Mark Callanan – Poetry

I’m reading at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s SPARKS Literary Festival this year. Here’s a list of the readers, with bio notes.

Chad Pelley interviewed me for his Atlantic Canadian fiction and poetry website, Salty Ink. You can find the interview here.

Michael Lista recently reviewed Gift Horse for the National Post. Read his piece here.

Here’s a flash “flash” interview I did with my editor, Carmine Starnino, about Gift Horse. We talked about mermaids, among other things. My three-year-old son is currently fascinated by mermaids (and whales, but whales are just big swimming kegs of lamp oil, if you ask me), so I felt quite at ease with the topic.

Meaghan Strimas has reviewed Gift Horse in the November issue of Quill & Quire. You can find the review here.

Scarecrow, my first poetry collection, has just hit remaindered status. If you’ve been waiting for the deep discount (shame, shame!), you can buy it from my publisher’s website for a mere 3 Canadian dollars.

I’ll be reading with Mary Dalton at the Atwater Library in Montreal as part of the Atwater Poetry Project on April 26, 2012 at 7 p.m. Here’s a link to the Poetry Project page on the library’s site.

Frog Hollow Press has sold out of my bpNichol-shortlisted chapbook, Sea Legend, so I’ve made a digital flipbook version. Much thanks to the press for permission to do so, and for making such a beautiful book in the first place. I haven’t figured out how to embed the book in a post yet, so until I do (and you might die waiting), you can read it here.

after Seamus Heaney

Heaven is a far cry from the contents
of this messenger’s tube: pebbles or peas,
desiccated seed or a fistful of beans

that trick the ear into hearing last trickles
of rain, water droplets cast upon hot griddles,
god wringing out a tissue he’s wept into.

These castanets or spilled rice grains,
these coffee beans fed down a grinder’s chute
create illusions. You want rain? Step outside

and a high wind full of honest tears
will teach you that this cactus stalk
could never be enough to slake your thirst

or wash away the curbside grime
and drizzle fallen petals in the dirt,
or paint her hair, just so, against a cheekbone

and turn her cotton shirt into a peepshow,
or make plain the fact of windowpanes
and all the things that they obscure.