O Birthday! My Birthday!

in which one attempts to offer some updates,

To paraphrase Walt Whitman: “This body has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won…” Or something along those lines. Today I turn fifty-four, but you probably already known that, having caught my annual birthday post earlier this morning. Turn, turn, turn.

Some updates:

Now that I’m Artistic Director, I’ve even more reason to tell you about VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, the fourteenth year of such which begins on Thursday (March 21-24). Might we see you? I’ve been posting a series of interviews to help promote a handful of this year’s authors (with further to post next week, also) over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

My short story collection, On Beauty (University of Alberta Press), is due to land in August, and is already up for pre-order. Christine’s third title, the hybrid memoir Toxemia (Book*hug Press) is out this fall and is also already up for pre-order. Christine McNair, of course, is my brilliantly-talented spouse, with two earlier poetry titles, also published through Book*hug Press.

Did you catch the podcast interview Stephen Brockwell did with me a while back, recently posted to Writers Festival Radio? This is the podcast for the Ottawa International Writers Festival, and we discussed the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022) and essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022), among other things. Han VanderHart also recorded a podcast interview with me a few days ago, focusing on World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023), for the Of Poetry Podcast; apparently it should be posted sometime in April. I was recently featured at Stephanie Austin’s Mugshot Writers via Instagram, and had a poem in the final issue of Carousel magazine (sad to see the journal end, I must say). Did I mention I’m also a juror for this year’s Montreal International Poetry Prize? I mean, I’m not always good about remembering to update you on such things as these.

I’m reading at Larry Sawyer’s milk magazine reading series on May 8 in Toronto, and Christine and I are reading together for the Single Onion Reading Series on November 21 in Calgary. You probably already know about the spring edition of the ottawa small press book fair in June (with our next fair in November). Christine and I are probably doing a whole bunch of other events this fall for the new books, but most of those are still in the planning stages.

Oh, and Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] is currently in the midst of a tenth anniversary subscription sale, which includes a whole slew of recent above/ground press backlist (some new/recent/forthcoming titles include chapbooks by Katie Ebbitt, russell carisse, Kyle Flemmer, Amanda Deutch, Jacob Wren, Melissa Eleftherion, Micah Ballard, Pete Smith, Clint Burnham, Angela Caporaso, Cary Fagan and even a collaborative title by Phil Hall + Steven Ross Smith). The tenth anniversary issue of Touch the Donkey, issue #41, lands April 15, and I might even have poems from a new project inside (okay: yes, I have poems inside. very yes.). I mean, that’s exciting, isn’t it?

It is only once we get to sit down and talk like this do I realize how long it has been. It has been too long.