Ken Norris : POEM FOR CLAUDIA

Claudia Lapp (1946-2026)

 

 

Honey, and horses,
and bright days
rich in sunflowers. 

The ecstatic
joys of youth. 

Where do we go now,
no longer earthbound? 

Out into the universe?

All of my realizations
always come slow. 

But I’ll see you now:

in the twinkling of stars,
in undefinable moments,
in the half-mad river of crazy dreams.

 

 

 

 

 

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He came to Canada in the early 1970s, to escape Nixon-era America and to pursue his graduate education. He completed an M.A. at Concordia University and a PhD in Canadian Literature at McGill University. Norris became a Canadian citizen in 1985. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maine, Where he taught Canadian Literature and Creative Writing for thirty-three years. He currently resides in Toronto.

Endre Farkas : On the Road with Claudia on my Mind

Claudia Lapp (1946-2026)

 

 

The highway is full of semi
colons while a guitar
gently weeps. 

You arrived where we’re all heading.
Hope there are wild horses waiting for you there. 

The world was full of shiny souls
giving you joy 

Actually, it was the other way around
when you were around. 

Around our lives you spun threads of love
as fine as your sunray hair. 

We knew it. We were ignorant.
You were living your loving life. 

No eulogy this
but a hymn to your rising
dancing under harvest moons, by cloud gates. 

Friend,
loved your fuck me shoes
& your Honey. 

So long sweet, sensual, spiritual Dakini.

Nearing a Thousand Islands.

Hey Cel
When I’m not thinking of you, send me a sign,
a poem, a sigh, a laugh that sings among chimes. 

It was raining a few minutes ago.
Leonard is asking you to dance him to the end of love.
I’m sure you won’t.  For you there was no end.
Just beginnings. 

I’m stuck in traffic, behind a semi colon
carrying goods. 

You charted the stars. What more can you do?

I already miss you
but you are here because I’m missing you.

 

 

 

Endre Farkas was born in Hungary. His family escaped during the 1956 Hungarian uprising and settled in Montreal. He was/is member of The Vehicule poets.

He has published two novels, twelve books of poetry and two of his plays have been produced. His work has been translated into Hungarian, French, Spanish, Italian, and Slovenian. He has read and performed in Canada, the United States, Latin America, and Europe, and has created performance pieces that have toured across Canada and abroad.

His book How To was nominated for the AM Klein poetry award in 1983.  He is the two-time winner of the CBC radio Poetry “Face Off” Competition.

His collaborative (with Carolyn Marie Souaid) book and videopoem Blood is Blood was the winner at Zebra’s International Poetry Film Festival (Berlin) 2012.

His two novels Never, Again and Home Game were published by Signature Editions in 2016 & 2019 respectively. Home Game was shortlisted for the Hugh MacLennan prize for Fiction. He won the Balasi Balint Translation prize 2025 in Hungary.  His first novel Never, Again is being translated into Hungarian. Excerpts were published in Freeside magazine in Hungary.

He is currently curating, with Carolyn Marie Souaid, a Facebook art project “Watermelon War Wednesday.” It will be launched Oct. 5, 2026  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61593328956573

Stephen Morrissey : For Claudia and Gary

Claudia Lapp (1946-2026)

 

 

 

I am living in 2D Gary said,
the 3D life in Technicolor has ended;
no reviews prepared us for this,
the ending fails to maintain
life's promise; the theatre has fallen silent,
it's all black and white, black and white;
what kind of movie is this when the hero exits
and there is just a gang of lonely actors left behind?
Claudia, what does astrology say about this?
What do poets write about now?
We need your wise counsel.
The theatre lights are off, we file out
and stand silent in the lobby.
What do we write about now
but losing you when we need you most?

 

Stephen Morrissey
09 September 2026

 

 

 

 

Montreal born poet Stephen Morrissey is the author of twelve books, including poetry and literary criticism. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Honours in English with Distinction, from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in 1973. In 1976 he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from McGill University. In the 1970s Morrissey was associated with the Véhicule Poets. The Stephen Morrissey Fonds, 1963 - 2014, are housed at Rare Books and Special Collections of the McLennan Library at McGill University. Stephen Morrissey married Vancouver poet Carolyn Zonailo in 1995. Visit the poet at www.stephenmorrissey.ca

Tom Konyves : Poem for Claudia

Claudia Lapp (1946-2026)

 

What is time, Claudia and
why does it announce itself in the past tense? 

Is it because I found you in the 1982 anthology, leafing back
to front, halted by the one and only Irving Layton,
preceded by LaMontagne’s Le Bateau Ivre,
and there, in between, the one and only Claudia Lapp, the
initial gang member CEL, literally between us -- 

Who wants to know what you saw then that we did not see?
I’ll wait.
Is it because time waits
as it waited for you
to see the vision
and it came in a dream
with thund’ring hooves
beneath your thighs
your shoulders sprouted wings, O Claudia!
and our earantennae
and our nostril chalices
and our temple ears
now tuned to your voice, Claudia
O Claudia

 

 

 

 

Tom Konyves is a poet, essayist, curator and videopoetry theorist. His career began in Montreal in the late 1970s, when he joined one of Canada’s first artist-run centres, Vehicule Art, where he was instrumental in the forming of the seven Vehicule Poets.

Having coined the term videopoetry in 1978, Tom Konyves is considered to be "one of the original pioneers of the form". In 2011, he published the ground-breaking Videopoetry: A Manifesto, a “definitive guide” which to date has garnered more than 30,000 views from 68 countries. He is the author of eight books of poetry and a surrealist novella.

David Currie & IAN MARTIN : These Guys Get It

 

 

 

Dave: Maybe we can just do this like Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. I think the secret sauce is that we’ve known each other for a long time, our writing has been inspired by each other’s entire back catalogue, and throughout Versefest, Two for One, Riverbed, the Factory Reading Series, and we’ve been talking about jokes with increasing intensity.

IAN: Yeah, when we're at poetry events together, we're usually sitting somewhere at the back, joking and riffing off of each other. So that's kind of how the chapbook came together – we would send poems back and forth, writing and rewriting as we went, riffing off each other's ideas.

Dave: I think play is an important part of the project. Comedy writing is often done in small groups. Some of my favourite moments are sitting together and cracking wise during readings.  We're old friends - who only really hang out at readings. It's nice to have a thing. One of the things I think we have both experienced is that poetry events can be...well...self-serious. The number of times I've texted a friend "somebody throw a pie!" during a reading could single space fill its own 30 page chapbook. Once we realized that this stand up project was going to work, we immediately started thinking of ways to make it fun for as many people as possible.

I think both of our sections in the book walk the line between parody and pastiche and I think the "stage show" really mirrors that. 

IAN: I've always had a serious, depressing streak in my writing, and there's definitely a place for that. But humour makes the sad stuff go down a little easier. And people like to laugh! It brings us together. The world is full of so much sadness but sometimes it's so sad that it's kinda funny.

Our stage show came about through riffing as well. Someone comes up with an idea, and you just keep trying to escalate it until it's so ridiculous it shouldn't work, then you do it anyways. We start our reading of the chapbook by copying a darts champion's walk-on song, and we end with a Saturday Night Live outro. Then in the middle we read a bunch of weird poetry and expect to be taken seriously. Riding that line is fun, where the audience isn't sure what's a joke and what's not. The higher the tension, the better the release.

Dave: Ok, that's a fair point. There's nothing wrong with serious depressing readings. There's always an undercurrent of that (?)  in my work as well but I do think if you ask people to leave their houses there should be some effort to add something to make it feel worth it. For my money, Christine McNair is one of the best readers around. She's not exactly Conan O'Brien but she creates a definite mood – a container to hold the audience in stasis until the reading is done. A great reading, a great set, holds you every second until it drops you in a cornfield somewhere without your wallet, your house keys, your shoes, and with somebody else's iguana to take care of.

I guess we should talk about the poems. After we were going back and forth, I hadn't reread IAN's poems until we were doing final edits and I laughed out loud so many times that I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be collaborating with them. For me, IAN's poems in This Guy Gets It transport me out of time and space. IAN does such a good job of replicating the dark stage, hot spotlight feeling of a comedy club while at the same time injecting that space with a whole world of characters, structures, and philosophies. It's such a pleasure to have my poem's next to theirs.

IAN: My poems may take you out of time and space, but yours put me in every time and space at once. Dave's very first poem immediately makes the link between comedy and philosophy, this ceaseless need to observe and question and reframe things over and over and over until you understand it all, or realize that you can't. His poems draw from all these different sources, music, TV, mythology, history, and mash them together in different configurations to try and make some sense out of the bizarre, iterative project of humanity. Dave is so great at capturing what it's like to live in the present, constantly haunted by everything that came before, and dealing with the absurd amalgam of what has survived.

Also he's very funny. 

Dave: We like each other.  We also both really like the book. I'm very grateful to rob mclennan for all his help. People seem to like the book (and the roadshow) too. 

I don't want to make a big thing about this but I saw a lit mag this week say "Don't send humour." Which is in itself very funny. We're seriously starting to put together an expanded full length manuscript. We both talk a lot about how frustrating it is to send our full length M.S.s out and to not find them a home.

This project feels special, though. It feels like it might be a place to start. We're adding a bunch of new poems – we're co-writing more. In This Guy Gets It, the last poem is co-written and I honestly think it might be the funniest poem in the chapbook. We wrote it knowing the shape of the rest of the book. Right now, we're kicking around a poem without a name yet about Lady Gaga that would be great in a full book length project.

For this chapbook, I really do want to thank rob, because there can be 99 publishers in a room and 99 of them reject you – all you need is one publisher to say "fine" to change your whole life.

What do you think IAN? There can be 99...

IAN: ...sandwiches?

Dave: Sandwiches.

 

 

 

 

David Currie is not IAN MARTIN.  He is a different writer with whom IAN MARTIN is collaborating. David's work has appeared in various places – he wishes he could be more specific, but he forgot to write them down, and has been collected into six chapbooks. He is the author of no-book-books, so what are we even doing here?

  

IAN MARTIN is large and barely in charge. Their work has appeared recently in periodicities, BAD DOG Mag, Discordia Review, and Sumac Literary Magazine. IAN has published six chapbooks, most recently EVERYONE IS MY ENEMY (2022). When not writing, IAN makes small video games and complains. Visit www.ianmartin.rocks at your own risk.

Their collaborative chapbook, This Guy Gets It, appeared recently through above/ground press.