John Oughton : Inanna Closes Its Doors

 

 

 

 

 

Not long after its 45th anniversary, Canada's longest-running feminist literary press, Inanna Publications, has announced that it will cease operations soon. Named after the Sumerian goddess of procreation, sensuality and war, Toronto-based Inanna began as the publisher of Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme in 1974, promoted many titles for women's studies and the feminist academic market, and in 2004, started its Poetry and Fiction Series.

In a recent letter to supporters, Inanna said it "will be shuttering its book publishing operations by March, 2025... We’ve struggled to keep going since the death of Luciana Ricciutelli in 2020, but the publishing model we’ve been using was not financially viable and we’ve determined that we have neither the financial nor human resources to continue." Ricciutelli, a powerhouse of positive energy and support to her writers, was part of the dynamic duo with publicist/marketer Renée Knapp that ran Inanna during its most productive years.

However, Inanna is not quite done publishing. Power by Sky Curtis will launch in June, and Poetry Marching for Sindy by Virginia Pésémapéo Bourdeleau in July. The letter added, "We also have a new issue of the cws/cf Journal out in June, 'Cuban Women: Politics, Culture and Revolution.' We will be launching this issue on Thursday, June 27th in Toronto... The journal is planning at this time to continue publishing." As for books that have been accepted but won't become Inanna titles, and the publisher's backlist, the press will "be searching for a new home for our titles and authors over the next few months."

I asked Inanna authors for their reaction to this sad news. Poet Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes replied, "As an author with two collections of poetry published by Inanna and essays and poetry in CWS, I was privileged to have experienced the intense and singular focus of their gifted, and creatively brilliant Editor-in-Chief Luciana Ricciutelli and her small, dedicated team of professionals. When your book was in Luciana’s sights, it felt as if it was at the centre of her universe. Nothing is more empowering for an author."  

Poet and fiction writer Myna Wallin recalled first meeting Luciana Ricciutelli in 2016. "She said, 'Are you Myna Wallin?' and threw her arms around me in one of her famous hugs and said Inanna Publications was going to publish my poetry book, Anatomy of An Injury. She was warm, supportive, and kind, throughout all my dealings with her. She was more than Editor-in-Chief; she was the beating heart of Inanna."

Lisa de Nikolits, whose Inanna novels won several awards, wrote, "I am forever indebted to the wonderful team at Inanna Publications for all the books, all the adventures and most importantly, all the friendships and great camaraderie. My life is forever blessed. And there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t murmur those very words to Luciana Ricciutelli, a fierce and beautiful warrior for us all."

Fiction writer Heather Babcock, whose first novel was quickly accepted there, said, "By providing a publishing space for a wide range of women’s voices, Inanna allowed a more nuanced and open-minded exploration of what a feminist book can be. Before I published with Inanna... I was very impressed with how enthusiastic Luciana Ricciutelli was about Inanna’s books and authors. When my novel Filthy Sugar was published during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, both Luciana... and Renée Knapp did everything they could to give my book, and the others in their Spring, 2020 line-up, lots of care and attention during what was a very challenging time.  When Luciana passed away in December of 2020, Canlit lost their brightest light and feminist publishing lost their strongest champion."

Finally, speculative fiction writer Terri Favro shared with me that, "If the news of Inanna’s closing is 'the worst of times', 2017 might have been 'the best of times' to publish with the press...There was a real sense of excitement about getting books by women out into the world. I knew Inanna was a small press, going in, and they exceeded my expectations, getting me into the FogLit Festival in St. John, NB." Favro was also part of an effective project at Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Island. She explained, "Inanna participated in a program to put books published by indy Canadian presses into a vending machine. I was delighted that [my book] Once Upon a Time in West Toronto was included —and sold well." She added, "I think Luciana’s great gift was as an impresario. I know we don’t usually use that word in publishing, but it seemed to me that she was an amazing promotor, great at talking up books and authors, and had a level of energy and warmth that drew people to her.  We lost an important voice with Luciana’s death, and it’s a shame that a Canadian women’s press of long standing is going to disappear. Many Canadian women writers got their start with Inanna."

 

 

 

 

John Oughton is a retired Centennial College professor, the author of eight books, most recently the poetry collection The Universe and All That (Ekstasis) and Higher Teaching: A Handbook for New Postsecondary Faculty (MiroLand/Guernica), and around 500 articles, reviews, interviews, and blogs.  He is the current Treasurer of the Writers Union of Canada.

Kim Fahner : The Universe and All That, by John Oughton

The Universe and All That, John Oughton
Ekstasis Editions, 2023

 

 

 

 

John Oughton’s newest collection of poems, The Universe and All That, begins with a preface that clearly sets out the poet’s beliefs about the nature of time itself, as well as the place of poetry in the world. He writes of how brief a human lifespan is, as just “a flicker in endless darkness.” What poetry allows us to do, Oughton suggests, is to “navigate, at least emotionally and through images, these long expanses” of time. In the face of difficult times—whether personal or global—“a good poem still works,” allowing humans to consider “big thoughts” and larger ideas of how time moves, and of how humans work into that philosophical equation.

Following the preface of The Universe and All That, Oughton looks back nostalgically,  tracing the architecture of his family tree. In the first poem, “Architectural,” he writes: “Parents are pillars,” the people who “are all we see” until “the world opens/between, around them.” Soon enough, children grow up and become “columns” that “support only sky,/clouds, and space.” Following on the heels of this first poem, both “Arthur” and “Jack” are loving tributes to the poet’s grandfather and father. One is a carpenter who could read knots of tree branches and who could “frame up reality/to stand a century.” The other is a scientist father who is more comfortable speaking about bees and trees than of humans and their complex interactions. Even after his death, though, the father’s lessons live on.

In amidst observational poems that root themselves in the regular rhythms of life, there are poems about love. They feel held inside the body of the collection, in terms of structure, surrounded by poems that document the tiny details of lives lived. In the cleverly structured couplets of “Uncouplets or Fifty Ways to Love Your Leaver,” the poet alternates between two voices, from “She dumped him because” to “He dumped her because.” The reasons offered are both logical and ridiculous, from lines like “He dumped her because she narrowed his creativity,/which he proved by never writing another poem” to lines like “She dumped him because he couldn’t see her grief, or angels.” Here is Oughton’s witty, yet tender side revealing itself in his work.  

In “Footwrote,” Oughton reflects on the nature of love when a college student stamps out the word LOVE on a snowy campus lawn: “each time I pass the window I see/love is the way boots walk/love is leaving/love is leaking into the ground/love is lessening by the hour/love a fading intention.” In “Long Distance Love,” the poem slips back and forth across the page, embodying the way in which long distance relationships can both excite and challenge lovers: “So many roads between you    me/and planes/that tilt as we navigate them,” until the piece ends with the poet theorizing that the lovers “will embrace/somewhere over Manitoba.”

There are poems, too, that reflect on the ways in which we age, and how the world changes with the passage of time. In one poem, “22 Forest Hill Drive,” there is reference to a childhood home, when the poet realizes that he “can’t go home again.” Both “Summer Camp” and “Down I Dug” are pieces that also reflect on childhood times, as places to begin, but not as places to remain, except to go back to visit them briefly in memory and nostalgia. 

The final ekphrastic section in the collection is something that will make the reader feel as though they’ve walked into an art gallery. Oughton’s keen sense of craft is obvious here, too. In observing  Judith Davidson-Palmer’s photographs, Flowing I and II, he reminds us of how the viewer can be altered by considering art: “You only see what eyes set for/I look: water is never still/look longer and the leaves keep changing/look long enough and I/have changed.” In “House, Pool,” he describes the effect of Marjorie Moeser’s Key West, saying: “This is Key West/after you throw away/the compass,/unlock your longing.” The poet suggests that observing artwork, just like observing life’s tiny details and the visible proof of time’s passage in a human life, are things that lead humans to change, grow, and evolve.

The Universe and All That feels like a philosophical, poetic portal of sorts. John Oughton’s poetry is rooted in the rhythms of regular, everyday life, but it is his keen use of sensory imagery, metaphor, and humour that often work together to direct the reader towards contemplating larger philosophical concepts.

 

 

 

 

 

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her latest book of poems is Emptying the Ocean (Frontenac House, 2022). She is the Ontario Representative for The Writers' Union of Canada (2020-24), a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Kim's first novel, The Donoghue Girl, will be published by Latitude 46 Publishing in Spring 2024. She may be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com