The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing is set to launch June 23

For the past year I've been working with a marvellous team of faculty and students from the Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing & Publishing program at Sheridan College to develop a new literary magazine called The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing, and we are set to launch our first issue next week! 

In this debut issue, we are proud to include new work by some of Canada’s most exciting contemporary writers. This issue features an exclusive interview with Amanda Leduc, new fiction by Jordan Abel and Jess Taylor, poetry by two former Sheridan writers-in-residence Liz Howard and Gary Barwin, among many other treasures.

We will be having a virtual launch for the debut issue on June 23 at 7pm EDT. 

To register for the event, please click here.

Talking about Shared Universe, the future, and culture on My Summer Lair

Thanks to Sammy Younan for having me back to his pop culture podcast My Summer Lair to talk about my latest book SHARED UNIVERSE, the future, and the relationships between poetries and mass culture.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO GO TO THE PODCAST

Mike the Headless Chicken (a digital poem)

 

Parallel Careers: a new podcast from The New Quarterly hosted by Claire Tacon

It was a pleasure to be interviewed by the talented Claire Tacon for the new Parallel Careers Podcast from The New Quarterly: Canadian Writers & Writing. And I'm grateful for the music that Amadeo Ventura has written for this episode!

In this episode, I discuss discusses how, to become an artist, you must commit to a life-long process of learning. Here are some time markers for topics in this episode:

00:40 | My recent collection Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020
02:08 | The optimism of the atomic age and our current fixation with dystopia
08:26 | Helping students expand their work past preconceived boundaries of poetic form
11:44 | Ekphrastic poetry and its pitfalls
13:38 | Teaching a course on Self-Publishing at Sheridan College 
17:10 | How literature can help shape the future

Click here to go to the podcast.

My 2020 Shared Universe Pandemic Book Tour

My big cross-country 2020 book tour didn't turn out the way I had planned, but it was an interesting year to say the least, so I put together this little video to commemorate all the places I went to in 2020.

The music in this video is by LASERGNU. Learn more the band here: https://www.lasergnu.com

Signed copies of Shared Universe now available in my Etsy store

If you know a poetry lover who'd like a personalized copy of my latest book Shared Universe from ECW Press, I now have them available through my Etsy store. Include your request for personalization when you order. All orders will be mailed promptly!

PLACE YOUR ORDER HERE

Shared Universe news, September 2020

Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020 was officially published on September 1st, and as the month draws to a close, there are already a few developments I am happy to report. 

First, Shared Universe was named a Globe and Mail best book pick for fall 2020. 

The other entries in the poetry category are Swivelmount by Ken Babstock, Home Body by Rupi Kaur, Black Matters by Afua Cooper and Wilfried Raussert, and Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine. 

Next, Shared Universe was also listed as one of the Canadian poetry books to watch for in fall 2020 by CBC Books. 

Other titles on this list include Render by Sachiko Murakami, The Cyborg Anthology by Lindsay B-e, and Word Problems by Ian Williams, among many others. 

More recently, a review of Shared Universe by M. Travis Lane in the latest issue of The Fiddlehead says, “Paul Vermeersch is a major poet. How, nowadays, when most new poetry books are praised as superb (like the Irish father whose daughters were each of them more beautiful than all the others), does one praise a book which really is better than the rest? ...The poems, always perceptive, sometimes achingly sad, and sometimes achingly funny — are real poems. That is, they are written with an ear for the sound of our language: for the basic iambic of English, for the drama of emotion and wit, for the richly suggestive possibilities of pun and colloquial usage. Many of Vermeersch’s poems are sonnets (unrhymed); there are long sequences richly developed, each of which deserves an essay as long as Tysdal’s. And there are jokes, and bits of music — a magnificent potpourri! And all set against a universe imaged as always just beyond our imagination: galaxies, monsters, myths, aliens, and our childish selves.”

A few days later, a review appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press written by Jonathan Ball, who writes, “Instead of arranging groups of poems chronologically, according to the collection from which they are pulled, they are instead arranged according to how they might have appeared in imaginary alternate-universe collections.... The result is a book that feels essential... An exceptional collection and a must-have for any seriously non-serious lover of poetry.”

And finally, if you missed The Shared Universe Show, the virtual book launch event hosted by poet Daniel Scott Tysdal and presented by ECW Press and Another Story Bookshop on September 15th, the entire program is now available to stream on Another Story's YouTube channel, embedded below. Enjoy! 

 

Register now for The Shared Universe Show: A Launch Party!

Join poet and inter-dimensional traveler Paul Vermeersch for the launch of Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995–2020, a look backwards, and forwards, at his 25 year career. Featuring host Dan Scott Tysdal, guest Anjula Gogia, and a performance by LASERGNU!

Order Shared Universe from Another Story Bookshop. You can request a personalized copy if you order by September 18. 

This book gathers together the best of my poems from the last 25 years. To celebrate, I was hoping to throw you all the biggest party you’ve ever seen, but we must adapt to our world, and to keep you all safe, we’re doing something different. We’re using the Zoom Webinar platform, and we're calling the virtual launch for this book The Shared Universe Show.

Please register for the launch, and reserve your spot, here.