Platonic Edit 2

Jewish Voice of Hamilton: a Yiddish language newspaper from the 30s and 40s in Hamilton, Ontario.

I've been working on a book project involving this fascinating newspaper from Hamilton, Ontario that was written in Yiddish. It's a remarkable look into an entirely parallel world (at least from mainstream considerations of city life) of opinion, perspective, and experience. The plan is to publish a reproduction of some of the pages, a translation of many of the columns (there was an editorial in each issue written by the editor/publisher), as well as some other documents (letters to and from the editor's sons who fighting in Europe.) The newspaper stopped publishing soon after the editor wrote a heartbreaking eulogy on the front page for his son who was killed in Malta while serving.

From Ug-Clomp to Uh, Okay: a recent review

unrelated screenshot of my computer screen.

Catherine Owen wrote a round-up of a whole bunch of recent Mansfield Press books, including my Moon Baboon Canoe. Her reviews are quirky and opinionated, and I don't agree with everything she says by any means ("ug-clomp"!) but she has interesting things to say and can be a sensitive reader of poetry. And I really appreciate the thoughtful engagement with all these titles.

Reviews here.

Review in Winnipeg Free Press

Jonathan Ball can always be counted on to review poetry 
in the Winnipeg Free Press. I'm grateful that he continues 
to support poetry with his always intelligent and 

Insightful writing. Here is his review of my latest book.

Perceptual Cloud

Perceptual Axis

Quickness: Transtemporal Ghost Bears

Vallum Magazine invited me to contribute a poem on "Speed," and so I wrote one. Then I made it into a video incorporating music (a transmogrified version of the Allemande from Bach's Cello Suite #1) and the spoken text. My daughter helped me create the transtemporal ghost bears.

Cruelty to Fabulous Animals: on hybridity

Over the last several years, I've been working on—or have gathered together from miscellaneous work—a series of visuals based on the notion of hybridity. I plan to exhibit these images as an art show. In the meantime, I've posted them on a tumblr over here.

Here's my 'artist statement':

We live in hybridity. Language is hybrid. Looking is hybrid. Culture is hybrid. These images explore the hybrid connection between humans and animals, between the real world and images, between the natural and the human-made world. Each word, each glance, each thought is a centaur, or a hand-headed owl, a grammar-horned deer. Antlers on a shopping cart. 

And everything changes. Everything is in the process of changing. Knowing is quantum. Understanding is chimerical. So is wonder. A jackalope, a feejee mermaid, cryptozoology or cryptocognition. We don’t know what to believe. We even doubt our skepticism. 

When is a pipe not a pipe? When it is a brain that is half a butterfly’s wing. Why is a raven like a writing desk? Because it has wings. Except I lied about the wings.

Poetry, Northern/Southern Border, part III

Hoa Nguyen writes in the Poetry Foundation blog, Harriet, about our recent performance in Toronto as part of Margaret Christakos's great new Across reading/performance series. 

First review of "Moon Baboon Canoe"

The first review of Moon Baboon Canoe 

by rob mclennan

"With this, one might suggest that Barwin’s poems are big enough to encompass and include the entire world."

New chapbook: Bone Sapling (with Amanda Earl)

AngelHousePress presents Bone Sapling by Gary Barwin & Amanda Earl: a visual poetry collection of hybrid letter creatures who swim, climb trees & wait in their nests to be born.

 the chapbook can be ordered via Paypal under Chapbooks at AngelHousePress.com or picked up at the Ottawa Small Press Fair on Saturday, June 7, 2014.

Moon. Ghoti. Listen. Writing: Silent Letters

Video: Reading from "Moon Baboon Canoe" in Cobourg, Ontario

"And I shall dwell in the my-parents'-basement of my own self forever"

The privilege and pleasure of reading: a letter

Today, I  received this lovely email which is a good reminder of the great privilege & pleasure it is to have readers of my work…and how great my father is [I've redacted the names for confidentiality]:

Dear Gary,

Almost every night, my little angel O____ wants to read The Magic Mustache. She smiles, she learns, she counts the number of words, she learns the senses... and she laughs!!!

Every night that she picks that book, I feel I am holding my miracle baby, my angel from heaven. O____ is almost four. After having 5 miscarriages after my first baby and dealing with a big fertility clinic here in Ottawa, my family doctor said: before you make the decision of ending your dream of having 2 children, please go see another doctor, Dr Barwin. We did.

The first meeting we had with your father, he simply said what was wrong with me. He gave me some shots a certain day of the month...a Saturday morning and nine months later, our baby girl was born. After many scares, he took the time to see us whenever we felt the heart of the baby had stopped, and gave us a present for James.

Our son J____ was 5 at the time and was never very interested in The Magic Mustache. He preferred Scooby Doo or Diego but O____ is fascinated by your book.

Thank you for reminding me how lucky we are to have met your father...and you, through The Magic Mustache.

My first chapbook: phases of the harpsichord moon (serif of nottingham, 1985)

Today, I discovered the page proofs (typewriter and White-Out) of my first chapbook, phases of the harpsichord moon. I created this chapbook in a class with the writer Frank Davey while studying with him at York University in 1985. He invited us to connect with the Meet the Presses monthly book fair down at Scadding Court Community Centre, run by Stuart Ross and Nicholas Power. It was through that I connected with them and with the Toronto small press community which inspired me then, and continues to inspire me now. I am currently—nearly 30 years laters—part of the collective Meet the Presses which runs the Indie Literary Market, which is the descendent of that monthly book fair. 

Below are scans of the chapbook. I'm so delighted to have uncovered these pages, buried in a bankers box piled high atop a broken fridge in the basement. It's strange to feel that your past is now 'historical.'

The poem clearly shows the influence of bpNichol who I had studied with the year before and would go on to study with the following year. It also shows the influence of Frank Davey and other writers that both he and bp had introduced me to. There's the concrete poetry, the process poetry aspect, and the Canadian historical content (Laura Secord.) I was also a music student and so the work engages with harpsichords, J.S. Bach, and even Jimi Hendrix. I used an ink calligraphy pen that my composition teacher at the time, James Tenney, had taught me to use when preparing scores. Additionally, much of my work engaged with issues of birth, childhood and fertile psychic ground of the fact that my father was a gynaecologist and fertility specialist. The poem was written on a little Olivetti typewriter that I was given for my Bar Mitzvah.

Some time that year, I had put on a poetry art show at York University's Calumet College which featured huge blowups of some of these pages along with some other texts. 

(click on the images to enlarge and then scroll through)

 

This is a receipt also from that time. I guess that the book was placed on consignment in a bookstore back then. I wonder if they ever sold, or if I were ever paid? [Update: I posted this image on Facebook and Charlie Huisken, co-owner of the very important This Ain't the Rosedale Library, a tremendously supportive bookstore for the small press, has identified that the signature on this receipt as likely his bookstore partner, Dan Bazuin's. Amazing.

Readings, Launches, Melted Media, Performances,

Last night at Margaret Christakos's awesome new series, Across. Some really stunning and surprising performances by Kaie Kellough, Beatrix Hausner, Tom Cho, and Hoa Nguyen. 

In this picture from my performance last night, I attempt to show those organ pipes who was boss with my massive desktop speaker system. They wept through their puny diapasons. But really, a great night of melted media, acrossnesses, possibility, and interplay. Plus Margaret gave a lovely shout-out and tribute to the memory of Richard Truhlar. Much thanks to her for initiating what promises to be a very inspiring new curatoreality.

I performed some pieces which used voice synthesis, spoken text with music, sound poetry with live digital processing (pterodactyls awking over priestly chanting), and a cappella poetry performance (though everything was 'a cappella' given that we were in the lovely St Stephens in the Fields church.)

A couple days before, I was on a little tour of Cobourg and Ottawa to launch my new Moon Baboon Canoe book, out with Mansfield Press. They were really lovely events -- great audiences -- warm enthusiastic and engaged, with lots of friends, families, and co-conspirators in the audience, particularly in Ottawa, and it is always a pleasure to read with David W. McFadden, one of my writing heroes. And Stuart Ross, our editor and MC, always makes it a warm and fun event. 

I love when people review readings. Readings are a form in themselves—I think about them as a performance, certainly, and try to shape my readings as a formal unit, a 'suite' of poems and consider what I say and how I read/perform as integral to the effect, just as if I were contributing to a dance or theatre performance.

Readings aren't discussed enough, but Brandon Crilly was kind enough to write about our  Ottawa performance on his blog. Thanks! Here's the link. No, here:

InterNaPwoWriMover: At lash is all over

I fell behind my International Pwoermd Writing Month writing due to many commitments, the best of which was a trip last week to the Yukon for readings at the Yukon Writers Festival and the Yukon Young Authors Conference where I gave two days of workshops to some very engaged students. The picture pictured is of the Museum of Nostalgia at Haines Junction on the edge of Kluane National Park.

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Printernational Pwormed Writhing Mulch

handthensome

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Inter Pw Wr Mo: flowerish

conceptulipism 

tulipogram

International Pwoermd Writing Month: