Arc Walk Ottawa #6 : Byward Market : curator/guide: rob mclennan

Arc Walks Ottawa is a series of guided walks based on poetry themes and capitalizing on the rich poetry history of Canada’s capital. Residents and visitors alike are welcome to join in on the walks to learn and revel in Ottawa’s poetry.

http://robmclennansindex.blogspot.com/2018/05/arc-poetry-walks-ottawa-2018.html

The sixth and final walk of this series will take place in the Byward Market on Saturday, December 8th. This walk, led by rob mclennan, will showcase the poetry of this historic neighbourhood, including sites significant to Susan McMaster, Diana Brebner, Stephanie Bolster, William Hawkins, Neil Flowers, The Vanilla Reading Series and The Vogon Reading Series, WORDFEST 1983, John Bart Gerald and Capital Slam, among others.

The walk will begin at 3:30PM outside of the National Gallery of Canada on Sussex Avenue. During the hour-long walk, participants will visit locations where they will hear about some of Ottawa’s contemporary poetry history, and hear from a special guest poet or two. Come prepared for rain or shine!

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include the poetry collection How the alphabet was made (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) and the forthcoming Household items (Salmon Poetry, 2019) and A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He is “Interviews Editor” at Queen Mob’s Teahouse, editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

For any questions or concerns, contact James Moran: imigan@rogers.com

Open Book : Ottawa finally gets a city Poet Laureate (again)

My article, "Ottawa finally gets a city Poet Laureate (again)," is now up at Open Book! In which I discuss a bit of history of Ottawa's Poet Laureate (we most likely had the first in the country), and the recent announcement that we are getting the position again, for the first time in nearly thirty years, thanks to VERSe Ottawa and the City of Ottawa...

The Rideau Review (1987-88): bibliography, and an interview

this interview was conducted over email from January to September 2016 as part of a project to document Ottawa literary publishing. see my bibliography-in-progress of Ottawa literary publications,past and present here.

Stephen Brockwell cut his writing teeth in the ’80s in Montreal, appearing on French and English CBC Radio and in the anthologies Cross/cut: Contemporary English Quebec Poetry and The Insecurity of Art (both Véhicule Press, 1982). George Woodcock described Brockwell’s first book, The Wire in Fences, as having an “extraordinary range of empathies and perceptions.” Harold Bloom wrote that Brockwell’s second book, Cometology, “held rare and authentic promise.” Fruitfly Geographic won the Archibald Lampman award for best book of poetry in Ottawa in 2005. The author of a growing stack of chapbooks as well as five trade poetry collections, his most recent publications include the chapbook Where Did You See It Last? (Textualis Press, 2016) and All of Us Reticent, Here, Together (Mansfield Press, 2016). Brockwell currently operates a small IT consulting company from the 7th floor of the Chateau Laurier and lives in a house perpetually under construction.

Q: How did The Rideau Review journal begin?

A: I’m not certain. Must have been 1985. I was at Carleton studying for my MSc in Math but I was sneaking in English courses on Spenser and other things. I met Frank Smith, an enormously generous person who still runs the NEADS—the national educational association for disabled students. I think they needed volunteers for something. Anyway, Frank and I were talking about words and writing. It turned out he loved fiction to bits. And wanted to write about it. And I was slumming at Gallery 101, attending Tree, working on some kind of book-like thing. I was one of the editors of Rubicon at McGill with Peter O’Brien. Ottawa seemed to need something in that vein—but smaller and lower budget. I don’t remember the final impulse to action.

Q: I’m curious about your work at Rubicon. How did you originally get involved with the journal and what was your role? How did your work with Rubicon influence the work you did through The Rideau Review?

A: I was associated editor. A fellow named Peter O’Brien was the editor—he wanted to create a kind of Canadian Paris Review with extensive interviews, superb fiction and poetry, and tight, serious book reviews. I really don’t remember how I heard about it or how we met. Must have been through the English department—maybe Robert Lecker, now that I think about it. I was associated editor—wrote some reviews, interviewed a couple of people, helped with choosing poems. That was a privilege: we were receiving amazing work from Daphne Marlatt, Eirin Moure, Chris Dewdney, Doug Barbour—reading that new work pried my eyeballs open and pulled back my ears, I can tell you that.

Q: What were your original ideas for The Rideau Review? Did you purely solicit work for the first issue, or did you send out a public call?

A: I feel like I’m in court. I know we received submissions at some point. I think we might have placed a few notices in things like Quarry. Other than that, I have no recollection.

Q: You mention you were hanging around Gallery 101 and attending Tree. What else was happening in Ottawa at the time, and how much of it (or the lack of it) prompted you to begin publishing The Rideau Review? I know, for example, Colin Morton was still producing items through Ouroboros [see the 2015 Ouroboros interview here], but Bywords and hole magazine hadn’t yet emerged. Arc magazine was roughly a decade old by that point. Was it the activity or the lack that prompted?

A: Your Honour, I regret that I have little recollection of events that took place 30 years ago. If it please the court, I would appreciate a recess to gather my thoughts and my literary dignity. Really, Frank and I simply wanted to gather together writing we enjoyed. It was no more sophisticated or ambitious than that. I have a better recollection of my final exam in probability theory. Maybe I need to say this: I think a significant amount of community literary production is performed in the moment for the joy of sharing the work and not for any legacy or history. It’s as beautiful and ephemeral as ice sculpture. I was still in my early twenties. What I knew about writing would have fit on the head of a pin—and that would be an analogy appropriate for the memory modules of the time.

Q: Going through the issues, it becomes clear very quickly that you were engaged with an interesting array of Ottawa activity, from the First Draft performance group (Colin Morton, Susan McMaster, etcetera) and a whole slew of writers, from John Metcalf to Heather Ferguson and Ronnie R. Brown, and E. Russell Smith to Louis Fagan, Scott Moodie and Dennis Tourbin, as well as Montreal writer David McGimpsey (half of whom are still active in one form or another). How did the “Poetry and Performance” feature in the second issue come about?

A: As I recall, that poetry and performance event was “out there”—people screaming, crawling on the ground, a lot of costumes and grimaces. You knew Dennis well: he was not interested in half measures. These really were performance pieces: visual, aural, tactile: kinetic. I wasn’t aware of any slam or spoken word scene in Ottawa at that time. Louis and Scott were tough, surprisingly idealistic and uncompromising.

The First Draft work was more formal and, maybe, cerebral: it was scored with great care—it really was intended to be voice music. You could think of the Tourbin event as punk rock and the First Draft work as polyphonic intellectual jazz. I wish we could recreate that energy now.

We have good energy here in Ottawa, but few people have the nerve to scream something articulately—maybe that’s for the best. I don’t know. The only person we have in town who performs with that kind of energy and careful attention to every detail of sound and spectacle is jwcurry. The loss of Dennis was catastrophic. He was a spectacular writer, artist, impresario—nothing he did was half-made. A lot of creative energy lost its fuel.

Q: I agree, completely. Tourbin was a huge loss; I was able to interact with him during his final decade, and quickly became aware of how he uniquely bridged the gap between Ottawa’s literary and visual arts communities. As well, I’ve long had the sense that Louis Fagan and Scott Moodie were also quite the force in Ottawa in the 1980s; what is your recollection of either of them, and where did they, to your knowledge, disappear to?

A: I’m sad to say that, from what I understand, Louis Fagan died of an overdose after forming a rock band called the Born Again Pagans. Michael Dennis would know more. There’s a reference to him here that I found thanks to Pearl’s archaeology of Anthos issues: http://ruk.ca/content/louis-tape. 

Q: What was behind the decision to suspend the journal? I know you put together a “final issue” that never saw print…

A: With almost near certainty a very bad relationship. But it’s a blur.

Q: With only three issues (and unreleased fourth), how well do you feel you accomplished what you’d set out to do with the journal? Each issue is packed with compelling creative and critical work, and really give a sense of a portrait of what was happening in and around Ottawa during the period. Where do you think the journal might have ended up, had it continued?

A: To clarify the previous answer, full time employment might have contributed to the hiatus. I dropped out altogether shortly after my first book which came out around the same time. I can’t speculate on what might have happened. It was an ephemeral thing.

The Rideau Review Bibliography

Volume 1, No. 1: February 1987. Editor: Stephen Brockwell. Assistant Editor: Marc Arellano. Fiction Editor: Frank Smith. Managing Editor: Edward Szukalo. Editorial Staff: Carolyn Voight, Alan deChezet. “A Conversation with John Metcalf,” “Five Poems by Heather Ferguson,” “Three Poems by Michael Anderson,” “Driver’s Education, a vignette by Scott Moodie” and “Five Poems by David McGimspey.” Book reviews by Alan deChezet, Stephen Brockwell and Marc Arellano.

Volume 1, No. 2: June 1987. Editor: Stephen Brockwell. Fiction Editor: Frank Smith. Assistant Editors: Marc Arellano, Alan deChezet. Managing Editor: Edward Szukalo. Editorial Staff: Carolyn Voight, Rob Campbell, Grace Spada. “Weasle-Eyed Slow Death Papa Got a Hand on Us,” fiction by David McGimpsey. “Poetry and Performance” section, featuring Louis Fagan, the First Draft group, Ronnie Brown, Paul Coulliard and Dennis Tourbin. “The Watcher,” fiction by [E.] Russell Smith. Book reviews by Alan deChezet, Frank Smith, Marc Arellano, Rob Campbell and Stephen Brockwell.

Volume 1, No. 3: Winter 1987-88. Editor: Stephen Brockwell. Contributing Editors: Frank Smith, Alan de Chezet. Assistant Editor: Marc Mrellano. Editorial Staff: Grace Spada, Edward Szukalo. “Four poems by Greg Lamontagne,” “A Conversation with Guy Vanderhaeghe” conducted by Alan de Chezet, “Two poems by Luanne Gauvreau,” fiction by Stan Rogal, “Three poems by Sandra Nicholls,” “Chopsticks for a Canadian Tongue,” an essay by Peter van Toorn. Photographs of the new Gallery 101 by Tony Fouhse. Book reviews by Frank Smith, Ben Jones, Marc Arellano and Stephen Brockwell.

Volume 1, No. 4: Fall 1988 (unreleased). Editor: Stephen Brockwell. Associate Editor: Frank Smith. Assistant Editor: Marc Arellano. Editorial Staff: Alan deCezet, Luanne Gauvreau. “The Rise and Fall of Pre-Columbian North America, fiction by Colin Morton,” “Ducks on the River, poetry by Jennifer Footman,” “Old Love (sunroom), poetry by Anne Walker,” “Crickets, poetry by Laurie Fournier,” “Sonnet 98, poetry by Grant Savage,” “Last Stand at the Dixie Pig, fiction by Denise Marois,” “Badlands and Rose Hip Jam, poetry by John Barton,” “Ghost Town and Burnt Island Lake, poetry by Laurence Hutchman,” “Ellipses, fiction by Sandra Nicholls.” Visual art by Lisa Kaitell. Book reviews by Luanne Gauvreau, Heather Ferguson, Marc Arellano, Stephen Brockwell and Frank Smith.

The Examined Space, by rob mclennan : Ottawa Magazine,

I had a back-page piece in the September issue of Ottawa Magazine, solicited by Dayanti Karunaratne, that I am extremely happy with, on Centretown, history and neighbourhoods. In case you didn’t happen to see such on newsstands, I reprint (with permission) here:

Ottawa Journal |by rob mclennan

The Examined Space

I’ve lived in Ottawa long enough to appreciate the layers that exist in the city, and long enough to become bored with the repeated self-designation of sleepy government town. One has to know where to look. Perhaps during such a period of urban development is the best time to re-think a self-portrait. The unexamined space, one might paraphrase, ain’t worth living in.

The bulk of my twenty-five years — in some half-dozen houses — have been in Centretown, and I’ve long been aware of the former lots granted to Colonel John By and William Stewart, which were part of the central core of what was once a Victorian town of lumber and rail. Before that, this was the site of some hundreds of years of native settlement, exploration, and travel. Montreal Road, for example, is quite literally the road to Montreal, and lies on the trails First Nations peoples established as they travelled back and forth between what wasn’t yet Ottawa to what wasn’t yet Montreal.

To live in any space or landscape, one should at least make some attempt to understanding it, both as a current entity and a historical one. There were the riots that regularly began between Irish Shiners and French in Bytown throughout the early part of the 19th Century, culminating in the infamous Stoney Monday Riot of 1849. For their own safety, the police wouldn’t interfere with most of these fights until they began to threaten the more expensive neighbourhoods further east beyond Lowertown. Imagine: in 1845, we were the most dangerous city in the Commonwealth. From these events, we remember Joseph Monferrand, who later became known as Big Joe Mufferaw, the legendary hulk of a man waist-deep in a number of those battles.

The bulk of Centretown is the former Lot F, picked up by Colonel By in 1834, with the southern stretch picked up by William Stewart, where he and his wife eventually created Stewarton, with streets his wife Catherine named for their children: Ann (later renamed Gladstone), Catherine, McLeod, and Isabella. To understand a space is to understand what it has come through. There is the used bookstore at Bank and Frank streets that housed a punk club beneath, back in the 1970s. There is the former theatre still known as Barrymore’s that every so often someone inquires about, wondering why someone doesn’t clean up the outside. Confederation poet Archibald Lampman once lived on Florence Street with his mother. Elvis performed at the Auditorium on Argyle Street, the same stadium that once housed the Ottawa Senators — it was later demolished and replaced with the YM-YWCA.

There are more recent events as well. The collapse of the wasted space that occupies Bank and Somerset streets, at the husk of the Duke of Somerset building, for example. Imagine: someone with money could refurbish such as an Ottawa version of Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel, providing much-needed hotel space downtown, a martini bar and a cool arts space.

At the corner of Bank and Argyle streets, there was the crossbow murder of crown attorney Patricia Allen by her husband in 1991. There are events we remember because we need to remember them.

The shifts are constant, continuous, and to be expected. Condos arise like mushrooms, including around McLeod and Bank, within the former village of Stewarton. Recently, we discovered that the house we lived in, just west of the intersection, was once owned by a friend’s great-grandparents. He sent wedding portraits from the 1920s of his grandparents as they stood in our driveway. Ottawa poet, songwriter, and cabdriver William Hawkins claimed to know the house in the 1970s as a very sketchy rooming house, as he delivered various unsavory types to a front door we would grace for two years. The house itself, with our enviable third-storey turret, was one of the first on our block, constructed in 1895. That stretch of McLeod sits on such a ripple of bedrock that basements become, from house to house, of a completely random depth.

Some might resist the construction of condos in the city’s core, but it far beats the alternative. Most of the 1990s seemed to include every second or third business closing, and it felt as though the plan was to actually exclude downtown residents. I feared for Ottawa turning its downtown into a dead core, much like what Calgary had been for a long time. The revitalization, done properly, can provide new energy to a city that requires both renewal and the knowledge of what had come before.

And, as Saskatchewan poet and Chinatown resident John Newlove once wrote, the past is a foreign country. And yet, so much is familiar. He lived on Rochester Street for 17 years, the longest he lived anywhere. Arriving from British Columbia in 1986, he once claimed to live in Ottawa, “for his sins.”

A recent postcard-sized story of mine reads: “Every city constructed out of a series of markers, of landmarks, but what happens to a city when it is constantly in danger of losing? What happens to memory when a city is constantly new? There is nothing to hold on to, there are no regulars to keep the rent in your restaurant. There is no heart, no soul, no loyalty. When a city is constantly new, it runs the risk of losing all meaning.”

This knowledge provides a richness to the landscape. Part of why we resisted the condo-company attempting “South Central” was precisely for the sake of our own history. We don’t need a new name. We already have one.

Ottawa-born rob mclennan is the author of, among others, The Uncertainty Principle: stories, the non-fiction Ottawa: The Unknown City, and the poetry collection If suppose we are a fragment. He blogs at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Make Contact: Circulating Small and Micro Press Poetry in Canada

Congress 2015 is being hosted at the University of Ottawa. Colin Martin (University of Calgary) and Cameron Anstee (University of Ottawa) wrote a CFP for a member-organized session for ACCUTE that has been accepted. Full details below (pdf over at Anstee's original link, here), and further member-organized session CFPs available here. Send them your stuff!

OTTAWA LIT: FALL 2014 PREVIEW

My piece on fall 2014 Ottawa lit, in which I took recommendations from and for Frances Boyle, Jesslyn Delia Smith, Cameron Anstee, Deanna Young, Sandra Ridley, Phil Hall, Chris Johnson, Anita Dolman, James K. Moran, Kate Heartfield, Monty Reid, Amanda Earl, Roland Prevost and a bunch of others, is now posted over at Open Book: Ontario.

Field Notes: Dear Lea Graham

I have two new poems up at Centretown Nonsense, epistolary poems composed in our new apartment last fall, for Lea Graham.

Ottawa’s mother tongue books to close doors; come help wind down the store,

A sad email circulated yesterday, citing the demise of mother tongue books [photo credit: Pearl Pirie] in Old Ottawa South. 

One of but a handful of independent booksellers left in the city (apart from Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeebar and Octopus Books, for example), so it’s heartbreaking to see it close. I’ve been both participant and audience for a great many readings there over the years, and they’ve been an incredible supporter of a number of local communities, not just of writers [see the article I wrote on them last fall, posted in Open Book: Ontario]. 

You should go by their store and thank them, and help them leave the business without their massive debt. It’s the least we can do.

Here’s the notice posted to their website, yesterday (highlights mine):

Celebrate mother tongue books

Help us close the store, start a new chapter and leave a lasting legacy

June 12, 2012

Help us wind down the store

June 12, 2012

Dear Friends,

There is no easy way to say this…

“After almost 18 years of serving our community it is time to close our beloved mother tongue books!”

There, we said it!

It’s okay to mourn a little bit, but then let’s celebrate together what mother tongue has achieved and the supportive role it has played in our community. We need your help to do that and create the strongest possible legacy of our small shop, from buying books to donating towards our closing costs, to attending events (more on this below).

It is obvious to everyone that there have been dramatic changes in the “book industry” since we opened in 1994. Running a bookshop, like running any small business, is a challenge. Bookselling is not for the faint of heart, but it is a dynamic way to engage, nourish and build community.

Bookselling is a beautiful way to share ideas (and ideals), and to support new journeys of discovery, learning and change. One of the great joys of being a bookseller is putting the right book in the right hands. What a wonderful gift to be a part of the reading and creative lives of our customers and community!

We have been blessed to be able to support the ideals, dreams and struggles of others. It is deeply gratifying, and humbling to have been part of our customers’ lives. We have built up a very loyal community – we appreciate you more than you can know!

Still, there are many others who love the “idea” of small, neighbourhood bookshops, and other local businesses, but who no longer shop in them. The scales have tipped in the past 5 or 6 years. The “ideal” life of bookselling is outweighed by financial and emotional exhaustion. In short, we are tired! For us, this little shop no longer translates into a sustainable business model or a way to serve our community. We have other things we need and want to do!

In this spirit, we are asking for your help to close the bookshop. We want to engage our community to help wrap things up, to help us celebrate what we have grown together and to plant seeds for a thriving legacy for mother tongue books.

To wrap things up we need to sell a lot of books, raise some money, and put things in order. Here are 5 things you can do to help:

1. Buy books from us!

2. Donate. No amount is too small. Join the Friends@200 fund, where individuals or groups purchase $200 worth of books or donate $200 toward our closing costs. Offer a service or special item for our online auction (details to follow!). Or just pass the hat at your next meeting, group or event! We appreciate every gift.

3. Join us at our series of events starting Friday, June 22, with Giller award-winner Elizabeth Hay and acclaimed Ottawa-based singer-songwriter Jill Zmud. Events are every Friday evening until July 20.

4. Send us a note of support or share a special “mother tongue moment” on our open blog at celebratemothertongue.ca. We will be sharing these stories and memories as a way to honour the store’s history. And spread the word! Circulate this blog’s URL http://www.celebratemothertongue.ca

5. Buy local. Now, more than ever, it is important to support your remaining local booksellers and businesses. They are the building blocks of vibrant neighbourhoods and communities. Next time you are at a community event, take the time to see which local businesses that supported it; in turn, support those businesses.

Our work is rooted in our feminist politics and our commitment to justice and equality for our LGBTTQQ family. Over the years we have supported many community-based organizations, from local arts groups to anti-violence agencies, from community choirs to international charities, from cooperative preschools to hospices. We want to thank those organizations for the work they do and we want to encourage all of you to consider donating time or money to those who make our communities richer. Their energy is incredible. We hope that that energy will be part of our legacy.

We are people who believe that the most rewarding thing in life is to be of service. So help us work in this spirit over the next weeks. Let’s celebrate what needs to be celebrated, close what needs to close, and support what needs to open! We have faith that other projects, businesses, and initiatives will come after us

Friends, we have not made this decision lightly. We ask that you please honour our choice and be happy for us, even as we all mourn a little bit for our community’s collective loss. We believe that there will be a renaissance in bookselling, but we are aware that we cannot be part of that rebirth. Please know that this moment is both frightening and exciting for us as we move into a new phase in our own lives.

Thank you for your trust, support and friendship. These things, we will never leave behind!

Laura Rayner, Evelyn Huer, Julie Gagnon

mother tongue books

www.celebratemothertonguebooks.ca

www.mothertonguebooks.ca