Pinhole Press spring series chapbooks! Each title is also available for preorder now on the website. 

‘Chroma,’ by Gary Barwin & Elee Kraljii Gardiner (cover design by the poets themselves). 

‘Love’s Little Dojo,’ by Jordan Williamson.

‘we astronauts,’ by Pearl Pirie.

‘DTES Watching,’ by Pari Mokradi  (cover photograph by the poet).

A resumé of Émile Nelligan in 10 minute video. He made his opus, then was institutionalized mad for decades. At this time dementia and convenience of family put people in such asylums and it was guarded by former guards and policemen more than by nurses, at least in Ireland’s equivalent. So many gaps in knowledge and history.

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Doing data entry in French which the computer tries to spellcheck all to English words. It’s enough to make handwritten text more attractive, almost.

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Are you on Bluesky? There are Canadian poets starter packs and haiku and tanka and waka starter packs

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“I seized the day, but I didn’t lift with my knees, so I seized my back too.” Dzintra Sullivan on the dead bird site.

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I have a structural problem, with books. So far my digital storage isn’t jammed but there is no way in sweet purgatory that these stacks are all going into those shelves. They have overrun the box capacity and heaven help but 4 more at least are coming by mail this month. Not to mention the wish list and the inevitable caving in at least some cases.

I have to make some hard calls. No, no, not purge. Probably. Boxing up anthologies and magazines so there is room for novels, history books and single author poetry collections. Even that mitigates little. I could actually box up some to sell that I expect I won’t read again. I believe I have a box or two that I meant to drop off at a book fair but mislaid when the time came. Or I unconsciously wanted to keep them.

Two walls are covered floor to ceiling in shelves. There’s a lot of windows and few options with quilting supplies also overflowing containment. And now more canvasses, and more embroidery gear. This is getting a little out of hand. But to be surrounded by possibility and options is rather delightful.

I do need more order in the office to function tho.

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Book mail out of the blue is so heartening. And a genuine personal letter. Letters are not dead as presumed.

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It’s disheartening how little fun many seem to have while writing poetry. Play and nonsense isn’t fun, nor letting loose some cynical remark? Poets, are you well?

Where is the art I suppose is the question, (she grumps). And in high-art-device poetry, where is the heart and body? Hard to please, I know.

Why can a novel be unput-downable and even written well poetry, off-putting? It must be me that’s shifting, yes? Or randomness of finding worse poetry and better fiction? Or narrative being the medicine I need, over intensity of impressions? Some books are such wonderful rides that all else pales besides and it seems despair alone that anything else could be written so sweetly.

I have a resources page where I share stuff. Just added is a checklist for what to bring when you table at a book fair. There are also tips for authors photos, how to run a reading series, templates for chapbooks, a spreadsheet template for logging your reading.

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In the further framing commercial scarcity model vs. abundance model, people who share haiku online, knowing it will make those poems ineligible for contests and magazines, win my admiration. Like, Charlotte. What does hoarding a poem until a reward with publication do? A publication is laminating a marginalia jotting on a newspaper clipping. Poems if shared are broadcast, exchanged, but pinning to a submission window of small paywalled patrons limits the ideas, corrals them when they could be free to bounce against other ideas.

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From Peer Gynt “We are songs;/You should have sung us! /Thousands of times/You have stifled us./We have been waiting/Under your heart,/But were never sent for./Death to your voice!” Peer: And death to you, you ludicrous jingle! What time did I have for versifying”

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Movies, shows, writing with hooks all can exacerbate the priority of crisis, the one inevitable outcome, awfulized emoting instead of creative various directions of solutions and de-escalations. Like anything so long as we remember it is silliness and play but we train the brain by every act, yes? Filtering in a reductionist way is funny unless you believe it’s getting at the underlying binary real vs. lie.

an emotion
is a thought the body has—
branch broken by wind

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Being present isn’t monitoring reaction/reactivity, body but unsticking, and seeing inward and outward, not judging, assessing, but seeing. As in how to survive.

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Not poetry but flipping perspective of defaults for cars.

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“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most” said a meme, echoing Dolly Parton in interview once, saying something like, a want is just a wish if you don’t back it up with action.