Vallum 2017 Year in Review: Part One

2017 was a busy year for Vallum!

We launched Vallum: Contemporary Poetry issues 14:1 and 14:2, and published two new chapbooks: Mind of Spring by Jami Macarty, winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award, and entre-Ban by Bhanu Kapil, a collection of notes taken by Bhanu Kapil during the writing of her 2015 book, Ban en Banlieue. Read about our new chapbooks here.

Ali Blythe won the 2017 Award for Poetry with “Waking in the Preceding,” while Brian Henderson received second place with “The Incommensurate.” Honourable mentions went to Judy Little for “Ur Signs” and Roberta Senechal for “After Eden.”

We also hosted two pop-up shops, at Le Cagibi and the Concordia Co-op Bookstore, attended press fairs in Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa, and Montreal, and hosted outreach workshops with new facilitators and organizers.

To commemorate Vallum’s busy and successful year, we asked this year’s contributors to share their thoughts on the books they read in 2017 and what’s in store for the year ahead.

Here’s what some of the writers published in Vallum Issue 14:1 said (stay tuned to hear from Vallum 14:2 poets, our chapbook authors, and 2017 contest winners):

---

Sonnet L’Abbé

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
An Honest Woman, by Jónína Kirton.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Délani Valin, “No Buffalos”

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Kith by Divya Victor; Call Out by David Bradford; Full Metal Indigiqueer, Joshua Whitehead; Retreats by Karen Solie.

Sonnet L’Abbé is a professor at Vancouver Island University. Her chapbook, Anima Canadensis, came out with Junction Books in 2016, and won the bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2017. L’Abbé’s upcoming collection, Sonnet’s Shakespeare,  will be published by McClelland and Stewart in 2018. Read “XVL,” from her forthcoming collection, in Issue 14:1. 

---

Klara Du Plessis

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Titles are evading me—I know I read many exquisite poetry collections and now I can’t remember any!

One of my favourites is Erin Robinsong’s Rag Cosmology (BookThug), which I read while camping in Northern Quebec during the summer. There is an openness, integrity, playfulness, and ecological relevance to these, somewhat long-form, poems. Erin’s language has a way of dismantling itself and regrouping organically, which I admire and enjoy.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Captured somewhere proclaiming that I’m dedicating my life to poetry, I also remembered again, this year, that poetry necessitates variegating life, nurturing, instead of neglecting, an array of personal interests—attending contemporary dance performances and art exhibitions, getting a pedicure, taking time to care for yourself, taking care of others—the list could be endless, with each enumeration eventually holding the potential to spawn poetry.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I’m excited for Tess Liem’s debut from Coach House Books, and Shannon Maguire’s new Zip’s File: A Romance of Silence from BookThug. Admittedly, I haven’t researched the forthcoming lists of books to be published in 2018 yet, but I spent some time recently curating a list of titles for myself to explore in the coming months. A few of these include: Renee Gladman’s Calamities, Cecilia Vicuña’s Spit Temple (which is an anthology of transcriptions from performance projects), Etel Adnan’s Night, Gregoire Pam Dick’s Metaphysical Licks, Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia (I want to read more South African literature generally). I’d like to continue reading and supporting friends, whether in published form or not; chapbooks will definitely float onto my list, especially with new endeavours such as Rahila’s Ghost Press and Knife Fork Book’s imprint.

Klara du Plessis is a poet and critic residing in Montreal. Her chapbook Wax Lyrical (Anstruther Press, 2015) was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, and her debut collection Ekke is forthcoming (Palimpsest Press, 2018). She curates the monthly, Montreal-based Resonance Reading Series. Read her review of Alex Manley’s We are All Just Animals and Plants and Steven Heighton’s The Waking Comes Late in Issue 14:1. 

---

Bill Neumire

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
I particularly enjoyed In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
This isn’t a book, but I’m going to cheat a little and say that Paris Review’s new podcast series is my best poetry discovery of the year. They really put out a finely polished product that makes my commute much more enjoyable.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Laura Kasischke’s New and Selected Poems is one I’m really looking forward to this year.

Bill Neumire’s first book, Estrus, was a semi-finalist for the 42 Miles Press Award, and his recent poems appear in the Harvard Review Online, Beloit Poetry Journal, and West Branch. Read his review of Rob Taylor’s The News in Issue 14:1. 

---

Jeffrey Mackie

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Catriona Wright—Table Manners

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Shannon Webb-Campbell

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I really want to read Sue Elmslie’s Museum of Kindness as I have enjoyed her past work. I also want to read Daljit Nagra from the UK as I have heard great things about his work.

Jeffrey Mackie is a Montreal poet. He has been featured on Mountain Lake PBS and in the anthology The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear), UK, 2016. He also has a new pamphlet collection available called Memory and Cities (Sitting Duck Press, 2016). In addition, he hosts the popular Literary Report on CKUT radio. Read his poem “The Days” in Issue 14:1. 

---

Adam Lawrence

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Jeramy Dodds’s Drakkar Noir
-I had the pleasure of hearing Dodds recite some of the weird gems in this collection (I’ll never look at Santa Claus, amusement rides, or Canada in the same way).

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Peter Trower, Haunted Hills & Hanging Valleys, 1969-2004
– An excellent collection that offers a vivid portrait of the logging life – in terse, grim, joyful language.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Leonard Cohen’s The Flame and Christian Bök’s The Xenotext

Adam Lawrence’s writing has appeared in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Salon, JSTOR Daily, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry, and Feathertale.com. He’s taught writing and literature courses throughout eastern Canada, and is currently a freelance writer and editor in Montreal. Read his poem “Evolution” in Issue 14:1. 

---

Maureen Korp

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Blaine Marchand.  My Head, Filled with Pakistan (2016)

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Rereading chunks of my big, old battered copy of The Collected Poems of W.B.Yeats (1940) as I worked my way through a spiffy, new biography of Yeats—Fiona Biggs, The Pocket Yeats (2017).

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Whatever I have not yet read by Patrick Leigh Fermor.  His letters have just been published. Also, a fine collection of poems by three Palestinian poets:  I remember My Name: Poetry by Samah Sabawi Ramzy Baroud, Jehan Bseiso (2016).

Maureen Korp is a military brat, the daughter of an American soldier. She grew up in faraway places including Okinawa, Hokkaido, Oklahoma, Texas, and Germany. Home base today is Ottawa. She is a university lecturer and researcher. Her field is visionary earth-centered art. Read her poem “Oahu” in Issue 14:1. 

---

E. Canine McJabber—Winner, Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Reading Catriona Wright’s Table Manners while road-tripping was a terrible idea, but only because it gave me all the cravings that gas station food could only fail to satisfy. It’s all tender and toothy.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
I’m super in love with the wealth of writing by queer, trans*, and Two-Spirit writers in Canada. Reading books by Kai Cheng Thom, Amber Dawn, Joshua Whitehead, and many others feels like coming home to a place I didn’t know I had the keys for.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?            
So far just my dogs’s horoscopes on the Astro Poets twitter page.

E. Canine McJabber has published poems in several journals and zines across Canada. A travelling salesperson by day, they live and write between Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec. Their travel entourage consists of their two pups, Bonnie and Clyde. Read their award-winning poem “To My Mother, Aloud” in Issue 14:1. 

---

James Mckee—2^nd Place Winner, Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
I have two choices for this question: Patricia Smith’s Incendiary Art, aptly titled if ever a book were, and Ange Mlinko’s Distant Mandate, exquisite & memorable in all the right ways.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Like many readers, I suspect, I only became aware of Max Ritvo’s work after he left us. His was a real loss. Of our older poets, this year I read through the books of Derek Walcott, one of our true contemporary masters.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I seem to be perpetually engaged in a losing battle to fill in the vast gaps in my reading, and next year will be no different: I plan to read for the first time (the shame!) Joseph Brodsky; to reread old favorites like Robert Pinsky, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell; and to give another try to poets whom in the past I haven’t much liked, like John Ashbery and Ted Hughes (maybe this time. . . )

A New Yorker by birth (and likely by death), James McKee’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Acumen, The Raintown Review, Saranac Review, The South Carolina Review, THINK, The Worcester Review, The Rotary Dial, and elsewhere. Read his award-winning poem “To a Young Man Seen Wearing a Bow Tie” in Issue 14:1. 

---

Salvatore Difalco—Honorable Mention, Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Favourite poetry book published this year was a tie with Peter Gizzi’s  Archeophonics and John Ashbery’s dreamy translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Alien vs Predator, a book by Michael Robbins. The book is OK, but the poem “Alien vs Predator” is enviably groovy. I dig it.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Anything but Canadian poetry, I’m afraid.

Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto. His work has appeared in print and online. Read his award-winning poem “Joy” in Issue 14:1. 

---

J. Mark Smith

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
November (Bayeux Arts, 2017). The title refers to November, 1984 and the genocidal violence against Indian Sikhs that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi.  Jaspreet Singh’s family narrowly escaped death in those pogroms, and many of the poems in this book are about the long aftermath of that time. Witty, poignant, multilingual, erudite poems by a writer who has fully absorbed the lessons of the modernist and the postcolonial traditions.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Ten Poems of Francis Ponge translated by Robert Bly & Ten Poems of Robert Bly inspired by Francis Ponge (Owl’s Head Press, 1990). I can’t quite shake the feeling I’m not supposed to like Robert Bly, but he is a great translator and poet. An incredibly beautiful little book that I came across for the first time this year. Also: Stories from the Road Allowance People (Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2010; revised ed.) Translated by Maria Campbell. Technically, these are oral tales, originally in Michif, rendered into a Metis dialect of English by Campbell. But they’ve been set down with such attention to verbal and sonic detail, to the rhythm of phrase and sentence, that I think of them as poems. I never knew about this book until a few months ago; it’s great.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I’ve been looking forward for a couple of years now — as it’s been delayed several times — to the publication of Architecture of Dispersed Life: Selected Poems by Pablo de Rokha; translated by Urayoán Noel (Shearsman Books, 2018.) This will be the first book-length translation into English of work by one of Chile’s greatest twentieth century poets.

J. Mark Smith‘s verse translations (from Chilean Spanish) of poems by Winétt de Rokha have appeared recently in Shearsman and The Fortnightly Review. His essay “The Richest Boy in the World” was published in Queen’s Quarterly 122: 1 (Spring 2015). He teaches in the English Department at MacEwan University. Read his poem “Prayers for C. Elegans and H. Sapiens” in Issue 14:1. 

---

Crystal Hurdle

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
I loved AUGURIES by Clea Roberts.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
​Have been excited to read verse novels for middle-grade readers and am keen on reading more.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Bring on fiction titles by Erdrich, Cusk, and Wolitzer, not to mention volume one of Sylvia Plath’s collected letters.  At over 1300 words, it may well be a book I’ll still be reading in 2019!

Crystal Hurdle teaches English and Creative Writing at Capilano University in North Vancouver, BC. In October 2007, she was Guest Poet at the International Sylvia Plath Symposium at the University of Oxford, reading from After Ted & Sylvia: Poems. Her work, poetry and prose, has been published in many journals, including Canadian Literature, The Literary Review of Canada, Event, Bogg, Fireweed, and The Dalhousie Review. Teacher’s Pets, a teen novel in verse, was published in 2014. Read her poem “Bog People” in Issue 14:1, and her poem “Veterinarian Dr. Bondo” in Issue 14:2. 

---

You can read all the poets featured in this edition of our Year in Review in Vallum Issue 14:1.

Look out for more Year in Review responses from poets featured in Vallum coming later this month!

And be sure to check out our Poem of the Week blog for 52 of our favourite poems this year.

Advertisements

On Imagism

Imagism was a powerful movement in the early part of the twentieth century, with proponents like Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound. It is interesting that it arose around the time when photography began its explosions. To fix an image in the mind. Are the emotions rendered null and void at the moment the snapshot is taken? Is it a passing beauty (or ugliness) that stops us in our tracks? Do we stop to think, or do we just absorb? It is believed in some cultures that the camera “kills,” and in common usage we speak of a photo “shoot.” There is something permanently fixed about images. Some of Margaret Atwood’s most memorable writing involve the “fixing of the eye”–the camera’s final word.

I loved the Imagists when I encountered them. The image is powerful and extends into all art forms. I wonder what this means–in the grander scheme of things.

Here are some historical insights on the Imagist Movement, originally posted in Modern American Poetry:

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/amylowell/imagism.htm

/ez

Who is poetry for?

Article that asks whether or not poets should be accountable, whether or not poetry should be more mainstream…comments??

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jun/02/is-jeremy-paxman-right-new-poetry-inaccessibilty

CANADIAN LITERATURE IN THE INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

CANADIAN LITERATURE IN THE INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

With the recent announcement of Canadian short-fiction writer Alice Munro as this year’s Nobel Laureate in literature, many are wondering what this holds for the perception of Canada as a literary nation. 

                

Certain nations have an incontestable status as literary powerhouses and no matter their country of origin, little evidence is needed to convince most avid readers of the literary importance of countries such as: the U.S, U.K, France, Russia, Ireland, etc. However, many less populous nations are overshadowed by these literary behemoths and Canada is no exception. 

                

Asking them who their favourite Canadian author is will solicit from many Canadians only blank stares and umms and uhhs, before stumbling upon the names of Atwood or Richler. Even within Canada extensive knowledge of the Canadian literary canon is largely limited to those involved in it and despite the efforts of the Canadian literary community and the government to promote Canadian literature, most Canadians read far fewer domestic works than international ones.

                

Canadian prose and poetry has long been overshadowed, but change may be in sight. By receiving the Nobel Prize, Munro has been internationally recognized as one of the most important living writers and as interest in her work grows so too may interest in Canadian literature as a whole. Munro’s lifetime achievement has put Canadian literature in the headlines and brought with it the hope that it will be seen there far more often.

– Connor Mellegers

   Intern

   Vallum: Contemporary Poetry

Congratulations to Yi-Mei Tsiang, Winner of the TenWordTenDay Poetry Invitational!

Tags

art, arts, award, contest winner, found poetry, found poetry contest, montreal, online poetry contest, poetry, poetry contest, poetry contest winner, Toronto, Writing

Thank you to everyone who entered the TenWordTenDay Poetry Invitational! The competition was fierce and we were thrilled to have so many excellent pieces to choose from.

Congratulations to Yi-Mei Tsiang for her wining poem “First Train Ride.” Ms. Tsiang will receive a chapbook of her choice from the Vallum Chapbook Series and her poem will be featured on this site and in Vallum’s memo.

First Train Ride

Yi-Mei Tsiang

First train ride and my daughter’s

face is pressed to the glass. She kneels

by the window, and even the small rounded hills look glacial

with November’s early frost.

I’m touched by the arc of her spine,

the intensity which coils in her body

like a taut spring. Her gaze is as precise

as mathematics. Nothing can escape

her catalogue of passing miracles.

We’re travelling to Toronto, we’ve explained,

to the funhouse, the circus, the zoo. Still, disembarking,

she clings to the windows, cries

with all the frantic adrenalin of grief.

We pry her fingers off, carry her kicking

and screaming; her boots fall and tumble over the station

floor. One is caught in the cleft between the tracks and the platform

and just before my husband reaches to retrieve it,

a train blows by and the boot

is thrown into the air, a black bird,

a final miracle.

Bio: Yi-Mei Tsiang is the author of A Flock of Shoes (Annick Press). Her full-length poetry collection, Sweet Devilry is forthcoming in Spring 2011 with Oolichan. She also has two new books forthcoming with Annick Press, The Dog Doesn’t Eat Jam and a book of non-fiction on ancient China. She is currently completing UBC’s MFA program and is a graduate from the Humber School of Writing. Yi-Mei currently teaches Creative Writing for UBC’s Booming Ground program.

Congratulations again to our winner!

Vallum: Top Ten

So, we’re moving offices, soonish.  This got me thinking about Vallum’s past in that lazy way you do when you dig through all your stuff and find things that you haven’t looked at in yonks but are really awesome, so it takes you five hours to pack one drawer since you stopped to look at that photo or read that old manuscript.  Anyhoo, I digress.

In one week, we’re launching our own Vallum Top Ten, where we’ve collected nominations from readers to determine popular parts of the Vallum issues that have gone past.  We’ve banged them all onto our FTP server and this Friday, they will go live and people will be able to vote for their favourites over the end of summer. 

Please come and vote!

Off Topic Readables

Tags

literature, martel, reading, stephen harper, yann, yann martel

Yann Martel is quite the evangelist. On his website What is Stephen Harper Reading, he chronicles his quest to bring “stillness” to the life of our Prime Minister, a project inspired by his visit to the House of Commons approximately two years ago. Martel explains that “I was thinking that to have a bare-bones approach to arts funding, as the present Conservative government has, to think of the arts as mere entertainment, to be indulged in after the serious business of life, that—in conjunction with retooling education so that it centres on the teaching of employable skills rather than the creating of thinking citizens—is to engineer souls that are post-historical, post-literate and pre-robotic; that is, blank souls wired to be unfulfilled and susceptible to conformism at its worst—intolerance and totalitarianism—because incapable of thinking for themselves, and vowed to a life of frustrated serfdom at the service of the feudal lords of profit.”

Martel’s words are far more eloquent than mine, but reading them re-energized my desire to read, and also to seek stillness in my own life. Martel wants more; he does not proclaim a desire to educate Harper, but to speak to his stillness. He has sent Harper one book every two weeks with a letter enclosed; each book is chronicled on the website. This has been a long project. Harper has received his 52nd book, and has sent one reply through a secretary. I don’t know whether Martel is daunted by this.

We have experienced a period of extreme financial upheaval. Things that seemed rock solid have crumbled away like so much dust; people are frustrated and fearful. It has struck me, as we write our grants, that this is the practicality of literature. It points to the lasting nature of our humanity; it articulates permanence despite fragility.

Poetry: an honest discussion

Tags

audio, criticism, jane hope, podcasts to listen to, poetry magazine

So we got our office copy of Poetry, which I looked for our ad, read the Langston Hughes and then stopped dead.

Well, my first reaction, was – oh right, Poetry has a podcast, and then I laughed. But maybe I should back up a little bit.

If you look into the Letters of the Editors section, you will find a letter from the poetry group of the Treemont Retirement Community, in Texas. They have worked their way through several substantial collections over the course of four years, including the work of Garrison Keillor, and decided that a group subscription to Poetry would be very stimulation. They were not pleased with the end product, saying that there was “no rhyme and very little reason” and complaining that the poems “are neither enjoyable nor enlightening”.

Ouch.

To give Poetry due credit, they published the letter and interviewed the poetry group on their podcast, which usually serves as an audio tour of the newest magazine – which is not meant to be derogatory, it’s interesting to listen to.

I encourage listening to the podcast – I think it is interesting…and hilarious.  I don’t think poetry is obliged to be accessible.  However, taste is personal, and I think it is a fascinating moment of justification and understanding.  I particularly like when they discuss the role of humour in poetry, and the role of the writer or intellectual in society.