All the seats were full at the Factory Series. Monty Reid was MC of the Ottawater Issue 4 launch. (On third photo my camera battery light started flashing. bah.)
Ottawater’s an annual magazine, a free pdf. This issue has art by various people, over 30 poets (I’m in there on page 80), interviews (Nicholas Lea, Anne Le Dressay, David O’Meara) and book reviews (Muybridge’s Horse, and John Newlove’s A Long Continual Argument).
The reading moved along quickly with readers introduced two at a time. Each person read about 3 poems, some from issue, some new or old from elsewhere. Some people I have known and appreciated the work of, some were new to me. It overall made for a nice mix of familiar and not.
Each poet had a distinct coloring of mood, intensity, pace, style and humor so it was was a varied buffet of ideas. It is always interesting to hear work read that you’ve seen on the page and the cadence and body language that surrounds the words. There were 8 readers: Rhonda Douglas, Anne Le Dressay, Chris Jennings, John Lavery, Marcus McCann, Christian McPherson, Sandra Ridley, and Peter Richardson.
Peter Richardson and Chris Jennings were new-to-me-voices in this issue. Richardson’s Sympathy for the Couriers just released a couple months ago, his third book.
Evidently Jennings has read a lot, given his dexterity at setting up a poem and making an audience anticipate and laugh. John Lavery too has that sense of comic play with expectation and pullback. You can see that for yourself in Quickeye (p. 32) in the issue. I heard read him read as part of Max Middle Sound Project in June and in the AB Series last week. I’ve heard his sound poetry, his lyrical music, his poetic short stories, but hadn’t encountered his poetry before. Equally pleasing sort of fare, that with a touch of irritation as comedy.
Likewise for Christian McPherson. I’d seen his art, come across his short stories but this was first exposure to his poetry. Unless my memory fails me he read from poems not in issue. His were more in touch with embracing the dark side of imagery.
I can’t disclose what Rhonda Douglas read since it’s a shush-secret from her engineer-love. 😉 (Although you can peek to p. 17).
It was good to get the issue and get another “dose” of Anne Le Dressay’s gentle vision of the world. I waited a long time between her first book and her Old Winter, coming a few month ago. There’s a long view in her words, simply phrased, quiet, but looking for gold glimmer. Sandra Ridley has a slow unfolding reveal of what has a holy quality of the everyday. It appeals to me in a similar way to Le Dressay’s. Perhaps it’s the underlying quality of poems that content with the surface and denial of deeper, and the finding the deeper that appeals.
Sandra Ridley and Marcus McCann closed out the night. Marcus McCann read a series of poems that speculated what friends did on New Year’s Eve, although narrative deliberately scramble-filtered thru sound and word play.
The crowd seemed to enter and exit on a contented buzz with good applause and appreciation in between.
Blog Links: In other words, Amanda described her take on the launch. John did a post and round-up from issue 3 last year.
Quote: “We could all stop writing poetry right now and there’s going to be enough to read. So in the end, you have to do it for yourself.” – David O’Meara

I finished updating my writing stats from last year. Good to get that out of the way. It makes me revisit the question of: What does it mean when someone says they composed a poem?

When someone says they haven’t written a poem in months, is that literal? How high is the critical bar in defining poem?
– sent a piece thru draft 40 into something complete?
– put fragments into something cohesive?
– sat down with intent to write and tapped something into a computer?
– wrote and come away with something that pleased enough to show someone else?
– caved in the resistance against the head drumming and let words have their way to draft something that is or could be something?
– composed something magic that merits the word poem (or form word of haiku or sonnet or whatnot)? (unlike the dozens of failed attempts which they aren’t mentioning?)

When not currently writing a poem, what fills the gaps between actions or instrumental language? Collecting fodder, of course. If nothing is happened and nothing is better understood, hopefully nothing is written unless the process iself is to uncover something useful.

Why are poems the useful angle of forms? I have to see ideas visually to physically manipulate them to really understand what I’m thinking. It’s a by-product of how my brain words. I tend to write copiously online and off, paper and screen, because that’s how I process best, verbally, visually. The more I say the clearer my headspace seems to get.

There have been a couple dozen goose egg months over the past 15 years of anything I’d rubber stamp as complete and about as many months over the last 20 years with none scratched down.

That isn’t to say each poem counts as a good poem, but everything counts as a measure of being in the process.

Maybe other people can compose and perceive and process without formalizing into words, distill inside their heads, come to comparable oblique understandings enacting with their bodies, or in stories, written or oral, or use their creative energies to hold beauty or fight the existential questions or observe and know what they have seen. When I write prose it doesn’t usually impact how much poetry I write. Generally if I am communicating outwards, every form causes momentum on every form.

My bar may be low. Some poems I don’t transcribe or count. Fragments I don’t count. It’s an intuitive, or maybe arbitrary measure.

Where’s my line in saying it is done is more of problem to determine. Some things are just communication to self that may have line breaks like a poem but fail in poetic terms. That’s fine. It’s a wonky factory with worms* pulled back to the line to be recanned into new recipes.

No earthworms were harmed in the making of this poor metaphor.

Spaces are part of the alphabet, or the phonetics, of a poem. Gaps emphasize what remains and spaces count out the beats just as spaces in music continue and sounds starts back on the same measure.

Further understanding of this comes via an article by Deloss Brown for theatre on scansion on when Shakespeare wrote in a pause. [It comes via Jilly.]

The verses demonstrates how short lines indicate silent time for the number of beats until iambic begins audibly again. One doesn’t have to just visually space the ideas to flag pause and pick up the sound units after the physical gap to make sure all beats register in phonemes.

And will as tenderly be led by th’ nose
As asses are.
I have it! It is engendered! Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

“As asses are” jumps out because of all the white space following its two feet. […] Iago’s wheels are spinning. At the end of the pause, he cries out, “I have it!” He has figured out how he’s going to betray and ruin Othello (Act 1, Scene 3, Lines 395-398)

Ahhh, book lust attack! I need a job for about half a day, cash, at least, now. My wish list priorities got instantly reshuffled – Li-Young Lee has released his new poetry book and it comes with an audio CD. I love his voice. Behind my Eyes. New and in review words, “transcendent poems” among the newest work as well. Mmm.
God, my wish list at Amazon is 74 items long now. Need to focus on what I’m in the middle of
Currently reading: Typographic Systems of Design, Evie Christie’s Gutted, TransCanada Rail Guide from Trailblazer and finishing up but need another by him now to tide me over, Completed field notes: the long poems of Robert Kroetsch.
But my brain’s been full for days. I keep trying to stuff more stuff in. This appetite thing is ridiculous.

Ariel Gorden reads her poem Fall Back to the background video of a walk thru an autumn woods. A snippet of fall-warm forest and her words feel good around now.