folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets : edited by rob mclennan,

 

 

 

 

Given our sixteenth annual VERSeFest: Ottawa's International Poetry Festival begins tomorrow night, I thought this would be a good opportunity to highlight what some of the Ottawa poets are doing these days, with a folio featuring new work by forty-five poets currently working across Ottawa and the immediate region.

Either way, we will see you at the festival this week, I presume? If you aren't able to make events in-person, we are attempting to livestream (via pay-what-you-can donation) as much of the festival as possible. Check out the website for information.

the folio includes work by :

Kimberly Quiogue Andrews : Cameron Anstee : Allison Armstrong : John Baglow : Manahil Bandukwala : Dessa Bayrock : Frances Boyle : Liam Burke : Ellen Chang-Richardson : Jason Christie : Lana Crossman : David Currie : Michelle Desbarats : AJ Dolman : Rhonda Douglas : nina jane drystek : Amanda Earl : Tamsyn Farr : Sanita Fejzić : Cara Goodwin : Adele Graf : Vera Hadzic : Marilyn Irwin : Sarah Kabamba : Anita Lahey : Ben Ladouceur : Margo LaPierre : Michael Lithgow : rob mclennan : Christian McPherson : IAN MARTIN : Pamela Mosher : David O'Meara : Salem Paige : Pearl Pirie : Monty Reid : Leslie Roach : Helen Robertson : Tazi Rodrigues : Kevin Shaw : Mahaila Smith : DS Stymeist : Chris Turnbull (and Nico Vassilakis) : Jean Van Loon : Grant Wilkins

for further projects on Ottawa writers and writing, check out: the ongoing "six questions series," featuring more than two hundred interviews online with writers either currently or formerly based in Ottawa; my ongoing "bibliography of ottawa literary magazines and presses," featuring links and even interviews with editors/publishers of shuttered presses; and the series of "Arc Walks" I conducted back in 2018, the full texts (with photos from the day and plenty of links) of literary walks I curated in four different Ottawa neighbourhoods, solicited by Arc Poetry Magazine.

Forty-five Ottawa poets : Liam Burke : Surface Drifter

folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets

 

 

after Vintage Story
for Michael Ondaatje 

My fears came to pass
and passed. I had my migraine,
weed anxiety, acute reminder
I am not the badass I think I am. 

It makes a nest     in my stomach.
A gurgle hidden in diverticules.
But I have not died. I obeyed the ancient law,
In time each hippocampus must be brought to heel;
I went into the cellar, a brave boy,
and slayed the shiver which had spawned there. 

I call the cats. My hands dripping with offal.
Collecting bits from the edge of the cleaver,
thick with it. I count them as they come lick
the kill from my fingers. On average, we lose
a kitten a litter; one gate left ajar, and a
lion in him roars, an irresistable call.
I know you can’t save them all. 

In January amidst the longest night we entered
the iron age, pulled a molten and ductile ingot
from the bloomery and bent it into pickaxes
as though blowing glass. Deluded, I’d guess,
on the promise of success, on being tugged
by the reins of industry, on burgeoning.
We cackled, “Down with the Empire!”, dancing
drunk on goji berry wine, cave paintings animate
‘round the firepit on the roof. You stumbled
     and I was struck sick with a vision of the future --
the sharp corner of the smoking rack. 

It was like they told me it would go.
I opened my mouth
and my dad’s voice came out.

 

 

 

Liam Burke: I am searching for a home for a manuscript of poems that use the imagery and terminology of dungeon crawling RPGs as a metaphor for mental illness. (If this is something you're interested in acquiring, reach out!) Meanwhile, I am working with Manahil Bandukwala on a full-length sequel to our chapbook Orbital Cultivation (collusion books, 2021).

 

 

Forty-five Ottawa poets : Leslie Roach : Two poems

folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets

 

 

And the Writing
 

And writing was my way of
seeing
straight on the
line 

And when I’d get too deep in,
I’d be able to see it written down
like evidence 

And write myself a prescription for
getting out
again,
and again 

And so, the writing has always been a constant,
a constant companion
to purge
that which does not
belong
in me

 

Ode to Audre Lorde
 

Indeed, poetry is 
Not a luxury.
It calls things out.
And you see them
Straight.
On the line. 
And theses lines 
They cluster
And rally
And dare to 
Think they 
are not 
alone. 

 

 

 

I’ve been working through my craft…

I’ve been coming to better understand my craft and its place in my life, essentially coming to terms with how I’ve used the written word, and to what effect. The written word is my muse, my champion, my advocate, and I strongly believe in its power to effect change and disrupt the status quo. And so, I write.

Indeed, I tend to write poetry which is an ode to the writing which has sustained me, helped me, rescued me – be it my own writing or the writing of others. And though I write about a myriad of topics, writing about writing is emerging as a stronger focus area in my work, as I contemplate and work through the writer’s path itself, which for me is a spiritual calling which does not relent.

 

 

 

Leslie Roach is a poet, writer and lawyer, based in Ottawa; she was born and raised in Montreal. Her debut collection of poetry Finish this Sentence was published by Mawenzi House Publishers and listed by CBC as a “Canadian Poetry Collection to Watch” and as a “Book to Read for Emancipation Day”.

 

Forty-five Ottawa poets : Anita Lahey : Two poems

folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets

 

 

 

The Formidable BFB

          (from Anita’s Own Annals of Anthropomorphic Indulgence)

I resurface in time to hear
crows debating the morning
headlines. You’ll find me below
their flyway to the alluring
fields of the experimental farm,
raucous riverside woods,
wherever day-to-day avian 

business calls them. Because
they seem, like us, cursed
with noisy purpose, too smart
by half, ruled by Fates, I like
to grant them humanity-
inflected professions. You 

see it too, right? Crows
directing traffic, fabricating
tools, calling (with understated wit)
the game. The formidable
Black Feather Bigrade (winged
emergency responders). Town criers,
garbage-pickers, composters, all-around
waste engineers who pity us
our stupidity. Cold-hearted 

civil servants. Supply-chain
wizards. Psychiatrists (expensive ones
with cocked heads). Professional mourners.
Mid-traffic nutcrackers. Could I hire one
to pace out, right here on the asphalt, between
passing cars, my witching hours? Send me
your best crow PI, the one with 

mesmerizing, oak-barrel eyes
that see through lies. I hear
they’re indispensable for detecting
dubious overtures to friendliness
or reconciliation. I’d offer them
double-time for inner-perimeter
security at protests. Birds 

like these? They’ve got eyes
on both sides. They’re natural-born
judges, influencers, urban planners.
Correspondents who’ll rummage
every last rubble heap for leads.
Connoisseurs of nightroost blues.
Nonpartisan priests. The Original
Rabble Rousers & False-King
Destroyers. Windmakers,
waker-uppers. Spies. 

 

 

 

The Nature of Things

          —with (further) apologies to CBC traffic reporter Doug Hempstead

The type of snow we’re dealing with.
The traffic guy, doing double duty, reaches
for a weather analogy: It’s fine, really
fine snow, as fine as… Chalk dust?
Crystals in bits? Notions in the billions
floated halfway toward magnificence
before rerouting to our Realm
of Boots and Snow Plows. I brought
a whole community of bitter cling-ons
home from my morning walk, stuck on
the wool of my hat, beneath which, my mind,
like everyone else’s, was blowing hard
Minneapolis-way. There exists, 

I’m to understand, a state of being
known as Minnesota Nice. If you grew
up there, winter everywhere else
seems fake. (Consider Canada, I want to say,
for relatable remains of The Genuine
Deep-Freeze.) I’m wondering if the seasonal
requirement to bundle up and shovel out
morning after morning breeds a lack of
surprise over repeat obstacles, a geographic
grasp of the ancient poet’s science: Life, he writes,
along bright lines that quick-step his hypothesis,
is pure motion, bound as much in particles
as in the spaces between that render 

stillness impossible. What is that space
is the real question. I try to imagine
the intricacies and the goings-on
that persist beyond the powers
of my eye. Even an ice-encrusted
snowbank thrums with Lucretius’ rhyming
Dance of Atoms. Falling flakes may present
as Sugar or Lacework or Grit. Pretty, maybe, but
we need to put them somewhere so that
we can get on with our day. Amazing, right? How
the substance of somewhere  gives way.
The good people of that city 

keep layering up and taking to the streets
to remind the Figures in Masks and Fatigues
they aren’t made for the weather there—
their pleas burst like micro-blizzards
into the deadly atmosphere: Go home,
warm up, settle the fuck down. Fairy Dust,
finally, is the idea he finds, it drifts
from the radio, a lovely cloud. This stuff,
he’s hit it, packed into a projectile, will poof
to glitter well shy of any target. I live for
when the halfway-theres, equations
that pushed forward first, the meaner
attempts, back off in favour of
a more suitable phrasing.

 

 

 

 

 

I am working on a little poetry project with a theme, but its parts remain too incomplete to offer. The poems here are home poems, Ottawa poems, survival poems (in a sense) that began to take shape during morning walks. I am unsure of them, they did things I wasn’t expecting, but some of those things are fun (I think!) and sometimes that uncertainty is a sign of something real (repeat: sometimes!). Here they are, shared with hope.

 

 

Anita Lahey’s latest poetry collection is While Supplies Last (2023, Véhicule Press). She’s also co-author, with Pauline Conley, of the 2023 graphic novel-in-verse Fire Monster (Palimpsest Press). Anita serves as series editor for the Best Canadian Poetry anthology, and her 2020 memoir, The Last Goldfish: a True Tale of Friendship (Biblioasis), was an Ottawa Book Award finalist.