Errata Slips

File Under: Tales from the Errata Slips of Canadian Literature

Wright, Richard and Robin Endres, eds. Eight Men Speak and Other Plays from the Canadian Workers’ Theatre. Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1976.

New Hogtown Press wishes to note that the Preface to this book was published without the knowledge or consent of co-editor Robin Endres or the authors.

Robin Endres and author Oscar Ryan wish to dissociate themselves from the paragraph in the Preface which begins ‘In speculating about the origins of Canadian agitprop…’

Endres and Ryan consider this viewpoint to be unfounded and incorrect. It in no way represents their views.

 

Conferences

I’m very excited to be heading to this cool looking conference at Concordia this afternoon–Approaching the Poetry Series: Using Literary Recordings as Scholars and Digital Designers. The digital/technical side of things will be brand new to me, and the range of theoretical approaches to studying poetry readings (and reading series) as literary artifacts is right up my current research alley. It’s going to be great. There’s a poetry reading on the Friday as well (Gregory Betts, Lee Hannigan, Daniel Snelson, Derek Beaulieu, Deanna Fong, Jeff Derksen, Karis Shearer and Michael Nardone). Check out the cool poster below, as well as the papers and abstracts at the SpokenWeb site here. I’m excited to see where SpokenWeb goes. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed exploring their digital archive preparing for this conference.

Whatever Else: An Irving Layton Symposium is nearly here as well. May 3-5. Things are shaping us nicely. The lineup of papers is phenomenal, an exciting poetry reading is taking shape for the Saturday night, and our preparations are starting to look a bit more concrete. You can see the program and read abstracts here.

Otherwise, exam prep goes on. See you on the other side!

March Miscellany

I spent a fantastic afternoon with Michael Dennis this past Saturday scanning his book covers in order to upload them to his new blog (kindly set up by Christian McPherson). Michael is just great to spend a few hours with talking poetry. He’s read more than most people alive, and he has strong opinions about it from all sorts of perspectives. It was a joy. Keep an eye on his blog going forward, he has been posting interesting micro-reviews almost daily. If you’re looking for a poetry recommendation, you could do a lot worse than trusting Michael’s instincts on the  books he reviews.

I spent a little while afterwards tracking down some links for his blog, which turned up these two great videos from July 1988. Both are part of a project (“Inset: The Video Poets”) from something larger called The Festival of the Arts that evidently took place in Ottawa. Does anyone have any further information? See Michael Dennis read a poem, and then watch Dennis Tourbin read one.

In other festival news, VERSeFest starts tonight and boy oh boy am I excited. Rob Winger, Stuart Ross, Gil McElroy, Claudia  Coutu Radmore, Christine McNair, Ken Babstock, William Hawkins, and scores of others. It promises to be wonderful as ever, this year in its third installment. Back in November I gave a talk on Raymond Souster as part of a fundraiser for the festival. I’m proud to have taken part, and now a version of the essay is available online to read in the latest issue of 17 seconds. Thanks to rob mclennan (editor) and Monique Desnoyers (designer) for their hard work on the issue. It’s a pleasure to be in there.

Odourless is apparently ramping up to go back into production, which is good news for anyone who cares about poetry and small press publishing in Canada. Catch up on what Ben Ladouceur is doing. Are you paying attention to him yet? You’d be a fool not to. There is a cool new profile on William Hawkins from rob mclennan up at Open Book: Ontario too.

See everyone at the festival.

Whatever Else: An Irving Layton Symposium | Registration Now Open

Registration is now open for the University of Ottawa Department of English’s annual Canadian Literature Symposium. The focus is on Irving Layton this year. I’ve got the privilege of helping to organize the conference with Prof. Robert Stacey this time around, and I’m incredibly excited about the three days of events that we have lined up. We have a keynote address from Brian Trehearne, papers from 17 critics, a documentary film screening from Donald Winkler, a poetry reading (details to follow), and a roundtable with Elspeth Cameron, George Elliott Clarke, and Seymour Mayne. It’s going to be excellent, and best of all registration is completely free for all graduate and undergraduate students. If you know a student interested in Canadian poetry, please share this information with them. We would love a packed house and want as many students in attendance as possible.

Full details here, program to follow shortly–Whatever Else: An Irving Layton Symposium

Peter Gibbon, William Hawkins

On heels of rob mclennan’s profile of In/Words two weeks ago, poet, editor and friend Peter Gibbon has written a short memoir on his time with the magazine as well and published it on his Conduit Canada blog. Pete has a pile of smart and insightful things to say about the mag, and some hilarious memories too. You’ll also find some poems in there from Jeff Blackman, Rachael Simpson, and Pete, as well as the closest thing our In/Words generation has ever had to a family photo courtesy of the Maxfield-Blackman wedding. Go read it!

In other fantastic news, William Hawkins is being inducted into the VerseOttawa Hall of Honour as part of their inaugural round of inductees (along with Greg “Ritallin” Frankson). We love Bill here, and I’ll be reprinting a chapbook of Bill’s work that Apt. 9 published in 2010 to mark the occasion. I’ve also never heard Bill read, so it will be a thrill on March 17 when he is inducted. Be there!

 

rob mclennan on In/Words

From 2006-2009 (or thereabouts), I was an editor at In/Words Magazine & Chapbook Press at Carleton University. My first published poem was in In/Words (Volume 5, Issue 3, February 2006, on the same page as Ben Ladouceur). I worked editing for the magazine, editing chapbooks, and helping to make a monthly open-mic reading series happen. We produced a huge volume of material (see the picture above of my own primary stash of In/Words and In/Words-related publications). I count myself lucky to have been a part of that community. My identity as a writer and a publisher can be traced to the first editorial meeting I attended in the summer of 2006 at Mike’s Place.

rob mclennan recently sent around a set of questions to quite a few of the editors and writers who were around during my years with the mag, and the collected answers were culled and organized by mclennan in this fantastic piece at Open Book: Ontario. My favourite part is Peter Gibbon describing our little group developing “a vicious loyalty toward each other’s writing.” Rob Winger, an influential poet and teacher for all of us in the In/Words community, chimes in at the end with some unbelievably kind words.

Thank you rob, and thank you to the consistently wonderful people at Open Book.

In/Words is still running. They have a great editorial team keeping the ship afloat, and Dave Currie has got the monthly reading series in excellent shape (building off of Justin Million’s invaluable work reshaping it). Somehow the mag is into its twelfth year, which is astonishing. If you’re in Ottawa, drop in to the Clocktower on the last Wednesday of the month.

The truly embarrassing photo below is of Amanda Besserer (left), myself (centre), and Peter Gibbon (right) in the quad at Carleton, Fall 2007 (I think?), trying to convince undergrads to pick up free literary magazines and chapbooks.

ottawater Launch

The ninth issue of ottawater launches this week. Thursday, January 24 at the Carleton Tavern (233 Armstrong). Doors at 7:00, readings at 7:30.

As I mentioned, I have two new, weird, plundered poems in there. The full issue has work from: Steven Artelle, Gary Barwin, Jeff Blackman, David Blaikie, Frances Boyle, Ronnie R. Brown, Colin Browne, Murray Citron, George Elliott Clarke, Faizal Deen, Amanda Earl, Laura Farina, Jesse Patrick Ferguson, Mark Frutkin, Brecken Hancock, Carla Hartsfield, a.m. kozak, Ben Ladouceur, Nicholas Lea, Anne Le Dressay, rob mclennan, Cath Morris, Colin Morton, Alcofribas Nasier II, Peter Norman, Abby Paige, Pearl Pirie, Nicholas Power, Wanda Praamsma, Ryan Pratt, Roland Prevost, Monty Reid, Sonia Saikaley, Dean Steadman, Lesley Strutt, Rob Thomas, Lauren Turner and Vivian Vavassis. Artwork by: Andrea Stokes, Danica Olders, Genevieve Thauvette, Guillermo Trejo, Jeremy Shane Reid, Meagan Darcy, Mike Pender Peter Shmelzer and Stephen Frew.

You can never be sure who will show up to these launches, but you can be sure that an interesting cross-section of those names will be present. I’ll be there to read briefly. Will you?