An Issue Come and Gone, An Issue On The Way
Almost two months ago, In/Words nestled itself into a new location for our Open-Mic nights, The Montgomery Legion (Kent & Gilmour, same Thursdays), and then proceded to publish with renewed vigor. The proof is in the pudding:
All titles are available by contacting In/Words: inwordsmail@yahoo.com, or by dropping by the In/Words office, 1902 Dunton Tower (the obelisk on Carleton's campus), or by showing up for one of our open-mic nights, held the last Thursday of every month (this month: March 26th), at the Montgomery Legion, 330 Kent St. Show gets underway at 9:00pm, sharpish.
In/Words Poetry Contest
This year's inaugural In/Words Poetry Contest has just been announced. Submit up to five poems. Deadline: March 30th, 2009. Judging will be blind. This year's judge: Justin Million. Submissions can be sent to inwordscontest@gmail.com.
In/Words 8.2 is currently in production, and will be available before this month's reading.
A New Year, A New Home Needed
A belated New Year's Greeting, as well as a tardy Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Swell Festivus, etc. How about some presents, you say?
In/Words 8.1 has been oficially released and is now available. You can find copies on racks across campus, or visit one of us at the In/Words Office, 1902 Dunton Tower, to pick up a copy, or just to say hi. It gets lonely in there sometimes. And speaking of racks, The Moose & Pussy released their second issue last month at Swizzles, and it too is now available for sale at Mags & Fags (Elgin & Cooper), After Stonewall (Bank & Gilmour), Venus Envy (Bank & Lisgar), Mother Tongue Books (Bank & Sunnyside), and Wicked Wanda's Adult Emporium (1473 Richmond Road). It would also be available at the Carleton University Bookstore, but it seems to have been banned from there. What a shame. I guess we'll have to settle for Maxim and FHM, or even Cosmopolitan, if we need our sex magazine fix and we're in buying textbooks.
Also, In/Words is still looking for a new home for the Open Mic nights. If you have any recommendations, please pass them along to inwordsmail@yahoo.com.
Submissions:
Expect more magazines to be uploaded within the week, including In/Words 8.1.
Good Byes, Fond Farewells
Before the heavy stuff, let's anounce some issue releases. In/Words will most likely be releasing Issue 8, Volume 1 tonight at the Avant-Garde, with the open-mic of course. As well, The Moose & Pussy will be releasing their second issue next Thursday. Moose & Pussy is Carleton's only sex-positive magazine
and features art, fiction, poetry, non-fiction and more, all centered around the subject of sex, lust and love. Join Host (Dusty Owl’s) Steve Zytveld and DJ Justin Case, Jeff Blackman, Tarah Deelite, Icesis Couture, Jazleen Fierce, and others, as they celebrate the topic of sex through performance, music, drag and readings and
officially launch the 2nd issue of Moose & Pussy Magazine! But Wait! It gets better! There will be a broadcasting of Taline Bedrossian's radio story on Bruce House. As well, half of the proceeds from magazine sales will be going towards Bruce House.
Issue #1 of Moose & Pussy is currently available for purchase at Mother Tongue Books, and Venus Envy.
Submissionswise, both Vagina Dentata and Mot Dit are seeking submissions.
Now for a word from your editors:
Issue 8, Volume 1 of In/Words Magazine is the first in four years made without Peter Gibbon. Serving as an editor for volumes five through seven, Peter was, simultaneously, the magazine’s most pessimistic and most optimistic editor. It was this balance of pragmatism and hope that helped guide In/Words to where it is today.
Peter continues to work tirelessly on the Chapbook Project and in pursuing his M.A. in Canadian Studies here at Carleton University; expect an excellent reseach paper about Michael Gnarowski and Canadian small press culture in the near future.
In/Words would like to give a great thanks and farewell to the Avant-Garde Bar & Gift Shop (135 1/2 Besserer St.) for hosting our readings for the past four years. After hosting hundreds of performers and serving us thousands of Baltikas, we decided to end our reading series at the Avant-Garde.
We will be moving the readings to a new location, to be announced in January 2009. We encourage you, our readers, to continue to frequent this ‘junction of eras & cultures’, if only to get your fix of Scooter videos. A special thanks to Alex for giving us all a place to be heard.
So please come out, bring a poem you've written or a story you'd like to tell, and bid the AGB a fond, drunken farewell.
And really, you should go to the M&P launch next Thursday, just to check out the cover of the new mag. I hear it's spectacular.
At long last: A slew of updates
Contrary to popular belief, In/Words did not go on hiatus for the summer. Chapbooks have been released, longpoems published, press fairs attended, writers circles held, and last but not least, vacations had. Yes, even the tireless group of rag-tags at In/Words even have to take a holiday every now and then. Thus, no website updates for the last four months. On the backside of our holidays, we now bring you updates:
The enchanting songstress Kyrie Kristmanson is releasing her new album, Pagan Love, tomorrow night (Thursday, September 4th) at the Blacksheep Inn in Wakefield, Quebec. The show gets underway at 8:30pm, tickets are $7. Now, you may be asking yourself, what does Ms. Kristmanson's CD release have to do with In/Words? In conjunction with Pagan Love, Kyrie will be releasing Myths of the Body, the second installment in this year's In/Words Chapbook Series. Here's a preview:
croak
This is how we sing
She says to the class
Breathe into an O
Then let sound ride your breath!
But my breath is studded like a pit bull's collar;
it barks out the kinks in my joints.
Still I'll try imagining an orange in my throat
while singing mee may ma mo moo.
She tells me to
Stay after class
Do it again!
This time opening all your orifices
to the possibility of song!
I should tell her to consider the frog
who inhales a perfect circle
through ever pore
but still only sings one note
Another release to announce: From the love-addled minds of In/Words editors and co-conspirators comes Carleton's first-ever sex magazine. No, not those raunch glossies tucked away ever so innocently at the back of the magazine racks, the ones you hide behind the latest copy of Better Homes & Gardens. The Moose & Pussy is a (mostly) tasteful collection of erotic poetry and fiction. The first issue will be launched at the Dusty Owl's AIDS Walk Fundraiser. The event is on Sunday the Sexy Seventh of September at Swizzle’s Bar & Grill. Writers from the first issue will be reading their poems & stories. It’s at 2 pm so come get boozy in the daytime with us and support a great cause (making sex better). Now for a sexy glimpse of what's to come:
i don't like to swear but i love to fuck
Terri Doell
i lay and I lie and I like to get laid
like a baby fresh from the womb
bellied down and feverish
working in soft spots and creases
red and yellow diseases
but my mother she turns me over
every fifteen minutes
for those who are born again
and she moulds my head
and all to make round my head
and yeah i’m a she wolf
and a pathological liar
a bi racial bimbo with a soul
makes you feel like filth and stars
my weakness is honey and hungry
for the love of the wolf boy
and all his scars
he who peers and sneers
all snidely in my forest
and all anxious in my town
but like a ruffian he lives in me
gnaws at me
he’s in my hair and in my cells
hungry but doubtful
hungry but doubtful
all for my honey
and my brain is this nest
and in this mess
whistling fibs at my chest
depicting my yearning
concern
just to be churned
once in a while
to be outright turned
once in a while
upright and in center
inches away from the nails that scratch
rip it open and fill me with honey
nothing stings quite like
my wolf boy
While we're on the subject of Dusty Owls, the good folks at the Owl are in need of submissions. Here's a message from Owl editor Steve Zytveld:
Hi All --
As you may recall, we were planning to bring The Dusty Owl Quarterly, our little lit mag, out of hibernation earlier this year. Due to the fact that we're short-handed, things got bogged down so we're only getting it off the ground now.
To be fair, we're giving you a little more time to submit your poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, or visual artwork to us before we make our final decision over the next couple weeks. The truly-last-final-ever deadline for this issue of the DOQ will be 11:59pm on Friday 12 September.
Send your work to us at steve@dustyowl.com or mail it to P.O. Box 1041, Stn. 'B', Ottawa, Ont., K1P 5R1.
Anything we receive late will be considered for the next issue.
If you have already submitted material to us, but haven't heard anything, it may be best to email me to make sure we have it on file.
Got questions? I'm waiting by my email in-box for them.
Your Pal,
Steve
In strictly In/Words news, more chapbooks are slated to be released this month. If you didn't pick up a copy when it was temporarily available, the prolific Cameron Anstee's Remember Our Young Bones is certainly worth reading. Contact In/Words through the facebook group, electronic letter, or in person at our writers circles or office (1902 Dunton Tower - the only tower at Carleton). Expect chapbooks from Leah Mol, Lindsay Woodward, and Mark Sokolowski in the next month.
That's all for now. The deadline for In/Words Magazine 8.1 has been tentatively set for mid-October, but we'll keep you posted as to when we get the date set. Keep those poems coming in the meantime.
A Special Presentation
For poetry fans, music fans, ceiling fans, and really any kind of fan, In/Words is proud to be able to share a special documentary with you. Produced by Mot Dit editor and jewellry artist extraordinaire, Morgan Faulkner, this doc profiles Ottawa resident and Carleton University singer/songwriter/poet Kyrie Kristmanson. For those of you living under boulders, spending your days examining potato bugs and snails, Kyrie is an incredibly talented up-and-coming musician. She was recently awarded Best Young Performer at the Canadian Folk Music Awards, and was the opening act for Feist in Paris. You can find the documentary here.
Now time for an In/Words update. In/Words Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 2 has just been sent to be bound today. For some reason, this issue came together almost totally smoothly (a huge surprise to us, considering the year we've had). Barring a massive fire at the binders that destroys all of our work (knuckles rapping on wood), the issue will be ready to go for our reading next Thursday, as always, at the Avant-Garde. As well, the next issue of Mot Dit will be ready for the reading, Vagina Dentata will there (teeth-a-gnashing, so watch out), and we'll likely have some new chapbooks to distribute. Come out and read, play music, or just come to listen and swill Baltika all night.
Progress and other awaited updates
For anyone monitoring our website over the past few months and finding not a single update, we sincerely apologize. Our webmaster has explained his web neglect as a result of an alien hijack. For months, he found himself without the knowledge of HTML code, and not once could he remember what he was responsible for. Thankfully, all has been restored, peace has been made, and a chapbook is in the works.
In other In/Words news, the printer mystery has been solved. After months of being told a printer was on its way to assist us with our publication needs, and said printer never actually arriving, it is now here. Nevermind the fact that when it was delivered, it didn't actually print. (Perhaps it too "forgot" its responsibility?) In/Words is now officially in the self-sufficient printing business. We are currently in the process of finishing the formatting for our second issue of the year, In/Words Magazine 7.2. Weighing in at around 76 pages, with a colour cover (courtesy of Mr. Evan Bullen) and perfect-bound assembly, this issue too has not escaped the recent string of unknowables surrounding your friendly neighbourhood small press: mailed-in submissions vanishing into thin air (chalked up most likely to our inbox getting revenge on us for not receiving such an excellent poem), disappearing editors, and a contributor who will only refer to themself as Mister_E. Tune in to magazine racks near you in the next couple of weeks to attempt to solve our case.
Lastly, some news from the In/Words Umbrella: both the lovely, quirky bunch of women at Vagina Dentata and the lighthearted, ambitious stalwarts at Blank Page have each released their second issue of the year. Copies should be materializing on racks and in coffee shops in the area. As well, those French-speaking girls and guy are preparing to go to print with their second issue of Mot Dit. Be on the lookout as they unleash their strophes on you in a couple of weeks.
Release Parties
It's a busy week here at In/Words. We've got two brand new chapbooks set for release, a perfect bound, colour-cover issue, and a French language magazine all being launched this week!
Cameron Anstee's longpoem, "the night goes, they rise together", and Peter Gibbon's chapbook, "Fidget", are being printed over the next couple of days and will be available at the end of the week. In/Words Magazine 7.1 is at the binders and will also be ready this week. And those crazy French-speaking girls and guy over at Mot Dit will be officially releasing their first issue, after numerous printing setbacks. Here's where you can find Carleton's literary action this week:
In/Words Launch Party
Avant-Garde Bar & Gift Shop
135 1/2 Besserer St. (Downtown Ottawa, across from Les Suites)
Thursday January 31, 2008
Doors open at 7, the show gets underway at 9
Soirée littéraire et lancement du journal Mot Dit (Mot Dit release party)
On aura un open-mic, un montage de photos, un débat francophone, et une présantation par la chanteuse Kyrie Kristmanson
Mike's Place, 2nd floor Unicentre, Carleton University
Vendredi le 1 février, 2008 à 17h.
Chapbooks Galore!
Chapbooks are making their way onto our website in hordes. It's being called the great chapbook exodus, where small collections of poems and prose by individual artists or eclectic collectives are leaving the magazine racks and bookshelves and our office (mostly due to the fact that a large number of these chapbooks are no longer available, scooped up by the masses) and taking root on our website. Last week saw Gary Robinson's White Dance and Peter Gibbon's Lost Poems Found plant themselves here. Over the weekend, we had chapbooks settle down en masse - Ben Ladouceur's Three Knit Hats, Jacqueline Lawrence's Surrender, Peter Gibbon's Illiterati, Stewart Joyce's The Unpublished Works of Stewart Joyce, Vol. 1, Amanda Besserer's Adversarius Poetica, and Justin Million's A Butterfly Rush. And there are still more to come!
If you have a chapbook ready or have an idea for a chapbook (or any sort of project), feel free to send them our way: inwordsmail@yahoo.com. We've got a slew of new chapbooks coming out in the next few months, but we'll gladly consider and would love to put out many more!
Writer's Circle news: Monday nights will continue to be hosted by none other than Mumble Somthing Pink's Jeff Blackman, as always, at 6pm, in the English Lounge of Dunton Tower. We're proud to welcome a new host for our Thursday Circles - the ever-funny short-film star and quirky prose writer Jeremy Hanson-Finger.
In In/Words Magazine news, In/Words 7.1 has just been sent to the binders! The first-ever perfect bound issue of In/Words, after 7 years of publication, will be available at our readings and at various locations across the city (a complete list will be posted when we know where it'll be). We'll be launching the issue in two weeks at our monthly open-mic at the Avant-Garde Bar & Gift Shop, Thursday January 31, 2008. If you're unable to attend and would still like a copy, send us an e-mail and we can arrange to have one sent to you.
Works in progress
After a brief repose for the numerous holiday festivities, things are back on track.
Distribution has started up again. Erik Marsh's new chapbook, Suppositions, is now available on racks at Carleton. The editors at Blank Page have released their first issue of the year, Tabula Rasa. Mot Dit is now available at the French Department of Carleton University (16th floor of Dunton Tower) and various racks on campus. A launch party and art show at Mike's Place is being planned for sometime later on in January - more details will be posted in the next week. Chapbooks from Peter Gibbon and Cameron Anstee (a longpoem) are also expected to be ready by the end of the month.
Some of the chapbooks have found their way online now. You can find Gary Robinson's White Dance and Peter Gibbon's Lost Poems Found in the Chapbooks section of our site (under Publications/In/Words Press). The rest will trickle in over the next month.
Finally, In/Words Magazine, Volume 7 Issue 1, will be available by the end of January, just in time for our monthly open-mic at the Avant-Garde on Thursday, January 31st, 2008. We'll be releasing our first-ever colour cover, perfect-bound issue, so make sure to get your copy.
New website; submission deadlines
After being set back by a couple of months due to the strike at Carleton University, things are finally happening this year at In/Words. We've got a re-designed website (with more still to come! online chapbooks, an author index, and random poems!), we've got an office in Dunton Tower, a brand new iMac for design and layout of the publication, a brand new printer which will allow us to print in colour (finally!), an expanded team of editors and co-conspiritors, and two new publications, Vagina Dentata and Mot Dit.
Today is also deadline day. For those who forgot about the deadline, or didn't know about it, you've got until the end of today to submit to In/Words.
Other important deadlines are fast approaching: Vagina Dentata's is Novemeber 5th; Mot Dit's is set for November 15th, and Blank Page has theirs the next day, November 16th.
We look forward to your poems, stories, reviews, photography and artwork.
It's getting cold out there - keep warm.
In/Words Press announces the launch of two new publications; additional Writer's Circle date
We here at In/Words are proud to announce the conception of two new literary publications, Vagina Dentata and Mot Dit.
Vagina Dentata is a literary magazine which focuses on women's issues and, first and foremost, women's writing. They welcome submissions of poetry, short fiction, personal and academic essays, and though the focus is on women's writing, submissions do NOT have to be from women.
Submissions can be sent to vaginadentatamag@yahoo.com
Aussi, pour les écrivains francophones ou billingues, il y a une publication littéraire pour vous: Mot Dit. Envoyez votre poésie, histoires, et essaies à lejournalmotdit@gmail.com
For writers in your first year of university, we also have Blank Page, a literary home exclusively for first-year students. They can be reached at blankpagemag@yahoo.com
And as always, In/Words Magazine is seeking submissions for our Fall Issue. Send your work to inwordsmail@yahoo.com
For those who wish to attend our weekly Writer's Circles and can't make the Monday evening sessions, we'll be holding an additional one every Thursday night. You can find the Circle at the English Lounge on the 18th floor of Dunton Tower at Carleton University, at around 6pm. Please bring 8-10 copies of your work (copied as environmentally friendly as possible, of course).
In/Words at the Ottawa Arts Bazaar
Former editor David Emery (with help from others) has conjured up an Arts Bazaar featuring Ottawan artists - music, poetry, theatre, visual, etc. Things get underway tonight at the Arts Court downtown and roll on until they explode on Saturday, where In/Words editor Peter Gibbon and our esteemed Editor-in-Chief, Collett Tracey, will be part of a panel with Ottawa's best in small press, doing what they can as the panel endures a barrage of questions from those in attendance (like you). Here's all the info you need:
Saturday, August 11
Arts Court Theatre - 2 Daly Ave.
Small Press Panel: A Q&A session with the best of Ottawa's small presses
and publishers, including:
above/ground
Bywords
Dusty Owl
In/Words
The Puritan
Admission is $10, or $15 for a three day pass.
For more information about the panel and the Bazaar itself, visit www.ottawaart.ca/smallpresspanel
Editor Roast - In/Words says farewell to David Emery
This past Thursday at the Avant Garde Bar we paid tribute to departing editor David Emery, who is off to pursue further literary greatness (perhaps finishing the novel he started in November, but probably not) and graduate studies at the University of Toronto. Emery has been monumental in the progression of the In/Words, putting us online with this website and redesigning the physical magazine, as well as with his enlightened input at editorial meetings, when he could make it. He will be missed and his contributions will not be forgotten, and we wish him all the best, and that he may achieve the immortality all writers seek. On the off-chance that he fails to realise such goals, there is always this footage that editor Cameron Anstee shot of the farewell roasting/toasting that took place, which will most likely remain on YouTube forever.
Thanks again Dave, and good luck.
In/Words at the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair
In/Words will be out in full force at the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair, presented by span-o, this Saturday, June 16th, at the Jack Purcell Community Centre on Elgin Street (at 320 Jack Purcell Lane), and runs from 12pm until 5pm.
Join us for the launch of Chapbook Series 7.1, a photo-postcard-poem experiment featuring work from 8 writers, including Mel Upfold, Justin Million, Peter Gibbon, and Cameron Anstee. We'll have a slew of free chapbooks, issues, and poems as well.
Come out and support Ottawa's flourishing literary community.
Not to editorialize, but...
I’ve been laying pretty low this past year as far as the magazine is concerned for a handful of reasons. Chiefly, In/Words is published out of Carleton University – its editorial meetings and plans of attack for distribution are based on the Carleton campus. I am no longer a Carleton student. For the past year or so I’ve been out in the real world, fighting to make ends meet without OSAP to break my fall, killing time until school welcomes my cold, tired and disillusioned frame back into the motherly arms of a Master’s program.
That said, the rest of the team has been kind enough to humour me by letting me edit pieces they’ve decided are worthy of gracing the pages you're browsing. I receive emails about meetings I’m never able to attend because I’m busy unloading boxes of books for a faceless corporation bent on extorting authors and lovers of literature alike. Collett is reading this right now and either cringing or fighting the desire to hurl a mimeograph machine through the glass windows at my workplace. To her I apologize and assure her it’s only temporary.
To the rest of the editors: thanks for humouring me. This was the first year of work on the magazine for over half the team and I remember how exciting it was to experience publishing new writers, to meet those writers and become friends with them in a lot of cases. Mark, Cameron, Justin and Amanda are all die-hards that just won’t quit when it comes to touting the benefits of a literary journal that chronicles the talent of people passing through Carleton on their way to greatness. Nick and Peter continue to be stalwart in their efforts to connect In/Words with Ottawa’s literary community, extending its reach off campus and into press fairs, open mics and art shows. Collectively, they’ve done wonders for writers at Carleton.
Carleton needs this magazine. In/Words is as capable of producing the next Margaret Atwood as the University of Toronto’s Acta Victoriana (again, my apologies to Collett... make that the next Al Purdy). All it needs is the opportunity to be read, and the willingness of writers to submit their work. With the financing we have received this year, In/Words has been able to produce a vast number of projects to allow good writers the attention they deserve. The momentum must continue. Want to know how to contribute? Come out to the open mic shows. Read your work to an audience, even if it isn’t published. Let us know your name so we can chat and share ideas all friendly-like. It’s honestly that simple. The more demand there is for a writing community at Carleton, the bigger and better the magazine will get.
This issue is our last of the academic year. We have become a mainstay at the Avant-Garde Bar (135 ½ Besserer St.) and over the summer we will continue our open mic series on the final Thursday of every month, punctually late in the evening as ever.
Editing this magazine is a position that must allow for constant change. I’m resigning with the assurance that the team next year will continue the amazing passion they’ve shown this year. I’m leaving with some great memories and full of appreciation for the doors this experience has opened. Mostly, though, I leave having met some great writers who are more talented than they can formulate. They allowed me to share my voice when I needed something heard, and all they asked for in return was the same show of interest.
Finally, thanks to Collett for allowing us access to her enormous worlds of ideas and ideals. Professor Tracey is a catalyst to the success of an artistic culture at Carleton. I’m sure the team agrees with me there.
Sincerely,
David Emery
In/Words Editor, 2005-2007
In/Words Writing Circle
Every Monday and Thursday, 6:00 PM
1811 Dunton Tower (English Lounge)
Bring up to ten copies of your work if you want feedback.
Although it has taken awhile to start up, we will be holding weekly (yes, weekly) writing circles every Monday night. We at In/Words have high hopes for this project, and we are hoping that it becomes a springboard of sorts for both individual and collaborative efforts. In any event, it provides an intimate setting in which people can meet, discuss, share their work and improve upon it to boot. If you don't want to share your work, just show up for the coffee and poetry (and community).
Hopefully, these writing circles will strengthen a creative community at Carleton, and at the same time make literature accessible - something you can relate to, experience and (hopefully) breath life into. Come on out, bring some work, and meet new people!