Some updates: new poetry book (Snow day) + next week in Vancouver,
an update! an update! my kingdom for an update,
Snow day has landed! Given the wealth of snow we’ve had since Wednesday (a snowfall record over a few days, going back to 2008), the arrival of my first copies of this are absolutely perfect. This is my third title with American publisher Spuyten Duyvil, following How the alphabet was made (2018) and Life sentence, (2019)! This collection is constructed as a kind of sequence of sequences, and includes the title poem, “Snow day” (produced as an above/ground press chapbook in 2018), and “Somewhere in-between / cloud” (also produced as an above/ground press chapbook in 2019), which was composed for and published as part of Dusie Kollektiv 9: “Somewhere in the Cloud and Inbetween”—A Tribute to Marthe Reed (1958-2018). Oh, and here are the blurbs on the back cover. Brilliant thanks to all three for their generous words:
There is snow and the school buses are cancelled. Letters come from afar in spite of the weather. In Snow Day, rob mclennan documents the detritus of living – the snow, the children, their toys, their resistance to naps, the accumulation of small daily events that make up this specific life. Except for what filters faintly through the media, there are no bombs, no daily fights for food or shelter. Even so, mortality is the quiet accompaniment rumbling beneath this work. We live on and find connection in spite of death. “How do [people] get strength to put their clothes on in the morning?” notes rob, quoting Emily Dickinson. By observing the private moments, specific to his world but common to many, he finds some kind of answer and some kind of grace.
Samuel Ace, author of I want to start by saying (CSU Poetry Center, 2024)
In Snow Day, rob mclennan squints through the hazy weather of everyday life to wonder what value a writing life might offer. As time passes from his desk, his couch, his car, his books, his screens, mclennan looks forward and back in time, his continued commitment to the process-based long poem working its way through a midwinter day boiled over into weeks, months, years, decades, centuries. These poems show us how the smallest gestures can open onto wider fields of connection, bringing things into contact even when they feel distant.
ryan fitzpatrick, author of No Depression in Heaven (Talonbooks, 2025)
and Sunny Ways (Invisible, 2023)In Snow Day, rob mclennan offers a quiet sibling to Bernadette Mayer’s beloved Midwinter Day, a personal reverie to revisit each year as the world darkens. Part history, part elegy, Snow Day weaves together an international poetry community, reflecting mclennan’s long-term commitment to spinning and repairing that creative web.
Jessica Smith, author of How to Know the Flowers (Veliz Books, 2019)
Might we see you in Vancouver next week? Christine and I are reading as part of Poetry in Canada: Off the Shelf Reading Series Part 5 on February 28, 2025 (Doors: 6:30 pm / Event: 7 pm) at SFU Belzberg Library, SFU Harbour Centre, 515 Hastings St. Vancouver BC, so that all feels pretty exciting, yes? I mean, you already have a copy of her hybrid/memoir Toxemia (Book*hug, 2024), I presume [which I wrote about here, in case you didn’t already catch]. I’m also reading in Ottawa on March 16th with Jorge Etcheverry Arcaya (Ottawa), Rob Manery (Vancouver), Chris Turnbull (Kemptville) and Grant Wilkins (Ottawa), which I suppose I’ll be calling an Ottawa launch for Snow day as well. There are also plans afoot for Christine and I to read together in Ottawa in June, but we aren’t there yet as far as details.
Were you aware that I’ve a further title with Spuyten Duyvil out soon? A river runs through it: a writing diary , collaborating with Julie Carr, a forty-odd page essay I composed around the call-and-response sequence of poems we wrote during the Covid-era, published as river / estuaries (above/ground press, 2023), although she reworked her poems, and they appear in her UNDERSCORE (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2024) [see my review of such here]. My pieces appear in “edgeless,” another sequence of sequences, and a poetry manuscript currently sitting on an editor/publisher’s desk. I’ll keep you posted on any movement on that (these things take time, as you know).
I’m working on a couple of further poetry projects, but nothing much worth updating right now, instead pushing hard to get “the green notebook” and “the genealogy book” off my plate before I can focus too deeply on too much else. Might I be able to finish at least one of these by spring? Keep an eye here on further excerpts on both of those; I’m a few months backlogged on “the green notebook” postings, so even if I complete the manuscript soon there will be a handful of further pieces through here. Also, BC poet David Phillips died recently, so I’ll link here to the obituary I posted.
Oh, I’ll be in conversation with the delightful Sarah Marie over on Instagram, talking live about various books and things on Tuesday March 18 at 7:30pm EST; be sure to catch the link for such here.
And be sure to save the date(s): VERSeFest: Ottawa's International Poetry Festival! March 25-29, 2025 : Eileen Myles! Chelene Knight! Pamela Mosher! Zoe Whittall! Oana Avasilichioaei! Kimberly Quiogue Andrews! Em Dial! Andy Weaver! Xénia Gould! etc (with more information to come) https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/versefest
There’s probably more stuff worth updating, but of course I can’t recall any of it right now. I’m sure once I hit “send” on this it will all come back to me.