::Arc Poetry:: Log Entries - Arc 53 Winter 2004 Archive ::

Press Release: May 28, 2005

Arc poet nominated for National Magazine Award

The Arc Poetry Society, publishers of Arc, Canada’s National Poetry Magazine, offer enthusiastic congratulations to contributor Michael Kenyon, a finalist for a National Magazine Award in the poetry category, for his piece “The Sutler,” which appeared in Arc 53, Winter 2004.

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posted by Arc on May 28, 2005 permalink
cats: News | Press Releases | Arc 53 Winter 2004
tags: Michael Kenyon | poetry prizes

Harold Rhenisch

Five Laureates on the Red Earth Road

Feature Review

Maryanne Bluger. Early Evening Pieces.
Ottawa: BuschekBooks, 2003.

Cyril Dabydeen. Hemisphere of Love.
Toronto: TSAR Publications, 2003.

rob mclennan. red earth.
Windsor: Black Moss Press, 2003.

Colin Morton. Dance, Misery.
Hamilton: Seraphim Editions, 2003.

David O’Meara. The Vicinity.
London: Brick Books, 2003.

If George Bowering had phoned me from Ottawa during his term as poet laureate and had told me that the city has poets laureate the way Hamilton has Timbits, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’d always thought that a poet laureate was a plaster bust, a figurehead for a National Literature, a dream in the eye of the Canada Council in a country patched up out of a bunch of regional poetries. I was wrong. Such things do exist. If George had stood in Parliament and said, “those laureates are hoofing it with Jack Kerouac; their poems are graffiti lipsticked in every gas station washroom from St. John’s to Sooke and spray-painted on Canadian Wheat Pool grain cars clattering down the VIA line,” I would have thought, “Whoa, too much Black Mountain moonshine for you, George,” and left him for the performance poets to nibble on like a pack of soynuts. But he would have been right there, too…

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Terence Young

Brave

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posted by Arc on May 27, 2005 permalink
cats: Poetry | Confederation Poets Prize | Arc 53 Winter 2004 | Arc 54 Summer 2005
tags: Terence Young | poetry

Press Release: January 18, 2005

PM reads Arc

Lo, look who’s reading Arc! Did the PM get an Arc subscription for Christmas?

Hockey lockout. A blank sheet of ice. A vision of Zamboni Bliss. And then the words of Barbara Carey, first published in the Summer 2004 issue of Arc, spill amazingly on Christmas Day from the PM’s lips.

In admirable sync with Arc’s new issue on Poets on Ice, Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Christmas address aired as follows:

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Margaret Christakos

Crossover Coup for Mikey "The Stiff Stanza" Holmes

Feature Review

Michael Holmes, Parts Unknown: Wrestling, Gimmicks and Other Works. Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2004.

Toronto-based Michael Holmes has become known as an interesting Canadian writer whose poetry and fiction powerfully deal with themes of attachment and competition among men. For a decade he’s been poetry editor at ECW Books; he is a “bookker,” “promoter,” “pencil” and “bull,” to use wrestling terminology. As it happens, ECW also stands for Extreme Championship Wrestling. This happy coincidence, via Holmes’ leadership, has led to ECW becoming—alongside its role as a reputable literary publisher—a major North American commercial publisher of books about professional and slam wrestling, an intense form of popular performance art that milks millions of dollars annually and which spawned the pay-per-view cable TV industry with extravagant pageants like Wrestlemania performed by hundreds of dressed-up hulking “gimmicks.” A gimmick is a wrestler’s persona, carried out with carnivalesque “kayfabe”—a widespread consensus across the industry and massive fan base that the whole deal is real, heartfelt and expressive of the true eventual story of good vs. evil.

In a recent Danforth Review interview, Holmes expressed the opinion that the real merit of his book would have to be judged by pro wrestlers themselves, for his interest lies in performing a crossover coup, out of the dingy and suffocating hell of the Canadian poetry ring and into the worldwide canvas of real men who know what it costs to take a direct edit to the balls.

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posted by Arc on January 18, 2005 permalink
cats: Reviews | Arc 53 Winter 2004
tags: Margaret Christakos | Michael Holmes | poetry criticism | poetry reviews