Robyn Sarah is Writer in residence at U of O for fall 2010.
watch me edit: introducing yourself is the latest post into Gillian’s editing process.
Interview with Nomados. Good to get more background. They have 30 titles out already. Huh.
Tiny books of 8 small pages from one sheet, and Favorite 500 words tiny books. [via the Serif]
“if you make one ironic gesture in a poem, people write the rest of the poem and book off as mere irony. Which is ridiculous, of course. And there are poets whose only tonal register is irony, and nothing is more boring, because nothing is risked.” ~ Matthew Rohrer
derek beaulieu now has a site as well as speechless
Been inspired by Ontario Petroglyphs? There’s a writing contest call for that…

I was glad to sell 5 chapbooks and give away 4 and go tradsies on one more.
Gerry, Brenda and Heather had some things to say about their feelings on the Sage Hill Experience. (Mine coming, maybe tomorrow.)
Publishing has been flipped on its head, said the Hidden Brook Press presentation on the future of publishing — the model is inverted. it used to be a publisher had a ready loyal audience and that is what a publisher brought to the equation but not it is the writer who builds the audience and sells that leverage of ears to the publisher as an asset.

Sweet Cuba: the building of a poetic tradition: 1608-1958 = forja de una tradición poética: 1608-1958 by Manuel de Jesús Velázquez and John B Lee (Hidden Brook Press, 2010) I only saw the shrink wrapped copy but seems like an intriguing project.
Literary Database of Quebec English-Language Authors

John Goodman has written an essay for AngelHouse Press on Obscurity in Poetry but it takes a fast-forward run thru the last millennium of writing. The 11 pages make for informative reading…
Here are some teaser snippets:

After the Norman invasion of England under William the Conqueror in 1066 and the
subsequent reigns of the Plantagenet Kings, French culture – and poetry – dominated English culture. The French introduced classical meters and end-rhymes into England. Old English poetry did not use end rhymes, but relied on fore-rhymes, since Old English was rich in words beginning with similar sounding syllables, arranged alliterative in four-beat lines.
[…]
Old English verse encouraged metaphorical or euphemistic language. For example, if ‘the sea’ didn’t alliterate with the other words in the line, a euphemism would be found, such as ‘the whale’s road,’ a technique called kenning. Similarly, a ship might be referred to as an ‘oar steed’ or a battle as a ‘storm of spears.’ While adopting French forms, the English bards retained this colourful and figurative language […]
Rather than dismissing non-narrative poetry because it is difficult to understand, a productive approach is to try and discern the writer’s underlying poetic and ask why a poet would want to write something abstruse in the first place. Language is what we use to communicate, so why would anyone intentionally write something incomprehensible?
The answer has a lot to do with the way our minds work. Our minds are constantly attempting to knit the world together and the tool the mind uses to structure reality is association. Our minds are associative engines continually binding our fragmented experiences together into a unified whole. Where there is no association between discrete events, the mind will supply one. […]
Dada […] sought to disrupt conditioned responses through the introduction of the random and unexpected. Surrealism followed soon after with the incorporation of images from the only place where we are free from our conditioning: the natural symbolic language of dreams. If our lives – and even our creativity – are directed by uncontrollable subconscious forces, why not give up the illusion of conscious control entirely and go straight to the source, the subconscious mind?
[…]
Each poetic is a self-contained schema. A poem created within that structure is meaningful within that frame – and it doesn’t have to be meaningful in other frames. The constraints of Romantic poetry don’t apply to Beat poetry. […]
There is no one poetic that characterizes all avant-garde poetry. Not all our innovative poets can be said to be attempting to write beyond their conditioning, or exploring the limits of language, or trying to reconstruct language to say things that cannot be said with conventional forms. Some experimental poets stay close to the surrealist tradition and relate bizarre tales in largely narrative, syntactical format. For others, the disruption and disorientation of the language is the message, expressing a sense of alienation by making us feel like strangers in our own culture – a dysfunctional world represented in dysfunctional language. Some intentionally blur the demarcations between the various elements of experience, overlapping inner and outer worlds. Some break their experiences down into basic components and reorder them in new ways. Others use random elements, text symbols rather than words, or invented languages to test the ability of language to convey meaning. Some use surprising juxtapositions of images in an attempt to bypass the critical mind and speak directly to the subconscious. And others provoke alternative perspectives on our shared reality through oblique, lateral, non-linear links rather than direct statement.

Do you set your poems to videos? Heather Haley has extended the call for submissions:

Due to popular demand and a fair bit of pleading, I’ve moved the deadline up. Please help spread the word/call for entries and send in your videopoem by Sept. 1, 2010.
See The Voice: VISIBLE VERSE 10th Anniversary Celebration & Festival
Call for Entries and Official Guidelines:
* Visible Verse seeks videopoems, with a 15 minutes maximum duration.
* Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or-subtitled version is required for consideration. Videos may originate in any part of the world.
* Works will be judged by their innovation, cohesion and literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
* Please, do not send documentaries as they are outside the featured genre.
* Videopoem producers should provide a brief bio, full name, and contact information in a cover letter. There is no official application form nor entry fee.
Send, at your own risk, videopoems and poetry films/preview copies (which cannot be returned) in DVD NTSC format to: VISIBLE VERSE c/o Pacific Cinémathèque, 200-1131 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2L7, Canada. Selected artists will be notified and receive a standard screening fee.
For more information, contact Heather Haley at: hshaley@emspace.com and, or check out our
FB group

Underway or on the way down the mental hatch:
sylvia legris, Nerve Squall (Coach House, 2007)
Paul Wilson, The Long Landscape (Coteau Books, 1999)
John B. Lee, Variations on Herb (Brick Books, 1993)
Gerald Hill, The Man from Saskachewan (Coteau Books, 2001)
John Lent, Cantilvered Songs (Thistledown Press, 2009)
Bernadette Wagner, this hot place (Thistledown Press, 2010)
John Barton, Hypothesis (Anansi, 2001)
Italian Women Poets, edited by Biancamaria Frabbotta (Guernica Editions, 2002)
Suzanne Buffam, The Irrationalist (Anansi, 2010)
Katherine Beeman, A Swamp and Forest Inlander Meets the Sea (Kasus Books, 2009)

Book and Briar Patch in Regina is changing into an office where you can make special order books only.
Aug 2nd, the bookstore closes. The shelves are emptying out. This is what’s left of the poetry section:

Everything is 80% off.

There are other odds and ends (emphasis on odds) like this kneehigh stuffed beaver for $100.
Gets one to think about the economic strains on Indie bookstores in Ottawa too.