Photo of the day

Walid Bitar (right) and Jack Illingworth at the Toronto launch of The New Canon poetry anthology, held at the Rivoli on December 10th, 2005 . Check out the recently uploaded photographs (including the Montreal and Ottawa events). Slideshow here.

Best Canadian poetry of 2008

Poetry magazine asked me to recommend a couple of poetry titles published in 2008. One of my picks was Jeramy Dodds' Crabwise to the Hounds. It goes without saying that I think Shannon Stewart, Christopher Wiseman, and Walid Bitar's books should be on anybody's best-of roundup, but here, in no particular order, are ten other books of Canadian poetry I enjoyed this past year.

• Noble Gas, Penny Black by David O'Meara: the best poems -- streetwise, nimble, and effervescent -- are a masterclass in formal and verbal precision. I'll be reviewing this book for Arc.
  
• The Pangborn Defense by Norm Sibum: a series of fluent, irreverent, sourly-spirited epistles. A full-tilt performance.
  
• Revolver by Kevin Connolly: possibly his best book. Connolly is an emerging master of doubt-ridden self-knowledge. Flawless writing mixed with elliptical, laid-back provocativeness.
• The Debaucher by Jason Camlot: largely set in Montreal's Mile-end and rife with bawdy humour. The standout poem is a sonnet-sequence on the late Montreal poet Robert Allen.
  
• Palilalia by Jeffery Donaldson: inspired by his own Tourettes-like speech impediment (Palilalia is "an involuntary repetiton of words, phrases or sentences"), Donaldson's poems are marked by linguistic wildness, bitingly beautiful perceptions and mordant wit.
  
• The Day in Moss by Eric Miller: lushly tactile and baroquely cerebral meditations on nature.
  
• Jeremiah, Ohio by Adam Sol: A book-length urban fable about a prophet and an everyman on a road-trip to New York city. Told in alternating voices and a high-low mix of street slang and biblical registers. Somewhat reminiscent of Eric Ormsby's Araby, I often found myself laughing out loud at the boldness of it all.
  
• Chameleon Hours by Elise Partridge: a superb follow-up to her debut, Fielder's Choice. Agitated descriptions of mortality expressed through the gritted teeth of impeccable craft
  
• Living Things by Matt Rader: I found some of the wordplay a little stiff, but Rader's book is full of arresting images that seem to reinvent everything he looks at.
  
• The Watchmaker's Table by Brian Bartlett: A series of inventive, subtle and deeply cutting speculations on the passage of time. In any other country, Bartlett would have a more substantial reputation.
  

Good Ox

Two great reviews of Christopher Patton's 2007 poetry debut Ox (yes, they appeared over the summer, but if you haven't seen them, then they're new to you).

"Christopher Patton’s new book Ox is artful, intelligent and substantial. It is a refreshing and generous first book from a very steady-eyed, steady-handed, steady-minded new poet." - Scott Hightower, Coldfront Magazine

"[Patton's] musicality and sense of structure, both in motion and shape on the page, are impeccable...Ox is a terrific first book from a sophisticated and sure-handed young poet" - Diane Schenker, Boxcar Poetry Review



And check out Carla Funk's interview with Patton on her Capital Verse page.

How does island-life inform your writing?

Vancouver Island is for a Salt Springer a sort of small mainland. I come across now and then for a hit of city excitement. Other times to hike around in Strathcona Park. Those long quiet steady fluid real days show up in poems as blues and greens and low sonorous vowels. A rainy forest quality to the phrasing, one thought decaying into or sprouting from another.

Finally, of all the arts and callings in life, why poetry?

Can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t paint, can’t sail.

Too Sexy for This Poem

Last thursday, Tightrope was in Montreal to launch the The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 edited by Stephanie Bolster (Molly Peacock is the series editor). Modeled after the American anthology, BCP promises to be an annual series. A.F. Moritz has apparently already been lined up as guest editor for 2009

This year, two Signal Edition poets got swept into the net. One made it into the longlist (Patrick Warner) where he stayed. The other slipped thorough: Jason Guriel, whose poem "Spineless Sonnet" was originally published in Maisonneuve. Guriel's second book, Pure Product, is slated to be published by us in Spring 2009.

BCP is a excellent anthology, with lots of arresting poems. My favorites at the moment are by Todd Swift, Jeramy Dodds, Michael Lista, Jeffery Donaldson, Craig Poile and Jim Nason. Almost as rare as the ability to write good poetry, is the ability to recognize good poetry. Stephanie Bolster clearly possesses both gifts.