Another batch of chapbooks from Apt. 9 Press!

I meant to write about this a couple months back, when the package arrived.

Young poet and publisher Cameron Anstee is doing some brilliant and energetic things up in Ottawa. He's sent me a fabulous and eclectic bunch of beautiful designed chapbooks he's released through his Apt. 9 Press.

eating thistles, by Peter Gibbon
The Delicious Fields, by Jeremy Hanson-Finger
Sweet & Sour Nothings, by William Hawkins
Accidentals, by Claudia Coutu Radmore
Site Conditions, by Monty Reid

Cameron also tucked in a copy of a chapbook-length poem by himself, She May Be Weary, from St. Andrew Books. Not sure if this is one of his own imprints, or whose. It's a nice piece, though, and Cameron's writing seems to be getting more focussed and less in the realm of abstraction.

He will be selling his stuff at the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair and at the Meet the Presses Screaming Chapbook Market on July 9, at Clinton's Tavern in Toronto.

Most exciting to me is that on the evening prior to the Ottawa fair, Cameron is launching a new chapbook — Exit Interviews, by the great Jim Smith. Details on this launch/reading on Cameron's site. This will be Jim's first publication since 2009's Back Off, Assassin! New and Selected Poems, which I acquired and ushered through Mansfield Press. If you haven't read that book, and you care about Canadian poetry, for fuck's sake, get a copy. It's brilliant. You will never read anything like it again here in Canada.

Hats off to Cameron Anstee. He's doing great things for us.

Over and out.