Jeff Blackman has been around the lit scene for a good while, adding his good energy to it. He published Unit in 2016 with phafours press. That was after his impressive So Long as the People Are People (Apt 9 Press, 2013). Back in 2014 he was a feature at my salon series. Back in that decade-thereabouts-ago, he published a poem of mine while he edited Moose & Pussy (It was a spin-off of In/Words magazine that I still hope will be resurrected by CU students). In short he remains a poet to be followed.

PP: What’s life’s focus these days, literary or otherwise?

JB: I’m in the middle of extended parental leave with my 2nd child (pictured), but still have a couple creative projects on the go. I’m still publishing my bi-monthly zine, These Days. I just put out the 17th issue in July; it was all about the end of the world.

PP: Amazing. 17 issues already!

JB: Also in July…

I launched the 2-for-1 Poetry Open Mic with my dear friend Bardia Sinaee. All are welcome to perform one poem they love and one they wrote. It happens the last Thursday of the month at the Happy Goat (35 Laurel), Ottawa.

We set out to do this in order to reconnect and grow the community after the last few years, and our first night exceeded our wildest expectations. We had 27 poets come out, and we cannot wait until we’re back on Thursday August 25. Follow @241openmic on Twitter or Instagram for updates.

PP: Where can people read more work of yours?

JB: You Just Proved Poems Work is my latest collection on family and home. It was edited by my lifelong collaborator Justin Million. I was lucky to have chances to tour it both in-person and virtually. You can watch my performance for the Tree Reading Series  complete with voiceover and greenscreen effects engineered in my cellar.

PP: Any links to drop?

JB: Subscribe to These Days via Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/thesedays)

PP: Super, thanks for those leads, Jeff. And for bringing such good energy into the community.

rob mclennan is reading this weekend at a pop-up poetry book launch: Stephen Brockwell + rob mclennan with their 2022 titles. When? Where? Saturday, August 20, 2022 at Das Lokal, 190 Dalhousie Street, Ottawa from 2-4pm, in the (patio) tent.

As a rob-fan he agreed to have had a flutter book with phafours in 2014, Acceptance Speech.

It is often on the tongues of Canadian poets, “everyone knows rob” but he’s constantly refining himself, his writing and his listening. He does get around, tiredly and tirelessly. He encourages new writers and established ones to keep going. He is a connector, reviewer, editor and publisher of poetry that isn’t mainstream narrative.

rob is a major promoter of Canadian and, increasingly, American poets. He shares the works of others through his various publishing arms, (above/ground, Touch the Donkey, and Periodicities). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. His own poetry, fiction and non-fiction has been published for decades and tops 30 titles. Who better to ask…

PP: What have you read lately that lit you up?

rm: I really enjoyed Johannes Göransson’s latest, SUMMER (Grafton VT: Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2022). There’s something in his diaristic meditations I find envious, and part of me is curious to attempt an echo on the form. There’s also something very ‘a poem as long as a life’ in the work I’ve seen of his, which makes me curious to start searching out some of his earlier collections. 

I’m also really enjoying the new issue of FENCE magazine (Vol. 21 #2: win-spr 2022), which easily ties with The Capilano Review for the journal I find most consistently exciting and engaging.

Stephen Brockwell’s latest, Immune To The Sacred, is an intriguing evolution in his writing; he moves into some very interesting places.

And have you seen the prose poems of Conyer Clayton’s But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves. (Vancouver BC: Anvil Press, 2022)?

PP: A lot of leads there. Take note, folks. What’s your life’s focus these days, literary or otherwise?

rm: I spent much of July re-entering the novel manuscript, set aside since November or so, as I worked on poems, until I had to return to reviews again, where I am currently (my list of titles-in-progress include poetry books by Polina Barskova, Krisjana Gunnars, CJ Evans, Gary Barwin, Nicole Brossard, Laynie Browne, Su Cho, Joshua Bennett, Billy Mavreas, Janice Lee, etcetera).

PP: mentally notes: Nicole Brossard and Billy Mavreas have something new?

rm: Our young ladies had various day-camps throughout July and into August, which allowed me a different kind of attention, so I was attempting to take advantage of that, for the novel. I’m hoping I can spend the rest of August pushing a few weeks ahead of reviews on the blog (and periodicities) to be able to return again to fiction come September, once our young ladies return to in-person schooling (something we haven’t engaged with since March 2020).

I’m also working on a handful of further festschrifts through above/ground press, as well as a variety of other projects in that direction, including a third ‘best of’ anthology to cover the press’ third decade, scheduled for release next fall with Invisible Publishing.

PP: Ooh, you heard it here first, folks, probably.

rm: Otherwise, I’m currently spending weekdays with our young ladies at their outdoor swim lessons, sitting a daily hour poolside with notebook, books and pen at Riverside’s RA Centre, a building I hadn’t actually been in or near before, despite years of driving by. Not long before my widower father died in 2020, I discovered my parents actually held their wedding reception there, so it’s a curious space for me to engage with. A very retro-vibe. Very calming, even despite the array of greenery leans up into the back windows of a government building. Perhaps today I might wave up at them.

PP: That’s a sweet discovery. Funny how places can be memory nodes, not only from direct experience but knowing family was there. Recently I went through Gatineau and passed the point in the river that my ancestors would have boated past to get from Montreal to Shawville and it gave a frisson of connection.

What else literary might be underway or forthcoming? Anything you can tell?

rm: As I said, I’m working a novel, originally begun during that first summer of pandemic-era. I would like to complete it, in part, so I can consider returning to the “Don Quixote” novel I began on New Year’s Eve, 2007, or the book-length essay I’ve been making notes on.

I’ve long been engaged with The Bagley Wright Lecture Series titles produced by Wave Books, especially Joshua Beckman’s THREE TALKS (2018), so would really like to be able to focus my attention on exploring some of the sketched-out thoughts I’ve had on literary citizenship and how poems get shaped.

Otherwise, my suite of pandemic-era essays, essays in the face of uncertainties, is scheduled to appear this fall at some point with Mansfield Press. Composed across those first three months of initial Covid-19 lockdown, I decided that if I was distracted away from work due to the crisis, why not make the crisis my work?

PP: Neat. Something else to watch for. What work can people read right now? Any author site, social media urls or things you’d like to plug?

Well, there’s the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022), obviously:

Some recent-ish poems for National Poetry Month, and at the blog, at Courtgreen, Talking About Strawberries All of the Time, and Columba Poetry. Also a recent short story at Airgonaut, The Snows of Mount Yamuska

Otherwise, this is the author site.

PP: Super. Interesting as always to talk with you.

Carole Daoust has studied the language of bodies via contemporary dance. Now, with or without camera or pencil, she enjoys observing gestures: the everyday movements of insects, birds, the sacred geometry of dandelions, and people here and everywhere. She writes haiku in French and in English.

The book: One less raindrop on the peony by Carole Daoust (Shoreline, Yarrow, 2022)

About the Book/ Review/Sample:

“full of treasures” “subtlety and power of brevity“ 

moonlit
the empty
sunchair

How can a few well-picked words say so much? Left to the imagination is who had occupied the chair that day, or who will tomorrow, and the soft veil cast by the moon that silvers the chair.  

I love side by side/sparrows hang out/on the clothesline. …you may find yourself saying aloud, every once in a while, just for the pleasure of it, ‘side by side, sparrows hang out…’ 

oh, well, if it’s not/lucilia sericata/at the milkweed, with its casual throw-away of ‘oh well’ is lovely and refreshing. Two little words with commas act as a half-second time lapse, enough time to make you want to check who is actually at the weed. I am lured by the soft sound of the Latin words, even without knowing what they mean. Then there’s that last line: at first you think it will be the milkweed’s usual visitor, a monarch butterfly, but it’s not. You have to look it up to find it’s an ordinary green bottle fly. Most people wouldn’t think it important, that fly on that weed. The poem highlights beauty in an insect we don’t often think of as beautiful, but then you think, of course the fly is beautiful! Look at its metallic blue-green coat; we gain a new way to see a fly.”

Claudia Coutu Radmore on One less raindrop on the peony

PP: How did you “meet” haiku, Carole?

CD: One day at the library in the poetry section I discovered a book from Angela Leuck and not long after by sheer coincidence met her at a church bazaar where she happened to be selling the book I had borrowed at the library.

PP: Do you have a haiku group you workshop with? Who are you favourite haiku poets to read or your favourite haiku books?

CD: Angela Leuck introduced me to haiku, to Issa, Basho, and to the French Group who used to meet once a month, so this is how I started to write in both languages, being bilingual. I intend to translate my present book into French in a near future.

For many years now I have been the news editor for Haiku Canada which I enjoy doing. I am inspired by the great haiku poets and also by the great poets of Haiku Canada who I discover more and more. 

PP: Thanks for contributing in that way! Volunteers make the world go around. Any other info you’d like to drop?

CD: If you’d like to buy a copy of the book email me at:

PP: Super. Thanks for you time and look forward to seeing the French version of your book floating to market.