Alex Boyd's The Lonely Offices features poetry by Jessica Hiemstra

Alex Boyd, author of The Least Important Man, also runs the blog The Lonely Offices: Poetry and Stuff About Poetry. Much to our delight, he recently featured a poem from Jessica Hiemstra's recent Biblioasis collection Self-Portrait Without a Bicycle. Jessica read "The Most Beautiful Things I've Seen in October" at the Windsor launch of the book this month at the Biblioasis shop. In case you missed it, here's the link to Alex's blog.

A Wednesday Wrap-Up

Hello, Windsor. Hello, world. What's new? Well, for starters, BiblioPoet Alex Boyd has just returned from the marvellous UNB poetry weekend, which apparently was as fabulous as ever. Thanks to Ross Leckie & to UNB for hosting. Quoth Mr. Boyd, the readings at Memorial Hall—thanks in part to the lovely environs and stained glass—were a bit like Poetry Church. For those of you in Toronto who'd like a poesy experience of a different kind, you can check out Alex (and Sonia Di Placido, Josh Smith and Daniel Tysdal), at LiveWords tomorrow at the Black Swan. More deets here. 

And of course we can't forget our friends in the West, oh glorious West: C.P. Boyko is reading with Rae Spoon tomorrow at Pages on Kensington. Should be a good show. Rae will be playing some of their music and Craig will be opening with a little Psych work. And of the latter? We had a review come our way which will be running in Booklist on Oct. 16. "Readers will enjoy the author's versatility," they say, along with his "quirky (sometimes uproarious) sense of humor, sardonic view of the world, and fruitful imagination. He is also master of the ambiguous clue and unreliable narrator .... Libraries with any short-fiction readers should buy this book and keep an eye out for the next one."

Other reviews in brief: "Unruly Voices has insightful things to say about the corrupting influence of money on public discourse," said the National Post this weekend of Mark Kingwell's new essay collection (for which we'll be having a launch party at Type on November 1st): "The scourge of incivility might not be new, but it is more pervasive. And, as Kingwell warns, the cost to coherent debate is great." If you check out the Montreal Review of Books, you'll see Alice Petersen talking about books and Beckett. And (as a lead-in to Hallowe'en, perhaps?) the next issue of Prairie Fire begins their review of Laura Boudreau's Suitable Precautions with this: "There is nothing like good old gore to lift a short story out of the bland."
Indeed. Good gore. Love it. 

Anon!

Alex Boyd at Art Bar

To Bibliofans and PoetryFans in the Toronto Area: Alex Boyd will be reading at an Art Bar Poetry Series event near you! Tuesday August 7th, the second floor of Pauper's Pub, 539 Bloor West, come join Alex as he reads from The Least Important Man. Alex will be joined by Louise Bak, Kyle Buckley, and Shawna Dimitry. Evening starts at 8 PM. For more information about Canada's longest-running poetry-only reading series, take a look at their website (it's blue!)

Poesy, then the Empty Road

Morning, folks. Just two quick notes before I dash off for the Great Congress. First and foremost, any bibliofans who are attending this high and mighty affair, keep your eyes peeled for Amanda Jernigan, who will be reading Sunday night alongside Carrie Snyder, Darren Bifford, Warren Heiti, Lucy Alford, and Lacey Beer. Moreover! Alex Boyd will be reading with Al Moritz at Words Worth Books, tonight, at 7:30. Third! Yesterday said Mr. Boyd was the author of the "Old Book, New Author" column in the National Post: Click here for Boyd's take on art, empathy, and an American classic. 

Man, that IS important!

A new review just in from our friends over at Quill & Quire, this time on Alex Boyd's The Least Important Man:

"Boyd changes lenses more frequently as the book goes on. “Dead Bees Are Indomitable” traces a ghostly flight path, punctuated midway by a Paraguayan car bomb and ending in a shapeless fit of static. The poet can work magic in miniature: poems about chess pieces, toy soldiers, and house spiders each animate aspects of civic and personal life without lapsing into caricature. “Basil Rathbone Meets God,” “A Stuntman Destroys the Hate Window,” “Samuel Drowns, at Thirty” and others that hunker down and lavish their attention on one individual are among the book’s most beautiful and surprising."

By the end of the collection, I was able to count a number of these standouts. And man, that is important."

You can read the full review if you follow the link above.

Biblioasis at the Bookshelf, TONIGHT

Morning, all, and happy Monday! We hope anyone within spitting distance of granola-town--by which I of course mean Guelph, that recycler's paradise, that urban spa, that city on the hill for composting cosmopolitans--will stop by The Bookshelf tonight for a bang-up Bibliomnibus Night. We're bringing you five authors, all at once, all for free! Come support the bibliocrew and the stupendous Dan Evans: indefatigable bookseller, charming radio host, and (it would seem) impromptu tour guide. AK's in Guelph as we speak and the rest will descend shortly! 

WHAT: Biblioasis at the Bookshelf: An Evening of Poetry & Fiction

WHERE: The Bookshelf, 41 Quebec St., Guelph

WHEN: Monday May 14th, 7 p.m.

Admission is free. Please contact tmurphy@biblioasis.com if you have any questions.   

THE LINE-UP:

Mike Barnes: The Reasonable Ogre

The author of seven books including poetry, short fiction, novels and a memoir, Mike Barnes has received many honours for his writing.  Calm Jazz Sea was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for poetry and Aquarium won the Danuta Gleed Award for best first book of short stories in Canada.  His short fiction has won a National Magazine Awards Silver Medal and appeared in the prestigious Best Canadian Stories (twice)and Journey Prize Anthology (three times).  Since the early 1970s Mike Barnes has also lived with mental illness, a story he told for the first time in his memoir The Lily Pond. His most recent book, The Reasonable Ogre, is a collection of adult fairy tales, and has been called by Fairy Tale Review founder Kate Bernheimer "a marvel, and a tribute to the power of story." For more information please visit www.reasonableogre.com. 

Alex Boyd: The Least Important Man

Alex Boyd writes poems, fiction, reviews and essays, and has published work in magazines and newspapers such as The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, and on websites such as Nthposition. His first book of poems Making Bones Walk (Luna Publications, 2007) won the Gerald Lampert Award. He edits the online poetry journal Northern Poetry Review, and recently helped establish Best Canadian Essays. His second collection of poetry, The Least Important Man, was released from Biblioasis in spring of 2012.

Liliana Heker: The End of the Story

Liliana Heker is a Jewish-Argentinian author and intellectual, known for her outspoken protests against state violence during Argentina's Dirty War (1976-1983). At a time when many writers and journalists fled the country to escape persecution, Heker remained, and argued the necessity of bearing witness to state atrocities. 

   Made famous at first by the public polemic she had with the great Argentine writer Julio Cortázar (then living in Paris), Heker’s short fiction has since been anthologized in over a dozen countries. Her collected stories was released by Alfaguara in 2004. The End of the Story, which provoked enormous public controversy over how best to remember the years of the Argentine dictatorship, is her second work to appear in English.

Amanda Jernigan: Groundwork

Amanda Jernigan is a poet, playwright, essayist, and editor. Her works have been published in Canada, the United States and Germany, and are represented in the online archive of the Poetry Foundation. Groundwork, which was selected as a Top-Five Book of Poetry for 2011 on NPR.org, was commended this January by David Orr: "Jernigan," he says, "possesses daunting formal skill ... her lines have an emotional intensity that is no less memorable for being understated. And she has a light, perfecting touch."

Anakana Schofield: Malarky

"Malarky spins and glitters like a coin flipped in the air—now searingly tragic, now blackly funny. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant."—Annabel Lyon, author of The Golden Mean

"This is the story of the teapot-wielding 'Our Woman': fretful mother, disgruntled farmwife, and—surprisingly late in life—sexual outlaw/anthropologist. Everything about this primly raunchy, uproarious novel is unexpected—each draught poured from the teapot marks another moment of pure literary audacity."—Lynn Coady, author of The Antagonist

Anakana Schofield is an Irish-Canadian writer of fiction, essays, and literary criticism. She has contributed to the London Review of Books, The Recorder: The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society, the Globe and Mail, and the Vancouver Sun. She has lived in London and Dublin, and now resides in Vancouver. Malarky, which was selected as a Summer 2012 Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, is her first novel. 

Cinco de Mayo Malarky

Well, folks, it continued to be a good weekend for Malarky. The book didn't, like the rest of Windsor, file into Detroit and get drunk in Mexicantown, nor did it stumble home in the wee hours clutching a bag of tostadas and reeking of margarita salt ... but it did get a little drunk on love. FIVE reviews this weekend: count them. FIVE. Not only did we see some tenderness from The Vancouver Sun and The National Post, but Kassie Rose of The Longest Chapter raved about it, as did The Winnipeg Free Press and Sheryl MacKay on North by Northwest. 

So. You can listen to Sheryl MacKay's interview with AK (approx. 22 min) here, and you can see how the rest of the salt shook out below.  

In other news, Alex Boyd was yesterday's Sunday Poet on the vehicule press blog, tonight is Alice Petersen's Montreal launch and Alexander MacLeod is reading at the Rowers Pub Reading Series AND Claire Tacon goes viral at Grey Borders; then tomorrow Claire is reading at Palisades Garden in Cobourg and Rebecca Rosenblum continues to spread the Bibliobug at Virus in St Catharine's. 

Lord. What a week! And to think it's only--well, a happy, yes happy--it's only Monday. More soon!

Malarky In Review 

"Schofield’s brilliant storytelling in Malarky is among the most engaging I’ve ever encountered." - Kassie Rose, The Longest Chapter

"The love of a mother for her son is the central theme of this novel. But the book has much to ask and much to say about many other topics as well, among them empowerment through sex, loneliness in marriage, the futility of war, the strains of immigration and the margins of mental health. Schofield's ability to tie all these together in such an original, quirky, tender and eloquent way is to be commended ... Malarky is an alternately beautiful, brilliant, profound, poignant and comedic work of literary fiction." - The Winnipeg Free Press  

"I loved this book Malarky ... I was gobsmacked." - Sheryl MacKay, CBC Radio, North by Northwest

"A challenging but rewarding look at what happens to a mother when the bottom drops out."—The Vancouver Sun

"Delightfully offbeat ... Schofield shows a deft - and altogether welcome - comic touch."—The National Post

"Malarky is an exemplary read ... I look forward to the next of Anakana Schofield’s novels."—Scott Esposito, Conversational Reading

"Irish-Canadian literary critic Anakana Schofield's first novel is a tumultuous ride. Malarky asks questions without providing answers, chronicling the emotional, mental, and occasionally menial anxieties of Our Woman as she struggles with her own agency and desire. Set in contemporary Ireland, the book overflows with subtle and sometimes subversive allusions to James Joyce's Ulysses, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, site-specific contemporary Irish art, and Catholic history. Yet Schofield's strong prose style and inventive approach to structure will likely reward readers unfamiliar with these cultural references."—Quill & Quire

"Malarky is like nothing else, and what everything should be … This is a book that will leave you demanding more of everything else you read."—Pickle Me This 

"Malarky is a wacky, dead serious book, and what stands out more than anything is its freshness in a sea of same-old, same-old novels.“—The Telegraph Journal

The Weekend in Review

G'day, folks, and happy Monday. We'll have more verse for you shortly--after a four-day hiatus we'll bring poetry month to an end with a bang--but in the meantime a few amuses-bouches, as dished up by critics from around the country. Reviews ad mari usque ad mare this weekend. Yes indeed.  

Attack of the Copula Spiders and Other Essays on Writing, by Douglas Glover

"Douglas Glover, the award-winning Canadian writer of fiction, short stories and essays carries within him a huge sense of duty both to the craft of writing and to the language ... I stand before it in awe ... This is a book for all writers and for any creative writing class syllabus" - Telegraph-Journal

The Least Important Man, by Alex Boyd

"Consistently strong. Boyd's images and metaphors are deft." 

- Winnipeg Free Press

Suitable Precautions, by Laura Boudreau

"The stories in Suitable Precautions are peopled with characters who act in believably quirky and compellingly odd ways ... For Boudreau, it seems love is the most powerful precaution, and as such is the only one that comes with any sort of guarantee." 

- The Malahat Review

Something About the Animal, by Cathy Stonehouse

"Stonehouse's skill lies in her ability to render a topsy-turvy world without alienating her reader. Her writing is disarming and fearless ... The violence, pain, and vulnerability Stonehouse seems drawn to creatively make for intense reading, yet an ease with shifts in time, a mastery of suspense, and perfect, revealing last lines soften the blows." 

- The Malahat Review

A Red Balloon (At Forty)

Today's poem of the day is courtesy of Alex Boyd, who as you all know (seven or eight times over by this point), is reading tonight with Claire Tacon at the London Music Club. So Londonites! (Yes, all 8 of you, don't think we don't count--) Come out and raise a glass with us to two pretty gosh darn great writers. 

At Forty 

Alex Boyd

from The Least Important Man (2012)

He feels like a kid in a hardware store, half his allowance spent, he needs to think
more carefully about the other half. Thinks
of the T. Rex, dead 65 million years but back
in a way it couldn’t have conceived, the flat
and flickering climax of a film.  He knows
he’s the grunt that would’ve made a good general,
but never mind that now, at least it’s no longer
a world with live cats burned in a wicker effigy.
He remembers standing in the heat of Florida with his father, and when American singers beamed,
announced they were The Voices of Liberty,
his father said “I knew it,” and turned away.
Trusts he’s made of old moments that rattled
past like boxcars, has pain when typing, notes
the slow betrayal of his body, but senses
a much bigger pain behind other doors.  And,
something new, his soul starting to get away, trailing him for the first time, a red balloon.

The image is a screenshot from Albert Lamorrisse's 1956 short film The Red Balloon, which you can learn more about here.

The Benefactions of the Muse

Morning, folks. Rise and shine! Another new day at the Bibliomanse; another new-old poem; another dozen or so events to rhapsodize about before you all get on with the business of the day. Today's theme, as we prepare to cogitate upon the sublime chaos that is May, is the farewell to sleep (Get up, get up for shame)! Along with Mr. Herrick, Bartholomew the Englishman/D. Solway have a few things to say about how best to bid Morpheus good night. Here's hoping his advice is sage ... especially since Bartholomew's cure for lethargy ain't exactly a walk in the park. (Lethargic types--especially poets and lovers of women--are to "be brought into a light and airy place / and drawn into wrangling and disputation / and tugged by the hair of [the] beard / and a clyster applied to [the] genitives." Anointing with mustard and a frenzied quaking of flesh to follow. Who knew? I'd rather be shook and called sweet slugabed, myself.)

Anyhow. The point is there are better things than sleep upcoming. Josh Trotter in Newfoundland, today. Ray Robertson in Barrie, tomorrow. On Sunday at 11:30 Ray Robertson is speaking about Writing and Happiness at the Blue Met Festival in Montreal. And THEN the mustard frenzy REALLY begins:

Tuesday April 24, Biblioasis's Spring Reading at Phog Lounge, Windsor: with Mike Barnes, Amanda Jernigan, and Claire Tacon
Wednesday April 25, Claire Tacon and Alex Boyd, Live at the London Music Club, London
Thursday April 26, The Reasonable Ogre Hits Type: A Book Launch/Art Exhibit for Mike Barnes & Segbingway (Type Books, Toronto)
Thursday April 26, David Hickey will be reading with Penn Kemp and a few others at the Poet Laureate and Friends event at the London Public Library (Central Branch).

Claire Tacon, moreover, will be reading at the Plan 99, Art Bar, and Virus Reading Series between April 29th and May 5th, and on May 7th, Alice Petersen will be launching All the Voices Cry at the Atwater Library in Montreal (with Chantel Lavoie).

So. That takes us to the end of the first week of May. The second week of May? You'll just have to see that malarky to believe it. Eh?

We'll have more information here on Thirsty closer to the dates. In the meantime, for full events listings, please see our Biblioasis Events Page.


Waking

from The Properties of Things (The Poems of Bartholomew the Englishman), 2007.

Bad waking is other than incontinence of sleep
but is a superfluity in the composition of man
and comes from evil matter grieving the brain
as in those disposed to melancholy;
and sometime it comes of grumous substance
and gloomy moistures in the brain
as in old, forlived men;
and sometime from great repletion and bad digestion
and sometime from craving and overdrinking.
For in this especially the sharp smoke of wine
sticks and pricks the sinews of feeling
and such men are often disposed to woodenness.
Excessive waking is to be avoided
for it dries the eyes and weights the eyelids
and enfeebles the sight and breeds headaches
and finally destroys the body.
But measured waking is nothing else
than the imbruing of spirit
into the limbs of feeling and moving
and working of the animate virtue of the body;
and abstinent waking prepares the soul
to receive benefactions of the Muse
and bring the work to completion
as did the Lord
who lugged the clayform out of darkness;
and moderate waking cools the body from within
and makes it lean and temperate;
and disciplined waking alerts the mind
to the sudden ruses of enemies
who lie in wait wolfishly like Dominicans.
For good waking
brings new resources to wayfaring men
so they do not lose the journey with sleeping
or the crown that is owing them in wakefulness.

(Image: "Satan Arousing the Fallen Angels," John Martin, 1824. Awake! Arise! Or be forever ... etc.)

Angel Quires

Afternoon, folks. April was kind to us over at Quill and Quire, with reviews coming out today for both Alice Petersen and Douglas Glover. Of Alice--who has her Montreal launch coming up at Atwater Library on May 7th--they say she "has produced a first collection of stories that, in its depth and quiet wisdom, is reminiscent of the work of another famous Canadian writer named Alice." All the Voices Cry they call "a beautiful tribute to human fragility and the inevitability of change." And of Doug Glover's Attack of the Copula Spiders they say quite simply:

Glover practises what he prays for in others. His own prose is clean and polished, thoughtful and intriguing, accessible yet serious .... erudite books such as Attack of the Copula Spiders are always useful as roadmaps for developing better readers and writers. Now if we could only get the world to read them carefully.

We couldn't agree more.

Don't forget, all you Toronto Bibliofans, that Alex Boyd's launch will start at the Dora Keogh in about 4 hours. Poesy and beer! And for those of you who already have the shakes for our next Toronto event, here's a little shot to steady the nerves. Courtesy of Open Book Toronto and featuring the marvellous Mike Barnes.

First World Wars. Captain Kirk. Dora Keogh. (Thursday!)

Morning, folks, and happy Monday. Today we get two poems-of-the-day since (what's that? the Biblioserf was slack over the holiday weekend?) I missed Sunday's post. Both are in honour of Alex Boyd, who will be celebrating the Toronto launch of his new book THIS THURSDAY, April 12th, at Dora Keogh. Doors open at seven! Hope to see you there.

First World Wars

by Alex Boyd
from The Least Important Man, 2012

Summer and stepping outside to a wall of wood
lifting, I asked my father and grandfather what
they were doing – building you a clubhouse Dad said
grudgingly, as if I had demanded one (and now,
remembering the sound of hammers at work,
it felt like strange thunder, a warning).
We still have my grandfather’s letters up to the end
of the war, 1918, and some give details: the big shell
right in front of us that failed to explode. Lucky.
Word spread to other houses, and near one
a wooden castle appeared in response, all the boys
of the street springing to one side or the other.
When my Dad was young my grandfather drank
and talked about turning a trench corner to come
face to face with one of them. What did you do?
I got my bayonet up first. I fought the other leader
and we fell through bushes without a scratch.
Sharpened popsicle sticks a purpose turned inside out,
plans for turning batteries into bombs stolen. Someone
defected to our side for a day. One morning, plaster
in my clubhouse lock. I cut an enemy lip, took a
blunt speech from his mother. And the tension, dull
electric, and constant. Boys charged from the bushes,
pushing one long sharpened branch. I fumbled keys
to get inside. Lucky. My grandfather noted an accident
in a letter: ironically, an electrocution days after the war.
He said I guess they don’t need a war to kill a man.

Captain Kirk Love Poem

There was some small moment at the start, wasn’t there,
some touch: the most dazzelous woman you’d ever seen,
there on a street corner and you left, made excuses
like she’s on a bike, I’ve got to get this package home.
It was before you knew your body swarmed with luck,
a black and gold uniform of mashed black-eyed Susans
and lurking, tamed mustard gas reinforcing your eyes.
You thought to make up for it: time travel slingshots,
cacophony of rankled emperors, altered comets, viruses
and wicked computers trashed, your scattered children.
You charmed the tall freckled women of Widow Avenue,
and were gone, never seen on a doddering bus to have
some old woman’s purse full of tissues and lozenges
kiss your knee and carry on. But there was a whisper.
A worry the further you went, the more you missed, some
combination of null space. Back there, a former self aghast
to face that we’re weak and beautiful, made of sticks,
honey, water and ranunculi holding up under the wind,
or that one place is shiny with multitudes, if you stay
long enough to see it. Or that we can be manta ray thin,
but blue whale big-hearted. We needed you, can note
your example, splendour-addicted, finally seeing the woman
who reminds you most of her, and disappearing
in your own pattern: her green and black floral dress,
the thin river of a burst of sun standing up, as if to speak.