Posted in poetry, poetry reading
Tagged C. Mehrl Bennett, Camille Martin, cinquain, John M. Bennett, poem, poetry, Skylab Gallery
A queue quickly formed, and trusting the locals to know a good thing, I followed suit. It was worth it. The hot tamales warded away the chill Chicago wind.
Soon after I arrived in Columbus, Ohio, I discovered that I was surrounded by my favourite comfort food. I bundled up against the cold and walked a couple hundred feet over to Junior’s Tacos:
Three chicken tamales, accompanied by hot sauce and Robert Majzels’ *The Humbug Diet*. Heaven.
Now I’m back in Toronto, on the lookout for taco trucks.
Saturday, November 24, 9 p.m.
SKYLAB GALLERY / 57 E. Gay St, 5th Floor / Columbus, Ohio
Martha Nichols, one of the editors, recently approached me about writing an illustrated essay about what it’s like to work in three disciplines: poetry, collage, and music.
I invite you to have a look at the resulting featured spread in Talking Writing and to explore the rest of the issue, which will be added to during the next few weeks.
Click the image below to view my collages and essay:
Posted in cognitive science, collage, literary theory, music, poetry, poetry magazine, Vispo, visual art
Tagged Camille Martin, collage, Looms, Martha Nichols, multidisciplinary arts, music, poetry, Shearsman Books, synesthesia, Talking Writing
In his review, rob generously included a couple of poems from the book. If you’d like to read more from Looms, you can order a copy at the following vendors (click to link):
Posted in poetry, poetry blog, poetry review
Tagged Camille Martin, Looms, poems, poet, poetry review, rob mclennan, rob mclennan's blog, Shearsman Books
Posted in poetry, poetry review
Tagged A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line, Adam Seelig, Anton Vander Zee, Attention Span, Camille Martin, Ish Klein, Jeramy Dodds, Ken Babstock, Lissa Wolsak, Maxine Chernoff, Meredith Quartermain, Nicole Markotic, poem, poet, poetry, Robert Majzels, Steve Evans, Third Factory, Tony Lopez, University of Maine
Posted in collage, visual art
Tagged Camille Martin, collage, film noir, film noir posters, visual art
Poet James Pickersgill put together some thought-provoking interview questions in advance of the reading. Below is a sample, and the complete interview can be found here.
Q – Camille, it is not at all true that poetry is your single creative outlet. You are known as a collage artist, too. You are an editor yourself … and a translator. Your own work has been translated into other languages as well. You have been a university teacher. You’ve organized poetry reading series. You’ve had radio shows and you blog actively on the internet. When listed like that, these activities might sound like an array of separate pigeon-holes but I suspect that there is a lot of cross-pollination, so to speak. What is the nature of this creativity as you experience it: one spark that finds many openings to jump into flame, or, can it be distinct and separate creative impetuses?
Camille Martin – I love the idea of cross-pollination. In fact, I think my primary creative impulse is to bring together: to merge or to juxtapose. It’s the basic impetus for the metaphor: to bring unlike things into dialogue. And for me, that goes for disciplines as well. I was reading and seeking out poetry on my own from an early age, though I didn’t begin writing it in earnest until my late 30s. But my first creative expression was musical – I was trained as a classical pianist since I was six years old, and I went on to get a graduate degree in piano performance. I was also intensely interested in visual art. I’ve always felt a desire to bring the arts together. So now, in the autumn of my life, I have the pleasure of doing all three: making collages, writing poetry, and setting my poetry to music. I think these disciplines are sparking conversations among each another.
Posted in interview, poetry, poetry reading
Tagged Camille Martin, Cobourg Ontario, James Pickersgill, Looms, poem, poet, poetry, poetry interview, poetry reading, Shearsman Books
Poetry. The title of LOOMS signifies the weaving tool as well as the shadowing appearance of something. These “woven tales” were inspired by Barbara Guest’s statement that a tale “doesn’t tell the truth about itself; it tells us what it dreams about.” The strands of their surreal allegories converse, one idea giving rise to another, and the paths of their dialogue become the fabric of the narrative. In a second meaning, something that looms remains in a state of imminent arrival. Such are these tales, like parables with infinitely deferred lessons.
“In tightly woven tapestry, Martin’s ‘backstreet songs’ re-invent a music of knowledge that navigates the hucksterism and catastrophe threatening our planet. The movement of her threads is fugue-like, punctuated by oboes and clarinets, mockingbirds and cicadas. Here, in the dream-space of time-lapse film, forms of life and ideas collide and morph, rippling through centuries of human consciousness to unravel as quickly as they ravel. Here, above all, Martin makes it possible to dance among our ‘origins in snake oil,’ our ‘crusades to mirages’ and our ‘accidental fictions’.”—Meredith Quartermain
“A dreamscape on the outskirts of town, ‘in the badlands of the vernacular,’ these hopeful, haunted poems populated by children and prisoners ‘hover between’ realms domestic and exterior, real and imagined. Like candles described herein, this book gives off a melting, tactile glow.”—Arielle Greenberg
Posted in poetry
Tagged Arielle Greenberg, Camille Martin, Looms, Meredith Quartermain, poems, poetry, Shearsman Books, Small Press Distribution
click image for Shearsman Books page for Looms
My box of Looms has arrived, and copies distributed to five Goodreads winners.
Shearsman Books has a pdf sample as well as a handy list of links where you can order the book.
Many thanks to Tony Frazer, publisher extraordinaire of Shearsman Books.
May the poems in Looms bring you pleasure!
Posted in poetry, poetry press
Tagged Camille Martin, Looms, poems, poetry, Shearsman Books
Also in the exhibition: works by Stacey Camp, David Marshak, Romas Astrauskas, Zora Buchanan, Ila Kellermann, Menno Krant, Myriam Levy, Andrew M. Smith, Jay McCarten, Frances Ferdinands and Adi Zur.
Good things are happening with my art as well as my poetry, and more in the wings very soon . . .
Posted in art gallery, collage, visual art
Tagged Adi Zur, Andrew M. Smith, art exhibition, Camille Martin, David Marshak, Elgin Wintergarden Theatre, Frances Ferdinands, Ila Kellermann, Jay McCarten, Menno Krant, Myriam Levy, Romas Astrauskas, Stacey Camp, Toronto International Film Festival, Zora Buchanan
An excerpt:
“In the pivotal collection Hearthedral: A Folk-Hermetic (1996), Phil Hall’s poetic shift becomes more apparent. It shows his transition from relatively accessible poetry using colloquial realism into more complex language reminiscent of James Joyce’s wordplay in Finnegans Wake and Gerard Manley Hopkins’ richly descriptive poetry. . . .”
Sonnets can be ordered on the publisher’s page, which offers links to multiple distributors.
Posted in poetry, poetry review
Tagged C. L. Bledsoe, Camille Martin, Cort Bledsoe, Murder Your Darlings, poetry, poetry review, sonnets
Click the image below to enter at Goodreads:
Cheers!
Posted in poetry, poetry press
Tagged Camille Martin, Goodreads, Looms, Shearsman Books
Looms, my fourth book of poetry, is now available for pre-order from your favourite bookstore and online sources.
At the bottom of the Shearsman Books page is a convenient clickable list so you can choose your preferred source and compare prices—you may wish to check for pre-order discounts (The Book Depository has one, last time I checked).
Looms is my second title published by Shearsman Books, and I couldn’t be happier with the way it came out. The cover features one of my collages, Blind Man’s Bluff, and the publisher, Tony Frazer, did a beautiful job (as usual) designing and producing the book.
Publisher’s description of Looms:
The title of Looms signifies the weaving tool as well as the shadowing appearance of something. These “woven tales” were inspired by Barbara Guest’s statement that a tale “doesn’t tell the truth about itself; it tells us what it dreams about.” The strands of their surreal allegories converse, one idea giving rise to another, and the paths of their dialogue become the fabric of the narrative. In a second meaning, something that looms remains in a state of imminent arrival. Such are these tales, like parables with infinitely deferred lessons.
Posted in poetry, poetry press
Tagged Camille Martin, Looms, poetry, Shearsman Books, Tony Frazer
Rogue Embryo
Rogue Embryo 