8/13/2021 POETRY: ROB MCLENNANFOUR POEMS FOR TREES 1. Across this formal pleasure, horizon contours mountain range: sawmill, birdsong, lodgepole. Spilled into my voice. Declarations of heartfelt territory lost among these splintered branches. 2. Frank O’Hara’s subway, and his blade of grass. 3. Transplanting monkey puzzle. Prolonged, a coastline errant. Ponderosa. Sechelt, breeze. This sentence of foliage reflects our complexities: such clear and exposed. Abstraction, stripped excess of tree-stubble. What season of nouns. Audre Lorde: There is no separate survival. 4. Where my limbs meet yours, a poem as dense as a brick. Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), with a further poetry title, the book of smaller, forthcoming from University of Calgary Press. An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) and Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. In spring 2020, he won ‘best pandemic beard’ from Coach House Books via Twitter, of which he is extremely proud (and mentions constantly). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com
8/13/2021 POET: CALEB NICHOLSTHIS TITLE DOES WORK He said inspiration is like being fucked by the Gods and if that’s so then I suppose it makes sense that you’d try to decant what they’ve filled you with, to bottle its essence while the sediment settles. Ceded ground I guess but what about getting free? Form feels like a workweek: useful, but to whom? What’s being formed— a complex structure— a vessel to keep things in, worlds which want to be let out. Birds can be observed in order to be observed or collected to be caged or killed to be kept or consumed. Either way the point ceases to be witnessing the wild, turns toward capture, possession, display, moves our attention away from subject to frame— how it was gilded, by whom it was hung, what the work is worth— at which point the bird’s flown, the coop empty, a wheel untrue, thrown off Apollo’s chariot— dawn’s horses on fire, now flaming out towards dusk. SIM CITY “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1 KJV everything is narrative nature is a myth. the ancients knew that humans were last to the party and quick to call the cops when things felt out of hand (what’s it like to be bounced from the club by a flaming sword a pair of angels?) but seriously who’s to say that the flip wasn’t switched I mean the swish wasn’t phished I mean the fish wasn’t dished I mean the witch wasn’t hitched I mean the switch flipped this morning when I woke up the fog-laden dawn carried on till midday. I walked the dog and wrote this poem on my phone listening to Ethiopiques on my phone drinking a blend of Kenyan coffee paid for with my phone which is powered by cobalt mined by Congolese children en Afrique and this is how poetry has everything to do with the deep violence of colonialism is complicit innit? but anyway as I was saying who’s to say that all of this isn’t due to a toggle tripped by a demi-god— a light being, libidinous for pain, or just bored? Caleb Nichols (he/they) is a queer writer from California, occupying Tilhini, the Place of the Full Moon, the unceded territory of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini tribe. His poetry has been featured in Hoax, Redivider, perhappened mag, DEAR Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. His poem “Ken” won an Academy of American Poets University Prize, and their chapbook “Teems///\\\Recedes” is forthcoming from Kelp Books. He tweets @seanickels.
8/11/2021 POETRY: PENN KEMPTRASH TALK Litter begets more litter- ah, sure when litter it. I / it lit light litter along the literal littoral. The ill litter it refuse refuse and garb age. I utter a light little iteration against litter alluding to allusion, all iteration and assonance off the road, on the road and in to ash, rash, trash can. Penn Kemp. Published online. RIVER REVERY Water abounds here, with this river five times normal width for winter, flooding roads and parks. The swell carries whole trees along stampeding currents. Yellow willows drop fifty-year -old boughs in high winds. Standing waves cover our usual walking path. Climate change is certainly upon us, from eleven below to eleven above in hours, sinking back below freezing. Green begins to bury the remnants of flood, the wall of last fall’s leaves packed level against the link fence. Weird how all reverts, reverberates in spring clarity as old detritus is dredged. Penn Kemp has participated in Canadian cultural life for over 50 years, writing, editing, and publishing poetry and plays. She has published 30 books of poetry, prose and drama and 10 CDs of spoken word/Sound Opera. Penn is the League of Canadian Poets’ 40th Life Member and Spoken Word Artist (2015). Penn’s latest collection, A Near Memoir: new poems (Beliveau Books), launched on Earth Day. Her lively web presence includes Wordpress, Weebly, Facebook, and SoundCloud.
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