Michael Dennis : part five

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Because of my blog I read a waft of poetry titles, every week, at least twenty.  Here’s a quick list of the last ten books I wrote about at Today’s book of poetry:

Salsa Nights at Hilo Town Tavern – Kristofer Collins (Hyacinth Girl Press)

Headline News – John Deming (Indolent Books)

The Art of Dying – Sarah Tolmie (McGill-Queens University Press)

Pressed Against All That Nothing – Cody Deitz (Yak Press)

Bociany (Storks) – Jonathan Garfinkel (Knife|Fork|Book)

Sinner’s Dance – Darrell Epp (Mosiac Press)

Burning The Evidence – Todd Cirillo (Epic Rites Press)

Sick and I – Katie Fewster-Yan (Desert Pet Press)

The Price of Scarlet – Brianna Noll (University Press of Kentucky)

Particles – New Selected Poems – Dan Gerber (Copper Canyon Press)

Michael Dennis : part four

How does a poem begin?

For me a poem can come from anywhere.  It sounds so obvious and trite, but the truth is I’ve carried a notebook with me since I was a teenager.  Anything that catches my eye goes into the notebook, at least it does when I’m diligent.  But I’ll write a poem on any piece of paper that happens to be near if an idea hits.  I often don’t know where a poem is going to start but I am always working towards the ending.  My poems begins with me having an end I want to get to.

Michael Dennis : part three

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

As much as I return to poetry I return to novels and movies and music.  There are a certain few novels that I read every few years.  I just finished rereading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.  I don’t know how many times I’ve read it but the ending always surprises me.  Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” is a movie I return to, but I also love rereading Mario Puzo’s The Godfather to shake out the gobwebs.  John Irving’s splendid Cider House Rules is a book I return to, almost as a gift to myself.

At present I’m reading a fair bit of new poetry, daily, I’m going through fifteen to twenty poetry titles most week, just to keep up with the blog.  I think because I’m reading so much poetry that when I need to recharge the batteries I go outside poetry.  I listen to a lot of music although I tend to listen to music I already know instead of searching out new music.  I am a lazy man.

Right now I’m reading Paul Auster’s 4321, an autobiography by Bruce Springsteen, a book of short stories by Alison MacLeod, All the Beloved Ghosts and a book of feminist essays called Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay.

Michael Dennis : part two

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

There is a long list.  Earle Birney got me into the game, I’d already been writing some very bad poetry but when I heard Birney’s “David” everything changed.  Then Gwendolyn MacEwen.  Shortly after that I discovered Leonard Cohen and was transfixed.  When I first read Sir Jack Kerouac I was hypnotized.  Then around 1975 I heard Tom Waits for the first time and I remember the exact moment.  I was in a small hotel room in Thunder Bay watching American Public Television in the middle of the night.  Tom Waits introduced me to the idea of Charles Bukowski.  Al Purdy was in the mix early along with Alden Nowlan.

The truth is that every time I read a good poet it has an effect on my work.  Most recently I’ve been in correspondence with the American poet David Clewell, former Poet Laureate for Missouri.  He not only recommends that I read certain people, he sends me books that I have to read, sometimes he sends them with post-it notes telling me which order to read the books in.  It has been, and continues to be a steep learning curve but it is absolutely inspiring.  Clewell introduced me to David Lee.  David Lee is the best poet in America as far as this cowboy is concerned.  But there are some other monsters, lately I’ve been reading Albert Goldbarth, Dave Etter, Campbell McGrath, Sue Goyette, and damn, have a brain sputter.

Charles Bukowski, more than any one other writer, influenced how I think about the world of poetry, but he wasn’t a very nice cat.  As much as I love Bukowski I don’t share his ethos that poetry is more important than people.  Sometimes it is hard to reconcile a poet and their life against their body of work.  And then there’s Raymond Carver.  First time I read his work my heart stopped.

I can’t wait for the next poet to shake me up, bite into my way of thinking, nudge me forward.

Michael Dennis : part one

Michael Dennis published his first chapbook, quarter on its edge, in 1979. Since then he has published several books and over a dozen chapbooks, his work has appeared in numerous magazine and journals. His most recent collection is Bad Engine — New and Selected Poems (Anvil Press, 2017) edited by Stuart Ross.

Dennis was born in London, Ontario, grew up mostly in Peterborough, Ontario and has resided in Ottawa, Ontario for the last thirty years. He lived in P.E.I. for year in the mid-80s and Czechoslovakia in 1989–90.

For the past five years Dennis has been producing a blog, Today’s book of poetry where he writes about books of poetry he admires. He posts a new blog every two or three days. So far Dennis has written blogs about 711 contemporary books of poetry.

Dennis is semi-retired from a career of varied employment. Dennis has installed public art for the Canada Council Art Bank, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Ottawa Art Gallery and numerous other arts organizations. He ran a small boutique hotel, The Cartier Inn. He drove taxi and trucks, worked in an ice-cream factory, worked on the motor line at Ford in Windsor, Ontario for a couple of years, a copper mine in northern Ontario. Dennis opened his own non-profit English as a second language school in Jablonec nad Nisou, Czechoslovakia and so on. Now he is supported by his wife and lives the life of luxury afforded most poets.

Photo credit: John W. MacDonald

What are you working on?

I recently sent a new book/manuscript of poetry to Anvil Press.  They published my most recent collection, Bad Engine.  Of course I’m hoping they’ll publish this new book, Low Centre of Gravity.  So that is heavily on my mind, but for the moment I’ve been able to set that aside.

I’m doing a chapbook with Larry Cowan’s Monk Press, my tentative title is Sad Balloon.  Those poems are finished, sort of.  I often work with Stuart Ross as an editor because he is a complete pro and he always makes my poems better.  Stuart has been helping me with Sad Balloon.  He also edited Bad Engine and he gave Low Centre of Gravity a good going over as well.  All of that to say that I will still have some homework to do once Stuart returns those poems to me.

Stuart and I have been working on a collaborative project for a couple of years.  Thus far it has produced one small chapbook called The Dagmar Poems.  But we are sitting on a pile of work that we like and do have plans for it.  These are poems that we wrote one line at a time, Stuart would write a line and then I would write a line, and so on.   Either of us can decide when a poem is finished.  Stuart and I are hoping to get together soon to put the finishing touches on our project.

rob mclennan contacted me recently as asked if I’d be interested in doing another chapbook with his above/ground press.  And I’m excited about that.  rob has published my work several times in the past and I’m happy about doing another one.  When you publish with rob there is simply no telling where it might end up, his distribution seems hits a wide swath.

Marilyn Irwin publishes chapbooks with her Shreeking Violet Press and we’ve talked about doing a chapbook together sometime in the next year and I’m certainly excited about that.

My biggest time consumer these days is my blog “Today’s book of poetry.”  That takes up a two or three hours every day.  I try to post a blog/review of a different book every other day, although lately it has been more like every three days.  I’m getting old and bad engine is starting to smoke.   The best unintended consequence of the blog is that I get to read a lot of poetry, daily.

I don’t really have a strict writing schedule for my own poems.  I often feel like I am not writing enough but then when I collect them all up I’ve usually got more poems than I thought.  I certainly worry about it a lot less than I used to.