“Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets.
Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance.”
– Charles Bernstein in Harpers (the whole is amusing as anything I’ve read lately.)

I’m a couple weeks behind the curve but this year’s Lampman Scott Award finalists are announced:
Nadine McInnis for Two Hemispheres (Brick Books) about a woman’s insane asylum inmates who read at the Decalogue launch.
Michael Blouin for I’m not going to lie to you (Pedlar Press) which were part of his Factory series reading [He will release his new novel Oct 16. – deets]
and Shane Rhodes for The Bindery (NeWest Press) who by some means I’ve missed hearing read anywhere anytime. It’s his third book from NeWest.
And a few more days left to participate in the Reader’s Choice Awards for Arc.
My short-list in the blind-judging is
p. 5 Plant Food
p. 7 A Model Close at Hand
p. 15 Chopping Wood on Ivan’s Farm
p. 16 Unspooling
p. 28 This Old Home
p. 40 Stroke
p. 42 To See You Like This
p. 50 Since You Died the Days are Broken and Meant for Stereotypes
p. 55 Oyster
But have to pick 3. (What stories resonate that do we need and why?) Earl J Wilcox at Poetry Superhighway has a story…Close Shave.
Other (unrelated) news, Douglas Lochhead who was appointed life-time Poet Laureate of Sackville, NB, 2003, reads excerpts from Love on the Marsh his newest, 30th book, a long poem. It’s published by Sybertooth, est. 1996, managed by Chris Paul.
And really unrelated hyponymy, what a lovely thesaurusie concept.

Evidence: The Ottawa City Project is the exhibit of objects, images and art runs at the Ottawa Art Gallery from September 5 to November 16, 2008. The art covers the underside of Ottawa, not the federal capital of grand buildings and tours for tourists, but what is less ideal but salvaged into perhaps beauty – the burned out or boarded up buildings on the contemporary streetscape. There’s trashed cultural byproducts (cereal boxes) remade into a canoe and then photographed with the Ottawa icons of Native sculpture. The same idea(l) of Native is set against romance novel covers (or immitation of). The exhibit tries to captures the ephemera of what’s discarded or looked away from, like mattress fabrics remade into quilted art (pictured below), gritty black and white images of local homeless people, larger than life images of trash on plexiboard.

September 25th there was an associated reading by rob mclennan reading from (turn on sound) Ottawa City Project, the book. His view of the city, although also dealing in the specificness of local, seems considerably less stark and grounded wider and deeper in history but also the bits that are at risk of getting lost or are lost, such as lectures from a century ago and memories of buildings that have been since razed.

What do we carry forward with? What past and past lives are under the surface? What little details comprise a place? p. 43

the arts court building, ceilings
filled w/ horse hair,
peter honeywell
the days he pulled at it

p. 39 there’s

an acoustic of geography, cultural
argument
in winterlude
or bands
in confederation park

Do we have to have the embedded knowledge or the experience of the shape of surrounding trees and buildings and knowledge of typical amping or to know that it is a music festival or can we extend better from the specifics than we could from a bland elaborated sweep of explanation?

There are universals such as in by-ward market, p 59

late remains
of any day, the place where language reflects
in the shape of a coin

english& french; french & english; a binary that ignores
the expansiveness of so much more

Past a century on, the constancy of flames yet p. 134

lesson of the fire, lebreton flats,
april 27, 1900

nothing lasts; everything
connects

bridges gap & fire house
made of wood

water is no barrier

Ottawa has shifted and continually changes. In address to the city of ottawa, 1857, p. 131 Queen Victoria had just renamed the place from Bytown to Ottawa and given the new function of capital,

victoria queen laid her hand upon

listen to what the land tells,
ghost of a scattershot; listen
to the earth

while it is still earth, muddy
on your boots

He also read (to a gallery-silent but few dozen large audience) from a special chapbook for the occasion Ottawa: A Field Guide and other texts coming out of life in the city and nearby, including a series of 7 poems for daughter Kate, house: a (tiny) memoir, a manuscript in process (including one which revisits the buddhist notion of never stepping into the same stream twice, with the side remark addition, but my sock and shoe are still wet, and in another piece, how a pregnant pause miscarries) and poems from a PF Yacht Club and a couple older collections as well.

Rosemary’s structure.

Daily Bread

I am bruised flesh of words, a coat around sensation’s spine.
I wonder at the crows that drop, wings closed as long as they dare.
I hear my own words proceed, a tin foil on fillings as I speak.
I see person in mind’s eye refreshed in new kind of flash.
I want to dive into the font divine of text sublime.

I am bruised flesh of words, a coat around sensation’s spine.
I pretend interest and averted eye is something other than fear.
I feel the black depth of throat threaten to cramp closed.
I touch a cloth, a cloak, a quote and come back out to skin.
I worry a stone, a word, a hymn to god long left behind.
I cry thanks to the plant whose leaves I pluck for my use.

I am bruised flesh of words, a coat around sensation’s spine.
I understand through thick mitts of perception, can’t lift –
I say I am free but the seagull’s gravity is its own, distinct, swift.
I dream myself into new beings, weaning from old dark communion.
I try to dissuade myself that the tongue in my cheek is unstitched.
I hope to slip it, slip on it, slick as herring down gullet, eat myself.
I am bruised flesh of words, a coat around sensation’s spine.

—

Well hello Funk. Back again are we?

Here’s your hat, what’s your —
hurry up — you might miss something
well worth complaining over. Scoot now.

The Funk’s bunk, like a curmudgeon
who used to grate, be obeyed, fretted over
now indulged as color, a kettle-headed child,
bang the pot to patronize a parody of its
sad-sock self. Feel free to mock, get bored
with its dramatic huffs the dry old fuss

you can shrug off when you remember
you don’t have to listen to this guff,
its fatiguing natter is a native comedy.

See more by those who join in at One Single Impression