Unfuckable Lardass (2022) and After Beowulf (2022)

Because all books were once new books, new books unite all books. What distinguishes books is as varied as one book is from another.

Last night Catriona Strang and Nicole Markotic read from their new books (Unfuckable Lardass and After Beowulf, respectively). Both books share similar concerns and approaches to language -- not as an ends over means waterslide into that over-stuffed sofa that is the heart, but a pebble in the shoe of life. Neither are afraid to complicate that which has been smoothed over erased, be it the historic male-centric scholarship on Beowulf, on the one hand, or, more recently, that ad hominem attack "allegedly levelled at German Chancellor Angela Merkel" ("levelled" too is a form of smoothing erasure, which is often the intention of the leveller).

Nicole, who read first, reminded us of the oft-debated first word that opens Beowulf (his Beowulf, but also Nicole's), a word that, with an exclamation not a question mark, translates as What! Later, when I got home, I read through Catriona's Unfuckable Lardass, and noticed something in "This Rabble World", a long poem comprised of short linguistics events, how the "3." entry ends where both Beowulfs begin. A clarification that extends, as opposed to completes.

just about

pop-ready

that's got

my what

It was so nice to be out in public for a reading, after all those months of prison windows, the penitentiary that is Zoom and its variants. To my left sat Maxine Gadd, before me, Fred Wah -- two Vancouver poets (now in their 80s) renowned for their critical insights and attention to craft. For those interested, a poem of Fred's is the focus of a group reading tonight at the Western Front, hosted by Deanna Fong. Please come!