Pearl Pirie’s lists, reviews, interviews, etc. since 2005

Read

I’m going to try to stay on top of books read this year, which is not say slipping on them underfoot.

6 days, 6 books.

  1. All I Have is the Moment: An interview with Barry Dempster by Maureen Scott Harris & Maureen Hynes (A Fieldnotes chapbook, 2020)
    • If you are interested in Dempster’s work, or artistic process, or biography, this is a must read. I read it all silently, then again aloud. It has a lot of food for thought. It is comforting to know that he only consciously got under his poems in his 40s and 50s.
  2. These Days, issue #7, edited by Jeff Blackman (Dec 2020)
    • I did not know Ottawa had an ongoing zine. I’ve been out of the loop but Meet the Presses videoed a talk on its start.
    • This eclectic old-style cut and paste and photocopy zine has poetry, drawing, an interview and a puzzle. Psst, they have a Patreon page.
  3. Ink in the Blood by Kim Smejkel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020)
    • This was an intense 444 pages, divided into 3 acts in this fantasy novel, set on an alternate earth with something that may remind you of the Catholic church. The female-god’s infrastructure rules with an iron fist. That falls so short of conveying the suspense and dexterous use of the genre to postulate new options.
  4. Ghost Face by Greg Santos (DC Books, 2020)
    • Admission: I have his other 2 books and have been waiting for this one. It takes a turn for the personal from the surreal. I wouldn’t say hodgepodge of style, more mosaic. Some stellar lines and memorable poems, a soft spot of course is his haibun for his dead father, that being a project I do.
  5. 70 Kippers: The Dagmar Poems by Michael Dennis and Stuart Ross (Proper Tales Press, 2020)
    • This book is like a 1930s movie in snappy turns of dialogue, movie references and cinematographic images. The play and poke, chime and support of the poems as they evolve in alternating lines is a thing of beauty.
  6. Sprawl: the time it took us to forget by Manahil Bandukwala & Conyer Clayton (Collusion Books, 2020)
    • I think this is a form they evolved together, echoing and turning on lines each repeats in a collaborative exploration, in the end backforming a sort of villanelle of the repeating touchstones. I can’t summarize it but it did bring tears to my eyes so it is doing some poetic work.

Michael Dennis

You probably know Today’s Book of Poetry where Michael Dennis reviewed hundreds of poetry collection. I can’t imagine how many thousands he received. He would only review those he was sent, and things were sent from all over North America for his generous review. The process opened him up. He was so chuffed about all the amazing creativity going on, it lit him up and his jadedness faded. It was beautiful to see him so excited, his mind blown. He could still revert to curmudgeon but adorably so. I treasure sitting at his kitchen table talking poetry and memories.

Michael liked to break expectations, work hard and make people laugh.

“A king. A gentle man, a good man” as Sean Wilson says with Alan Neal on the book panel in All in a Day yesterday. Don’t miss Cameron Anstee’s tribute to Michael.

From Low Centre of Gravity,

Damned Poets the new bookcases simple unfinished pine planks makes us happier than any piece of wood should I spend my days in this study thousands of poets staring out at me from the shelves all of them shouting you'd think they could agree on something but they don't agree on a damned thing

His poems were lively reflections of full emotional range and among recent ones especially telling vivid anecdotes. With perfect comedic timing when the poem called for it.

His Low Centre of Gravity (Anvil Press, 2020) was one of a handful of my favourite reads of the read and stood up to reading it at least 4 times cover to cover. The Bear will live with me. It was a poem like a whole short film. I don’t even remember I wasn’t there when it happened. A good poem can do that.

rob mclennan posted memories of Michael and his literary bibliography. It’s good that I don’t have it all. I was half-finished his 70 Kippers book, collaborative poems with Stuart Ross when I heard. Their exchange is so combative, as foam bats at play. It’s dark and suicidal and Armageddon revolution and yet with a sense of onwards we go. Profound and fun and depressed all equals in the forum.

Even when we know death is coming, it’s hard to not hope for one more year. He did stage 4 cancer with all the interventions but still, we got him for a little longer.

Stuart posted the news that Michael died on the Go Fund Me where over $11,000 was raised in thanks for all the reviews and poetry he made. He passed on New Years Eve. His obituary speaks of his love and how much he was loved by many.

A black and white photo of a semi-circle of poets in chairs as part of Stuart Ross and Michael Dennis reading at Amanda Earl’s salon series March 2009.

We are better for knowing Michael, with his explosive sputter of calling out nonsense, or greatness, for his cherishing love of his Kirsty and his siblings and nieces and nephews. Any gap in topic could lead to his nephew being amazing at basketball. And his love of words and books and art.

As Greg Santos put it in his Ghost Face, “we live lives of so many shoulds”. Covid kiboshed so many possible visits this year.

He gave a careful read to one of my manuscripts last year, in summary saying it is not quite mine yet, that I’m hiding behind too many quotes and poem structures. We don’t need notes to know the origins of everything he said. The poems need to be out as you more.

So, I have my assignment from him and have been rewriting. 3 poems down, huge number of pages to go.

Available for Review

Reader Aware: More readers, buyers and reviews welcome.

They say it takes 7 or 8 presentations of the same book before one latches on that a book exists and checks it out.

I have copies for review or purchase of Not Quite Dawn (haiku and tanka by me), Crossing a Grave in Harmonium by David Groulx, The Morning Becomes Azalieas.le matin devient azalées by Paul David Mena, Water Loves its Bridges, Call Down the Walls, Eldon, Letters (haibun), Sex in Sevens, Occasionally Rational Human by Stephen Brockwell, Evacuate: poems (of Syria) by Mohamad Kebbewar, and Cough of a Sloth by Claudia Coutu Radmore.

footlights Review

Kim Fahner was so kind as to review footlights at Periodicities on Jan 3.

She says in part,

“In “lifting for the purposes of night,” six beautiful couplets carve out vivid images and phrases:

                    the moon’s face is both up
                    and downwards. 

                    in incandescence a
                    glossy-leafed houseplant 

                    feels how the bottom
                    of an airplane wing 

                    lifts, night sky slips
                    the room into bluer. 

                     night suggests, anything
                     could happen. 

                     a mosquito rides
                     the cross-ventilation. 

This is a small poem that builds itself around texture, in how things feel to the touch, and in sight, and in the way even the tiniest mosquito hitches a ride on a current of air through a room. It is, I think, a poem that embodies all of what is best about Pearl Pirie’s work: she looks to—and documents—the tiny things in life with careful attention to detail. In so doing, she asks her reader to consider their place in the world, physically, spiritually, mentally, and philosophically.”

95Books

The year has ended. We can now officially say hindsight is 2020.

After being in a headlong tumble-scramble from August onwards, I had a few days to sit after Christmas and move the bookmarks.

I read 128 books and chapbooks over the year, 21 chapbooks and 50 novels among them.

59% were by females, 35% by males and the remainder non-binary or multiple authors. (Males tend to be 47% most years).

48% were by Canadians. Until 2014 when I noticed Canadians tended to be about 15% then ramped to 69% range for a few years.

I got better at quitting what wasn’t working. I pressed on to finish things that I gave 1 star of 5 only 3% of the time and 30% of what I finished I’d give 5 stars of 5.

All the Amazon instant downloads added up to 3x more than brick and mortar bookstores. (*Hangdog expression.*) A lot came direct from publishers and authors, and as review copies. None from Little Free Libraries or free at curb like some years.

Didn’t do so great with GLBTQ+ this year with only only 15% but still that’s 2% more than last year. and 5% more than the year before.

16 books by Black writers (12.5%), 6 by Writers of Colour (5%), 10 books by Indigenous writers (8%).

[Compare 2017 where 28% were by POC or Black writers and 5% by Indigenous writers.]