Summer 2022 update
In which I catch up and try to fumble for an explanation why I haven't done much of anything
So, I started out on this silly platform with the full intention of writing a real review about four times a year. More than six months later, I’ve written but the one. I mean, if knew I was only going to write one review a year, David O’Meara’s book Masses on Radar was probably the one I’d have chosen for 2022 anyway. I’ve been back to it about three times now, combing through the pages and marveling at passages. But still, I’m not going to lie: I’m a little disappointed in my brain. See, about three years ago I got diagnosed with ADHD.
The thing about ADHD and its relation to something like reviewing is, as soon as something feels like a chore it’s on the mental shit-list and gets either forgotten or resented. A bit of both happened here. I can concentrate for hours at a time on things I’m interested in, but anything that feels like an obligation becomes, simply, the devil. (Side note for another time: this diagnosis goes a long way to explaining much of my life the last 51 years. Boy-o-boy.)
In fairness, I HAD written a review of a second book, but then the opportunity to nominate the author for a big award came up, so I backed down from issuing the piece and went with the award. (Actually, this was a great experience and it gave me a chance to deep dive into this author’s work, but no review for this little space.)
My goal now is to start smaller, mention a few things, then ramble at length if the mood strikes me. My wife, the novelist Elisabeth de Mariaffi, a genius of organization (so good at it, I wonder if she’s actually neurotypical or just on the other side of normal from me), has been putting out these news letters on a monthly basis and it’s inspired me to follow her format. So, a hybrid, then. Part newsletter, part review? We’ll see what sticks. (What I do like about this is that whoever is reading this has chosen to be here and therefore I’m talking to other kids already on my side of the fence.)
My Books
Problematica: New and Selected Poems, 1995 - 2020 (ECW, 2021) has had a resounding nothing from the print and online reviewing world. It’s been really interesting and sort of frustrating to watch the reviewing world just…disappear. I’ve been on the radio, been mentioned in all sorts of other places, but nothing in terms of actual reviews. In 2007, my book The Rush to Here (Nightwood) got something like 17 pieces of coverage (16 of which were positive! One was…oof…ow, my ego….) This included pieces in The Globe, The Post, The Star, industry magazines, etc. etc. Reviews, interviews, excerpts, etc. Four years later, I published my first book of aphorisms, Glimpse (ECW), and the reaction was similar. Hell, it even got noted in The New Yorker. Then…well…things went downhill. Maybe 8 pieces of coverage for Whiteout, then 6 for Diversion, then 4 for QUICK, and down to Problematica with a couple interviews, etc., but nothing else. It’s been a shit time to be a poet the whole time I’ve been one, but it’s even shittier to be old news in a world dedicated to hot new things. Sigh.
That said, it really does put things into perspective. Obviously I didn’t get into poetry to sell books, but I do want my publishers to not go under, so I try.
Reviews are difficult to write (for me at least—I tend to agonize) and reviewers are paid very little. Further, with the generalized drift of cultural attention away from the printed page (much less the printed page containing poetry), the reviews probably bring very little “RoI” to print venues like newspapers, etc. And did they ever really sell books? Maybe some, but not poetry, I don’t think. What review sections do remain feel like they’re more or less there as hold overs from a time when they made a difference, and they’re being kept on out of some sense of responsibility to the genre.
What I’m Working On
I’m about halfway done a new book of aphorisms, tentatively titled, SKEW, and am just starting to write poems again as well. Not sure where any of this will go. The great thing about the Selected was that it allowed me to sort of “tidy up” all the loose bits and pieces of poems I had kicking around, and put them all in one nice storage container for the future. So I am really starting from scratch this time. It’s been interesting, going back and starting over. Doing a lot of reading (see below) and working on songs and other things.
In terms of prose, well, I printed out my languishing Belfast novel, and 300 pages of it have been sitting unfinished since the last page wafted from the chemical smell of the trusty old Brother laser. I suppose printing it at looking at it resentfully each day since is a KIND of work.
What’s Happening at Walk the Line
My online poetry school called Walk the Line will be two years old this December. It’s been a real blast to do this my own way (as opposed to following inherited curriculum, etc), and the response has been great. I’m constantly amazed, as well, at how hard the participants work. From practicing poets to those just dipping their toe in the pool to check the temperature, they are all there to learn.
Classes
Fall classes are being posted this week (The Poet’s Toolbox starts again in September, Built from Scratch in January), and I’m working on creating a third level course for people who already have a working practice and want the structure of a directed workshop to help them produce new material.
Community
People are generally spending more time enjoying the outdoors than inside writing, but The Front of the Line subscription community is still going strong will start its readings up again in September and October. The readings were super well-attended and laid back and they’re a great way to get to know some of the people working in that community.
Freebies
Watch for a few new poetry craft videos being given out for free this Fall as an incentive for signing up for the Walk the Line newsletter.
What I’ve Been Reading
Carl Phillips’ Then The War, his second selected edition, has been much on my mind. I’ve long been a fan of Carl’s work, having discovered him through his first selected Quiver of Arrows, and then gone back to find his books one by one. I have always been enamoured of Carl’s ability to consistently interrupt, doubt, reinterpret, and reposition himself while maintaining a sense of absolute confidence in the subject at hand. It’s like he’s engaged in an ongoing argument with himself, in part because he’s probably the only one suited to refute or bolster his own words. He’s intelligent, but has a sexy sensuality that hides the thoughts of his poems the way skin hides the possibility of a soul. And he genuinely seems in love with (or repelled by, on occasion) his subjects. It’s a rare poet who can make me fall in love with their love.
Liz Howard’s Letters in a Bruised Cosmos (M&S) was one of my top three books from last year. It just missed out on the GG shortlist and was on the Griffin Prize shortlist (where it was probably favoured to win, though Tolu Oloruntoba took both this year for his great book The Junta of Happenstance (Anstruther)). Howard’s subject matters seem to coalesce around the search for self in an unforgiving universe that doesn’t really want you too look too closely into histories around identity, power structure, and inherited information. She’s really mastered keeping a book interesting to read, in the sense that each poem feels like its structure and style are directly influenced by the subject matter, making each piece look, feel, and…taste?…different. You’re never going to get bored reading Howard, and given her background in science and her magpie eye for metaphorical detail, you might learn a few things as well.
Mark Callanan’s Romantic was just shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize and is a perfect little book (admirably spare) of poems investigating memory, childhood, and self-image through a variety of subjects and unhurried styles. He’s really an underappreciated poet who takes his time with thinking and writing and it shows. Couched in the tradition of warrior imagery and a stately pomp, but tackling subjects as diverse as taxes, illness, teenaged shenanigans, child-rearing, etc, the book puts a veneer of make believe over its vignettes that somehow manages to spotlight the intense reality of each moment. Like a fun pantomime under which harder truths lie. And the poems ARE fun—each its own little universe of humour, cynicism, hope, despair, and joy. I think that’s his greatest strength: each poem is its own world, fulfilled.
Events and Travel
I read last month at Ochre Fest in Newfoundland, but have otherwise been keeping a low profile. I’m headed to New York City for the wedding of my best pal there and have been thinking of reading with some friends while there. More to come on that. This trip in September will mark the first time I’ve been properly away from the island in three years. Not even sure I remember how to be a person in the world.
Advice to a Young Poet
I saw a thread on Twitter where someone asked what writerly advice you’d give to a younger you and my answer was something like this: “Just because people are your colleagues does not mean they are your friends.” I can’t believe how long it took me to realize this. Back when I was just emerging, my elderly publisher, a sort of Hemingway wannabe type who lived as though he were auditioning for the role of “Stereotype Writer #6”, called me “guileless” one night at a party. I was sort of offended. “Is guilelessness a BAD thing?” I asked. Turns out the answer is: kinda.
I think it’s probably a biproduct of the MFA-run poetry culture in which we live and which affects the social structures of our field. People are spit out in “cohorts” instead of working towards artistic goals and finding like-minds that form in to “schools”. I did my undergrad in poetry and made a very close group of friends then. We shared everything and supported one another. I assumed, wrongly it turns out, that this was just how people in the arts behaved generally. I suppose my assumption was that “we” (ie, an amorphous group of generationally-tied poets and poetry-adjacent people who met in various cities while touring) were all working sort of like a team towards the same goal: the general betterment and health of our art. And maybe we were? But that doesn’t mean we were meant to be friends. Or at least friends forever. The difference between a colleague and a friend is—behind your back, a friend is waiting to help, not strike. So be careful, young poet, whither you shine your love.