Mansfield Press fall book tour starts on Sunday!

There is so much going on, my head is spinning, Linda Blair-like. I promise, though, there will be no projectile vomiting.

Here's what's happening on Sunday. I'm leaving Cobourg for the village of St. George, Ontario, to kick off the Mansfield fall book tour. Well, sort of kick off the tour. Laura Farina already launched her wonderful second poetry collection, Some Talk of Being Human, in Vancouver back in November. The other books we're sending out into the world are Frank Davey's poetry collection Poems Suitable for Current Material Conditions, Nelson Ball's Some Mornings, Christine Miscione's Carafola, and, in Toronto, Corrado Paina's Cinematic Taxi.

So here's what's coming up over the next week:

Sunday, November 30, 2 pm — St. George, ON
Adelaide Hoodless Hunter Homestead, 359 Blue Lake Road, west of Hwy. 24
Readings + screening of Catherine Stevenson's Nelson Ball & Barbara Caruso / Home Project / A Photo Documentary
Featuring Nelson Ball, Frank Davey, Laura Farina, Christine Miscione
Brian David Johnston will read for Nelson Ball

Sunday, November 30, 7 pm — London, ON
Mykonos Restaurant, 572 Adelaide St N
Readings by Frank Davey, Laura Farina, Christine Miscione
Stuart Ross will read for Nelson Ball

Monday, December 1, 7:30 pm — Toronto
Monarch Tavern, 12 Clinton Street
Frank Davey, Laura Farina, Christine Miscione, Corrado Paina
Stuart Ross will read for Nelson Ball
Nelson Ball & Barbara Caruso / Home Project / A Photo Documentary, by Catherine Stevenson, will play continuously on TV screen

Tuesday, December 2, 7 pm — Cobourg, ON
Impresario Artisan Market, 37 King Street West
Readings by Frank Davey, Laura Farina, Christine Miscione
Stuart Ross will read for Nelson Ball
Nelson Ball & Barbara Caruso / Home Project / A Photo Documentary, by Catherine Stevenson, will play continuously on TV screen

Wednesday, December 3, 7 pm — Ottawa
Black Squirrel Books, 1073 Bank Street
Readings by Frank Davey, Laura Farina, Christine Miscione
jwcurry will read for Nelson Ball

All events free. Books for sale.

It's an exciting season. This is Frank Davey's first book with Mansfield Press, and it's a provocative and wild ride. I first met Frank back in the late 1970s when I took a couple of creative writing courses with him at York University. Our paths have crossed many times since then, but this is the first time we've had an editor/writer relationship. From Weeds to Capitalistic Affections! to this new book, Davey has explored a lot, and deeply, in his poetry.

As for Christine Miscione, I met her back in the fall of 2010 when I was writer-in-residence at Queen's University. Each week, she would slip 20 or 30 pages of a brilliant and harrowing novel underneath my door. That novel has come a long way, and it's very exciting to help usher it into the hands of the reading public. Christine is an original and uncompromising fiction writer, and this is the second book in what is going to be a remarkable literary trajectory.

Nelson Ball has always been a favourite poet of mine—and of so many others. I first met him in the late 1990s, I think, when he and his wife, Barbara Caruso, lived in Toronto, before their move to Paris, Ontario. A couple of years after Barbara's death in 2009, I worked with Nelson on the first full-length manuscript he'd publish without Barbara seeing it first. It's such a pleasure to work with Nelson again. I've learned so much from the experience and enjoyed the camaraderie immensely.

We've waited a long time for Laura Farina's follow-up to her award-winning 2005 debut from Pedlar Press. I met Laura nearly ten years ago, when we both worked at Centauri Summer Arts Camp and I remember her first launch, for which she packed the front of the Cameron House on Queen Street West in Toronto. Laura's poetry is a lot of fun, and often very dark within that fun, and always very smart, and it was a lot of fun to work with her on this new collection. (The amazing cover painting is by the talented-as-heck Jeannie Richardson, who I met when I was a mere teenager.)

Those are the four books that are coming out under the "a stuart ross book" imprint. The other volume in the mix, published under the broader Mansfield Press umbrella, is Mansfield veteran Corrado Paina's very unusual new collection, which is a sort of remix of an older book of his, Hoarse Legend—here, that book is, as I understand it, translated into a language of Corrado's own invention. I'm looking forward to hearing him read those mysterious and playful lines aloud in Toronto.

You can check out the covers of the new books on the Mansfield website. (I designed Frank's and Laura's!) Hope to see you at one of our five stops!

Over and out.

2 new poems on the Puritan

The Puritan is the hip online mag for young Toronto literary types. I mean, Spencer Gordon, respected biographer of Matthew McConaughey, is intrinsically involved, so there you go. But somehow they let a geriatric like me in.

I'm really pleased to have two poems in the current issue. "Poem Beginning with a Line by James Tate" and "Poem Beginning with a Line by Gillian Jerome" are poems I'm proud of. When I do my Poetry Boot Camps, I always have about a hundred poetry books scattered about on the table we sit around. One of the projects I often inflict on the workshop participants is to choose a book from the table, find a line that resonates with them, and then use that as a first line in a poem entitled "Poem Beginning with a Line by ——————."

It's a neat way of sort of collaborating with a poet whose lines you admire, and a neat way of experimenting with a tone/structure/vocabulary you might not otherwise work with. There was something blunt and noirish about the Tate line, so I wrote a little pulp novel beneath it. I can't recall if Gillian's poem was about pregnancy, but I enjoyed imagining being pregnant.

Now that I have been published in The Puritan, I will become ace and sell tens of thousands of books.

Over and out.

2014 Indie Literary Market: amazing (also, the stuff I acquired)

OK, I was going to write a lot this morning about last Saturday's Indie Literary Market, but I'm bludgeoned with deadlines and I'm exhausted. Just this to say for now: it was perhaps one of the best small-press events I've ever been to. I think the Meet the Presses approach of actually curating the market is brilliant (especially since I thought of it). Every one of those 30 or so tables had fascinating and exciting stuff on it.

Also wonderful was the ceremony for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. Christine Leclerc won it with Oilywood, from Nomados Press. Her acceptance speech, delivered by Elizabeth Ross, was beautiful. The whole darn thing was class and quirky and small pressy and wonderful. The prize is now worth $4,000, thanks to an anonymous donor, and the winning press gets $500, thanks to an annual donation by Brian Dedora and Jim Smith.

Everything just seemed to come together on Saturday. But I wish I'd had more time to go to the other tables. I missed some amazing things. Here's what I got, though. Pretty nice bounty:

Gary Barwin, the wild & unfathomable ways (Xerolage, 2014)
Sarah Burgoyne, Love the Sacred Raisin Cakes (Baseline Press, 2014)
Angela Carr, Here in There (BookThug, 2014)
Victor Coleman, David Peter Clark, Oliver Cusimano, Harvard House (shuffaloff/Eternal Network, 2014)
Dennis Denisoff, Jonathan Rollins, Dale Smith, White Wall Review 38 (2014)
Avonlea Fotheringham, doing & undoing (phafours, 2014)
Terence Go, Ungh (Go-T pro-duck-shuns, 2007)
Karl Jirgens, ed., Rampike Vol. 23/No. 2 (2014)
Lorette C. Luzajic, Fascinating Artists: twenty-five unusual lives (Idea Fountain, 2014)
Sina Queyras, MxT (Coach House, 2014)
Stan Rogal, After Words (Guernica Editions, 2014)
Stan Rogal, Obsessions (Leaping Lion Books, 2014)
Samuel Snoek-Brown, Box Cutters (Sunnyoutside Press, no date)
William Taylor Jr., The Blood of a Tourist (Sunnyoutside Press, 2014)
Conan Tobias, ed., Taddle Creek 30 (2013)

Over and out.

I, Thug, and a big year for publication

At last I am a Thug. This is my recent poetry chapbook from BookThug, In In My Dream. It's a crazy miscellany of poems, and Jay MillAr designed the cover. I am very pleased to have been published by one of Toronto's most exciting little presses, run by MillAr and Hazel Millar.

For a while there, it looked like I'd have six chapbooks out this year, but it's wound up to be three, which is not so bad at all. The other two are A Pretty Good Year, from Linda Crosfield's Nose in Book Publishing, in Ootischenia, B.C., and Nice Haircut, Fiddlehead, from Michael e. Casteels' Puddles of Sky Press, in Kingston.

Been a great year for magazine appearances too. It's the first year in centuries that I have made an effort to get stuff out there. I've had pieces appear (or set to appear this year) in Jubilat, Gargoyle, Fell Swoop, Event, Illiterature, Stone the Crows!, Cordite, and another place or two, I think.

I have a lot happening publishing-wise in 2015, and I'll tell you about that later.

Over and out.

Happy 400th, Patchy Squirrel!

In late 2006, Toronto poet Dani Couture and I started up a weekly email blast called The Patchy Squirrel. Every week since then, Patchy has sent out detailed listings of literary events happening in Toronto — readings, launches, festivals, fairs, signings, workshops, courses. There would be no website containing the listings: you could only get them by subscribing, which was free, and a plain old texty email would land in your in-box at the start of each week, with listings going from the Tuesday to the following Monday.

Rising to prominence around the same era was Facebook, and this made us even more determined to stick with the old-fashioned email approach. Somehow Patchy has survived for 400 weeks — I sent out mailing #400 today. There are nearly 1,200 subscribers now: people who have asked to be the list and who are interested in literary events in Toronto. The vast majority of the listings come in from event organizers; this is sometimes supplemented by info Patchy finds elsewhere.

Dani worked with me for about a year and then moved on to other things. Eventually another Toronto poet, Carey Toane, joined me for Patchy, but soon she moved to Brooklyn and turned in her badge. I've been Patchy's sole operative since then. (Though Dani has subbed for me a few times when emergencies have arisen.) Patchy is thus named, by the way, because Toronto squirrels are brawlers. It's a tough city for a handsome tree-leaping rodent. But it's been exciting to see Patchy become almost a household word among Toronto literary people.

Now, I moved from Toronto to Cobourg in fall 2010 (with a few months' detour when I was writer-in-residence that season at Queen's University). Since then I've wrestled with the Patchy issue. I don't get a ton of feedback, and I don't get a ton of thanks. Each week, Patchy invites tips — donations — for her volunteer Operative. And occasionally Patchy does get a tip: some people are wonderfully generous and appreciative. And I'm sure there are also appreciative people who can't afford to make a contribution, and that's fine too. Anyway, when I lived in Toronto I went to an awful lot of literary events, and I organized an awful lot of them too. So doing Patchy from way over in Cobourg can be frustrating: I'm helping to publicize events that I will mostly miss. But I feel like I've made a commitment, and for the time being, I'll keep doing it. It usually takes an hour or two a week. Sometimes a little more. It's my contribution to a community that has been very good to me (except for a couple of weasels).

If you don't subscribe to Patchy Squirrel, and you'd like to, just drop a note to patchysquirrel [at] gmail [dot] com and put "Here, Patchy Patchy!" in the subject header. If you want to submit a listing, get it to Patchy by Saturday evening of the previous weekend. Put the event title and date in the subject header. In the body of the email, include: Event title; date & time; venue & address; admission cost; detailed description of event; contact info. No attachments allowed. Patchy reserves the right to edit for whatever reason.

A couple of other features of Patchy: Leaping to Future Branches: this is where Patchy lists upcoming workshops that ask for pre-registration. If you're sending in a listing for something that qualifies, please put "Future Branches" in the subject header. And then there's the Weekly Nutable, which I think was Dani's idea: a little squirrel-focused proverb to help guide readers through their week.

If you like Patchy, please consider making a contribution of any size. The encouragement is thoroughly appreciated. If you can't make a contribution, it's nice to just get a word of thanks, so Patchy knows people are using the weekly listings.

I wish Harbourfront would send in listings. And I wish the Art Bar series would send in listings so I don't have to go to their calendar every week. Sometimes this Operative just doesn't have the time or will to do that. If you know of any event organizers or literary fans who might not be acquainted with Patchy, please send them her way.

Over and out.

Indie Literary Market inspires Toronto on November 22

We've got a helluva small-press extravaganza lined up for next Saturday (November 22) in Toronto. We being the Meet the Presses collective.

We're gathering togeher a wonderful, hand-picked selection of literary publishers and mags from Toronto, Ottawa, St. John's, Cobourg, Buffalo, Windsor, Erin, London, Hamilton, Victoria, Mt. Pleasant, Kingston and Hamilton. Not bad, huh?

Meet the Presses will also be handing out the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award, with a purse now doubled to $4,000, thanks to our anonymous donor. This award goes to the best poetry chapbook by a Canadian, published in Canada, as chosen by our judges Sandra Ridley and Kevin McPherson Eckhoff. The shortlist is:

Government: Jason Christie (above/ground)
Life Savings: Mat Laporte (Odourless)
pleasantries and other misdemeanours: Christine McNair (Apt. 9)
a fist made and then unmade: matt robinson (Gaspereau)
Oilywood: Christine Leclerc (Nomados)
X: Phil Hall (Thee Hellbox)

I'll be there for Proper Tales Press, with new chapbooks by Michael Dennis, Jason Heroux, and Oded Carmeli (the latter two if I get them done on time). It's Tales' 35th year in existence. I was hoping to have a big 35th birthday party, but I'm so goddamn busy this year I can barely breathe. Maybe I'll do a 36th birthday party next year. I've got forthcoming chapbooks lined up by Michelle Winters and Christine Miscione, but I think they'll be coming out in 2015.

Over and out.

Ottawa Small Press Fair & all the stuff I bought there

The Ottawa Small Press Fair has been organized for the past two decades by the ubiquitous rob mclennan. For the 20th edition of the fair, he asked me to read at the eve-of-fair reading. He said he invited me because the Ottawa fair was inspired by the Toronto fair, which I co-founded with Nick Power in 1987. And also because my Proper Tales Press is 35 years old this year. Imagine that.

rob and I have had a roller-coastery relationship over the years, alternately dominated by admiration and irritation. But we're entering a pretty good phase. We've exchanged cordial emails over the past year, which is something. So he invited me and I accepted. It was a good night of readings, with strong, emphatic work by Frances Boyle, a moving poetic tribute to dear departed John Lavery by Anita Dolman, a fine, bold reading by a young writer named Jennifer Baker, and a crazed roof-raiser by Dave Currie, who thanked me because he first became interested in poetry as a high school student taking a workshop with me during the Ottawa International Writers Festival over a decade ago. The room upstairs at the divey Carleton Tavern was packed with poetry fans of all ages.

The next day was the book fair in a community centre off Elgin Street. As usual, attendance was middling, but sales were pretty good. It's a tough thing to promote an event that's been going on for 20 years. More signage leading to the venue might help, and maybe providing participating presses with electronic flyers they can email to all their local contacts. But I always have a good time: I meet a handful of cool new people and see lots of old friends. And I did come back with way more stuff than I'd planned to accumulate. Some of it bought, some of it nabbed from the freebie table, some of it foisted upon me.

Here's my score:


Jade Alyssa & Terry Trowbridge, Smiling Drunk Pufferfish (Grey Borders, 2014)
Cameron Anstee, Jeff Blackman, Justin Million, Rachael Simpson, jesslyn delia smith, Five (Apt. 9 Press, 2014)
Arc Poetry Magazine 75 (2014)
Jennifer Baker, Abject Lessons (above/ground press, 2014)
Eric Baus, The Rain of the Ice (above/ground press, 2013)
Catherine Brunet, Change in Their Pockets (phafours, 2014)
Michael e. Casteels, 3 chapters toward an epic (phafours, 2014)
Dave Currie, Bird Facts (Apt. 9 Press, 2014)
jwcurry, BeRzeRker hyPeRgRaPheR (Canadian Small Change Association, 2014)
jwcurry & Rachel Zavitz, tchts (CURVD H&Z, 2014)
Czandra, This Side Up (sitting duck & broken rules presses, 2011)
Amy Dennis, The Complement and Antagonist of Black (or, The Definition of All Visible Wavelengths) (above/ground press, 2013)
Anita Dolman, jwcurry's Map Drawers (above/ground press broadside, 2014)
John C. Goodman, Dark Age (Grey Borders, 2014)
Sanita Fejzic, The Union of 6 & 7 (phafours, 2014)
JM Francheteau, Tiger Shark (In/Words Broadsides, 2014)
Noah Eli Gordon (images by Sommer Browning), Fifteen Problems (above/ground press, no date)
Phil Hall, Eigner (Phafours, 2014)
inwords 13.1 (2014)
Marilyn Irwin, tiny (In/Words Press, 2014)
Marilyn Irwin, vagabonds (CURVD H&Z, 2013)
Nina Jane, Autumn Requiem (In/Words Broadsides, 2014)
Jennifer Kronovet, Semantic Analysis: Ways (above/ground press broadside, no date)
Sneha Madhavan-Reese, Some Things with Certainty (phafours, 2014)
rob mclennan, Acceptance Speech (phafours, 2014)
rob mclennan, The Un Certainty Principle (Chaudiere Books, 2014)
James Millhaven, As Well (Grey Borders, 2014)
bpNichol, Ballads of the Restless Are (CURVD H&Z, 2006)
Ikenna Onyegbula, If You Want to Love Me (In/Words Broadsides, 2014)
Rod Pederson, Obviously Obviously Not What It Seems (phafours, 2014)
Pearl Pirie, from the diaries of Semicolon (phafours, 2014)
Roland Prevost, Singular Plurals (Chaudiere Books, 2014)
Kate Schapira, The Motions (above/ground press, 2014)
Jessica Smith, Cicada Radio (phafours, 2014)
jesslyn delia smith, for ottawa. (In/Words Broadsides, 2014)
Touch the Donkey #1 (2014)
Touch the Donkey #3 (2014)

Over and out.