which there is a 3-D poem.)
Saturday, Sept 18th, 2-3 p.m., there’ll be a reading at the base of the art group’s obelisk which is concrete plexiglass poetry of a poem. Join in.
For Barely Their the theme of the poems would circulate around the notions of
-unreliability of memory,
-shifts in self-identification,
-stages of life.
It could be a response to the site of the gallery itself where canal intersects river.
By August 28th, we’d need to have names of people who wish to read for the invitations/posters. Invites to attend out should go out in a couple weeks.

Clare Lacey considers

i think it’s important to investigate why native speakers of standard Englishes (and i include myself in this category) get so emotionally invested in spelling: why are we angry about people who use chatspeak, haughty when an error appears in a professional publication

A reaction to lack of constancy in lives and society all poured at poor little language who just wants to flex? An in-group, out-group pecking order thing? A desire for one Queen’s English, except whatever is local winning? Some desire to throw pixie dust and fix time and let language never change again, yet never stagnate?
Towards the other direction Rob Mackon Perloff on Khlebnikov,

Even words which had no objective etymological connection were connected by Khlebnikov if they shared syllabic sounds. Words had content not on the basis of meaning but on how they looked and, above all, how they sounded. He made up words and related them to other real words on the basis of sound, and also made nouns verbs, adjectives adverbs etc. What a word represented in the real world didn’t matter, simply its place in the “language field” i.e. Khlebnikov’s system of connections.

And Marjorie Greyson’s take on Sage Hill.
Much to think about in poetry, always.

At the last Tree, (perspective: seated about halfway back.) Between 40 and 4 dozen came.
The tribute to the poet of the past was done by Mike Montreille on R.G. Everson of Huntsville, then Montreal Quebec. He was a founding member of the League of Canadian Poets.
The collective mind seemed turned Eastwards by chance. Jeff Blackman sang a Cape Breton ghazal. Sean Dowd had a rowing poem but bought his sachel across the road from the Cape Breton field of scarecrows that Murray Citron’s poem talked about.
The Hot Ottawa voices you can sort of experience a part of: Gillian Wallace read poems from her blog as well as some newer and older, published and not.
To sample the newest of Cameron Anstee, you can get some the chapbook version in the above/ground chapbook Frank St.or from the Emergency Response Unit chapbook, Water Upsets Stone.
Christine McNair also has a chapbook (contact her for that) and a call for another.
Call for Cartwheels: an artist chapbook. Submissions due before November. A samplette from her poem Cartwheel 8 “I write a word to stop a truck”.
To read a pages not quite the same as being there, but it’s also good.
It’s a well-read town. People who are new are still a few serious years into craft and exploring their bliss.

Canadians readers have probably already seen that the longlist is out but for those who haven’t, the Relit Award for fiction and poetry.

Claudia did her first workshop of 4 at Tree last night. About 8 people came to this one with a focus on metaphor, with some exercises and example poems (Pablo Neruda, Paul Tyler, Lorna Crozier, Susanne Buffam, Mark Doty and herself) and an essay by Mark Doty.
Any talk on metaphor seems more of a trip-thru than walk-thru since the comparison seems hard for people to get explicitly, even tho people do it as a matter of course. English does the word and thought structure everywhere. Maybe because the definition shape (noun is other noun) is so ubiquitous that we forget it isn’t true definition or equivalent? It seems a nature of being, the comparison invisible? Or people are looking for something more complex?
It was a nice mix of poetic principles and of practice. She had us do, as a group and individually, a brain storm for each word on each side of the “is”.
As a group the collaboration we did was “Death is a sofa”.
What are the associations with death? People volunteered words in brainstorming (black crepe, funerals, little deaths, shiva a mourning period, Shiva the destroyer, sadness, grief, release, etc.) She encouraged to think in the round of all kinds of associations rather than pursue one channel then asked, What are the associations with sofa? (cat hair, basement, crumbs in cracks, slouch, squeak, spring, back, arms, doilies, plastic cover, sex, antimacassars)
She led each turn. She solicited and scaffolded how one would weave the two concepts and edit and look for a good ending point to build a structure. A person contributed a line. She suggested a direction to go to extend the metaphor in another direction. People came up with one more description of a sofa that linked the ideas in a sort of braiding without dropping either. What’s something that is more positive? What about functions? What does a sofa do? How does a sofa support you? How does it feel? What does it sound like? and other question to see what people would bring forward. The first draft group result:

death is the sudden give of a sofa.
its leather creak embraces you.
it doesn’t care about the lace on its arms,
or the coin offerings in its folds,
or its broken spring against your back.
it will be put out on the curb on garbage day.

Rather than leaping from subject to subject, it is more radial, in a way. There’s expansion and contrast but within a smaller frame of reference. As Mark Doty said, study, examine describe and it will naturally “yield depth and meaning that lead me to insight”. You lead with the object rather than drag the object around to what you want to talk about. It becomes the oracle and implicit of psychic state without explicit unpacking of what you mean. It can be quite elegant and economical of words.
Making other word pairs of things that don’t naturally go together (thunder is matching luggage, money is a confession, a candidate is an argument, my soul is a polished stone, a tatoo is a rubber duckie, chef boy-r-dee is a tazer) and use the same method she encouraged us to keep using the method to brainstorm another set and to also extend the death is a sofa idea.
The next workshop is floor 2A of the Arts Court on Daly at 6:45 on August 24th.
I’ll have to return later get back to the rest of the evening…