Candid Chats Primer
Ethos for the Interviews. Goals. Whatever.
Writing for ARC’s Summer Poetry 2023 issue, Jérome Melançon surveys a couple dozen of above/ground press’ publications from over the years. Melançon is an extremely generous reviewer of Rob McClennan’s 30-years (so far) venture.
But even in his praise, Melançon comes up against a wall with a/g’s program. “I cannot commit to a demonstration of the presence of a common aesthetic—a manner of affecting the senses and the imagination so as to bring them together” (71). I don’t think this wall is so much an issue for Melançon as it is for me.
I say this in pretty much every one of the forthcoming interviews, because interviewees bring a/g up in every interview, but with the rate rob mclennan publishes these chapbooks at, it’s hard to believe he’s even read all of them, nonetheless vets and edits and carefully curates the program1.
Melançon affirms both the velocity and hands-off production: “His hands run across the poems and chapbooks, but do not venture too far inside. He seems to favour a catch-and-release style of editorial decision. He very often solicits work, going back to the same spots to see if the catch might repeat itself” (71), and in general, mclennan is “focusing on volume (of chapbooks and of print copies),” producing work that “is simple and affordable enough to be discarded or passed on; well-crafted enough to be kept, archived, cherished” (72).
Melançon’s copies of the books must come in better shape post-Canada Post than mine did over my several years of subscriptions. In fact, I was overwhelmed by the amount of books that would come in a year. A few times I didn’t receive one or two from the lineup, too bitter to bother emailing mclennan about it; even shy a couple titles, what was I supposed to do with all of it?
I also found very little I loved as a reader or connected with as a fellow practitioner. No more than a handful each year, and at the time I was a very eager reader, and much more patient, less angry with bourgeois writers. With the gatling approach I should think more would connect, but no.
There are a lot of poets I do love and know who’ve had books with a/g, but I’d rather buy those books from them direct, pay out the ass for postage and all that and buy myself the luxury of not having to do anything with all the rest of that plainly adorned paper I struggle to find kinship with.
Another thing I keep saying in these forthcoming interviews is that if rob mclennan is the white whale, I’m really, really not Ahab; I’m Ishmael, I’m aware of the whale, but I’m not exactly chasing it, I’m kinda just along for the ride. Didn’t you know there are facts and things to think and talk about? What chance does some whale stand in the face of the almighty tangent or special interest?
Plus there’s no shortage of folks interviewing mclennan for writeups just like this one. Literally the first post I saw when I visited his substack2 last was a link to yet an interview he’d just done.
SO, why am I opening this primer to the CanDid Chats interview column by talking about him?
Because I’ve got no idea how the man affords to do what he does, though I’m sure one of any of those forty thousand arts grants you could spit on the street and win in, if not Toronto3 then the rest of Ontario, probably covers a lot of his printing or mailing costs.
There’s a lot of labour that goes into managing a library of “more than 1200 publications as of the date of writing” (72), a time-stamp probably many months in-advance of the Summer 2023 issue.
I bet I could find answers to this stuff in his interviews. But I don’t really like a/g’s catalogue, so, no thanks.
Like Jim Johnstone asserts in Write Print Fold and Staple (Gaspereau, 2023): “Can’t find the book you’re looking to read? Fold and distribute something new. Generate the change you want to see” (18).
The change I want to see isn’t me putting out 1200 books in 30 years (40 a year oh my fucking god).4 What I want to see is a lot of chatter about all the rest. And if I quit in a fit of rage in 3 or 4 years, I’ll go beg rob for forgiveness and an interview then.
And based on the interviews I’ve been doing so far, plus the sheer number of people making books this way in Canada, I’m really really excited about what I’m learning, and getting the opportunity to share these people with much less visibility, little to no financial support or brand recognition, and often bring something singular to the table.
What excites a guy like mclennan, I couldn’t say; “no school of writing here, no common thread” (75). Everything? Nothing?
As Melançon points out, there is no real submissions process for a/g. It’s “heavily networked” (76), commemorative, and sprawling. Anecdotally all I know is if you bump into him in the street you’re likely to end up with a book, assuming he knows your online handle to get in touch via. But just as likely, if you bump into him, he’ll promote the small thing you yourself make, or interview you about your book.
What I so admire in mclennan’s practice is everything that surrounds a/g, his blogging and interviews and his “reviews,” in addition to his journal “periodicities,” for the often excellent writing it attracts.
There are in fact many books I love that rob was the only person I saw talk about them, because they were rich and difficult to review, or because they are written by people who are not socialites, or were ignored for whatever other reason. mclennan is a busy bee. He is involved.
There are, I think, thresholds and weird biases to that involvement. And I think it would be useless in the extreme to detail those hiccups here,5 because I’m not here to tell the paper-crown king of stapling poetry in Canada about those subjects of the realm he forgot about.
I’m here to interview everyone else.6
CanDid Chats are designed to talk to micropress7 publishers new and old. These things happen fast. Khashayar Mohammadi posted about, and then started releasing, “chaplets” between the time I started building a queue for the substack and the time my first post went out; when it wants to, the micro gives the the internet a run for its money re:velocity.
CanDid Chats are also designed to get concrete information on the labour and costs involved in the making of these small books. I want to know how much it takes to print and stitch the damn things. I want to know the cost of paper, who does the printing. I want to know what your day-job is, and how it relates to the cost of a long stapler; did you steal that stapler from the office?
CanDid Chats are also a place for the micropress publish-ees8 to sing its praises, name their nemeses, and to talk about it from the other end; I also take every opportunity to bully these particular writers into starting their own micropresses.
I want to make visible the feasibility of the enterprise. To emphasize the cost difference between a trade book and a chapbook.910
I want show how these projects are compelled, not always idle inspiration rather something they have to do.
I want to show that sometimes people lose money on the projects. That sometimes people lose money on them and can’t even afford to lose money on them, but they do it anyhow. I want to show that some of these people are ramping up to publish trade books, and they’re willing to spend a longgg time learning, refining, and dreaming to get from here to there.
I want to show that there are people who have been making books like this for years, and years, who only just recently achieved a living-wage, and have used the improved quality of life to make even more books for other people. That some of these people are publishers first, and poets (not even second, or third, but) last, that they’re doing it as service and asking for nothing back.
I want to show that they aren’t all vanity-presses, and that some of the writing happening here is better, is just as ‘real,’ and is doing things that trade would never let happen because trade is run almost entirely by cowards who know they’re publishing homogenous work and hide behind claims of “not being the right person to champion diverse work,” knowing full well they’re handing those jobs over to “the right people” to do it if that’s really the case.
I want to show that some of them publish things OTHER THAN POETRY.
I want to show that some of them are making nasty little fucked up crummy things (and I love it).
I want to show that there are publishers who check in on writers who’ve gone silent, writers who can’t afford to call themselves writers because they don’t have the means to write while surviving, and that these publishers gently coax something doable, projects with reasonable demands on precious energy from those people, and reconnect them with a practice they deserve to nurture and would be able to do so in a fairer world. That these publishers help remind us that writing is a diverse field, but that publishing at-large is not.
And I simply gotta YAP. This is a great excuse to do that.
Interviews will always be free. I will make an audio cut for each instance too in the spirit of accessibility, I think hosted just on the newsletter itself, though those take me more time than the transcript, because I’ll literally die if I don’t cut out at least 4500 “umms” of the 5000 “umms” I put into each of them.11
Plus his regular publications in mags, his own writing practice, his blog and his online journal periodicities, and the raising of kids with his wife. He might even have a real job on the go, I’m not sure. But my point stands, I’m not sure how he can meaningfully engage with all that writing he’s putting out. And I think reading it is besides the point, for a/g at least.
It’s different than the other things apparently, sheesh, too much too much.
I can’t even tell the difference. Don’t all Toronto Variants in the OCU (Ontarian Cinematic Universe) look the same to you, too?
I have published micro, micro micro, nano minute dust-mote sized ephemera for 10 years as of next year, and I’ve only just hit 12 (13 really, because one is secretly reversible) total publications for what I do. That doesn’t feel like a lot, but it certainly feels like the right pace, like it’s the time I need to make them the way I want, and to pick the people I want to work with. It’s a bit unreal, to think about that number. For instance, I’ve been sober for 16 years, and that number is kinda boring, passe. But to have been “publishing” for 10 years, oooh, ahhh. It’s no 40 a year. But in my careful approach, I suppose like the Lorax, I speak for those few trees a/g hasn’t gobbled up yet.
"No bad reviews! no bad reviews!!” I hear in the back of my head, which makes me want to be an asshole here. “Focus on the positives.” But people positively review things that are bad out of friendship and familiarity all the time. Fffuck.
Is there no ledger to balance? What of Kroestch’s legacy?
Though probably not people who’ve published me, at least for the first leg.
Books under 48 pages, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Print media that is smaller than trade. That is punker than trade. And by and large focusing on “Canadian” enterprises for now; any boundary to curtail my madness.
Often these people are also the publishers. It is not discrete.
Corresponding with Johnstone 1 on 1, he emphasizes that chapbooks are books, and shouldn’t necessarily be viewed as a stepping stone to a trade collection, as something to later be collected or subsumed into a more costly project.
I think this is true. And there are many, many thousands of dollars of difference between producing a full-length and something under 48. Johnstone also argues that chapbooks are the ideal unit of poetry—older poetry collections simply were smaller, “too slim to be a full-length book by UNESCO standers, which are used by the Canada Council for the Arts” (16). And argues that “publishing becomes more equitable the less expensive it gets” (18), which I actually don’t think is true 1:1, having seen so much of what is published, by whom, and who gets left out, but I’m not here to argue with a gagged Johnstone in a footnote; I also initially quoted Johnstone quite at length, but the book is quite short, and I think if you’re interested in micro-in-Canada, you should give it a look yourself.
I like this particular kind of transparency. Writers should be honest about their incomes. Writers should have an idea of what a publisher invested in them. Writers should know a lot fucking more about the world than a certain class of writers thriving do know.
It’s also a problem that I need to cut 3 or 4 hours of talking down sometimes too. Like I said, I gotta YAP. And so do these publishers.