issue fourteen : The Entanglement Issue : guest-edited by Michael Sikkema

NOW AVAILABLE: G U E S T #14
edited by Michael Sikkema

see here for Michael Sikkema’s introduction and biography

The Entanglement Issue
featuring new work by:

Sue Bracken
Andrew Brenza
Megan Burns
Juliet Cook
Amanda Earl
Robert Martin Evans
Nathan Hauke
Jessie Janeshek
E.J. McAdams
Meredith Quartermain
Claudia Coutu Radmore

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Author biographies:

Sue Bracken lives in Toronto, in a house ruled by artists and animals. Her first collection of poetry When Centipedes Dream was published by Tightrope Books (2018). Other poems and prose have appeared in Hart House Review (forthcoming), WEIMAG, Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, The New Quarterly, The Totally Unknown Writer’s Festival: Stories (Life Rattle Press) and elsewhere.

Andrew Brenza’s recent chapbooks include Poems in C (Viktlösheten Press), Bitter Almonds & Mown Grass (Shirt Pocket Press), and Waterlight (Simulacrum Press). He is also the author of four full-length collections of visual poetry, most recently Automatic Souls from Timglaset Editions and Alphabeticon & Other Poems from Redfoxpress.

Megan Burns is the publisher at Trembling Pillow Press, and is also a poet, performer, essayist, curator, rollerskater, trash talker, and healer.

Juliet Cook is brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

Amanda Earl (she/her) is a feminist Canadian writer, visual poet, editor and publisher. She's the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. Chapters from the Vispo Bible have been published as chapbooks and leaflets by publishers in Canada, Sweden and UK.  Excerpts from the Vispo Bible were included in two exhibits: http://mellompress.com/translations/ and https://www.poematlas.com/escapisms.  Her talk, “The Vispo Bible: One Woman Recreates the Bible as Visual Poetry” was presented at the Kanada Koncrete Material Poetries in the Digital Age symposium at the  University of Ottawa in 2018, and can be read here: https://angelhousepress.com/essays/Amanda_Earl_The_Vispo_Bible.pdf. Amanda is grateful for funding received for the Vispo Bible from the Ontario Arts Council in 2018.For more vispo, visit EleanorIncognito.blogspot.ca. Additional sites and social media: https://linktr.ee/amandaearl.

Robert Martin Evans’ poetry has appeared in Vallum, Topograph, Oratorealis, and Where is the river: a poetry experiment, as well as one of the Wall Poems of Charlotte. In 2012, a selection of poems was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Robert is a reader at bywords.ca.

Nathan Hauke is the author of Indian Summer Recycling (The Magnificent Field, 2019), Every Living One (Horse Less Press, 2015), In the Marble of Your Animal Eyes (Publication Studio, 2013), and four chapbooks. His poems have been anthologized in Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press, 2015) and The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta Press, 2012).

Jessie Janeshek's full-length collections are MADCAP (Stalking Horse Press, 2019), The Shaky Phase (Stalking Horse Press, 2017), and Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). Her chapbooks include Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish (Grey Book Press, 2016), Rah-Rah Nostalgia (dancing girl press, 2016), Supernoir (Grey Book Press, 2017), Auto-Harlow (Shirt Pocket Press, 2018), Hardscape (Reality Beach, 2020) and Channel U (Grey Book Press, 2020). Read more at jessiejaneshek.net. 

E.J. McAdams is a poet and artist, exploring language and mark-making in the urban environment using procedures and improvisation with found and natural materials. He has published five chapbooks: 4x4 from unarmed journal press, TRANSECTs from Sona Books, Out of Paradise, an e-chapbook from Delete Press, Close-range Divinities from Shirt Pocket Press, and most recently, Middle Voice from Dusie Kollectiv.

Meredith Quartermain’s fourth book of poetry, Lullabies in the Real World, just came out from NeWest Press. Her first collection, Vancouver Walking, won a BC Book Award for Poetry, and Nightmarker was a finalist for a Vancouver Book Award. Other books include Recipes from the Red Planet; I, Bartleby: short stories; and U Girl: a novel.

Montreal-born writer Claudia Coutu Radmore has lived, taught and created art in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, China and, as a CUSO volunteer, in Vanuatu. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Queen’s University. She edited, and wrote the introduction to Arctic Twilight: Leonard Budgell and the Changing North. Now residing west of Ottawa with husband Ted and rainbow lorikeet Desirée, she began editing and publishing selected poets with her catkin press in 2012. Accidentals won the bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2011. Her poem "the breast of sappiness" is included in The Best Canadian Poetry of 2019, and her latest lyric collection rabbit was published in the spring of 2020 with Aeolus House Press. Claudia has collections in Japanese forms as well as lyric, and is the President of Haiku Canada.

 

Michael Sikkema : issue #14 : Introduction

 

In 1960 in southern Georgia, a dog chased a smaller animal up a hole in a chestnut oak, became wedged, and died.  Due to dryness and the high tannin count of the tree, the dog’s corpse did not decompose, and was instead mummified, discovered only when loggers lopped off the uppermost 25 feet of the tree, decades later. Also, every single year, nitrogen makes its way from the Pacific ocean into Alaskan trees that are miles and miles inland via the help of birds, bears, and other fish-eating creatures. Even as you’re reading this, a shrew is biting some prey animal and injecting it with venom that will paralyze but not kill it. The shrew will then hoard this prey in an underground stash and return to it when necessary. This practice is known as “live hoarding.”  At the same time, biologists are increasingly tuning in to the Wood Wide Web and its fungal communication system, the underground connections between all the above ground plants. According to mycoligist Merlin Sheldrake, many scientists who study the symbiotic nature of life come to the conclusion that “there have never been individuals,” and “we are all lichens.” Take the work in this issue as proof of that coming from a range of angles.

 

 

TL:DR:  Listen carefully for your original voices in the mix and remix of these pieces. 

 

 

 

Michael Sikkema is the author of many chapbooks, and 6 books of poems, including Caw Caw Phony, forthcoming from Trembling Pillow Press in 2021. He is also the editor of Shirt Pocket Press, and helps run the Creative Youth Center in Grand Rapids, MI.