pesbo blog – Page 44

Mini-interview: Carole Daoust

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.

Checking In: With Mohamad Kebbewar

I was lucky enough to publish Evacuate: poems by Mohamad Kebbewar in 2019 about his memories and reflections on the bombing of Syria. It is one of my best-selling titles.

PP: Mohamad, what have you read lately that lit you up?

MK: I recently read Hotline by Dimitry Nasrallah. It was a good read and topical. It’s a story of immigrant life during the eighties, the life they leave behind and the life they aspire to. The craft is solid and the story comes to a full circle with the news from Lebanon.

PP: What comprises life at the moment, literary or otherwise?

MK: I’m focused on my graphic design studio and building new clientele. I’m also editing my first novel The Bones of Aleppo.

I have written twenty or thirty poems in the past two year. I’m working on the manuscript of my next chapbook The Soap of Aleppo.

PP: What is underway or forthcoming? Anything you can share?

MK: Recently an essay was accepted for publication by About a Place Journal. Here’s the link: https://aboutplacejournal.org/issues/navigations-a-place-for-peace/factual-state-future-spate/mohamad-kebbewar/

A British music writer asked to do an interview with me about the war in Syria and the Ukraine war with regard to the treatment of refugees East and West. Here’s the link: https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2022/05/17/in-conversation-mohamad-kebbewar-not-another-war/

PP: Any author site, social media urls or things you’d like to plug?

MK: I don’t have an author’s website yet but readers can find me on Facebook with the same spelling: Mohamad Kebbewar.

PP: Super. Thanks for your time.

Checking In: Phil Hall

Phil Hall is undoubtedly one of my fav poets and people. I have many of his books. As should you. Try on Guthrie’s Clothing. He doesn’t do author sites/social media so you have to buy his words, preferably in your local indie bookstore. You might want to use the photo below because he’s not the Phil Hall of how-to books, Bigfoot books, nor thrillers.

His flutter books The Math (2018) and Eigner (2014) were put out by phafours. His poem was also in our hurcine, murcine, doppelgängers, mars (phafours, 2013) [aka the squirrel anthology chapbook].

PP: So, Phil, what have you read lately that lit you up?

PH: One and Half of You. Leanne Dunic. Talonbooks, 2021: Three poetic sequences in travel journal mode & tone: Vancouver’s Chinatown, a mixed-race childhood. Notes & asides that merge toward harmony.

A surprising tension in the ease of it all is maintained by a disjoint to the entries, so they don’t lead directly next into each other, thus a reader does not feel “themed.”

A terrific poet. And for each sequence in this book there is a link to accompanying music—at the Talonbooks web page. Dunic’s own band is called The Deep Cove. Check them out.

PP: Always good to get a hot tip on a writer I haven’t heard of. Thanks. What’s life’s focus these days, literary or otherwise?

PH: I’m editing A Possible Trust:The Poetry of Ronna Bloom for Wilfrid Laurier University Press (WLU), in their Canadian Authors series.

And I’m editing The Essential Eugene McNamara for Porcupine’s Quill in that Essential series of theirs.

Decluttering. The hunting & gathering phase is over. Many boxes of bad books donated to sales.

Things bought at auction sales are now finding their way to Free Stores at dumps.

Would anyone like a bucket of rusty spigots? Perfect for tapping rusty maples.

PP: Heh, maple won’t you weep for me.

PH: In fact, that’s what we call(ed) our “can’t play so good” band: The Rusty Spigots!

Did we ever perform? Not live. We aspired to invisibly be the Nihilist Spasm Band’s cover band. A joke. Noise, & a good album photo, if ever…

(Other band member: Stuart Kinmond (L) and Phil Hall (R) / Photo credit: Barbara Sibbald.)

PP: Apart from music, what is underway, or forthcoming?

PH: This fall (2022), from Beautiful Outlaw Press: The Ash Bell—a book-length poem in thirty parts within parts.

PP: Oooh, writing that down on my buy list. And what intrigues you these days?

PH: Susan Sontag’s Introduction to A Barthes Reader is the best thing I’ve read (again) all summer.

The thoroughness intrigues me. It teaches me how to read Barthes (again). I wish I could write as well as her! (And him.)

And why such writing gives me such pleasure in the reading act, despite or besides its usefulness, its cargo—that why intrigues me too.

The kinetic tension of a sustained critical sentence followed slowly like poetry: Sontag, Hugh Kenner, Marjorie Perloff, Peter Quartermain…

Also, asemic writing in all its wayward forms. Gesture alluding to Alphabet.

And also asemic in its original meaning, from Barthes: words that by error make a new word without any official meaning, but vaguely suggesting odd meanings…

Here are a few I’ve made the mistake of finding & being intrigued enough by lately to record:

becomerang

poorine

obmutescence

tomen

Such asemicisms seem like poems in nugget to me. Syntax can’t get to them! Even music can’t get at them — too dense to lilt.

They hope to leave Meaning flapping its gums.

PP: As meaning should be left. I wrote in my poem Montague, the machine changed it to Mina guess. Autoincorrect is the new machine asemic.

Thanks for your time. And, as ever, your words.

ICYMI

I’m doing the Sealey Challenge this year. Which is a poetry book a day to open windows in the head.

Check out what I’m read at PearlPiriePoet One book cover and poem or poem part a day.

You won’t be alone. At the moment there’s 434 followers and I tend to suss and toss out the bots.

Checking In: With AJ Dolman

AJ Dolman had a flutterbook Glass Studio in 2015 with phafours. She used to be a regular on the Ottawa scene, pre-Covid like all of us.

AJ Dolman (she/they) is the author of Lost Enough: A collection of short stories and three poetry chapbooks, and was co-editor of Motherhood in Precarious Times. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Arc Poetry Magazine, QT Literary Magazine, The Quarantine Review, Imaginary Safe House, Grain, Canadian Ginger, On Spec, Prism international, The Fiddlehead, Utne, Crush and The Antigonish Review. They are a bi/pan+ rights advocate living on unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin territory. Twitter @ajdolman

PP: What have you read lately that knocked it out of the park?

AJD: River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey was innovative in a particularly fun and brilliant way, as well as suspenseful, witty and fantastically queer in every direction. Alternative history with hippos might be my new favourite genre. I’m waiting to read Taste of Marrow, the follow-up, as a treat once I’ve finished my current editing project.

I’m also slowly reading Roxanna Bennett’s Unmeaningable. I say slowly because it’s so intimate in its visceral exploration of mental illness, and I’m overcome by both the poetic, scathing beauty of her poetry and the pain of recognition. So I’m only managing a few poems at a time before I have to put it down again.

In novels, I finally read an older work by Christian Baines (a friend whose delightfully wicked Arcadia vampire series I really enjoy). His book Puppet Boy blew me away. Suspenseful, subversive, queer, YA(ish), I’ve described it as a much more gripping, smarter and insightful When Everything Feels Like the Movies. I wish more people knew about it.

Finally, I can’t say enough good things about Isabella Wang’s Pebble Swing, which impressed me so deeply both in the quality of her poetics and in her approach to her content. It’s given me faith in the next generation of poets in Canada.

PP: Thanks. A lot of great recommendations. What has been life lately, literarily or not?
AJD: My life’s focus lately has been on recovery and revision, in all areas. It was a terrible year for me and my family, as I know it was for many others. In addition to the effects of the pandemic, we lost my sister-in-law Kim to cancer in November, and my dad passed away at 89 this spring. We’re all trying to figure out how to move forward now in a world so full of danger and strife.

For me, the best way is to lift others up as best I can. I’m fortunate that I also have writing, reading and my fellow writers and artists to turn to. Far from feeling futile in the face of the world’s climate and ethical breakdowns, creating, imagining, communicating feels absolutely crucial right now to ensure we have a future (and acknowledgements of the past) worth saving at all.

PP: My sympathies to you, with this year. Making connection and good for all is the best case. What are you in the midst of, for writing?
AJD: I am currently working on revisions for my first novel, tentatively titled Take, about a young bisexual man who falls in love with an icon of sorts, and everything, both good and bad, he discovers as a result. I’m also thrilled to say that Gordon Hill Press will be releasing my poetry book Crazy/Mad in spring 2024. In the meantime, I’ve started crawling slowly out into the world again to do some readings. The next one up will be at the Riverbed Reading Series in Ottawa (and livestreamed via Zoom) on Wednesday, August 17, at 7:30 eastern.

PP: Awesome. Congratulations! What can people read right now to hold them over until your next?
AJD: Lost Enough is currently available via Amazon.

*Lost Enough: A collection of short stories* by AJ Dolman

Poems of mine have fairly recently been published in QT Literary Magazine, Pocket Lint, These Days, The Pi Review, Ottawater, The Quarantine Review and Guest 9. And, my essays and nonfiction have most recently appeared on the League of Canadian Poets site and in Hamilton Arts and Letters. I also regularly review poetry for Arc Poetry Magazine.

PP: Any author site people should be watching?
AJD: I admit I’m awful about remembering to update my blog, https://ajdolman.blogspot.com/, except for my annual favourite books I read this year list. I’m much better (for better or worse) at showing up on Twitter @ajdolman, both to support writers and the bi+ community. If you’d rather see what I’ve baked recently than hear about my writing (or, more accurately, if you’d like both), I’m also on Instagram as dolman_aj.

PP: Noted. Super. Thanks for your time.