I've been dipping back into Zach Wells'
bookTrack & Trace,which I bought and browsed when it first came out -- but it's only now,
on further reading, that I appreciate the neat fit of Seth's austere cartoons
(if I can call them that) with the rigorously pent emotions in Zach's poems. As
John Metcalf once wrote to me, talking about Ben Jonson's "On My First
Daughter," "It may be that it is the distance itself which is so
moving."
That's a brief appreciation, as I can hear the baby stirring and the
toddler (who's been at the park with his saintly grandmother) approaching home,
but I hope it will serve your turn. I, too, lament the speed with which
backlist books fall off the publicity radar. For years I've dated the flyleaves
of books according to when I bought the books -- but it's often years before I
really get round to reading them. Better, I think, to record the date (with a
really good book, dates) of reading: the date(s) when the words actually
entered/re-entered your thought and life.
Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets is one of
the best anthologies of poetry I know, and in my top five contemporary poetry
books ever. Zach Wells selects sonnets from across the country, across
generations, and across styles. For those who think sonnets all look the same,
there is much to learn here about the range of poetic possibility within a
single set of formal constraints. Among other clever things, Wells's
introduction argues that the fourteen lines of the Petrarchan and Shakespearean
sonnet forms are poetry's finest vehicle for introducing, developing, and
concluding a well-formed thought. These poems are thus phenomenological
jailbreaks, consciousness busting out -- in good order -- from the buzzing
prison-yard of our jumbled minds. A book to dip into or read cover to cover,
with delight on every page.
I'm happy to bring you more great news for Bibliosis authors.
Alexandra Oliver appears on rob maclennan's blog for an interview regarding the Pat Lowther-shortlisted collection Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway.
The Underground Book Club posted a glowing review of Zachariah Wells' Career Limiting Moves: Interviews, Rejoinders, Essays, Reviews. Michael Bryson calls it "Playful, snarky, sharp-witted, intelligent and polemical ... his debate skills (formidable) leave his opponents flattened."
EVENT Magazine reviewed Jessica Hiemstra's Self-Portrait Without a Bicycle, describing it as follows: “The poems themselves-free-verse stanzas whose titles are almost always composed of subject and verb, and whose sentences often overlap with the first lines of subsequent sections—dart in and out [of] narratives … [and] are strongest when the narrative stakes are highest … tender and convincing.”
Windsor poet-cum-panel-moderator Robert Earl Stewart talks to Our Windsor's Michael Michalski about our upcoming poetry criticism event:
"One of the things that’s always up for discussion...is whether or not Canadian poetry is too Canadian, too in love with its own provincial sensitivities and sense of identity such as the pervasive Man vs. Nature theme featured in a lot of Canadian poetry, whether the poetry be historical or contemporary...The point (the panelists) make about this brand of Canadian nature poetry is one I tend to agree with: that it’s distinctive because it’s not very interesting. Which is not to say there are no interesting Canadian poets. Far from it. It’s just that the interesting ones have managed to transcend our literary fascination with the whole ‘True North Strong and Free’ ethos of surviving in the wilds against all odds. Though, for better or worse for poetry’s sake, it’s part of our heritage.”
What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry, with Zachariah Wells, Anita Lahey, Jason Guriel and Robert Earl Stewart takes place @ Biblioasis Bookstore, Saturday March 22nd, 4:30PM.
Dear Haligonians and Dart...mouthians? It's still March, and National Poetry Month is still almost two weeks away, but that ain't no thing to the perennial, ardent supporter of verse, is it? No thing at all. So beat the fashion and join Biblioasis and The Bookmark as we celebrate in style an evening of pints and lyric insights at The Company House on Gottingen for the Halifax Launch of Zachariah Wells's Career Limiting Moves and Richard Norman's Zero Kelvin, @ 6PM tonight! And speaking of ardent supporters of verse, check out the amazing window display for the event courtesy of The Bookmark below!
Last but not least, ladies and gentlemen, and from the other side of the world: Rebecca Rosenblum and Amy Jones were on a Maritime Tour last week, where they read at St. Mary's, UNB, and Acadia. Thanks go out to our own Alexander MacLeod and Brian Bartlett at the St. Mary's Reading Series, as well as the many others who helped make this tour possible.
Biblioauthors Dine in Style: Alexander MacLeod, Amy Jones, Zach Wells, & Rebecca Rosenblum. Take that, Halifax!
This Fall the Literary Press Group is launching its Handmade Campaign, focusing on well-designed physical books in this age of e-reading hysteria. This, to my mind, is one of the more intelligent and creative back-to-the-book promos I've seen in a few years. There's some great titles there, by some of the best indie presses in the land: Coach House, Anvil, Pedlar, Invisible. And Biblioasis, of course.
Zach Wells's Track & Trace, K.D. Miller's Brown Dwarf and Mauricio Segura's Black Alley make up the Biblioasis contribution to this campaign. But if you're looking for some other great Biblioasis titles with that handmade appeal, why not also check out Mike Barnes's Thaw Foretold, Salvatore Ala's Straight Razor, Glenn & Kingwell's Idler's Glossary, Goran Simic's From Sarajevo With Sorrow.
Check in with you local indie bookseller to see if they'll be carrying these titles. For more information please go here.
Three Biblioasis titles made the just-announce Re-Lit longlists. Congrats to Amy Jones, in the short fiction category, for What Boys Like, Terry Griggs, in the novel category for Thought You
Were Dead, and Zach Wells in the poetry category for Track & Trace. Wayne Clifford also made it for his Exile Papers, instead of Jane Again, so congrats to Wayne as well.
The National Magazine Awards were announced earlier this week, and Zach Wells was nominated in "the one of a kind" for an essay on a poem in another Biblioasis author's book: 'Echoes in November,' by Robyn Sarah, from Pause for Breath. It's an exceptional essay about an exceptional poem, and it is now online here.
Though it has taken me far too long to post notice, Zach Wells's Track & Trace has been shortlisted for the Atlantic Poetry Prize. It's a well deserving nod, and T&T can stand in as Biblioasis representative for the two other poetry collections by Atlantic Canadians we published last year: Wayne Clifford's Jane Again, and Shane Neilson's Meniscus. The fact that Zach brought both to the press only ties them together in my mind all-the-tighter.
Congratulations Zach on some much deserved acknowledgment. Congrats also to the other nominees, Anne Compton for Asking Questions Indoors and Out and Tonja Gunvaldsen Klassen for Lean-to.
Atlantic Poetry Prize
Asking Questions Indoors and Out Anne Compton Fitzhenry and Whiteside
Anne Compton's first two collections marked the arrival of a major voice in Canadian literature. In this, her third book of poetry, she brings her crafted, narrative lines into focus on the mysterious metaphysical nature of everyday life. Spirit-haunted yet critical, and meticulous in her observations, Compton opens the immediate world by asking it questions, searching for answer to the way in which we live.
A native of Prince Edward Island, Anne Compton is Writer-in-Residence at UNB Saint John, where she also teaches English literature and creative writing courses and is the director of the Lorenzo Reading Series and the Backtalk Series. She has contributed to critical discussions on 19th-century and early 20th-century aesthetics; 17th-century metaphysical poetry; Canadian literature and Maritime literature. Her poetry is published nationally and internationally, and her reviews appear in Canadian Literature, Fiddlehead, and other journals. She won the Atlantic Poetry Prize in 2003 for Opening the Island and in 2006 for Processional, which also received the 2005 Governor General's Award for poetry. In 2008 she was honoured by the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in the Literary Arts.
In her third book of poetry, Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen writes of places made home, navigating between fixed points of origin and the flotsam that encloses, between the longevity of marriage and parenthood, and the temporary of camping trips, renovations and hospital stays. Across the collection, the poet's lyricism finds a lilt and repetition that firmly pegs while leaving one side open to the unlikely and unexpected.
Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, and now lives on a hill in Halifax with her husband James and their three boys. Her first collection, Clay Birds, won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry in 1996. Her second collection, Ör, was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award in 2004. Her series "August: An Anniversary Suite" won a CBC Literary Award for poetry in 2005 and was published as a chapbook by Gaspereau Press. She's read in collaboration with Norman Adams on cello and has exhibited her work in the Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax.
Track & Trace Zachariah Wells Biblioasis
The poems in Zachariah Wells's second collection range from childhood to dimly foreseen events in the future; they idle on all three of Canada's coasts, travel the open road, take walks in the city and pause on the banks of country streams and ponds. Both elegiac and celebratory, Track & Trace considers how we love, how we shape our lives and how we are eroded and drifted by time and circumstance.
Zachariah Wells is also the author of Unsettled, a poetry collection about his experiences in the Canadian Arctic. He is co-author of the children's book Anything But Hank! and editor of Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets. Originally from PEI, Wells has travelled and lived all over Canada, working a variety of jobs in the transportation sector. He presently lives in Halifax, where he works as a freelance writer and editor and serves the travelling public aboard Via Rail's Ocean Ltd.
Hosted by Carmine Starnino. Mark it down and spread the word. The event serves as the Canadian launch for Norm Sibum's Smoke & Lilacs, the first reading since Zach Wells was shortlisted for the Atlantic Poetry Prize earlier this week (more on this later) for Track & Trace, and the first Montreal reading since Robyn Sarah's wonderful launch at the Word for Pause for Breath back in October.
I don't know why I didn't see these the first time around, but if they are new to me perhaps they will be new to you as well.
Back in November, Maisonneuve did an interview with Zach Wells about the publication of Track & Trace.
Alessandro Porco: Can you talk a little about the new book’s title and central concerns?
Zach Wells: I think I first came up with the title after reading a passage in a story by Ivan KlÃma (tr. Ewald Osers) in his book My First Loves. That passage is now the epigraph of the book. But I might have had the title in mind already, then read the passage, not sure. The title is kind of a key. As with the title of Unsettled, it doesn’t refer to a specific phrase or poem, but is something that links the poems, that accounts for these particular pieces being in this particular book. The poems, which I wrote over a period of ten or eleven years—during which time I was moving all over the place, Halifax, PEI, Iqaluit, Montreal, Resolute Bay, Vancouver—are mostly concerned with place and displacement, roots and rootlessness, flux and fixity. I don’t tend to think of them in such terms—I’m generally more focused on how a given poem is working word to word, line to line, than in how it relates to other poems or thematic concerns—but when it came time to put them together, those seemed to be the main things all of these poems had in common. They’re more or less the same preoccupations as the poems in Unsettled, I guess, but differently focused.
AP: Why differently?
ZW: I’d say that, generally, Unsettled is a more civic book and T&T a more lyric book. I’d also say that T&T is a more refined book. Unsettled had over 80 poems in it, many of them quite rough and raw, some of which I’d disown now if I could. I held on to the manuscript of T&T for quite a while because I wanted to have a book in which I was quite confident that each poem justified its own existence. It only has 34 poems in it and I don’t think I’ll feel as negative about any of them in five years as I do about some of the poems in Unsettled. T&T also reflects my growing interest in metrics and stanzaic structures. There are some rhymed and metred poems in Unsettled, but those things are foregrounded more in T&T. Another difference is that Unsettled, being focused on the eastern Arctic, is more geographically unified than T&T, in which the poems take place on all three coasts, points in between and even in Orkney, Scotland.
Last month Jonathan Ball did an interview with Zach on his blog:
3. What is wrong with the publishing industry, and what are they getting right?
Lots of things are wrong with the publishing industry, but the thing that’s bugging me most these days is the union-type rules related to Canada Council block grant disbursements, whereby really enterprising, energetic and talented junior publishers receive smaller grants than sluggish, attenuated, mediocre relics–no matter what the jury recommends. These grants should be going to the houses making the most significant contributions–now–to publishing, not to those whose main claims to fame are their backlist and the fact of their survival. But then, survival’s what Canadian literature’s all about, ain’t it.
I think there are a lot of really dynamic small presses producing worthwhile books and in many cases making those books into beautiful objects. I think a few players on the small press scene have really raised the bar over the last decade, which has spurred some presses to up their game and has provided inspiration and a positive example to upstart publishers. Good design is so important, I think. What’s the point of making something few people are going to buy if you make it cheap and ugly? There are enough cheap and ugly things in the world. So kudos to presses like Gaspereau, Biblioasis, Coach House and the Porcupine’s Quill, to name a few, for giving words durable and stylish homes.
An interesting post over a tthe Comics Comics blog on the work Seth has been doing as a designer. Several of the entries focus on the design work he's done for Biblioasis. This might also be the time to announce that he is completely redesigning CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries, hopefully in time for issue 79 (May, 2010). More on this to follow.
From the Comics Comics article:
Seth’s commitment to Canada also extends to the publishers he works with. Drawn and Quarterly is a Montreal firm, although of course one with an international reach. What non-Canadian readers might not know, however, is that Seth is also closely involved with several other Canadian imprints and magazines, often in his capacity as a book designer but sometimes as a writer. This work is often done for quite small presses, such as the Porcupine’s Quill and Biblioasis (in my opinion two of the best publishers not just in Canada but in the world).
Since Seth has fans all over the world, I thought it might be a useful service to call attention to some of the work he’s done that non-Canadians wouldn’t necessarily know about. If you care at all about Seth’s work, all these items are worth tracking down. Even when working with small specialty presses, he lavishes on each task the same care and attention that he gives to projects for The New Yorker and Penguin Books.
His latest design project, Zach Wells's Track & Trace, also comes up for some praise of the Freefall Magazine blog:
Opening a small package in the FreeFall mail I was immediately enchanted by the little book that came out. The cover a textured white stock with embossed shoe prints wandering around the grey title plate, literally tracks in a snowy white background, how wonderful. I ran my fingertips over the textured surface embracing the promise of an absorbing experience with the enclosed poetry. The decoration continued inside with a single snowflake dangling at the end of a dotted white line on a black page, how elegant. The decoration continues throughout the volume with wintery scenes that say so much in their sparse nakedness. Seth has decorated this volume beautifully, I can’t wait to discover the poetry enclosed. It is everything that my tactile sense wants in a book. I’m now off to explore the contents.
Another publisher and book design teacher told me a few weeks back, upon seeing this volume, that no one has done design work like this on a trade poetry book in Canada since the 1940s. It remains to be seen if the extra details will help to sell any more copies: it is painfully hard to even get many independents to stock poetry these days, let alone at Chapters or Indigo. But it seems to be helping in getting people to pick it up. That, at least, is a small victory.
This is, without a doubt, one of the most beautifully produced trade paperback editions of a poetry book I have ever seen published in Canada (and with publishers like Gaspereau Press, Pedlar Press, and this book's publisher Biblioasis on the scene, there are more beautiful trade paperbacks around than ever before). When I first heard it was being illustrated by Seth, I worried the result might be a little too gimmicky, but no. Seth's stark, simple illustrations work well as a counterpoint to Zach's meticulous craftsmanship. As for the poems themselves, Zach has definitely built on the burly aesthetic he demonstrated in his first book (which was edited by me, incidentally). This is an aesthetic generally characterized by an assertive (even, at times, severe) approach to metre that is enhanced by an ardent attention to sonic effects like alliteration, syncopation, rhyme, etc., and his control over such a severe metre is both admirable and remarkable (only on a couple of occasions does it sound too conveniently clippity-cloppity to my ear). And verse with such a robust physicality is well-suited to his subject matter: woods, ponds, floods, cormorants, slugs, briars, ice floes, etc.
Born on Prince Edward Island, currently based in Halifax, frequent Q&Q contributor Zachariah Wells is a Maritime poet of direct speech and muscular lexicon, both of which can be counted among the legacies of fellow Maritimer Alden Nowlan. However, Wells boasts more cosmopolitan affiliations than Nowlan did: he takes his book's epigraph from Ivan Klima, and recasts poems by Rilke and the baroque sonneteer Jean-Baptiste Chassignet.
Since Wells works for Via Rail, one might supppose that the track in his title alludes to the transcontinental routes he travels. But this is no railroader's verse: he is interested in the tracks we follow and the traces we leave. Such abstract concerns are conveyed with admirable, if sometimes too effortful, exactness. In "Slugs," the titular creatures are "creeping beads / of cool snot"; in "Briar Patch," ploughing a cane thicket, the poet's father "John-Deered the patch." Sometimes he leans a little too heavily on line breaks, creating a stuttering effect, as in "The Pond," in which a creek is "percolating into a reek- / rich bog." On rare occasions, he succumbs to jarring metaphors, as in "Fool's Errand," in which a valley in a snowstorm is a "bowl of stirred-up curdled milk."
Yet, taken overall, such poems are among the most powerful in the collection, to which may be added the impressive "Dream Vision of the Flood," in which the poet, a Noah retreating to a hilltop, dreams of his island home becoming "redrawn / by water." Since PEI in winter is more or less an iceberg floating in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it's not surprising that snow figures in many poems. Then, too, snow relates to his theme, given its ability to erase both tracks and traces.
Unashamed of end-rhymes or reworking the sonnet form, Wells also varies his work with incantation-like poems, in which line openings reiterate words or phrases like "Roads...," "Out with the...," and "It was a winter of..." Such litany-like exercises in parallelism are less successful than the poems in which variations on a theme are smoothly melded.
Even in Vancouver, Wells finds traces of his island home. Indeed, his most resonant poems reach back to the cormorants, red earth, and mussel mud of the province nicknamed "the million-acre farm."--Fraser Sutherland, whose next poetry collection, The Philosophy of As If (Bookland Press), is forthcoming in 2010.
Back from Toronto, a quick stop to tie up what loose ends I can before heading down tomorrow to the Magic Kingdom. Over at Julie Wilson's magnificent Seen Reading she's started her 30 in 30 celebrations, and the archive is up, which promises to be at least as good as the official program.
The whole archive is worth taking a look at, but I'll highlight two: Wayne Clifford, reading from Crazy Jane, and from W.B. Yeats, and Zach Wells's Winter from this fall's Track & Trace, a collection I've just finished reading in ms form, and a damn fine one it'll be.
More to follow over the course of April. But if I were you I'd be bookmarking this one, and checking back daily for what looks set to be a wonderful, wonderful series. My thanks to Julie for doing it.
Julie Wilson's 30 in 30, for National Poetry Month, which will include poetry from two Biblioasis poets, Zach Wells and Wayne Clifford. I've heard Wayne's recordings, from his forthcoming Jane again and some of the Yea's's poems that inspired him, and they are absolutely fabulous. the whole project will be as well, I'm certain.
In the Winter 2009 issue of Arc -- Volume 61 -- there are three reviews of Biblioasis Poetry titles. The first, of Robyn Sarah's Little Eurekas: A Decade's Thoughts on Poetry. T'is a feature review, and largely full of praise:
"I've never met Sarah, and was previously familiar only with her poems, but i've come to like her through these essays. Conversational in tone, her voice sounds like that of a friend. ... This easy-going style gives the book much of its clarity and approachability, two traits that poetry -- and poetry criticism -- could use more of.
Nest up: Shane Neilson on Patricia Young's Here Come the Moonbathers:
"She's the poet of compression, of no time and small space. ... Young at her best writes a noose around loss ... There is indeed a quiet, firm, almost questing brand of dignity in Young's brand of loss. It has made for an excellent collection ..."
Lastly, a review of Zach Wells's sonnet anthology Jailbreaks, which Alessandro Porco says "has scope ... As with any anthology, there are a few head-scratchers ... but also some jaw-droppingly good eye- (and ear-) openers."
"These poems can be read without even being aware that they are sonnets. Their apparent informality, even within a formal structure, is part of their appeal."
Not quite the "Belongs in every school library in the coutry" endorsement of the Winnipeg Free Press a month or so back, but, still, gets the word out.
Asking Questions Indoors and Out
Lean-To
Track & Trace
