It’s curious going through a thick pad of haiku in journals and without reading the names, 2 poems called out to me by people I was already fond of. The individuality comes out in so few syllables, and the perspective on the world that clicks is still there, even remotely. Interesting.
Poetry matters more when you care about the person making it.
Two others got third reads because they are people I care about. Looking at the poem and their known parts of life, with more empathy than before I knew whose it was.
We need that in reading. If a person puts their heart out there, risks some show of self, why categorize it first a poem, not poem, quality of writing. It is something from the person. Even if the creation is imaginative fiction like Norman Rockwell feeling the ugly so making what he wanted to see, even if the creation is quaint attempts at wildly chaotic from a safe ordered position.
There’s the reader in the perceiving. There’s the writer in the perceived.
As much as I try to make a gap between myself and “what I produce”, the model is faulty. The Buddhist insistence of removing ego and that one can’t be hurt if one one has non-attachment, the Christian idea that one is disconnected, in the world but not of the world, separate from the body, the workshop idea that there is divide between created and creator. They are all binary ideas.
reading The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative by Thomas King (CBC Massey Lectures Series, Anansi Press, 2003) has me pondering the underlying givens.
What would a collaborative model that doesn’t put self against self, self-against other, other against self look like?
What is reading as a collaborative, community act?
Conversational acceptance, curiosity, kind questioning into, less rule-based, more exploring for truths or exploring for its own sake?
News/updates
For those of you not on Facebook, twitter or my mailing list…
I had two articles out recently:
Writing After a Concussion: at the QWF blog.
Writer on Wellness Feature in Writing & Wellness.
I have a new chapbook out of 20 years of my best haiku, senryu & tanka. Not Quite Dawn can be yours for $10 plus $2 postage.
I read 2 poems at the Virtual Reading Series at reading 3 of periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics with Adeena Karasick, Pearl Pirie, Paul Brookes, Manahil Bandukwala + Margo LaPierre.
I also updated my author site with recent and upcoming poem publications.
poetry is
I have said for years I like poetry but what I mean by that is observations from a curious, alert, agile mind, with an eye for compression. The mind that is self-critical and with a sense of humour. It could be other forms. A nimble, generous conversationalist, an astute playful piece of sculpture, ink-stamped marks or song lyrics. It is a paying attention and living with loose limbs but practiced gestures and not reinforcing what the person already believes.
Poetry is less likely than a novel or article to ramble on in its own ruts at length. But sometimes it does until it finds a new path.
Currently reading
I have probably 50 recently bought books unread. Probably 6 books pre-ordered. Probably 12 underway and partly mislaid. So far this year in 5 weeks, I’ve finished 6 books. Rather less than my usual 2-3 a week but my body has been evil and I have physical projects of sewing and construction.
- Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson, trans by Ernest Benn Ltd (Square Fish, Macmillan, 1958)
- The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler (Villard, 1998)
- Gogo Monster by Taiyo Matdumoto Translated by Camellia Nish (Viz Media, 2009)
- The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish by Neil Gaiman and illust by Dave McKean (Harpers Collins, 2006)Zen Guitar bt Philip Toshid Sudo,
- Mooninland Midwinter by Tove Jansson, trans by Thomas Warburton (puffin books, 1958)
- The Howls of August: encounters with Algonquin Wolves by Michael Runtz (Boston Mills Press, 1997)
Underway, Charlotte Gray’s Murdered Midas, Essays in Idleness by the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō, collected plays of Euripides, Drawing the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, …the silent Zero, in search of Sound…an anthology of Chinese poems from the beginning through the sixth century, translated by Eric Sackheim (Grossman Publishers, Japan, 1968), and probably other things in other rooms buried under other books.
I also belatedly realized I truncated my fav of 2019 reads list in a copy and paste error. It’s properly expanded.
Poetry to Come Out to Look Forward to
Of course there’s the couple dozen, or fifty, books I have but haven’t opened yet. Still, the appetite is strong.
I look forward to Ghost Face by Greg Santos after having read his last two books. And a full book from Natalie Hanna. Since I’ve liked every poem I’ve seen from her, I look forward to holding the first collection by Connie Clayton, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (ordered).
I loved Eduardo C. Corral‘s first book so look forward to Guillotine. Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz is maybe finally out this year. (Pre-ordered.)
Bookland Press is releasing Sandscapes by Eric Charlebois any week now (pre-ordered). Likewise Dale Tracy’s above/ground chapbook.
David Groulx won the Newlove Award so I look forward to what he does next in his Bywords chapbook. Each book is a new thing with him. I don’t feel i’ve read one book therefore read them all. His material gets thicker not more abstract with time.
And I want a collection from Manahil Bandukwala. I hope to see another David Blaikie collection in print. And from David A Epstein’s first chapbook. After reading another chapbook from Michael Sikkema (I have to get a book or three of his.) And a book from Marilyn Irwin.
At the Tree reading, Sarah Feldman had a striking comic timing, and humility about her poems in her first poetry collection, The Half-Life of Oracles. Hearing her read, I’m not sure if it was the poems or the patter that I found compelling. Eventually I’ll find the book and find out, but I guess that’s a couple years old now. Curious about Curtis LeBlanc’s Birding in the Glass Age of Isolation.
As I muddle about, not reading, I see Gwen Benaway’s day/break is already out, kinda (pre-ordered). Want that too.
I’m curious about Lauren Turner’s The Only Card in a Deck of Knives. I’m curious to look at Murmurations by Annick MacAskill, out with Gaspereau this Spring. Gordon Hill is a new press about, and their essays with poets this fall could be good. I’d like to get Roxanna Bennett’s Unmeaningable because her chapbook blew me away and got at least 4 rereads. Crow Gulch from Gooselane came out at the end of the year by Douglas Walbourne looks interesting.
Of course I look forward to footlights from Radiant Press, coming by October 2020. It’s been such a good experience working with them that I’d gladly do another book or few with them. Gerry Hill’s latest will be with Radiant this fall too.
I wonder if Micheline Maylor has anything out soon. (I find I missed a book so I can do that in the meantime.) Standing orders for whatever she, Rae Armantrout, Chuqiao Yang, David O’Meara, Monty Reid, or Stephen Brockwell put out. (Did I dream word that Stephen Brockwell likewise had another accepted somewhere?) I feel like Jamie Sharpe is due a book out, but I can’t recall if that’s 2020, or 2021.
rob mclennan has something with Anstruther Press soon. Kirby’s What do you want to be called is with Anstruther Press. Ellen Change-Richardson’s Unlucky Fours is out now. Want to get that too. Amy Leblanc has a title out with them this year too. No, wait, last year. Still, the press is on fire in the best possible sense.
I have to make a list of all I want or I forget. Even still, I know I’ve already forgotten a few.
Like Gil McElroy’s Long Division (pre-ordered).
John Elizabeth Stinzi’s Junebat from Anansi (pre-ordered).
Russell Carisse’s Nomography. (ordered).
How did I not hear before 49th Shelf’s spring book list that Michael Dennis comes out with Low Centre of Gravity in June.
Body Count by Kyla Jamieson focusses on post-concussion. Should be interesting to peek.
” Meredith Quartermain’s Lullabies in the Real World (April) is a sequence of poems about a train journey from West Coast to East Coast that invokes a patchwork of regions, voices and histories.”
In rushes from the river disappointment (May), a meditative, musically attentive collection exploring the confounding nature of intimate relationships, stephanie roberts’ poetic expression is often irreverent, unapologetic, and infused with humour that can take surprisingly grave turns.
OO: Typewriter Poems (April), by Dani Spinoza, is a collection of feminist visual poetry that rewrites avant-garde poetic history.
Hmm, could be good. Could be an expensive year.
P.S. March:
Revery: a year of bees by Jenna butler (summer)
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
To Speak for the Trees by Diana Beresford-Kroeger (non-fiction)
A Reverence For Wood by Eric Sloane (older non-fiction)
The Union of Smokers, novel by Paddy Scott.
The Gospel of Breaking by Jillian Christmas.
Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart by Beatriz Hausner