TDR on BookThugs

The Danforth Review has listed Kate Eichhorn's Fond as one of the top spring books of 2008! We're pretty partial to it too, so take a look and then come by the launch at 7:30 this Thursday at Cervejaria at Ossington and College Streets in Toronto to get a copy.

and....

Jay MillAr was recently reviewed in The Danforth Review for The Small Blue published through Snare Books.


Aaron Tucker on Blue....

"This is a soft work, hinging on preservation of phrasing and relying on its own echoes of images and wording. Far from picturesque, the poems do work as photos, vignettes exploring the singular line from a multitude of perspectives. The work gains strength as it progresses, gathering momentum and additional connotations as the poems pile up."

read the full review here.

We're on Team Win!

Cara Benson's Quantum Chaos and Jay MillAr's Lack Lyrics have won this year's bpNichol Chapbook Award. We're clearly awesome!

Award ceremony scheduled for May 21st, 2008 at 7:00 pm at The Central
603 Markham Street, Toronto. For Media Inquiries or to set-up interviews please contact Natalie: (416) 964-3380 or write natalie@pcwf.ca

Spring Launch

Come celebrate the release of two stunning new books of poetry from BookThug:

Fond by Kate Eichhorn
Matter by Meredith Quartermain

May 29th at Cervejaria 842 College Street at 7:30

Also, purchase or renew your BookThug subscription and become a card carrying Thug!

About Fond:

What drives the collector? Is the archive a site of order, the convergence of past narratives and present desires, the chaotic reflection of passions spilling over categories? Is every lover an archive waiting to come undone? Every archive a place where the dust of bodies accumulates? One file in a fonds of misplaced manuscripts, Fond is haunted by an author’s compulsion to repeat and the archive’s inevitable limits. A finding aid guides the reader through a field of drafts, grids and marginalia, but can it account for this conflicting narrative of desire and its inevitable unraveling? A book-length disentanglement of one archive of emotion, Fond dwells in the eerily familiar, exposing the fragility of our most rigid constraints.

Kate Eichhorn’s poetry and creative prose have appeared in journals such as Matrix, How 2, Bird Dog and CV2. Fond is her first collection of poetry. She is also the co-editor of Innovative Canadian Women’s Poetry (forthcoming from Coach House Books). She teaches writing and book and media studies at Ryerson University in Toronto.

About Matter:

What if words evolved in species and genera just like birds and dinosaurs? What if you classified them in kingdoms and families? Made a phylogenetic tree with orders of Space, Matter, or Intellect. Gravity and Levity as classes of Matter. With Density, Rarity, Pungency, Ululation. Would this matter taxonomy speak of the out-there, the non-human? Or the in- here – the human mind, the sorting, reasoning human – homo linguis the word maker, the world maker? Formally innovative, Matter explores Roget’s taxonomy, rummaging its taint of globalism and social Darwinism, unearthing relations between humans, language and the planet. Matter asks what if words are so many birds, chirping and chattering? What is thought? What is knowledge? What’s your life-list of words?

Meredith Quartermain was born in Toronto but grew up in rural British Columbia, on the north end of Kootenay Lake. Botany, Latin, Math, Philosophy and Ecology intrigued her at UBC. She is the author of Terms of Sale (1996), Wanders [with Robin Blaser] (2002), A Thousand Mornings (2002), The Eye-Shift of Surface (2003), and Vancouver Walking (2005), winner of the BC Book Awards Poetry Prize. She lives in Vancouver where she runs Nomados Literary Publishers with husband Peter Quartermain.

Line UP!

BookThug would like to take this opportunity to announce the spring list, now available in a classy pre-publication subscription package at a discounted price through Apollinaire's Bookshoppe: (www.apollinaires.com)

The BookThug Spring 2008 Line Up:

Trade Books:

Fond: Poetry by Kate Eichhorn
Matter: Poetry by Meredith Quartermain
Beloved of My 27 Senses: Fiction by Karen Fastrup
Translated from the Danish by Tara F. Chace

Chapbooks:

After Rilke: to forget you sang: Poetry by Mark Goldstein
Sweethearts of the Great Migration: Poetry by Andrew Hughes

Get all five titles at the advance price of $75 plus shipping.
Books will be shipped when they become available.

If you want to be a card-carrying member of BookThug Nation, you have to pay your dues!

Camille Martin hosts In Other Words

:::T U E S D A Y 1 8 M A R C H 2 0 0 8:::

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SOUND POETRY ON CKLN FM: IN OTHER WORDS
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Please tune in to CKLN (88.1) on Tuesday, March 18, from
2-3 pm.

Poet Camille Martin hosts In Other Words with a program of sound
poetry and text-sound compositions.

The link for online listening:

http://www.ckln.fm <http://www.ckln.fm/>

BookThug Launch Orphans

BookThug presents Launch Orphans, part of our Back to the Backlist Reading Series.

Feb. 25^th @ The Cameron House, 408 Queen Street West, 7 pm.

This business of front and back listing could use some more thought, so BookThug would like to propose a paradigm shift. Backlists are full of good work too, and rather than continually shift amazing poetry into the shadows, we'd like to nudge it forward.

To kick off our Back to the Backlist Series, we're reintroducing four exceptional BookThug poets who never had proper launches back in the day.

The Orphans:

Elizabeth Bachinsky:
CURIO: Grotesques and Satires from the Electronic Age (Fall 2005)

Ray Ellenwood: The Sands of Dream (Therese Renaud)
(Spring 2007)

Jason Dickson: The Hunt (Fall 2006)

David Fujino: air pressure (Spring 2006)

The readings will be followed by Troy Sinister & the Trailer Park School at 10 pm.

We look forward to seeing you out!

Jenny Sampirisi

jenny[at]bookthug[dot]ca
BlogThug: www.bookthug.blogspot.com
BuyThug: www.bookthug.com
FaceThug: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=12255736347

Ottawa hosts Jay MillAr

Toronto poet and publisher Jay MillAr visits Ottawa for a reading in The A B Series. Joining him are Ottawa poets and writers Monty Reid and Emily Falvey. Hosted by Max Middle.

Friday 15 February 2008

doors open 7:30pm
downstairs
Laurier Royal Oak
161 Laurier Ave East
Ottawa

There will be a book table.

Free admission
A hat will be passed.

for more information:
contact Max Middle
maxmiddle at gmail dot com
telephone: 613.859.8423

or refer to:

theabseries dot blogspot dot com

Jay MillAr is a Toronto poet, editor, publisher, and virtual bookseller. He is the author of False Maps for Other Creatures (2005), Mycological Studies (2002), and The Ghosts of Jay MillAr (2000). His most recent collection is the small blue (Fall 2007). In 2006 he published Double Helix, a collaborative "novel" written with Stephen Cain. MillAr is the shadowy figure behind BookThug, an independent publishing house dedicated to cutting edge work by well-known and emerging North American writers, as well as Apollinaire's Bookshoppe, a virtual bookstore that specializes in the books that no one wants to buy. He is also the co-editor (with Mark Truscott) of BafterC, a small magazine of contemporary writing. Currently Jay teaches creative writing at George Brown College.

Originally from Nova Scotia, Emily Falvey is currently an Ottawa-based writer, curator, and art critic. In 2004, she received a Writers Works in Progress Grant from the Ontario Arts Council for her novella, Lessons in Darkness. She is currently working on the final version of this manuscript. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Descant and Decalogue 2: ten Ottawa fiction writers (Chaudiere).

Monty Reid's books include The Life of Ryley (Thistledown), Crawlspace (Anansi), The Alternate Guide (rdc books) and Sweetheart of Mine (BookThug). Widely published, he has been short-listed three times for the Governor-General's award. His most recent book, Disappointment Island (Chaudiere), won the Lampman-Scott Award and was nominated for the City of Ottawa book award. He lives and works in Ottawa.

Upcoming

Upcoming:
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Jay MillAr reads at the IV Lounge friday, Feb 8:

Lolette Kuby (Out of Cleveland, fiction)
David McGimpsey (Sitcom, poems)
Jay MillAr (the small blue, poems)

THE IV LOUNGE READING SERIES
326 Dundas St W, across from the AGO, 8pm, free.

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St. Catharines: The Grey Borders Reading Series
Strega Cafe / 19 King Street
Friday, 8 February 2008, 7:30 pm
Featured readers: Aaron Giovannone, Stephen Cain, Geoffrey Hlibchuk, and Camille Martin
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Toronto: Test Reading Series
Mercer Union / 27 Lisgar Street
February 15, 2008, 8:00 pm
Featured readers: Susan Holbrook and Camille Martin

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Launch Orphan: A Back to the Backlist Event
Monday, Feb. 25th at 7pm Sharp.
@ The Cameron House 408 Queen W.

Readings by talented Thugs who never had launches

Elizabeth Bachinsky
David Fujino
Ray Ellenwood
Jason Dickson

Followed by the musical stylings of Troy Sinister and the Trailer Park School.

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March 5th

Refus Locale: An Evening of Surrealism in St. Catharines -- in
commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the publication of Refus
Global. The event will feature readings by contemporary Canadian
surrealists like Beatriz Hausner and Stuart Ross, and acclaimed
Automatist scholar Ray Ellenwood reading from the very first book of
surrealist verse in Canada, Therese Renaud's The Sands of Dream
(1946). To cap off the event, local avant-garde theatre troupe
Suitcase in Point will be performing Claude Gauvreau's remarkable "In
the Heart of the Bulrushes."

There will be surrealist games, films, movies, and more; most notably,
the Great Canadian Surreal Beaver Balls art installation featuring the
work of over 60 Brock students.

Tickets available at the door: $8 adults or $5 for students/artists/
seniors