Some love for Biblioasis titles in the NY Times

David Orr, a critic whose taste and judgment I've long admired, has published a list of the best poetry titles of 2018, according to him. Really pleased to see my friend Amanda Jernigan's Years, Months, and Days on his list. I had the pleasure of hearing Amanda read this slim book in its entirety on two occasions, while she was doing a reading tour with Rachel. Minimalist poetry at its best.

I'm even more chuffed to see Richard Sanger's Dark Woods on Orr's list. Not only because Richard is a friend and the book is published by Biblioasis, but because I was its editor. I don't care a whole lot about attention or lack thereof paid to my own books, but I always get a bang out of seeing the books by others that I love appreciated.

CBC Poetry Prize

I'm doing very little freelance work these days because I'm doing a lot more other work than I used to, but one thing I did recently was serve as a reader for CBC's annual poetry contest. It's a complex process, with twelve readers each assessing over 500 entries (I read 515) and submitting a list of their top 12. There is some overlap, as I understand it--i.e., there aren't 6000+ entries, but over 2500--so they must aggregate the lists somehow to come up with their longlist of 30, which is then whittled to a shortlist of 5, before a winner is finally crowned. Three of my picks made the longlist, including my top pick, a poem called "Migrations" by a poet named Mark Wagenaar, who also had another entry make the longlist. I only learned the identity of the author when the list was published, because the judging is completely blind. Wagenaar's name and work wasn't known to me (which shows how little attention I pay to these contests normally, since he won it in 2015) previously, so this was one of the bonuses of doing this work. Wagenaar's poem, I will say, was easily my first choice, so I was disappointed that it didn't make the shortlist. But so it goes with contests.

HALF

Having, by any actuary's reckoning,

logged half the days due me, here I hunker

in the chilly gloom of my third mortgage,

shivering and doubting the wisdom of this dead

pledge: petty rent-seeker and prompt payer

of bills, fetcher of foodstuffs, keeper of the dulled blade

of concupiscent bliss, alchemic converter of hours

into shekels deferred for the decades

ahead. When did I grow so prudent,

when tripped I over the threshold

dividing fresh from old, when did contingent

thoughts lodge, throttle and square this cold

shoulder to the wheel? Numb and dumb,

I hold a lit candle to my quivering palm.

I hold a lit candle to my quivering palm

and marvel at the metacarpals dark

against an orange lantern glow—then jerk

the hand aloft before the skin begins

to sizzle. Had pain the power of a balm

to turn tortured thought away from work

and aim it on the path of art or at some mark

more worthy than the burthens of a citizen,

then might I persist, burn black the skin,

obliterate the fortune-teller's lines

and bear the molten stigma like a blaze

while I wander nameless among pines

and cedars, unheeded prophet of unknown

gospels, wending along dim holloways.

Gospels of wind along dim holloways

blow, and no prophet there to hear them;

footsteps on the stone of cthonic hallways

echo, and no homeless there to fear them;

pastures abandoned to spruce and grey jays,

with no pioneer's handsaw to clear them;

directors stage cycles of mystery plays,

but no audience shows up to cheer them;

councillors conspire to deflect sun's rays,

and no activists gather to jeer them;

slouching toward man's penultimate days,

like Zeno, we can only draw near them—

My friends, this is the way the world ends:

nothing is shattered, but everything bends.

Nothing is shattered, but everything bends

beneath the weight of airborne drops of ice.

Birches bowed over the track scrape ends

on this train's steel and glass as we pass

through a light-latticed tunnel. No passengers

sit in the dome to take in this marvel;

they're all in the wifi zone, tapping messages

of all-caps outrage at the late arrival

announced, wailing like Lear at the weather.

A heavy branch glances off the glass dome.

I flinch, but settle into the leather

of my seat, bound to wait this out. Bound home.

Half of my days are spent away

in a limbo zone between go and stay.

In a limbo zone between go and stay

is where our hero finds himself at home,

less foreign, least strange; starring in a staged play

on steel wheels, your working-class-hero-cum-

boho-hobo-cum-minor-magnate struts

and frets, stumbles, sways, lurches and lunges

through the switches, crossings and slack action

of his days. Gravity and inch-high flanges

keep this rolling show on rails gauged to ruts

in Roman roads, which is to say the way

is wide as two horses' rumps, a fraction

of which—one half, I'll own—you'd fairly say

our hero is, bytimes. Bytimes, he earns

our trust and love. Bytimes, he even learns.

Trust and love, bytimes, even I have learned

to honour, however strange they might be

to my soul—a notion I've a half-mind

to dismiss, since soul is nothing I can see,

flipping by-catch in a neural net designed—

if that conceit my judgment might concede—

to keep this body breathing. I have yearned—

yea, even burned—for purpose, for meaning

beyond bare-forked, basic need to light me

down this darkling road toward gold-greening

rolling fields, clear streams and feral orchards

dropping windfall fruit free for my gleaning—

but snap back from dreaming to data and facts.

No haphazard drift can sanctify profane acts.

No haphazard drift sanctifies my profane acts,

therefore have I made this drift my mission

statement to the stars, whose distant fission

fuels my hours and lifts dim cataracts

of mist from the bustled harbour narrows,

above which sit my debt-beleaguered homes.

The water and the interest rate arrow

ever upwards, precipitation comes

slashing crabwise at my asphalt shingles,

unraked rotting leaves festoon the flower

beds. Across the Northwest Arm, the Dingle

Tower pokes through fog. Church bells toll the hour.

The balance of my days are beckoning—

Half, by any actuary's reckoning.

Charlie Sark reads Ego on the full moon

I'm honoured to have a poem of mine, "Ego," read by PEI/west coast poet and chef Charlie Sark as part of this cool chain project, "Luna Mouths," in which an east coast poet records a poem by another east coast poet and posts it on the night of the full moon.

ZW interviewed by Nigel Beale!

RIP Rosaleen Dickson

Surveying the sad state of affairs that's dominating the news in Canadian writing circles these days, it's easy to forget the good and valuable things that make participation in this often dysfunctional sphere worthwhile.

Almost eight years ago, The Porcupine's Quill published The Essential Kenneth Leslie, a book I edited which brought a substantial selection of Leslie's work back into print for the first time since the late '70s.

In the process of working on that book, I got to know Leslie's daughter, Rosaleen Dickson, and her daughter, Elizabeth Dickson, who was working on a biography of her grandfather. It was easy to see that Rosaleen had inherited several of her father's remarkable qualities: charisma, wit, rhetorical flair, leadership and pro-social political commitment.

One of the great joys of my literary life was having Rosaleen and Elizabeth attend the Ottawa launch of the book. At that event, John MacDonald took this wonderful candid photo of me and Rosaleen in conversation.

I learned from John the other day that Rosaleen had died, age 96. Elizabeth told me that, while her mother was physically infirm in the last year of her life, her radiant brilliance never dimmed. This obituary notice gives some indication of what an exemplary life she led.

Seems appropriate to conclude with one of her father's poems:

Requiescam

I must have peace, must have it undisturbed,
quiet and deep, must have it in my soul,
deep in my soul. But let no noise be curbed,
let every restless thing escape control
and find its freedom in its own sweet groove!
Let eagles storm the sky, let the worm creep,
let all things move the way that they must move,
but let me rest awhile and let me sleep!
And do not chide me for my weary eyes,
nor scold because my hands have lost their grip.
Some arrows they have aimed still climb the skies,
some hands shall not for get their comradeship.
I must have sleep and leave the quickened clay
to answer if sleep bring another day!