USEREVIEW 093: Critical Pictures

USEREVIEW 093: Critical Pictures

How can a critic respond to Zane Koss‘ debut collection, Harbour Grids (Invisible Publishing, 2022), which, despite being “a long poem in four parts” is textually, and even visually, sparse, defined as much by absence as by presence? In this experimental review, John Nyman mirrors Koss’ terse and spatial form, in an attempt to approach the text on its own terms — to chart a route for readers through the breakwater and steer us clearly

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USEREVIEW 092 (Capsule): If You Discover a Fire

USEREVIEW 092 (Capsule): If You Discover a Fire

Shaun RobinsonIf You Discover a Fire (Brick Books, 2020)ISBN 978-1-77131-527-2 | 72 pp | $20 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Like a shadowy watermark, a note of anxiety lies beneath the cool, attentive observations of Vancouver-based Shaun Robinson’s debut poetry collection, If You Discover a Fire. It is this mixed tone, a sort of muted dread, and not a common subject, that unites the poems in the book. In this, Robinson shirks the current trend

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USEREVIEW 091 (Capsule): Iceland Is Melting and So Are You

USEREVIEW 091 (Capsule): Iceland Is Melting and So Are You

Talya RubinIceland Is Melting and So Are You (Book*hug Press, 2021)ISBN 978-1-77166-722-7 | 92 pp | $20 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY The second poetry collection from Australia-based Canadian poet Talya Rubin, Iceland Is Melting and So Are You is a climate elegy for the Anthropocene. By turns doleful and playful, even comic, the collection is organized into four sections — ‘Dead Ice,’ ‘Tidewater,’ ‘Drift’ and ‘Chatter Marks.’ ‘Dead Ice’ comprises many of the collection’s

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USEREVIEW 090 (Capsule): Current, Climate

USEREVIEW 090 (Capsule): Current, Climate

Rita WongCurrent, Climate (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2021)ISBN 978-1-77112-443-0 | 104 pp | $15.99 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Another effective and concise contribution to the Laurier Poetry Series, Current, Climate: The Poetry of Rita Wong presents poems from Rita Wong’s multiple collections (some authored independently, some written in collaboration), as selected and introduced by Nicholas Bradley, an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Victoria. Wong’s work and Bradley’s critical

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USEREVIEW 089: Mute as a Riot

USEREVIEW 089: Mute as a Riot

In this traditional review, Mark Laliberte offers a ouevre-spanning retrospective as context for mid-career writer Gustave Morin‘s latest poetry collection, Gongo Dodan (New Star books, 2022), the first language-forward book from this otherwise ‘visually dominant’ author. ISBN 978-1-55420-186-0  | 88 pp | $16 CAD — BUY Here (publisher) or if you’re in Windsor, get copies at Biblioasis Bookshop #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY After several decades of producing visually dominant ‘writing’ & releasing a constellation of projects falling into

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WRITING THE TAROT themed call — deadline: Mar 15/22

WRITING THE TAROT themed call — deadline: Mar 15/22

Don’t Delay — submit today! SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORIAL STATEMENT Pick a card, any card . . . Tarot is a vehicle of storytelling. Tarot is divination, self-reflection, ritual. Tarot cards take on new meanings in new contexts, as they travel through the deck to find your touch. The symbols of the cards are laid out before The Magician. Metal bends under his finger tips. Before he can create, he considers the tarot in its most

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From the Archive: Sandy Pool (CAROUSEL 40)

From the Archive: Sandy Pool (CAROUSEL 40)

SANDY POOL Excerpt from The Ebbinghaus Illusion: A Book of Hybrid Non-Fiction The Ebbinghaus Illusion elegizes the death of my former partner who suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. After a short battle, my partner chose to take his life, rather than suffer the debilitating effects of the disease. The Ebbinghaus Illusion is structured around a standardized Alzheimer’s memory test. Each piece is titled with a word from the Alzheimer’s word list, which is used to

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From the Archive: David Haskins (CAROUSEL 40)

From the Archive: David Haskins (CAROUSEL 40)

DAVID HASKINS Burning Chair Under the spreading locust limbs, a chair,old, rustic, of bent vines and cedar boards,host to rampant English ivy entwinedaround its feet, winding through its spines,rooting out marrow from its bones, the splits and nicks and splintered shards,the frame twisted as if by hurricane,the seat planks broken from their moorings,fallen askew, showing rot in their ends. In the cool autumnal breezeleaves drift onto the wrecklike pear-shaped daubs of yellowpaint, a last gasp

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From the Archive: Chelsea Coupal (CAROUSEL 40)

From the Archive: Chelsea Coupal (CAROUSEL 40)

CHELSEA COUPAL Rural Hangover I picture myself sometimes, slimas I was then, walking in, stripping down, lying down in that dirt-morninglight, hungover, and nausea tucked under my mind like an old note.I didn’t mind those mornings: click of dried contacts, tumbleweedstomach, and the sun pouring through bedroom windowsslowly. Before the farmhouse, you lived in a trailerwith walls so thin I swear you could see through them.Hardly a yard, just pasture, and cattle peering in, curious

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From the Archive: Amy Ireland ‘The Stranger’ Interview (CAROUSEL 39)

From the Archive: Amy Ireland ‘The Stranger’ Interview (CAROUSEL 39)

Amy Ireland is an experimental poet and theorist, co-conspiring with arcane and esoteric vectors of poetic and theoretical thought. As a PhD Candidate in Creative Writing at the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Ireland’s work develops concepts embedded within the prefix xeno-, denoting that which is unfamiliar, strange and alien. Following this trajectory, Ireland is writing her thesis on xenopoetics, which engages various poetry projects that involve

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From the Archive: Fan Wu (CAROUSEL 39)

From the Archive: Fan Wu (CAROUSEL 39)

FAN WU from Songs Heard on The River Styx Charon Before Breakfast Charon moves along his sloop, fern-heavy with morning sleep.He rubs his eyes then his wrists together.Standing sexless, two words — pistil, stamen — flash across his mind, illustrated like in the Grade 9 Biology textbook he once read for proof of nature’s perfect design, lovewise.An anchor tethers him to the limitless sea.Anther and pollen.Something Lacan once said occurs to him:“Love is giving something

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From the Archive: Michael e. Casteels (CAROUSEL 38)

From the Archive: Michael e. Casteels (CAROUSEL 38)

MICHAEL E. CASTEELS 4 Poems The Cattle Business I was rousting some steers that had taken up residence in the house. I gathered a coil of rope and slung it over the pommel of my saddle. Some of these old mossyhorns had grown up here and had no wish to leave. A brindle steer lurched through the breezeway, scraping the walls with his horns. A twisty creek trickled down the front steps and pooled among

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From the Archive: John Nyman (CAROUSEL 38)

From the Archive: John Nyman (CAROUSEL 38)

JOHN NYMAN For My African Violet Between oscillation and explosion,an iris undone, your graceful fall a flick so swift unhingedand floating: sinkable, the thrust of piling upand the flutter of a tip of a feeler frenzied wanting.Let’s sally down my list: the measurable handshakes,a close furrow (grin to a parasite), chores,a strong caress sent to a friend like you, so in a bright timeI’ll blow further on. • • • Always look at me like

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From the Archive: gustave morin ‘Clean Sails’ interview (CAROUSEL 36)

From the Archive: gustave morin ‘Clean Sails’ interview (CAROUSEL 36)

Canadian ‘para-literary agent provocateur’ gustave morin has been working in the fields of composition & performance for the last twenty years. As a maker of concrete, found, collage, typewriter & sound poetry, his creative practice always manages to the blur the borders between poetry & visual art, offering up startling hybrid works that resist conventional reading. Clean Sails, a 164 page volume of visually complex, next-generation typewriter poems composed using dozens of different typewriters — the

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From the Archive: Paul Dutton (CAROUSEL 36)

From the Archive: Paul Dutton (CAROUSEL 36)

Paul Dutton is a poet, novelist, essayist & oral sound artist, who, over the course of 5 decades, has uncompromisingly challenged the borders of literature & music. Internationally renowned for his solo sound performances, Dutton’s otherworldly voice works have helped redefine the potential of human utterance. CAROUSEL is pleased to present the first appearance in print of a selection of works from this innovative explorer of language in the following profile section — which includes

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From the Archive: Ben Ladouceur (CAROUSEL 36)

From the Archive: Ben Ladouceur (CAROUSEL 36)

BEN LADOUCEUR 461 Margueretta Street There’s the house there’s the way into the house.Hot head blood a difficult decision being responded to.We are hurting men we house and cause great woe.The moss growing by one millimetre every warm year.Harder to tell when you’re away plus I care less too.Inert things proceed no regard for human assent.God will not fail to take such a martyrdom into account.You create a fluid place it inside me leave it

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From the Archive: Chad Campbell (CAROUSEL 36)

From the Archive: Chad Campbell (CAROUSEL 36)

CHAD CAMPBELL At the Surabaya Zoo The last eyes retreat. A shiftworkof waiting for food until morning starts, when she’s led from the brickhutch to the pens. Nearby, a bear stares brokenly at some apples.She stretches out again. Day opens. White tigers are especially rare. Lookhow white she is, how fine her tail, how black the stripes that leapbrail for violent majestic force — the titillation of a hungry shadowloping for you through a field

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From the Archive: Daniel Scott Tysdal (CAROUSEL 35)

From the Archive: Daniel Scott Tysdal (CAROUSEL 35)

DANIEL SCOTT TYSDAL Inside Job – Composed on the occasion of the release of the 9/11 conspiracy theory documentary Tight Resistance The doc shocks; its evidenceis as disturbing as its claim: 9/11was not an inside job. Bush could nothave known X. The CIA could nothave orchestrated Y. The “terrorists” were notactors working from a script by Z (a rumouredOscar winner) and doctored by otherHollywood A-listers. Tight Resistance mounts a new founding alphabetto articulate the tragedy,

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From the Archive: Cara Evans (CAROUSEL 35)

From the Archive: Cara Evans (CAROUSEL 35)

CARA EVANS Fractal i.nothing disappearsevery action fracturesinto a million splinters of the sameaction happening over andover there is no erasureonly variation ii.the word or is nestledin word and eachword is a thresholdthe breath or the storythe sound or the sign the word more is truncatedand trapped withinmemory memorycannot exceed or replicatetwists vainly towarddoubling redoubling redoing all wholes are completed by lack Fractalappeared in CAROUSEL 35 (2015) — buy it here

From the Archive: Eduardo C. Corral + Jim Johnstone (CAROUSEL 35)

From the Archive: Eduardo C. Corral + Jim Johnstone (CAROUSEL 35)

EDUARDO C. CORRAL + JIM JOHNSTONE Alternating Landscapes (Sonoran Desert / High Park) I roll into a high shoulder stand, allknees and elbows —saguaro. • Forget the beautifulmoments:               the theatre drenched              with rain a fox swinging              its cutlass between the sunand sun-              glassed              eyes • Dust devil, tattered sail.              Stray tenderness              stay. • My gaze is directedby counterweights               that mount              like a bruise: birch, hickory,basewood. • To escape the rain I leap                                   into a book.              Terra-cotta warriors,                            gunpowder, a buck:                 its antlers              the Chinese character                            for deer. •

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