rob mclennan
Biography
Author photo of rob mclennan. The poet is sitting in a darkened room with colourful images, paper, and blue posted-notes on the wall in the background. His hair is down, head tilted slightly toward camera’s right. Light from above gently illuminates this angle.
Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019), Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) and the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) and Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. 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.
https://twitter.com/robmclennanblog
Poetics Statement
“So many of my considerations are rhythmic, structural. Throughout the onset of this second pandemic summer, I’d been reading and rereading Rosmarie Waldrop, Valzhyna Mort and Etel Adnan. The shapes and the cadences, the turns and twists of phrases. I am thinking about how language and politics are articulated, and the bare bones of writing. The conscious elements of how language is structured, and propels the action of thought; or is it the other way around? My poems emerge through both reading and living: a collaboration between what kind of architectural or rhythmic or tonal concerns I have at any given time, and my materials-at-hand. What did we do that day, what am I distracted by or what did I read? I’m thinking about sentences, I’m thinking about the prose poem, I’m thinking about friends and social concerns and civil rights and the ecological precipice; our small children go rushing past. Writing is built out of words, out of language, and out of my immediate. What am I on about, here?”
Sample of Poet's Work
Five poems for Anstruther Press
1.
Whether a lake in the Kawarthas,
or this Scottish coastal town
founded as fishing village. Stumbleweed,
euphemism. Alexander I of Scotland, and
the lands of Anstruther
to William de Candela,
1225. We all fall down. This sentence
is preposterous.
2.
Amid a network of freshwater lakes, this glacial stretch
of shining excess. Lake Ontario, via Anstruther Creek,
by way of rivers Mississaugua, Otonabee, Trent. A drop
of dew, line. Bhanu Kapil: What
is the place of the fragment in your work?
Picture the river. The water, flows. What
has been transferred. Names, we
carry. Here.
3.
A poem to the reader: territory, maps and dust.
Invasive species: as Stacey Ho writes of ecologies,
migration, refugees, metaphor. It has
me thinking.
4.
Anstruther: a name
that lends itself to water. One small boat fishing,
coasts alternating wavelengths: cyan,
turquoise, teal.
The Great Lakes basin. Billy the Kid and
the benefit of ash, oak. A strained relationship
to sun. Semiotic, tidal. Plants
a bare foot.
Preoccupied by gravity,
the surface water points to sea.
5.
Articulation, falls.
An unobstructed view.
A manifesto on the poetics of Asphodel Twp.
for Michael & Suzanne Wilcox,
I have forgot
and yet I see clearly enough
something
central to the sky
which ranges round it.
William Carlos Williams, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”
1.
If Heaven, river. What greeny something. Shine, Kawartha Highlands. Lake, and early hum. Once, in the shadows. Glowing outwards, temperate. Ontario syntax. Reassuring this, and self. A revelation, you. I see the world. Claw, in architecture. Bipolar lift, a tongue. A peace the mind can breathe. Although the dark remains, small lights in favour. Celebration, soar.
2.
The mouth, at Cameron's Point. An acid-free layer. Craft: a promise, fold. Is this all nothing? Repair, a situation. Sorrow, and a cock-eyed grin. In this room, this other room. A complicated, binding. This morning, Highway 7. Double-binding, surface of a still. Lovesick Lake, meeting hip to shape to shore to night. A glacier, made. Such frozen light.
3.
Asphodel, greeny flower. Surveyed in 1820, Richard Birdsal. To warm up, bottles under covers. All the uphill way. If it is, repeated. Notes, and highway. Hummingbird feeders, to keep from ants, from black bears. An empty bench, among. Back and forth, snow-scribbling. Some other star. The metaphor: cast iron, photo-legal. Walking. John Becket and his wife, five children.
4.
You left your mark. Combination of industry. Vaguely seen, but can't cross. Waterskin. Go, central-eastern. The shores of Rice Lake, frequent. Burned away. Big Cedar, smoke. Yours, truly. Tell, no other story. Picked up, by useless clouds. Such well-bred manner, brush. Such lovely liquid. A leather casing, isolation. Those that have the will.
Five poems for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
1.
An almost, circumstance. Sustained
by intensive care unit, my father’s
withered muscles. First the right hand, legs, the lungs;
a machine to administer breath. On Carling Avenue,
flush in fluorescent polish,
an eternity of blankets, stainless repetition.
Time simultaneously collapsed,
suspends. He will not return home, but
for singular purpose. To finally land; to comprehend
where he once stood.
2.
Pinned, to the weather. If he might or could,
these endless meetings
with social worker, hospital staff. He will not return home,
but might, yes. Texts out
responses, queries. Sister
administers, paperwork: wheelchair,
hospital bed, BiPAP machine,
health workers. His medical history
goes viral. What else. An updated proposal
invites. Bag
by the ready.
3.
Sleep apnea, diabetes,
colon cancer, triple bypass, short term
kidney dialysis,
multiple sclerosis. Worn, our hearts crush.
Wherein, his lungs. He sleeps
all morning, and another year. A blood clot,
cyst; thigh-high, the muscle. Set
the scanners on. Attempt
to drain. It doesn’t, won’t. Home plans
suspend. Demarcate, black marker
lineates. The daily whiteboard calendar
by his bed is obsolete
for half a day.
4.
Imagine, his options: history held
the iron lung. Lists, a sentence. His strength
will not return. Will ours? My sister’s
homemade contraband, a
chicken wrap, delights. We offer strawberries,
raspberries, daily paper. His hospital flatscreen,
suspended in air,
shimmers local news. The only
difference, amid
the daily bleed.
5.
I am aware of my silence
on this matter.
A halt, which is empty: http://mansfieldpress.net/2019/06/a-halt-which-is-empty/
Life Sentence: https://www.amazon.ca/Life-Sentence-rob-mclennan/dp/1949966526?asin=1949966526&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
the book of smaller: https://press.ucalgary.ca/books/9781773852614/