Forty-five Ottawa poets : Christian McPherson : Two poems

folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets

  

 

Smoothie

I get one of those big industrial blenders
and I start tossing in
pineapple
and yogurt
and honey
and the way I made you laugh that day
and when my son’s team clawed back a win after being down 4-1
and when I got my food for free that day
and when we sat in the rain for the concert and didn’t care it was raining
and when I got the note saying they were going to publish my book
and when my kids were born
and my movie collection
and all the sunsets
and all the sunrises
and all the full moons
and all the poems of Michael Dennis
and rollercoasters
and picnics in the park
and walks in the woods
and your dog playing fetch
and an eye of newt
and the kitchen sink 

then oat milk to the top

I throw all of that into my blender
cram the lid on tight
and hit
            liquify 

the machine roars to life
and it glugs and sputters
chewing my liquid landscape of life
to smithereens 

it Wizard-of-Oz tornado spins
colours and images
swirling people and places
blurring them together 

it turns different colours
like a chameleon’s skin
it dances before me like disco lights 

when I switch it off
it’s a light purple with rainbow swirls
running through it like a fancy lollipop 

I pour it into a highball
and chug it back 

it cools my throat like strong peppermint
and I can taste the universe
God is on my tongue 

I begin to levitate
until I’m lying on the ceiling 

I do upside down yoga
and after I finish
well I’m ready to start my day 

you know
breakfast
it’s the most important meal of the day.

 

 

The Misery of Camping
 

The experts are with us
and they have all the magical gear
the axe
which is a flashlight
which is a personal floatation device
which is a flare gun
which is a compass
and it can fold up to the size of a pen
            who signs us up for camping? 

the experts have some sort of unicorn powder
they throw on the fire
and it turns the flames into rainbows of colours 

when you die alone
in a house with pets
they will soon eat you
cats will consume your head 

I roast a vegan marshmallow
as blackflies and mosquitoes
suck and bite and eat my flesh 

I am food.

 

 

 

What am I working on next? I continue to draw all the time, so there is that. And I’m always working on the next book of poetry but my main focus is a horror novel about a kind of vampire that lives and works in an old age home.

 

 

 

 

Christian McPherson is a poet, novelist, short story writer, and cartoonist/artist. He is the author of eleven books including, The Cube People, Saving Her, and My Life in Pictures. His newest book of poetry, his sixth, was released from At Bay Press in November of 2025 entitled Screaming Obscenities at the Sky. It contains 100 poems and over 400 drawings. Christian lives in Ottawa.

Julia Polyck-O'Neill, Aaron Tucker, Claire Kelly, Su Croll + Christian McPherson : virtual reading series #10

a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

Julia Polyck-O’Neill : “Cell Atlas,” “poem for flesh,” “the theory of the maternal imagination (after Rosi Braidotti’s “Monsters, Mothers, and Machines”),” “the theory of (imagi)nation,” “poem for a new geography,” all from the suite Cell Atlas

Julia Polyck-O’Neill is an artist, curator, critic, and writer. She is completing a SSHRC-funded interdisciplinary and comparative doctoral dissertation at Brock University, examining connections between contemporary conceptualist literature and art in Vancouver. She was a 2017-18 visiting lecturer in Transnational American Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and is a 2019-20 Fellow of the Electronic Literature Organization. She was recently awarded a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship to work in York University’s Sensorium Lab. Her critical writing has been published in Canadian Literature, English Studies in Canada, BC Studies, Tripwire, Prefix, and elsewhere, and she has published three poetry chapbooks with above/ground press.

Aaron Tucker : excerpt from Catalogue d'oiseaux

Aaron Tucker's most recent work is the novel Y (Coach House Books) which was recently translated into French as Oppenheimer (Éditions La Peuplade); he has a forthcoming poetry collection titled Catalogue d'oiseuax with Book*hug Press in the Spring of 2021. His prior books also include the poetry collections punchlines (Mansfield Press) and Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp (Book*hug Press) as well as the cinema studies texts Interfacing with the Internet in Popular Cinema and Virtual Weaponry (both with Palgrave Press). He is currently a VISTA and Elia scholar undertaking his PhD in the Cinema and Media Studies department at York University where he is studying the moving images of facial recognition software.

Claire Kelly : “As if you steeped and drank these streets" from Maunder (Palimpsest Press 2017),” “Her Pillow Smells of the Special” from One Thing – Then Another (ECW Press 2019)

Claire Kelly has written two full-length poetry collections, One Thing – Then Another (ECW Press 2019) and Maunder (Palimpsest Press 2017), and a chapbook forthcoming with Rahila’s Ghost Press, Another Final Girl. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals across Canada and has recently focused on horror films (but with feminism!) and the apocalyptic nothingness that is becoming the certain future of Earthlings (but with jokes!). She lives and writes on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton.

Su Croll : “Head-on collision,” “Side track” and “Loco motion” from Cold Metal Stairs (Turnstone Press, 2019), a book commemorating her father’s dementia and  death.

Su Croll’s two previous books, Worlda Mirth and Blood Mother, have been awarded or nominated for The Kalamalka New Writers Competition, the Gerald Lampert Award, the Stephan G Stephansson Award, and the Canadian Author’s Association Poetry Award. A short selection of poems from Cold Metal Stairs was long-listed for the 2015 CBC Poetry Prize. “Side track” was short-listed for Arc’s 2018 Poem of the Year Award. Her novel, Seeing Martin, is slated for publication with Pedlar Press. Su Croll lives in Edmonton.

Christian McPherson : “One Poem” from One Poem (Now Or Never Publishing, 2017)

Christian McPherson is a poet and novelist. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and their two kids. He has written a bunch of books including The Cube People, Saving Her, and My Life in Pictures. If he isn’t out walking his dogs, driving his son to hockey practice or his daughter to cheerleading, he is usually sneaking off to the movies. Walking on the Beaches of Temporal Candy is his new book of poetry coming out this fall from At Bay Press.