The New Quarterly to launch essay collection "Falling in Love with Poetry"

A new book “Falling in Love with Poetry,” a collection of essays from The New Quarterly, the award-winning Canadian literary magazine, is being launched on Wednesday evening at Conrad Grebel University College. at the University of Waterloo. 

The book grew out of a conversation Rae Crossman had with The New Quarterly’s then editor, Kim Jernigan. Crossman's own essay, the first in the series, is featured in the collection. 

Crossman, Program Director and poet laureate for Waterloo Unlimited, a high school student enrichment program, since 2004 , is retiring following the May 2016 program and will be honoured as part of the launch event for his efforts as educator, director, connector, and poet.

" Mechanical poetry journal" in Toronto vends little broadsides for a toonie

Toronto Poetry Vendors have a launch of their latest (spring 2011 -- it's only a little late) issue at one of the newest installations of their poetry vending machines at Shopgirls gallery boutique in Parkdale,  June 30 at 7 p.m. 

TPV will also be at Clinton’s Tavern (693 Bloor St. W, near Christie Station) on July 9 for the Meet the Presses chapbook market with their portable, travelling machine, lovingly known as Snacks, stocked with the new issue (and possibly some back issues).

Toronto Poetry Vendors is a mechanical poetry journal which uses refurbished gum vending machines to vend twice-yearly issues consisting of 10 single, hand-folded broadsides by 10 Toronto-based poets, purchasable from the machines for a toonie.It is the creation of poets Elisabeth de Mariaffi and Carey Toane.

Weighing the magazine factor for Trillium Book Award finalists

Magazines have played a part in the careers of some of  the English finalists for the $20,000 Trillium Book Award, Ontario's most prestigious literary prize. Among those for fiction:

• James Fitzgerald, for What Disturbs the Blood (Random House Canada). Fitzgerald has been a frequent contributor to Toronto Life and the University of Toronto magazine. 
•  Ken Sparling, for Book (Pedlar Press). Publication of Sparling's first book was the result of submitting work to the late Toronto literary journal Blood & Aphorisms.
• Paul Vermeersch, for The Reinvention of the Human Hand (McClelland and Stewart). Vermeersh's poetry began to be published in respected poetry journals in the late 1990s, later gathered into anthologies, and his work has been profiled in such magazines as Taddle Creek and The Danforth Review.

And for poetry:

•  Dani Couture, for Sweet (Pedlar Press). Couture's work has appeared in many literary journals, including Taddle Creek, The Fiddlehead and ARC Poetry.
• Jeff Latosik for Tiny, Frantic, Stronger (Insomniac Press). Latosik's poetry has appeared in many Canadian indy magazines and journals, including winning the P.K. Page Founder's Award from The Malahat Review in 2007, placing first in This Magazine's Great Canadian Literary Hunt in 2008.
• Shane Neilson, The Complete Physical (Porcupine's Quill Press). Neilson was a National Magazine Award nominee for poetry and won ARC Poetry's 15th annual Poem of the Year contest.
• Peter Norman, At the Gates of the Theme Park (Mansfield Press). Norman's work has appeared in The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Prism International and the Byword Quarterly Journal.

Quote, unquote: Why (some) literary magazines should fold

"The problem with the market for literary journals now is that there’s too much supply for too little demand. The demand is there, to be sure, and isn’t in danger of diminishment should a number of these journals fold; quite the opposite. A culling will improve quality on both sides of the editorial table; the quality of submissions will increase as places to publish become more scarce, as will the calibre of the editors. And if we move from having a couple dozen journals to a handful, the readership that now is so thinly spread will coalesce around the remaining organs. The standard of the whole enterprise will rise."

-- Poet and essayist Michael Lista, in an opinion piece in the National Post 25 March.

New poetry magazine from B.C. belies its name -- Poetry is Dead

A new semi-annual publication called Poetry is Dead magazine is being launched in BC, and expects soon to publish 1,000 copies of its first issue, with the theme death/rebirth.

"We publish any form of poem that is intriguing, hilarious, ridiculous, inspiring, timely, unfortunate or provocative," say the editors. "We are looking for Canadian poets with a style for the current, relevant, topical, political, smart, hilarious and brilliant. Exactly in that order."

[Thanks to Places for Writers for alerting us to this.]

Scream kicks off with Matrix launch and two challenging panels

The Scream Literary Festival, now in its 15th year, is hosting two inspiring events in Toronto as part of its July 3 to 9th run. "As always," they say, "the festival reaches its boiling point with The Scream in High Park, Canada's largest single-night outdoor reading, on July 9."

(Both events may be interesting not only to literary and cultural magazine publishers but also to their hard-pressed poetry contributors.)

• One event is a panel, moderated by Clive Thompson (former editor of This Magazine, now a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine) called "Strange Alchemy: the Science and Poetry Panel." Panellists include Christian Bök, angela rawlings, Ken Babstock and postdoctoral candidate, Lisa Betts (who is studying the neuroscience of vision at York). It's being held Wednesday, July 4 at the Supermarket, 268 Augusta Avenue in Kensington Market at 7 p.m. The panel is followed at 9 p.m. with a launch of the newest issue of the Montreal-based magazine Matrix magazine, with readings by the panel members.

• The other event is a panel discussing the state of poetry criticism called "Under the Microscope", to be held at Tinto, 89 Roncesvalles Avenue at 3 p.m. The panel includes New York Times critic David Orr, music critic and Zoilus.com creator Carl Wilson, and poets Elizabeth Bachinsky and Damian Rogers, discussing why poetry is missing from popular critical consciousness. The panel is moderated by Toronto writer Marianne Apostolides and will question whether the lack of conversation about poetry is due to a failure of critics, not a failure of poets.

Arc aims to rehabilitate reputations of forgotten and neglected Canadian poets

Arc Poetry Magazine is this month launching a special Forgotten and Neglected issue featuring poetry by 13 “forgotten and neglected” Canadian poets. Photographs and essays by many of Canada’s best contemporary poets and critics illustrate their arguments why the featured writers' work ought to be revered and remembered. (The kickoff is a reading on on Saturday, June 23, 2007 at 5 pm at the Manx Pub, 370 Elgin Street in Ottawa, just in time for Canada day.) Podcasts by the various essayists will be featured on the poetry magazine's website.

A release from the magazine encapsulates explanations of the entire lineup. Among them is Audrey Alexandra Brown, a west coast Romantic poet, rediscovered by Kim Blank of Victoria, a fellow westerner, poet, playwright, and frequent media consultant on pop culture. Blank is a professor of literature and cultural studies at the University of Victoria.

Literary history suddenly dropped Audrey Alexandra Brown (1904-1998) like a hot potato. Despite the accolades, the awards, and the best wishes of those who early on championed her work—and those who may have played upon the fact that she was crippled by rheumatic fever—she was bull-dozed by modernism and professional literary critics. She was aware of what was happening, but helpless to stop it. Her failing, she claimed, was that she had no real experience of life.

In their introduction to the special issue., co-editors Anita Lahey and Matthew Holmes write:

“All the poets you will read about in this issue of Arc are dead. With each, a potential legacy has also died, or is in full-blown demise. Though ordinary mortality is beyond our powers to correct, we take issue, as our theme ‘Forgotten and Neglected’ implies, with these secondary, literary deaths. We contend that each of the 13 poets whose work appears in these pages has received less credit than was his or her due for either literary accomplishments, the enrichment of Canadian poetic history, or both”

Arc Poetry Magazine was founded in Ottawa in 1978 and is the oldest and most established national journal of Canadian poetry.

Five, seven, five for spring

Maisonneuve magazine ran a contest for readers to write a "spring" haiku. The winners are in. And here is one of them:

the daffodils dance
like girls drunk on bottled beer
shimmying freely

(Scott Lucero)