I will be reading on Saturday August 10 at 2pm at Raw Sugar as part of the Great-Mini-South-Eastern-Ontario Short Story & Poetry Tour. Christine Miscione, Nicholas Papaxanthos and Michael e. Casteels are hitting the road together and reading in Hamilton, Cobourg, Kingston and Ottawa (with local writers in each town). I’m lucky enough to be on the Ottawa bill and can’t wait. Hopefully everyone can make it out. Raw Sugar is a great place to be on a Saturday afternoon and the reading should be excellent. Thanks to the touring writers for having me on board!
I had a poem featured on the Dusie blog recently courtesy of the rob-mclennan-curated Tuesday poem series. I’m very happy to be in such fine company. Thanks to rob and thanks to Dusie! Read back through some of the other Tuesday poems, and see what else Dusie is up to.
In Apt. 9 Press news, the ‘press’ of the name is taking on a new, literal dimension. I recently acquired a Kelsey Excelsior Model N 5×8 table top press, pictured below. It isn’t quite functional yet, but hopefully by this time next year Apt. 9 might be producing its first letterpress items. My optimism is naive and complete.
The press was purchased from Richard Coxford who was selling it on behalf of Otto Graser. Otto ran Arlington Books in Ottawa and also ran Black Squirrel Press. Shortly after bringing the press home, I found a book published and illustrated by Otto at Argosy Books. in twenty words or less is a book of short poems by David Collins paired with line drawings by Otto Graser. Otto’s odd drawings set off the brief poems nicely. The book was published in 1994.
Otto’s bio reads:
Otto Graser is a retired architect now luxuriating in print-making, computer graphics and publishing. His art work has appeared in or on various Canadian & US books, anthologies and journals. Otto Graser is the proprietor of Arlington Books.
Otto is credited for “Graphic Art” in the book. The drawings feel like computer illustrations to me (rooted in 1994 technology), but also in some places bring Joe Brainard’s illustrations to mind.
It seemed like a good omen for the press to come across a book by its previous owner immediately after bringing it home. We’ll see where it goes!
Cameron Anstee 