what are years but days mashed together in sequence?
, three online readings (including one with Christine McNair,
I tend not to think of New Year’s as any prompt for annual retrospection (I save those for my birthday, actually), although I’ve had a good enough 2024, despite whatever wildfires are happening in the world around. I yell on social media when I need to, donate money when I’m able, attend to our young ladies and otherwise just keep my head down attempting to push through as much work (reviewing, writing, reading, publishing, editing, organizing) as possible. Sometimes the best thing one can do is keep going, despite all. [And: despite my Christmas Day selfie, above, in which I look like a Mad King]
I had a collection of short stories out this past year, one I’m deeply pleased with (both through the stories themselves and the experience with everyone at University of Alberta Press), and have completed a follow-up (there was seven years between completing On Beauty and it actually landing a home, don’t you know). Christine had her own remarkable book out, which you’re probably already aware of [you saw the essay I posted on such, yes?]. I’ve pushed hard through my book-length work-in-progress “the green notebook” (150+ pages since April, if you can imagine). I’m hoping to end my notes by this coming spring), and circling the ends of “the genealogy book” (eighteen months or so into that project). I’m leaning near poems again (including a manuscript I’ve been tinkering with for over a year now) but also aware that it would be nice to get this novel-in-progress actually progressed, and possibly off my plate also. Further short stories? I’ve been writing down the occasional line, but I want a bit of a distance before I launch into further, as I don’t want anything new to sound too much like what I’ve already done, if that makes sense.
2025 sees a small poetry collection, Snow day, out with American publisher Spuyten Duyvil, as well as my book-length essay, A river runs through it: a writing diary , collaborating with Julie Carr. I’m told that October 15th is the target release date for the book of sentences with University of Calgary Press, the follow-up to the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022), so that’s pretty cool. I should probably be thinking about setting up some fall readings, I suppose. Oh, and be aware that Christine and I will be reading in Vancouver at the end of February; once the information is posted, it should be here.
I recently posted my fourteenth annual ‘best of’ list of Canadian poetry books (with three follow-up emails by folk asking why their books weren’t included, of course). And did you see that Han VanderHart included something of mine on their own end-of-year best of? My first list! I produced a mound of above/ground press items across 2024, as we end the press’ thirty-first year and move into thirty-second. And the Tuesday poem series nears twelve years of weekly postings. And by the time you’re reading this, the January issue of periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics has begun posting. Watch for a new issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], number fourty-four, in about two weeks.
I recently thought that a fun thing to do would be to record me reading a short story or two from On Beauty (University of Alberta Press, 2024), for those unable to catch a reading in person [my YouTube channel, which I’ve predominantly used for the ‘virtual reading series’ via periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics]. I’ve posted two stories so far, below:
Should I perhaps have shaved for these? Maybe. Also, those nice folk at The Single Onion Poetry Series in Calgary were good enough to post a recording of our whole event back in November [see my report on that whole Calgary trip, here], when Christine and I read out that way (it was live-streamed as well, at the time). You can catch that here.
Hoping our combined 2025 is a good one. I think we could all use a bit of a break, yes?