Fresh Raw Cuts

Front & Centre #25: Special Edition — edited by Matthew Firth, Bill Brown

2011-11-06T12:07:00.000-08:00

Front & Centre #25: Special Edition — edited by Matthew Firth, Bill Brown
ISSN 1480-6819, 2011
Black Bile Press, 8.5x5.5 (perfect bound), 76pp, $7.00

In the Editorial Feature of Front & Centre's Special Edition celebrating their 25th Issue — "Two writers talking" — a discussion between writing couple Alexandra Leggat and Salvatore Difalco about his latest book The Mountie of Niagara Falls and Other Brief Stories (Anvil Press, 2010), Leggat and Difalco exchange:

Alexandra Leggat: Which medium do you think is the best vehicle for exploring the depths of more risk taking writing?

Salvatore Difalco: Whatever medium you're permitted to express yourself in. If you can't get your so-called experiments published then perhaps you should rethink things. Writing in a vacuum is death. Pushing boundaries is meaningless unless you have an audience that recognizes your bravery and ingenuity.

Difalco also suggested in his dialogue with Leggat:

I don't know if writers in Canada are really capable or permitted to write edgy fiction. But then again, that word is problematic, isn't it? If it means you're writing from the margins ... either by choice or circumstance, well, okay. If it means you're willing to explore certain darker regions of the human psyche and the human condition, I guess it's as efficient an adjective as any.

The dilemma with writing anything edgy or transgressive in Canada, isn't that it is all too often written from the margins, or by by choice or circumstance — it comes down to the harsh reality that edgy, transgressive writing is an unwelcome commodity at Canadian magazines, journals, and ultimately, publishers. The number of Canadian magazines and publishers that publish relatively edgy and transgressive writings by Canadian authors can be numbered on one hand. Given that edgy, transgressive writing is at best a niche genre in Canada, the skewed writer to publisher ratio almost assures that edgy, transgressive writing never sees print. It also does not help that Canada has no celebrated transgressive history of its own.

That's where a magazine such as Front & Centre (formerly known as Black Cat 115) has served so valiantly as a vehicle for new writing. Free of the shackles of government funding agencies, Matthew Firth and Bill Brown have created a seminal litmag of new Canadian and International fiction. Emerging fictioneers stand alongside established authors of the gritty, the urban, the hard-edged, the transgressive, and all with F&C's trademark mordant wit, and tongue-only-partly-in-cheek humor. Each issue is a mix bag of unexpected delights and reviews of current fiction.

F&C #25 is no different (only perfect bound this time):

New fiction by Zsolt Alapi, David Burdett, Christine Catalano, Julie McArthur, David Rose, Daniel MacIsaac, Chelsea Novak, Jeremy Hanson-Finger, Stacey Madden and Zachery Alapi. Reviews of books by Anne Perdue, Danila Botha, Chris Walter, Daniel Allen Cox, Mark Anthony Jarman (ed), Dave Newman, Jerrod Edson and Salvatore Difalco.

Get your copy before someone else does.

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Order by sending a cheque (made payable to M. Firth) to:

Matthew Firth, Editor
Front&Centre
573 Gainsborough Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario
CANADA
K2A 2Y6

and

Black Bile Press

Queries: firth@istar.ca

First you know, and then so ordinary, by rob mclennan

2011-08-21T11:09:00.000-07:00

First you know, and then so ordinary, by rob mclennan
published in an edition of 200 copies, November 2010
above/ground press, 8.5x5.5 (saddle stitched), 8pp, price unknown

Rob Mclennan is a prolific poet, writer, editor, blogger, and publisher of the Ottawa-based micro-press, above/ground press. In his chapbook, First you know, and then so ordinary, we find a suite of six poems which perfectly illustrates the understated lyricism which weaves throughout mclennan's poetry. The poet uses restraint like a kind of inner punctuation in his poems in combination with notions of breath and distance, as in the title poem itself:

I wanted to say: the big dumb
excuse of me,

the phone rings
all the way from lakeshore,

Toronto Island Airport

Or in "To be entertained, in such release", the same understated lyricism is described in the lines: "I want nothing from you now/but faith; a question/of degrees" and "last night's full moon; betrayed/a threesome, reduced/to two; the ghosts of Preston Street."

These allegories of breath and distance and lyrical restraint continue in "For the rain between us, sheets" as the poet describes "bitter threads/pull at my edge;/a larynx & throat-sound/that you find beautiful, there" and

how low in the morning, sun
butters your shoulder-lengths,

milk-heavy breasts,

It is through McLennan's lyrical restraint that his exuberance for his subject matter is most clearly revealed, proving again and again, in title after title, one need not be flashy or provocative to make one's point.

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Available from:

above/ground press
c/o rob mclennan
858 Somerset Street West, main floor
Ottawa, Ontario K1R 6R7

and

rob_mclennan@hotmail.com

or

abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

rob mclennan was born in Ottawa, Canada's glorious capital city, and rob currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), kate street (Moira, 2011), 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) - an essay on Phil Hall - (Obvious Epiphanies Press, 2010) and wild horses (University of Alberta Press, 2010) and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press, 2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (ottwater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com), and has edited numerous collections for Chaudiere Books, Insomniac Press, Black Moss Press, Broken Jaw Press and Vehicule Press, and, in June 2010, a special "Canadian issue" of the Swiss online pdf poetry journal Dusie. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com. He is currently working to complete another novel or two, a collection of short short stories, and a post-mother creative non-fiction work entitled The Last Good Year.

God forbid should rob ever get sick. Take a shot of rum, rob. Keep those bones warm.~Editor

Eleven:Eleven by Liz Worth

2011-07-06T02:40:00.000-07:00

Eleven:Eleven by Liz Worth
published in 2008
Trainwreck Press, 8.5x5.5, 24pp, $5.00 (CAN)

Written during a stretch of unemployment in the spring of 2008, this micro-novel pieces together a narrative that speaks through a fragmented consciousness of abstract poetics, claustrophobic fantasies, and scraps of torrid memories salvaged from Worth’s personal journals.

The last time I encountered so successful a hybrid between autobiography, poetry, and fiction was the 1992 publication of Daniel Jones' Obsessions: a novel in parts from Beverley Daurio's, The Mercury Press. While Worth has yet to attain the high literary genius Jones exhibits in Obsessions - she is not without her own overflowing cup of literary talent as she pieces together a complex narrative labyrinth of female coming of age rituals, overt media images, and juxtaposed images of sexuality, identity, gender, love, and madness of an anonymous narrator.

15.

Life outside this bed is unimaginable. Grotesque. A dreaded, hunched figure you don't want to look at.

It seems there is no way to leave. It seems you will never want to.

Eleven:Eleven is one of those "must have" chapbooks of a young, emerging writer, particularly as an artifact of her early writing, revealing initial sprouts of brilliance (I'll let you decide which - there are just too many to choose from in this chapbook). Eleven:Eleven is an exceptional literary tease which begs one to wonder - what is forthcoming from Liz Worth in five years? Ten years? Twenty?

What sprouts in Eleven:Eleven can only blossom in later works.

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Available from:

www.ditchpoetry.com

Liz Worth is an experimental writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto. Her poetry has been featured on ditch, and the anthology Strong Words: Year 2. She is the author of the forthcoming tome on Toronto punk history, Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond (Bongo Beat), and her writing has appeared in The Toronto Star, Toronto Life, Exclaim!, Punk Planet, and Broken Pencil, among other publications: www.lizworth.com

She May Be Weary by Cameron Anstee

2011-05-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

She May Be Weary by Cameron Anstee
published in a limited edition of 30 copies, April 18th, 2011
St. Andrew Books, 8.5x5.5 (saddle stitched), 28pp, price unknown

In She May Be Weary, produced and distributed for a reading in the blUe mOnday Reading Series at Cafe Nostalgia in Ottawa, Ontario, on April 18th, 2011 - Cameron Anstee has composed an intriguing nine part/nine page poem reflecting his exceptional grasp and comprehension of the form of the long poem generally, and the ghazal specifically.

The ghazal is often compared to the sonnet formally, since they are both brief "takes" on a situation, usually love. Each couplet is not only self-contained grammatically, yet also self-contained in terms of ideas, imagery, as well as allusions - but unlike the sonnet, the ghazal has no linear narrative or logic, no temporal progression, no contemplation of an incident in order to make sense of it. ("That Bastard Ghazal", Andy Weaver, Poetics.ca #1)

Anstee suite of ghazals insightfully makes the reader contemplate the nature of the poet's love affair with Jenn without the usual tools of lyric poetry (sex, confession, details of the poet's personal life) - opting instead to make sense of a love by how it has affected those it embraces - much like how a stone affects the river it is dropped into:

Jenn, the secret heart; please laugh
there is nothing to excuse

the body will never deny you
until one day the body denies you

the heart catches; these things, and others
the disarray unsettles me, you know that

we can't change the words
endlessly the words change

the body is a lousy mechanism
for the heart

What makes this collection so exceptionally intriguing and unique, at least to me, is how Anstee combines elements of the ghazal with elements of the long poem to create a hybrid melding of diverse forms into a unified whole.

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Available from:

Apt. 9 Press
Ottawa, Ontario

apt9press.ca | apt9press@gmail.com

Apt. 9 Press is an Ottawa based micropress founded by Cameron Anstee who publishes handmade chapbooks of poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction in limited editions by new and established writers.

Cameron Anstee lives in Ottawa ON where he runs Apt. 9 Press. Recent chapbooks include Frank St.(above/ground, 2010) and Water Upsets Stone (The Emergency Response Unit, 2009).

I Have Come To Talk About Manners by Stuart Ross

2011-03-22T23:14:00.000-07:00

I Have Come To Talk About Manners by Stuart Ross
published in an edition of 50 copies, February 2010
Apt 9 Press, 8.5×7, 19pp, $10.00 (CAN)

In his first book of poems since 2008’s Dead Cars in Managua (DC Books), I Have Come To Talk About Manners collects eighteen new Stuart Ross poems in this attractive chapbook from Cameron Anstee's Ottawa based micro press, Apt. 9 Press.

From the first instance I encountered the poetry and prose of Stuart Ross -- in the Proper Tales Press titles When Electrical Sockets Walked Like Men (1981) and Father, the Cowboys Are Ready to Come Down from the Attic (1982) -- it was his sardonic, yet playful use of the surreal in the face of modern culture's hyperreality that struck me most. His use of ordinary, mundane, quotidian elements of everyday existence become extraordinary in Stuart's deft surrealist hand.

I Have Come To Talk About Manners is no different. Ordinary, everyday elements are constantly on the verge of becoming something else as Stuart's poems transfigure whatever hyperreality they happen to come into contact.

In "Fathers Shave", something as ordinary and seemingly innocuous an object as a Father's razor blade becomes a surrealist allegory for rigid codes of masculinity as viewed through the eyes of a child: "The blade rips the bristles / from his cheeks, his chin, / beneath his thunderous / nose", "rips the carpet / and the curtains, rips / Sylvester the Cat / right off the TV screen", "rips the welcome / mat off our porch, the / grass off our lawn" and Father's "boss caresses / his smooth face. The clients ohh and ahh."

In "Sorry Sonnet", the poet has a vision "of this thing I was going to create, / but it went too far", "words / started writing themselves", "political views / became more extreme than I had envisioned. / I stepped on more ants than I had meant to, / my feet went too far."

Still, nowhere else in I Have Come To Talk About Manners are Stuart's surrealist and fabulist transformations more poignant and antithetical with hyperreality than in his poem "(2009)":

a ditty fills your head (voice
and banjo) and a camel
falls on your head and a new
slogan pops into your head
and a kiss is planted
on your head where it
grows into an unusual
sculpture and you tug a pair of
parentheses around your shoulders
like an overcoat and
there you are
walking along a street

Through Stuart's playful, sardonic and surrealist simulation and imitation of transient reality in his poems, he constantly forces us, the reader, to confirm what we think or feel is real or authentic. The in-joke, I sense, is that Ross has all along known what I have long suspected - in a culture dominated by the hyperreal, nothing real remains, just it's simulated copy.

How do I suspect this? From Ross himself, of course. In "Stand Back" he announces:

I have come to talk about manners:
we live by lost rules.

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Available from:

Apt. 9 Press
Ottawa, Ontario

apt9press.ca | apt9press@gmail.com

Apt. 9 Press is an Ottawa based micropress founded by Cameron Anstee who publishes handmade chapbooks of poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction in limited editions by new and established writers.

Stuart Ross is a Toronto writer, editor, publisher, and creative-writing instructor. Co-founder of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and founding member of the Meet the Presses collective. Proprietor of Proper Tales Press. Fiction & Poetry Editor for This Magazine. Runs the "a stuart ross book" imprint for Mansfield Press.

Stuart Ross can be emailed at hunkamooga AT sympatico DOT ca.

To the Dogs by Thea Bowering

2011-01-30T17:18:00.000-08:00

To the Dogs by Thea Bowering
published in an edition of 100 copies, 2010
privately printed, 52pp, price unknown

Thea Bowering has worked in Edmonton as a bartender, freelance writer, and Film Studies and Creative Writing instructor. Her fiction involves a female flâneur - one who wanders through the streets and avenues, evoking the history of a place, past and present, visiting its bookshops and boutiques, monuments; providing gossip and background to each, all the while looking through blank walls and past mundane edifices glimpsing the human dramas behind and beneath. It is to the conflicting backdrop of Alberta's Oil Sector and Edmonton's University culture that Bowering has set her postrealist novelette, To the Dogs.

Bowering's narrative circles around the female protagonist, narrator, bartender and flâneur, Riel (after Louis Riel) and the romantic love triangle she finds herself a part of with the emotional and psychological grifter and conman, Billy, and the quintessential other woman: Jasmine. In her search for meaning and love, Riel wrestles with concepts of truth and self knowledge throughout To the Dogs, evoking "a hell of the mind" in as much as the possibility of the existence of any potential future:

After living with The Poor, he [Orwell] concluded that: the great redeeming feature of poverty is that it annihilates the future.

That was it. This was the key to Billy and Jasmine's world that I couldn't go down into. Somehow Billy and Jasmine had escaped tragedy by staying in the middle of it. They could stand anything. For them, happiness was merely a series of moral lessons missed. Jasmine would forever continue her theatrics in front of her camera, and her eyes would shine with the excitement of love renewed, over and over again; and Billy, he would continue to operate and rot under the guise of union. In the ongoing present there are no sins, only actions, and nobody dies from them. Well, if they do, it's only another action. Something for all those oil professionals, with their 50 thousand dollar trucks, to run over and obliterate. (To the Dogs, p.44)

I found To the Dogs very much reminiscent of Juan Butler's Cabbagetown Diary: A Documentary in the manner in which it described and documented the gentrification of Whyte Avenue (82nd Avenue) in Edmonton's Old Strathcona district during the mid to late 1990s, as well as Louis Rastelli's A Fine Ending.

Indeed, some might be put off by the otherwise unusually dark themes which abound in Bowering's work:

I try to imagine what would happen to someone like Billy, who, now I can see, is like so many on the Avenue. Does he just go on forever like this? No disaster, just one meager pay period to the next. One crappy apartment half furnished. A new pair of boots every 4 years or so. Until he's lived a lifetime more or less -- then, at around 50 or so, still working in a kitchen, some infection in the lung takes him one day. Perhaps there is a memorial at his last bar or restaurant and that is it. (To the Dogs, p.46)

And that is it. A superb novelette. I only hope that Thea Bowering decides to produce more copies of this dark little gem which delivers on every promise it makes.

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Thea Bowering is currently working on a collection of short fiction that explores themes and forms of contemporary flânerie. Her fiction has appeared in The Capilano Review, Dandelion, TESSERA, and Matrix.

The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman by Amanda Earl

2010-09-09T21:06:00.000-07:00

The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman by Amanda Earl
published in an edition of 300 copies, March 1st, 2008
above/ground press, 30pp, $4 (CAN)

This particular review is as much about one's literary influences as it is about the two long poems in question. Growing up and becoming a writer in Alberta, in the early 1980s, one could not help but be influenced by the writings of Robert Kroetsch. His influence was on the wind and in the words of so many writers, it would impossible to name them all in this review. Lest to say, generations of Alberta and Western Canadian poets and fiction writers have been influenced by his works. That he has become a fully fledged Canadian literary icon is really no surprise, either, considering his wide influence upon Canadian Literature, in general. On a more personal level, though, Robert Kroetsch came to my personal rescue in September of 1990, rescuing my then Canada Council sponsored reading (at the last minute) by swearing to the CC jury the validity of the press that had published my book. Indeed, a unique gesture from a poet and writer, who up until that time, I had never once met face-to-face. Thus the unique tapestry of literary influences in the overall Canadian mosiac - the closer one looks, the more one examines, the more intriguing are the literary influences.

Case in point - Amanda Earl's The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman. In her homage to Robert Kroetsch's The Sad Phoenician, Earl's long poem reminisces about the exploits and romantic conquests of a woman who loved adverbs (in as much as she loved men) marks a striking contrast to Kroetsch's poem:

"love hurt him; don't I know how he felt; just ask me", "I, The Sad Phoenician of Love, slighted by the woman"

The poet in "The Sad Phoenician" takes on the role of cuckold, lamenting his cuckolding by the women he has known: the girl from Swift Current, the woman from Montreal, yet not once in the poem is there such a word as it applies to women. No wonder the woman from Swift Current had a thing for adverbs, like Amanda Earl. It's at this point that these two long poems begin to depart, allegorically.

In Amanda Earl's blog entry, "Experiencing Robert Kroetsch’s Poetry In A Fever", Earl confesses to writing The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman in a fever (literally, due to a flu) over three days and three nights. In the same blog she speaks of Kroetsch’s poetics of failure:

“Since the eloquence of failure may be the only eloquence remaining in this our time, I let these poems stand as the enunciation of how I came to a poet’s silence. And I like to believe that the sequence of poems, announced in media res as continuing, is, in its acceptance of its own impossibilities, completed.” - author’s note, Completed Field Notes, (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2000)

At first reading it might be easy to assume both long poems are predictable, even linear narratives - though upon closer inspection the narratives of both long poems are neither linear, nor predictable: Kroetsch’s use of the conjunctions “and” & “but” to cause a disjunction in the narrative (also borrowed by Earl in her homage) and misdirect the flow of the narrative - akin to putting a rock in the river to change the tempo and movement of the water - accomplishes this in both poems. Earl furthers this by taking excerpts of Kroetsch’s poem, in italics, into the body of her own narrative - thus alluding to an almost contextual sexual intercourse which I found most playful on Earl's part.

To anyone who has also been influenced by Kroetsch’s capacity for narrative playfulness: avoiding linear design or maps within the poem, seeking instead constant motion, unresolved transition, sudden twists, obstacles, impossibilities, possibilities, things lost, things found - all within the myriad voices of the poet's inner and outer landscape, those completed field notes collected from everything around and about us - I highly recommend Amanda Earl's The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman.

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Available from:

above/ground press
c/o rob mclennan
858 Somerset Street West, main floor,
Ottawa Ontario
Canada K1R 6R7

http://www.abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/

http://amandaearl.blogspot.com/2008/04/experiencing-robert-kroetschs-poetry-in.html

http://www.amandaearl.com/

Men and the Drink by Julie McArthur

2010-03-15T04:01:00.000-07:00

Men and the Drink by Julie McArthur
Black Bile’s One-off Chapbook Series 3
Black Bile Press, 16pp, $5.00 (CAN)

Review by Mark McCawley

In her second published story, "Men and the Drink", Humber School alumna Julie McArthur has written a unique story of one woman's dealings with all the men in her life. What makes this story so unique, though, is how McArthur abandons traditional narrative to develop her protagonist - instead relying upon the relationships, themselves, with the various men in her protagonist's life to describe her character.

Whether it's her relationship with a distant father on a road trip, or a co-dependant relationship with her lover, or a friendship with an aging widower -- who she really is changes to suit the man she happens to be with at the time. For her father, she's constantly the little girl attempting to please. For her lover, she is the exact opposite - vixen. For the aging widower, she participates in his weekly fantasy reenactment becoming a replacement for his dead wife over lunch - seeing the meal for something more than what it actually is.

Returning from the road trip with her father, she learns of her lover's infidelity which thrusts her into a fit of alcohol-fuelled anger and confusion:

"I want to throw all his shit out the window, but I'll never be one of those girls. I drink gin I'd hid in the freezer and pass out on the couch.
I wake to the turning key.
"Hi baby. When did you get back?" He smiles.
"I can't believe you slept with her."
"Who?"
"Andrea, you stupid fuck!" I yell, sitting up.
Now I want to throw the bottle at his head, but I'm not that kind of girl either." (p. 13)

Indeed, Julie McArthur is a writer to watch. If only to see where her unconventional approach takes her fiction next.

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Men and the Drink by Julie McArthur is part of the Black Bile Press One-offs Chapbooks Series Three (also featuring Tony O’Neill and Nathaniel George Moore).

Order all three books for only $10.00 (plus $2.00 postage), for a ridiculously good final price of $12.00 for all three books. Or order one chapbook (please specify the title) for $6.00 ($5.00 for the book, plus $1.00 postage). US orders, the same price applies, as the exchange rate to Canadian currency will cover the higher postal costs. UK and RoW orders, please email firth@istar.ca for the price in your currency.

Order by sending a cheque (made payable to M. Firth) to:

Matthew Firth
Black Bile Press
573 Gainsborough Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario
K2A 2Y6 CANADA
http://ardentdreams.com/bbp/home.html

Queries: firth@istar.ca

Sensational Sherri by Nathaniel G. Moore

2010-03-15T03:40:00.000-07:00

Sensational Sherri by Nathaniel G. Moore
Black Bile’s One-off Chapbook Series 3
Black Bile Press, 20pp, $5.00 (CAN)

Reviewed by Mark McCawley

In "Sensational Sherri" Nathaniel G. Moore -- Toronto based poet, short fiction writer, cultural activist, and editor of the online cultural magazine Critical Crushes -- has written a transgressive, allegorical home-movie-like story of lust, booze, violence, nostalgia, pornography and obsession. In the story, we follow a thirtysomething Ricky Galore, a down and out ex-backyard wrestler in the throes of mediocrity on the verge of tapping out:

"When you tap out, you give up. That's what it is called: tapping out, he's tapping out, he just tapped out, surrendering, quitting: he had been giving up each night since the last time he saw Sherri.
Tapping out, counted out, whatever it took to go back through the little curtain backstage, feeling like a total piece of shit."

By using the media of Wrestling as a virtual substructure for the ongoing relationship between Ricky and Sherri - beautiful, young and sought after - Moore has fashioned a Baudrillardean hyperreality whereby the real and the simulated are as interchangable as the profession wrestlers on pay per view -- performances with predetermined outcomes between wrestlers with fictional personalities portrayed as real:

"Everything was fake and did fake things; small moths moved, chomped ice, hot breathing burbled nouns and the go-to: I know . . . I know! I know! trademarked after each utterance TM TM TM, and totally or tots."

In "Sensational Sherri" Moore returns to this motif again and again, Ricky and Sherri's torrid and torrential relationship, just another wrestling storyline swerving swerving day to day, hour to hour. The most detrimental swerve begins, though, when Ricky asks Sherri about her sexual fantasies.

"He was, in fact, booking himself out of their program. A program is a series of matches that assist in telling a story between (usually) two competitors. The program can last anywhere from six weeks to six months depending on the intensity of their encounters."

As their program neared it's numb conclusion to make way for new talent, Sherri had countered Ricky's "But I love eating your pussy," with "But you can eat other pussies." Ricky knew he would be replaced by a much younger, much fitter and hungrier competitor. One she'd bring home to her parents.

Moore's irreverent and sardonic short fiction make him a CanLit writer to watch and enjoy. Get a copy of Sensational Sherri while it's still available. Published in a limited edition of 80 copies, it won't be in print for very long.

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Sensational Sherri by Nathaniel G Moore is part of the Black Bile Press One-offs Chapbooks Series Three (also featuring Tony O’Neill and Julie McArthur).

Order all three books for only $10.00 (plus $2.00 postage), for a ridiculously good final price of $12.00 for all three books. Or order one chapbook (please specify the title) for $6.00 ($5.00 for the book, plus $1.00 postage). US orders, the same price applies, as the exchange rate to Canadian currency will cover the higher postal costs. UK and RoW orders, please email firth@istar.ca for the price in your currency.

Order by sending a cheque (made payable to M. Firth) to:

Matthew Firth
Black Bile Press
573 Gainsborough Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario
K2A 2Y6 CANADA
http://ardentdreams.com/bbp/home.html

Queries: firth@istar.ca

Bill Bailey by Tony O'Neill

2010-03-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

Bill Bailey by Tony O'Neill
Black Bile’s One-off Chapbook Series 3
Black Bile Press, 16pp, $5.00 (CAN)

Review by Mark McCawley

Tony O'Neill is among the new vanguard of contemporary urban post-realist writers writing since the turn of the millennium. His fiction is raw, honest, unpretentious, unsympathetic and completely unapologetic in it's use of sex and violence. O'Neill deftly explores and examines the underside of modern urban life with dark, sardonic humour and a mordant insight which only a past substance user and abuser can possess.

In Bill Bailey, O'Neill gives us a violence and lust-filled story which follows O'Neill's unnamed narrator through a single alcohol-fuelled day in Hollywood. As with much contemporary urban fiction, the setting functions almost as a character onto itself - Hollywood's urban decay a microcosm for any urban center. O'Neill's further use of post-apocalyptic imagery gives the story an almost cinematic feel akin to George A. Romero and John Carpenter, with a dash of David Cronenberg:

"...death was everywhere. It was in the air. It clung to my clothes like last night's cigarettes. I stunk like a butcher's window; I reeked of death from the inside out." (p.5)

The city defines O'Neill's characters, moulds them, gives birth to them - the ultimately deforms them: "A construction worker with a gimp neck and a stutter", "a regular called Mickey who had busted, snaggled teeth and could quote long passages from Kierkegaard."

Throughout the story, O'Neill has a specific goal in mind with the character of Lupita. She is the narrator's primary focus, his obsession, the promise of sex.

Lupita "was a gleaming machine and the ass was the piston, the heart of it all. Up, down, up, down..." but she was flawed, too: She had bad teeth "that seemed too big for her mouth and too much make up. The rest of her could not live up to the promise of her ass...So maybe I was in luck after all."

From this point on O'Neill delivers a cautionary tale, a warning: be careful what you obsess over, covet, or desire.

You just might get it.

*******************************************************

Bill Bailey by Tony O'Neill is part of the Black Bile Press One-offs Chapbooks Series Three (also featuring Nathaniel George Moore and Julie McArthur).

Order all three books for only $10.00 (plus $2.00 postage), for a ridiculously good final price of $12.00 for all three books. Or order one chapbook (please specify the title) for $6.00 ($5.00 for the book, plus $1.00 postage). US orders, the same price applies, as the exchange rate to Canadian currency will cover the higher postal costs. UK and RoW orders, please email firth@istar.ca for the price in your currency.

Order by sending a cheque (made payable to M. Firth) to:

Matthew Firth
Black Bile Press
573 Gainsborough Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario
K2A 2Y6 CANADA
http://ardentdreams.com/bbp/home.html

Queries: firth@istar.ca