Cleveland Review of Books, Jamie Tennant + Winnipeg Free Press,

American ex-pat poet Katie Ebbitt was good enough to interview me recently, newly up at the Cleveland Review of Books! That's pretty cool, I'd say. We talked about the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and of some of my activity through above/ground press. Jamie Tennant, master podcaster, had me on recently for a conversation around the new poetry book as well, now posted online. And Winnipeg poet melanie brannagan frederiksen reviewed the same poetry title over at Winnipeg Free Press as part of a group review, alongside new titles by Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi and Margo LaPierre as well! Thanks so much! You can catch her review at the link, or below, as she writes:

The latest collection from rob mclennan, The Book of Sentences (University of Calgary Press, 198 pages, $20), is rooted in his close attention both to the matter that makes quotidian life and to the semantic components of language. The COVID-19 pandemic, mclennan’s father’s death, the deaths of poets and friends and the emergence into a more fragile and fractured world are rendered in “The plain language of the earth. Our youngest monologues/ the long grass, anticipating mowers. In lockdown the world// is through this window.”

Among the things mclennan is both working out and honouring in the collection are the personal and intellectual losses and legacies. In Burning the dead grass, he uses the remembered “springtime ritual: layers of controlled burn” as an entry point to consider the settler relation to the land: “Monty Reid: No way to distinguish// what one has chosen to remember// from what one has chosen to forget. {…]/ {…] Lineages// the settler descendants do not reference.”

Overall, the book of sentences is a prolonged consideration of the intersection of writing, thinking and life. From the poems called Autobiography, one of which begins, “Neither a short walk nor a short talk. Once upon a time,” to Lecture, on craft, where “Not the first death./ The ways in which we/ swallow form. A crease// of each turned page,” mclennan brings together citation and observation with equal degrees of attentiveness.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold, and other rowdy tales,

Okay, possibly not rowdy. We survived another Christmas, at least the immediate bits of such, with a few more adventures and gatherings ahead. Aoife and I have been doing a Marvel Movie marathon the past week or so (in order of release), some six or seven movies in, at this point. I've not been able to convince Rose of any of this. As far as updates: Jérôme Melançon has composed the most lovely review of the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025), posted via the temz review. Did you see that the book was also part of this year's CBC Book's list of "The Best Canadian Poetry of 2025" as well? Very nice! I so rarely get on lists such as those. As part of the lead-up to this year's Ottawa Book Awards, Susan Johnson re-ran the CKCU Radio interview she and Brecken Hancock did with me on the book, which was fun. You probably already know that I didn't win the Ottawa Book Award for On Beauty (University of Alberta Press, 2024). I wrote about that here.

There's also a recent interview with me via On Creative Writing that got posted, as well. Read Alberta even recommended the book as part of "Alberta Books for the Poetry Reader"!

Public Reverie posted a few poems from my work-in-progress "Fair bodies of unseen prose," and Work and Days (Beautiful Days Press, Brooklyn) included some of the same, plus another project, in Vol. 6 of their journal, both print and online. I even have new poems in Gone Lawn. Oh, and the recording of the recent (zoom) conversation between Renée Sarojini Saklikar and myself on above/ground press is now online, as Aoife scours the shelves behind me, like the Junk Lady in Labyrinth (1986).

49th Shelf recently asked me for some reading recommendations, so I offered a list of such here, including titles by Anna Swanson, Qurat Dar, Isabella Wang, Melanie Dennis Unrau, Gillian Sze, Jumoke Verissimo, Hajer Mirwali and Sadiqa de Meijer.

What might 2026 bring? I'm pushing through these poetry manuscripts, hoping, in part, to return to short stories, return to that novel I was working on. There's also a whole swath of exciting things I'm working on via above/ground press and Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] and periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics and the "Tuesday poem," as well as curating our spring edition of VERSeFest: Ottawa's International Poetry Festival. Did you know if you donate by the end of the year, we'll even send along a nice tax receipt? 

Rodrigo Toscano, WHITMAN. CANNONBALL. PUEBLA.

my review of Rodrigo Toscano's WHITMAN. CANNONBALL. PUEBLA. (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2025) is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. Catch my review of his The Charm & The Dread (Fence Books, 2021) here.

a poem, a story, an essay or two and a new review of the book of sentences;

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Ottawa launch of the book of sentences on Saturday! It was a very great event, and great to co-launch with Zane Koss [see my review of his new poetry book here]. Here's a pic that David O'Meara was good enough to capture of myself reading. 

Otherwise, I know these updates are important to you, dear reader: the first published poem in my current work-in-progress, "The Museum of Practical Things," has landed online: a poem I composed for Jennifer Baker and David Currie's recent nuptials, posted over there at minor literature[s]. You can catch a recent essay I wrote on the project via my substack. There's also a recent short story, "Easter Parade," that appeared at MicroLit, posted as both text and audio of myself reading such. As well, Chris Banks was good enough to post an essay I wrote on the book of sentences over at The Woodlot, along with a poem reprinted from same. And did you see this review Dawn Macdonald posted for the book of sentences yesterday on her own substack? Holy cats! Much thanks!

Juliana Spahr, Ars Poeticas

my review of Juliana Spahr's Ars Poeticas (Wesleyan University Press, 2025) is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

the first review of On Beauty, the Archibald Lampman Shortlist + upcoming shortlist reading,

In case you hadn't heard, my latest poetry title, World's End, (ARP Books, 2023), was recently shortlisted for the Archibald Lampman Award, alongside D.S. Stymeist's Cluster Flux (Frontenac House, 2023) and Sandra Ridley's Vixen (Book*hug Press) [see my review of such here]. Naturally, I've lost track of how many times (a handful, certainly) I've been up for the Lampman (always a bridesmaid, never the bride, as Bugs Bunny once complained as well), although the last time I was, ten years ago, it was also along Sandra Ridley (for those at home, keeping score). If you are so inclined, also, be aware that the three of us will be participating in a Lampman Award Shortlist reading this coming Monday at 7pm at Ottawa's SPAO: Photographic Arts Centre, 77 Pamilla Street (in Little Italy). In other news, Canadian writer J. Jill Robinson was good enough to provide a deeply generous first review of On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press) over at Goodreads! Thanks so much! Here's the link to where she posted the review, or you can read such, below:

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying reading and being challenged by rob mclennan’s fine new book of stories, On Beauty. It’s called ‘stories,’ but the author’s approach to narrative is largely unconventional, untraditional, and distinctive.

In mclennan’s work there is a fine balance between how each piece happens and what happens, which is a particular delight for readers who are writers: opportunities to learn craft from a master. Poetry and prose combine, and fuse. mclennan has the facility with language of a poet, uses compression like a poet, yet he also indulges a fondness for story. He uses brush strokes, wispy suggestions, evocative details, and graceful, often charming phrasing to convey meaning drawn from the domestic to the sublime.

At times mclennan speaks directly to writerly choices in craft: for example, “Who is the intended reader of the contemporary novel? Some books are composed to be intimate. Is that better, or worse? Perhaps an improvement to be spoken to directly, as opposed to listening in to a conversation between others.” Thus the frequent use of the close third person, and first person, drawing his readers near to his head, and his heart.

Each of the often brief stories, which are interspersed with fourteen “On Beauty” sections, is introduced by a quote that both informs each piece, and also illustrates how well-read mclennan is, how varied his influence are, seen through a wide range of writers including writers like Brossard, Auster, Kundera, Wah, Stein, Miranda July, Gunnars, and many others. A diverse bunch of language lovers.

Examples are surely the best way to convey the fineness of mclennan’s work. Here are a few of my favourites.

Before his son is born, the persona writes, with humour and delight:
I was beginning to see them more clearly, fleshy outline of baby-foot in my dear wife’s belly. There was something inside.

And then, on witnessing the birth of that son, the persona observes:
Stunned as our newborn pulled himself to the breast. Baby skin-to-skin as I quietly wept, and our new trio drifted from anxiety to relief.

Note how much he can convey in so few words, a quick character sketch of a wife as an domestic whirlwind: "Their mother a flurry of cupboards and movement"

And then there’s this, which follows a quote from Paul Auster: "What frightens us most isn’t death, but its result: absence"

Or, in “Translator’s note,” “I am shaped by these words, as I understand them.”

And here’s one of my favourites, in which a social media excerpt is incorporated:
On National Boyfriend Day, @adultmomband posted: that ex u still romanticize is just a concocted projection based off of everything they were never able to give you.”

The piece goes on to note: All of this is projection. All of this is created.

Throughout On Beauty mclennan provides the reader with the “delightful instruction” Aristotle speaks of. I would add that On Beauty is also of beauty, in beauty, from beauty, as well as being simply beautifully written, beautifully expressed. Lovers of language and of narrative will delight in this volume.

Congratulations, rob mclennan, on this fine book of intellectually and emotionally engaging work, work that skilfully uses the abstract and the concrete to entertain, touch, and move the reader with mclennan’s open mind and open heart.

Adam Clay, Circle Back: poems

My review of Southern Mississippi poet, editor and critic Adam Clay's latest, Circle Back: poems (Minneapolis MN: Milkweed Editions, 2024), is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. You can see my review of his prior collection, To Make Room for the Sea (Milkweed Editions, 2020), here.

two new reviews!

It has been very nice to see two new reviews of my titles pop up lately! Pearl Pirie was good enough to review World's End, (ARP Books, 2023) over at The Miramichi Review, and Nick Thran offered this review of the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022) via Event magazine; thanks so much! And of course, I'm attempting to keep track of all links to my reviews over at my author site, here.

two recent reviews of World's End, (ARP Books, 2023)

Reviews! I'm constantly complaining that my work doesn't see critical response, but my latest, World's End, (ARP Books, 2023), has already two! Thanks much to both Wanda Praamsma and Billy Mills! And did you see the one-question interview Hollay Ghadery did with me recently on the book as well, over at River Street Writing? Obviously, copies of the new book are available via those fine folk at ARP Books in Winnipeg, but I have a box or two here, if anyone is so inclined. A similar deal to some of my most recent titles: send $18 (via email or paypal to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com) ; obviously adding $5 for postage for Canadian orders; for orders to the United States, add $11 (for anything beyond that, send me an email and we can figure out postage); for current above/ground press subscribers, I’m basically already mailing you envelopes regularly, so I would only charge Canadians $3 for postage, and Americans $6 (that make sense?)

Here's the first review of the book, kindly written by Kingston poet Wanda Praamsma as part of a group review (alongside Sandra Ridley's latest, etc) via the Toronto Star! See the original review here.

World’s End
by rob mclennan
ARP Books, 64 pages, $18

These poems take on the quality of measured breath — inhale inhale pause, exhale. Inhale, and exhale. In so doing, they slow us down, a necessary and welcome step for all, but particularly needed while moving through the births of children and their early years, as mclennan is/was. “A circle of latitude, this/rushing force/of birth; of hours. … Days fold, moments. Into/collapse, and/still.,” he writes in “The small return.” mclennan applies beginner’s mind — the ability to address everything anew — to every poem and fragment; he appears a Zen master through his meditative sequencing, though not unruffle-able to the trials. “Oh, you are stupid, death./You’re drunk; go home.” Intertwined are mclennan’s welcome lessons on process and form (“Attempt to see if sentences can breathe, take root, grow limbs.”) and the abundance of clarity gleaned from small children: “I later gift the toddler a small/plastic robot. She names it: robot.” No need to overcomplicate. These poems send that message: Simplify, breathe, look around.

Here's UK poet Billy Mills, who posted this on his blog, as part of a group review (see the original post here):

The Worlds End of rob mclennan’s title is, we are told in an epigraph, is a ‘pub on the outskirts of a town, especially if on or beyond the protective city wall’; a space that is both convivial and liminal and a tone-setter for the book.

As a poet, editor, publisher and blogger, mclennan is a key figure in a world of poets, and this community is reflected in the fact that most of the poems that make up this book have individual epigraphs from writers, the regulars in the World’s End. A sense of poetry as being intrinsic to the world weaves through the book right from the opening section, ‘A Glossary of Musical Terms’:

The Key of S

Hymn, antiphonal. Response, response. A trace of fruit-flies, wind. And from this lyric, amplified. This earth. Project, bond. So we might see. Easy. Poem, poem, tumble. Sea, to see. Divergent, sky. Deer, a drop of wax. Design, a slip-track.

This melding of the natural and domestic worlds (hinted at by the slip-track) with the world of poetry and language is characteristic of mclennan’s work here, with frequent pivots on words that can be read as noun or verb (project). The carefully disrupted syntax calls out the sense of observing from the margins. This can lend a sense of Zen-like simple complexity, a tendency towards silence:

Present, present, present. Nothing in particular.

In the poems in verse, this disruption is often counterpointed by deft assonances:

A gesture: colour match.

Describe, describe. Sarcophagi. Small bite marks
perforate the humerus.

[from ‘Cervantes’ Bones’]

The second aspect of convivial community is family and parenting; the book overflows with babies and toddlers:

Toddler’s outstretched arms,
convinced herself bigger

than she still is, asks: Let me
hold her. Two ducks,

three. The western shoal,

swift curl of seagull, her
newborn deep

and impenetrable.
The contours

of a shapeless day.

Their mother, relieved
she finally out.

[from ‘Two ghazals, for newborn’]

As the book progresses, these themes become more closely interwoven, a process that comes to a head in the penultimate section, ‘mmm’ (the final one is just two pages long, so effectively at the end of the book):

We. Are turning a boundary.

Shush. Shush. Be quiet. Shush. Restrain. Restraint. Abate. Or don’t. Could never. Can’t. I couldn’t. Please. I beg you. Silence, or.

Begat, begat. This is a copy of a document held by the Office of the Registrar General. Begat, begat. Ceaselessly exposed, and hollow. Cyclical, ends. This grown head strikes a ceiling.

Until a separation, there can be no relation. Is this true?

Parthenogenesis. Maternal instinct, strikes. If you the only one. Trade for passage, ours. Delighted. Like it was the day before the day before. Slips through the fingers.

Former mother. Birth. My wrong grammar implicates.

It’s a quietly powerful conclusion to a book that benefits from, and fully merits, careful rereading. At the start of this review, I listed some of mclennan’s many roles in the world of poetry. Let there be no doubt, the primary one is poet.

Laynie Browne, Letters Inscribed in Snow, Practice Has No Sequel and Intaglio Daughters

My group review of Laynie Browne's new poetry trio of collections, Letters Inscribed in Snow (Tinderbox Editions, 2023), Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar Press, 2023) and Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter Press, 2023), is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. See my review of her Translation of the lilies back into lists (Seattle WA/New York NY: Wave Books, 2022) here, my review of You Envelop Me (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2017) here and my review of I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Los Angeles CA: Les Figues, 2012), edited by Browne, Caroline Bergvall, Teresa Carmody and Vanessa Place, here.

Heidi Greco reviews essays in the face of uncertainties (2022) in subTerrain #94!

Thanks much to Heidi Greco, who reviewed my suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022), in subTerrain #94! Naturally, you can order a copy of the book from the publisher directly, or even from me! Here's an excerpt of her review (the review is roughly three times longer than this):

     mclennan is also amazingly widely-read. I can only imagine the bookshelves in his home. Nearly every essay references the work of some writer -- from those whose work I know to those well beyond my ken. [...] Yet this book isn't some high-falutin' literary treatise; it's an extended diary and includes bits of material long since posted on his blog -- often about matters as mundane as washing floors, doing laundry, and dealing with grocery shopping. It's also about some of the grim realities of the pandemic -- the death counts so high in New York that refrigerator trucks serve as temporary morgues, the absurdities of valuing the economy over the preservation of lives. These were also the days when Breonna Taylor and George Floyd died at the hands of police, causing racial tensions to surge. Personal loss also figures into these pages; he addresses the difficulties of unresolved grief from not being able to observe the rituals many of us rely upon for dealing with death.
     On the other hand, there is also much in the way of abounding joy, often via the behaviours of his six- and four-year-old daughters, Rose and Aoife. They build Lego villages on the dining room table, and go through what often sounds like a repertoire of costume changes over the course of a day -- from dressing like a cat or a witch or an elf to donning bathing suits and pretending to swim indoors. As for his own sartorial splendours, the author takes pride in earning an award for the 'best beard' during Covid, and even admits to wearing house slippers when he runs errands. Truly, a man after my own heart, though even he draws the line at what Fox Mulder warned about in an old X-Files, "...the return of drawstring pants."
    This book is a kind of time capsule for the future -- documenting a period of collective uncertainty, when we were isolated from one another, not only physically, but to an extent, psychically. A time when one of mclennan's steady refrains was our most reliable reality: "We wash our hands. We wash our hands." A time that we can only hope we have finally (at least mostly) left behind.

the book of smaller : two further reviews, (plus a bunch of others,

My 2022 poetry title, the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press) has garnered two further reviews over the past week! Nate Logan was good enough to write up a review for DIAGRAM, and Eric Schmaltz was good enough to write up a review for Canadian Literature. Thanks so much!

As well, I've even managed to put together a page on my author page linking all the reviews I've managed to find from over the years of various of my work. I mean, that only took how many years to get around to compiling? There are far more reviews of my books (and chapbooks, even) than I had thought! So that was good also. Check that out here.

the book of smaller : some reviews, some interviews/podcasts, (oh, and ive some new chapbooks out,

I should have been mentioning, I suppose, some of the reviews coming in for the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022) (I still have copies for sale, don'chaknow). Kim Fahner, Margo LaPierre, and Jérôme Melançon collaboratively did a really stunning one, over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. Jami Macarty did a really neat one over at Miramichi Review (although I should point out that my references to Sainte-Adèle were to the village in Quebec, and completely unrelated to Vancouver poet Adèle Barclay). Benjamin Niespodziany provided a short review via Neon Pajamas, which was pretty cool. And there are even some wee reviews over at the book's Goodreads page! What! I mean, even the CBC recommends you read this book, so what are you gonna do?

Susan Johnson interviewed me on the collection on her Friday Special Blend recently, so be sure to listen to the podcast of that. Andrew French also interviewed me for the same via his podcast, Page Fright: A Literary Podcast.

Amanda Earl also interviewed me recently for her podcast, The Small Machine Talks, on the recent 29th anniversary of above/ground press. Pearl Pirie conducted a brief interview with me around the new book, and I answered Colin Dardis' questions via his Fill Your Books! Oh, and I answered Michael Murray's questionnaire recently via his Galaxy Brain (I should probably point out that I post links to all of my interviews here as they appear, in case you ever wonder about those).

Also, did you see that Greg Bem provided a wee review via Goodreads of my chapbook, Autobiography (above/ground press, 2022)? Oh, and I've a new chapbook out now with paper view books, 4 poems on receiving the phizer covid-19 vaccine (second shot, (2022) (my first chapbook published in Portugal!), and another small item out with Kyle Flemmer's The Blasted Tree, Canadian Poem (2022). And I've a chapbook forthcoming with Rose Garden Press as well, sometime next month. There's probably other stuff I'm forgetting about right now, but these are some highlights. I mean, there is just so much going on! What!

Carl Watts reviews my Mansfield Press poetry title, A halt, which is empty (2019) for Canadian Literature

I am incredibly grateful for Carl Watts’ attention recently, after he reviewed my Mansfield Press poetry title, A halt, which is empty (2019) alongside Mark Laba’s The Inflatable Life (Anvil Press, 2019) over at Canadian Literature. Thanks so much!

This is actually the fifth review of the book (which makes me feel even luckier, honestly), after Kim Fahner discussed same for Arc Poetry Magazine, Jessica Drake-Thomas reviewed it over at her site, Jonathan Ball reviewed it in the Winnipeg Free Press, and Mary Kasimor reviewed the same at Otoliths. You can see the original review here.

There are certainly options for you to order directly from the publisher, or through whichever of your local bookstores are doing delivery, I'm sure, although I can mail you a signed one, if ever such appeals ($19 Canadian / add $2 for US orders; add $5 for international orders; send me an email: rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com).

As Watts' review of the collection reads:

Fixtures in a poetry community, even those who are notably prolific, can sometimes be accounted for without much trouble. But figures whose writings span multiple genres, which may come from the smallest of small presses or in otherwise ephemeral formats, can be harder to get a handle on. Any attempt to make sense of such writers, especially in a brief review, seems preposterous.

And yet, a reviewer taking on a new book by rob mclennan may note that his sprawling body of work has been shifting toward producing a somewhat less conventional form of lyric. A halt, which is empty bears out this development; its title comes from a passage by Claude Royet-Journoud that associates writing with the perception of movement. The opening poem’s first section is caught up in this crudely physical act of stopping and noticing; it relies on short “sentences,” frequently of two words (“Uninterrupted, swallow. Machines, recirculate. Relieve. We watch for symptoms, shallow”), distilling into particles everyday processes that clunk with their materiality.

But passages like “[a] mass of modern bus and antiquated streetcar. The power of an average. Slanting, ruin” are also typical mclennan in their alternately clattering and airy impressions of Ottawa. Much of the book strikes this balance between experimental conceit and familiar authorial voice. The epigraph to “Corporation of snow” disputes the colonial “Eskimo words for snow” myth; it asks whether any writing can be truly novel—“[p]articles, we designate. A show of hands. More sentiment / than sediment”—while again simplifying and physicalizing its conceit.

“Birthday poem for Gwendolyn Guth” combines the above techniques with apostrophe: “You turn, you turn, // remark, refrain.” Such moments depict a group of creative people working in loose association with one another, creating a picture of mclennan as publisher of broadsides and of work by possible up-and-comers—a writer’s writer’s writer whose network defines his past and pervades his present as he brings others into the fold, his poetics embodied as they dilate within recognizable limits.

Margo LaPierre reviews my Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil) for PRISM International

Thanks very much to Ottawa poet Margo LaPierre for reviewing my Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) over at PRISM International! You can always order a copy from me if you are so inclined, by the way; shoot me at email at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com / send $20 and I'll mail one within Canada / send $23 and I'll mail one to the US ; or you can order via the publisher direct (obviously). See LaPierre's review here. As she writes:

Life Sentence,
rob mclennan
Spuyten Duyvil, 2019

Review by Margo LaPierre 

Life Sentence, (the unusual punctuation is deliberate, you’ll see) is a poetry collection that begins quietly, with much purpose, and picks up speed as it goes along like a river wending its way through springtime. rob mclennan commences the book with a dedication to his father, which opens to a spare, image-rich account of his father ill with cancer: locked in his body, in silence, in hospital. Metaphors of the self as a flowing thing abound. We know that flows can weaken, dry up, or be disrupted:

Hand, white hand of rain. Biopsy, cures. Have yet to centre. What was not, derailed. Amend, deleted. Current. Disputed streams. Railing, spillway, creek. A sated, broadband. Record, disposition.

Life-flow, as it etches forward, can also accumulate, become torrential. We witness this in the trajectory of the collection. mclennan records his father’s illness, memories of his late mother, and his own experience of finding love and its progressions: becoming a husband, becoming a father:

Situational: two-fold. Become as we become, parents and unparented. A continuation, sequenced. My daughter, a small plastic duck. In earth rotation, heavens. Will to overcome.

mclennan’s language is deliberate, and thanks to his clever and controlled use of punctuation, the poems tell readers exactly how they would like to be read. Short sentences are structured in a way that suggests balance, an equivalence between asymmetric elements. Some words that you’d otherwise wing past gain new meaning. The result is an underlying sense of composure. As I read these poems, I had the sense of sitting surfside, listening to waves come in and out—the rhythm had that same sense of inhalation/exhalation, both evoking the basic function of the body and also the tidal nature of the planet itself. Wave in, wave out. Breath in, breath out. Connections between the body and natural terrain are drawn more explicitly throughout the book, but this structural parity creates a potent atmosphere that would have been near impossible to achieve through word choice alone. How does mclennan do this? Through distinctive use of punctuation, particularly the comma. For example:

Colon, semi-colon. Stop. Just stop. A sentence, shortened. This long sentence, long. Perilous, condensed. Where you have gone. The river’s slowness, lake. The slowness of these phrases. A most satisfying taste.

What do signs, maps, signals, latitudes, and in some cases, currents all have in common? They are signifiers, they refer to natural phenomena, natural terrain. Such is the case with language, and I get the sense that mclennan sees language as a physical representation of the body—one that is parallel; that never quite touches the body, reality, or experience, but runs alongside it, mapping it out. In the collection’s final notes, mclennan writes that he’s long been taken with bpNichol’s idea of a “poem as long as a life.” mclennan states that he prioritizes the process over narrative, but that nonetheless the contents of his poems are taken from moments in his own life. What we get is a textural account of an era of his life. Confessional poetry, this is not. It’s as though the language of mclennan’s life is as important as the life lived, and once again, there’s that one-to-one ratio that distinguishes this work. My favourite moments of the book were in the understated accounts of new love—the heightened, loving details work well under mclennan’s close-up, granular focus. 

          Speak, a river. Deepening. Construct a voice. What is a dream.   Salacious, taste. Ceramic. Porcelain, she reaching. 
          Claims. Baggage, format. Clear-eyed. Ovulatrix. Standard, in compulsion. 
                    Registry, conflates. We have been married, days. We list the age, require metric. Parlour, as an outburst. Stillness, leisure. Serious cakes. This plunge.

Life Sentence, is at once joyful, measured, contemplative, engaged. Readers living in Ottawa will enjoy the Bank Street poems (especially since the recent health crisis has restricted us from leisurely wandering down busy city streets). Cat-lovers like myself will enjoy the appearance of a polydactyl kitty. With this book, mclennan traces the fullness of a life, while rejoicing and grieving the blows and treasures of being given life, and also giving it. 

Kim Fahner reviews my Mansfield Press poetry title, A halt, which is empty (2019) at Arc Poetry Magazine

I am incredibly grateful for Sudbury poet and critic Kim Fahner's attention this past week, after her review my Mansfield Press poetry title, A halt, which is empty (2019), was posted online over at Arc Poetry Magazine. Thanks so much! This is actually the fourth review of the book (which makes me feel even luckier, honestly), after Jessica Drake-Thomas reviewed it over at her site, Jonathan Ball reviewed it in the Winnipeg Free Press, and Mary Kasimor reviewed the same at Otoliths. You can see Fahner's original review here. There are options for you to order directly from the publisher, or through whichever of your local bookstores are doing delivery, I'm sure, but if you wish to pick up a signed copy directly from me, just let me know (I have a few copies kicking around).

A poetic love letter to Ottawa:
rob mclennan's A halt, which is empty
Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2019.

This beautiful book of poems is rooted in the history of Ottawa, but opens itself into so much more as you read through it. mclennan, a prolific writer, reviewer, and publisher of poetry, lives and works there. The epigraph to the first section, from Sarah Mangold’s “An Antenna Called the Body”, sets the tone, suggesting that we need to realize that we all should begin at a place of “not knowing.” From there, we can reconstruct our own meanings, histories, and personal stories.

One would be mistaken to think this is just a simple book of historical poems, though. It isn’t dusty and worn, but instead is so very vibrant and alive. Each piece is popping with poetic energy, something which is a hallmark of mclennan’s poetic work. In “Mother Firth,” the poet creates a cluster of twelve small poems that trace the beginnings of settlement in the Ottawa area. The ninth piece is artful, as they all are. In that numbered piece, mclennan writes of how “Empire, what Dominion, // cut from cedar boughs, birchbark, / maple.” He alludes to the colonization of First Nations lands by referring to the destruction of trees.

mclennan uses language and poetics with a keen sense of awareness. In “shadow-puppet, everything is moonlit,” he writes evocatively of “the cadence of the city,” of the river and canal, and of “the necklace of floating logs.” Anyone who has lived in Ottawa can see how you can trace its history through its urban planning and structure. What this poet also does, though, is sing a song of tribute to the way in which cities are envisioned, formed, brought into being, and quietly invite us to consider how we fit in. 

In “Quarters: Calgary,” there are four poems that are almost prismed, somewhat reminiscent of the old paper origami Fortune Tellers that kids used to make in elementary school. You get a good sense of mclennan’s skill when you read something like this in “Quadrant: two.” He writes:

     Urban planning doesn’t fence. Magpie. Birds track, patterns. Radar,
     fumes. Breath, my neck. Atop the lungs, a trail. This little sweetness.
     Wheel, reverse.

     Ship, adrift. They coin a term.

These are images that are artfully layered, stippled with light and shadow, so that you are called to enter into the work and consider what it means to live in a city, and what it means to live carefully, to be observant of what is around you, and to notice the way in which a city breathes.

Poems like “Dear Catherine,” “Corporation of Snow,” and “Love letter,” as well as the gathered poems found in the sections titled “site map: draft,” “The particular and busy lives of side streets,” and “Poem at Forty-two” are all beautiful and multi-faceted. Every one of the poems sings. You end up having finished reading mclennan’s A halt, which is empty knowing that you’ll return to it over and over again, glad for its well-crafted artistry.

 

Jessica Drake-Thomas reviews A halt, which is empty

Jessica Drake-Thomas was good enough to provide a new review of my spring 2019 poetry title, A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press). Thanks so much! This is actually the third review of the book, after Jonathan Ball reviewed it in the Winnipeg Free Press, and Mary Kasimor reviewed the same at Otoliths. You can see Drake-Thomas' original review here.

You should totally order copies from my publisher. But if you live close, I have a new box of copies, also. As her review reads (in full):

“Listing, and in consequence. Whip-smart. Porcelain, imprints. Restless,/in what seemed. Eternity. A printed image. Transmitting, sparks,” the speaker in “[entirety, the edge of sky, scrapes]” says in rob mclennan’s collection, A halt, which is empty.

Most of the poems in the collection are fragmentary. Literally, they are made up of sentence fragments, listing items and ideas. It’s almost as though the collection is a bunch of still life paintings, all of the pieces adding up into an elegant, well-fitted whole. 

mclennan’s technique is a lesson in mastercraft. Anywhere else, the sentence fragments would be choppy, but the longer line breaks of the pieces maintain the steady rhythm and flow of the poems. Each thing fits together with what comes before it. There’s nothing that distracts or forces the reader out. The reader is drawn along, as though jumping from stone to stone to cross the river. 

“We navigate abandoned rail, the crossing-bridge. A hush of limelight, walking./ Softest, luminescent green. Reflecting, kettle. Diverse objects, spread./Reflecting off your half-tones,” the speaker in “[entirety, the edge of sky, scrapes]” says. “A silence, not imposed but opened. Shorn,/of human speech.”

It reminds me a lot of John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which gives one the sense of things, but not necessarily the cohesive whole. The reader is not quite sure what’s going on all of the time, but gets the gentle implication of it. It’s a really cool effect.  

Overall, the collection weaves together Canadian history, a polydactyl cat named Lemonade, all of the names for snow. I really loved A halt, which is empty. mclennan’s work is original and comforting and lovely, and I highly recommend it. This book is available through Mansfield Press.

Jonathan Ball reviews A halt, which is empty in Winnipeg Free Press

Jonathan Ball was good enough to provide a second review of my spring 2019 poetry title, A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press) in Winnipeg Free Press. Thanks so much! This is actually the second review of the book, after Mary Kasimor recently reviewed the same. You can see Ball's original review here.

Rob McLennan’s A halt, which is empty (Mansfield, 132 pages, $17) presents a series of short sequences revolving around a variety of issues, somewhat connected by an investigation of place.

But what truly unites them is McLennan’s interest in the comma. "Strength of the adhesive, doctor blade. A corridor of slipping, cellular. / Geometry, the paper gulp (…) Kiss, pendulum lips. Like I was, never." Throughout the collection, McLennan uses commas to bend sentences out of shape, or graft two disconnected ideas. The result is some of the prolific poet’s best recent work.

Notes and Dispatches: Essays by rob mclennan, reviewed by Julian Day

Hey! Winnipeg poet Julian Day was good enough to review my second collection of essays over at Empty Mirror! I don't even know if copies are even available anymore (although I always have a couple of copies for sale, of course). Might they be? Either way, thanks!

See the original review here.

Notes and Dispatches: Essays by rob mclennan / Insomniac Press / 2014 / 978-1554831265 / 318 pages

rob mclennan has operated above/ground press from his home base of Ottawa for more than twenty-seven years, publishing over a thousand items since the press’ inception in 1993. He is himself a prolific writer, with more than twenty books of stories, poems, and essays to his name. In Notes and Dispatches: Essays, a collection of his writings from 2010 to 2014, he displays remarkable breadth and depth. mclennan’s interest is not just in writers and writing, but also circumstance and surroundings, and he is as much interested in how these external factors affect writing as in the output itself.

Throughout the book, he moves between person and place, subject and geography. In the introduction, he writes that each of his essays begins first with curiosity, as he tries to learn, through their writing, some aspect of an author or subject that can’t be understood otherwise. By starting with this pearl of curiosity, and enlarging his understanding through writing, mclennan provides a series of snapshots, each one focused on a figure or aspect from Canadian or American literature.

The essays in this collection are as diverse as they are personal. The first piece, “Reading and Writing Glengarry County: writing the Long Sault hydroelectric project”, describes the St. Lawrence Seaway project of the 1950s, tracing its indelible mark on the landscape of the region, and how entire communities were created, destroyed, or relocated by the project’s ambition. Weaving in recollections of his father’s life with Don McKay’s out-of-print long poem “Long Sault” and other sources, mclennan describes how the project’s scope changed Glengarry County forever. At the other end of the collection, in the penultimate essay, mclennan delves into his family history, tracing the McLennans from Scotland to Glengarry County, through to northern Alberta, British Columbia, and California. “Genealogy,” he writes, “really is akin to archaeology” (299), closing the piece with a note about his grandparents’ first child, named only as “Baby girl McLennan” in the newspaper obituary. Those who would have known her name, he writes, passed away years before he started his own inquiries. Despite our desire for understanding, for a full knowledge and accounting of ourselves and our histories, mclennan shows there are limits to how far we can ultimately dig.

Between these essays, the writings turn between geographies and the writers that inhabit them, often in the same piece: Douglas Barbour, an Edmonton poet mclennan feels was never given his full due; the poets and poetry of Vancouver and the west coast, including Roy Kiyooka, Meredith Quartermain, and Sachiko Murakami; essays on Lisa Robertson, Sylvia Legris, the American poet Sarah Manguso, and others; and “A note on Miss Canada”, on a piece by mclennan himself, describing how the sequence of voices in that work was partially informed by his trips between Toronto and Ottawa, where the dead played out in missing person posters taped to, then removed from, diner walls along the way.

mclennan is generous with the work of others, but the strongest work in the collection is autobiographical. In “The green-wood essay: a little autobiographical dictionary”, mclennan uses eight short sections to connect his family history to discussions of the pastoral, notes on the changing urban/rural landscape, poets whose lives began in farm country, and whether it is possible to be pastoral in a deeply urban landscape. The work shifts between sentences and fragments, in and out of poetry, working in mclennan’s distinct poetic style:

Instead of recess, played my scales. Another lesson. A further removal from bonding with my peers, already quiet, shy. Out on the farm, with barely a neighbour my age. Thirteen years of lessons, told to practice instead of wasting, wandering time. I wasted time. I put my head down. Played. I suppose, then, this was discipline. Certain notions set aside. (75)

“green wood”, a journey through mclennan’s foundations, allows the reader a view into his core tenets and beliefs – and foundations, mclennan writes, “rarely change, no matter subsequent constructions” (77). mclennan’s foundation is Glengarry County, and the red brick house where his father still lives; it is the move so many of us have made within the last few generations, leaving farms and villages for towns and cities; it is how he “absorbed books, consumed them” (75) – and how he still does. That was his life, and that is his life.

“How do books begin?”, mclennan asks (209). In Notes and Dispatches: Essays, the beginning and the end are geography: physical and human, intertwined and inseparable. We can never remove ourselves from the physical world; we are a product of our childhoods and upbringings, and the lives we choose for ourselves. The personal is the physical. Each of us are necessarily a part of where we live, and as mclennan deftly demonstrates, where we live, where we’re from, form an inseparable part of ourselves as well. “We already live in the world,” mclennan writes. “Why pretend to be apart?” (78)

hey! a new review of my Mansfield Press poetry title! what?

American poet Mary Kasimor was nice enough to review A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019)! Thanks so much! I have copies, of course, or you could pick up a copy via the publisher (who is great, obviously). (Full disclosure: I'm doing a chapbook soon by Kasimor, but didn't know she was doing this review...). Here's the review! whooooo!

A review of rob mclennan's A halt, which is empty

ISBN 9781771262200
$17.00 CDN/USA
132 pages
Mansfield Press

rob mclennan’s new collection of poetry, A halt, which is empty, reflects the poet’s sense and feeling for the land. and how humans construct and interpret our world and place. Do we ever really experience that what is in that world as constant, or does it change through our human experiences, or are these experiences the same but different? I wonder how we experience the emptiness of place, which is never really empty, nor is it ever completely full. Even though we may not have words to describe it is —whatever it is, we see it again—and it changes and becomes something different. Place shifts and then shifts again. This place, this locale, this space, this ground and sky all become something known after we have seen it and after it has become an experience.

According to mclennan (and history), in the early 1800’s people began exploring and living on this land in what were the early days of Ottawa, Ontario. In this collection of poetry, mclennan gives us a descriptive feeling of what the land means through the description of the men at this historical place in time: “Voyageurs and kinsmen” and Brand of hearty, men,” who live with “the boiling water,” and we are told what these hearty men have become or becoming as part of the history. Besides the discovery of “new” land, mclennan takes us away with his scattered but concisely chosen words. He uses “parable/ of chance” perhaps to inform the reader that many experiences can be construed from within the language and place. One can describe a place as beautiful and interesting through the choice of words, or one can make it empty and without a hint of breath, and simply a void. mclennan gives us the dream of what we might want to see through metaphor or function—through poetry and prose, giving the reader vignettes of place, fact, and emotion, and all that relates to human beings. We gather meaning through poetic meaning: “Artichoke, a stump. Break everything. Opposing mobs, they met at Sapper’s Bridge: ”A town, I wonder.)” The reader is given some direction of where this place is and how the poet suggests his attitude toward this place. Part of this place is specific—Sapper’s Bridge, and then a vague and shadowy place is only identified as “A town, I wonder.”

One of the most interesting images that mclennan “creates” is “Eternity. A printed image.” I will interpret that as implying that eternity is created when we are able to describe it. It parallels the idea or question that simply asks: if there is no one in the forest when a tree falls, does that mean it never happened? Is it humans who become entangled in their words and thus forcing ourselves to stay focused on the subtlety of language? I do not know the history or the landscape of the land/place or culture, but I get a sense of the history and the geography of the place. mclennon alludes to words as describers, despite the words appearing to be random, or perhaps the poet has a reason for creating this text. Depending upon our life experiences, we do get some sense of place through visual language.

Ultimately mclennan’s poetry tantalizes, and it creates more possibilities in so far as how area, space, and land become familiar through suggestion and thus opens up the place to other interpretations of all that is possible. The language is set up and located on the page so that the readers can find themselves in the text and part of the text while developing strategies to read and interpret the page. While reading mclennan’s book, I was reminded of William Carlos William’s book, Paterson, which opened up many possible interpretations as his poetry was very innovative and new. I also see and read mclennan’s collection of poetry as being experimental, and I don’t expect everything—or anything to be linear and logical—and it isn’t. The language and the layout of the language suggest ideas in a non-linear way. I have enjoyed the playfulness of these poems, evoking place and history. I have followed mclennan’s places as people and their poetry made the land their homes and the land became dirt beneath their fingernails..