Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections Glengarry (Talonbooks, April 2011), kate street (Moira, January 2011), 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) – an essay on Phil Hall – (Obvious Epiphanies Press, December 2010) and wild horses (University of Alberta Press, April 2010) and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press, October 2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (ottwater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com), and has edited numerous collections for Insomniac Press, Black Moss Press, Broken Jaw Press and Vehicule Press, and, in June 2010, a special “Canadian issue” of the Swiss online pdf poetry journal Dusie. 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. He is currently working to complete another novel or two, a collection of short stories, and a post-mother creative non-fiction work entitled “The Last Good Year.”
TTQ - What role do you see poetry playing in an increasingly digital world, and do you feel the e-book will ultimately take the place of the printed page?
rob mclennan - Poetry (and literature generally) has already gained much ground thanks to the internet, moving more easily across borders, opening writers up to much larger audiences. Influence need not be geographic, not by a long shot. Some of my first and most immediate readers live overseas; could any of us have really said that a decade ago?
Still, I don’t think the e-book can take the place of the printed page. I mean, how could it? I think there will always be those who prefer the printed page, the physical feel of the book. Authors and publishers and booksellers shouldn’t be threatened by trends, but we should all know how to move with the technology. It’s simply a different way to gain access to material. Weren’t there voices who said a century ago that telephones were the tool of the devil? That people would no longer talk to each other? That we would stop writing letters? Or half a century later, when television programs were supposed to have killed movies? Everything changes, and these are all simply tools in which to receive content; certainly, the content will change alongside the tech, but so too do the readers and content-providers (writers).
I see e-books as something that can only add to an already existing experience.
Alexandria, a quarter mile
1.
depth-rise; used to take the horse,
cutter; town, the village
, slip; a documentary
blink,
white rain a frozen sky, is
gathered dust,
or highway when the dog hit,
bear sparks,
2.
white air is heavy,
great emptiness of slush; sleek
shoulder flow,
3.
the tire tracks a name
small highways memorize,
a marriage,
of buildings,
settlers, long forgot
shadow of a shadow,
how to write in poems when
the stores close?
most folk here
drive an hour, work
the city shore,
barns abandon, de
compose
return to,
4.
small town symmetry,
, silky green
provincial main,
, spring melting snow
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