Monty Reid : part one

Monty Reid is a poet based in Ottawa. His books include Garden (Chaudiere), The Luskville Reductions (Brick) and Crawlspace (Anansi) as well as recent chapbooks from above/ground press, corrupt press, postghost press and others.  Segments from his current project, The Lockdown Elegies, have appeared in The Quarantine Review, Train, Noon, Guest and other journals in print and online.  He is a contributing editor for Arc Poetry Magazine and the Director of VerseFest, Ottawa's international poetry festival. 

What are you working on?

As usual, I have a few projects on the go.  There are several book-length mss getting some touch-ups after their latest round of rejections - a lengthy book on espionage, since CSIS lives just across the street from me, with the usual themes of in/visibility, secrets and betrayals, and a book on parasites, which many poets seem to find profoundly distasteful as actual organisms but charming as metaphor.  And my squeaky little non-parasitical collection of Lockdown Elegies is nearing completion and getting some airplay currently.  And there’s a mistranslation of Nicolas Guillen’s El Gran Zoo still getting its annual upgrade. Plus unrelated poems now and then, songs occasionally, lots of gardening, and putting together the program for VerseFest2021.