rob mclennan
heartbroken sky & graceless singers
(for Thesen
whatever the pose is holding,
you are in it
on the go train north to bramalea,
more than a dozen winds
a straight eye shudders out from adverts,
displays
there are no lights to flicker,
or save
the flowers beside the tracks
barely grow enough to know their names
rob mclennan is an Ottawa-born & based writer, publisher, critic, visual artist & a few other things, as well as the author of seven poetry collections & over three dozen poetry chapbooks. He is the editor of four anthologies: Written in the Skin (1998, Insomniac Press), a poetry anthology to raise funds for AIDS charities; Shadowy Technicians: New Ottawa Poets (2000, Broken Jaw Press); YOU & YOUR BRIGHT IDEAS: NEW MONTREAL WRITING (co-edited with Andy Brown, 2001, Vehicule Press); & side/lines: a poetics (2001, Insomniac Press), a collection of essays by Canadian writers on their personal poetics.
The editor/publisher of above/ground press & STANZAS magazine, both started in 1993. In 1999, he won the CAA/Air Canada Award for Most Promising Writer in Canada under the age of 30, & was shortlisted for the Shaunt Basmajian Chapbook Prize & The Archibald Lampman Award for best book of poetry in Ottawa-Carleton (& again in 2000). He was one of 18 other writers included in OC Transpo's inaugural transpoetry project, putting poems by local writers on nearly a thousand Ottawa city buses.
He currently runs the small press action network - ottawa (span-o) & the ottawa small press book fair, as well as various literary readings around Ottawa. His website is here
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