It’s been a while since our last newsletter, and a lot has happened during Gaspereau’s first summer under the Sackville sun.
Natalie Rice’s Nightjar, was a finalist for the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award
Sue Goyette’s Future Howl, won the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award
Ian LeTourneau’s Metadata from a Changing Climate, won The Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize
Bren Simmers’ The Work, won a PEI Book Award (for Poetry)
Wren Ashenhurst reviewed Sue Goyette’s Future Howl, for The Woodlot
rob mclennan reviewed Jamella Hagen’s Perfect Weather, for The Woodlot
Jeff Dupuis reviewed Ian Roy’s Astrid, Aghast, for The Miramichi Reader
Catherine Owen reviewed Marco Melfi’s Routine Maintenance, for Alberta Views
Brilliant Women Inc reviewed Tonya Lailey’s Farm: Lot 23
rob mclennan reviewed Leesa Dean’s Interstitial, on his blog
rob mclennan also reviewed Geordie Miller’s Love Poems for Landlords, on his blog, along with Sherry Coffey’s Foraging, the latest contest winner from our friends at High Marsh Press.
Finally, congratulations is due to Bren Simmers for being chosen as P.E.I.’s 9th Poet Laureate!
Books start to stack up in the shop. Here they are, in the hundreds.
Before Nolan’s The Odyssey shuddered sound-systems and bladders around the world, Sue Goyette’s Penelope, In First Person hit the Sandglass Theatre, a puppetry theatre founded in Munich and based in Vermont. One review by Corinna May reads: “A brilliant, heart/filling, exhilarating evening !!!!! Such artistry, whimsy, vulnerability, love, Keely is BRILLIANCE, Eric’s direction exquisite, Sue Goyette’s writing thrilling, the design elements simple, eloquent. See it, if you possibly can. ❤️✨❤️✨❤️✨❤️”
Two Tuesdays ago, Gaspereau poet George Elliott Clarke shook the stage performing a poem with Aquakultre at the Polaris music awards, live at Massey Hall.
Meanwhile, Clare Goulet has been causing a stir across the pond with Graphis scripta / writing lichen serving as a core text for a public lecture by the U. of Cambridge CCRASH/Hughes Hall Centre for Climate Engagement in London, and it’s poems appearing as a part of Plastic Art Performance Collective’s SymBio-bodies: cryptograms event in Brussels.
Magali cleaning ink off the Vandercook, Emma inspecting a printing plate, and the CBC filming Keagan's demonstration of the Auto-Minabinda
It’s time we introduced some of the characters we’ve got roaming around the press these days:
Emma Neilson joined us this September as our student intern.
Freddy Hyun Smith. That’s me, sitting at Gaspereau’s Sappyfest Zine Fair table.
Magali Charron, the Production Assistant, seen here matching a bundle of chapbooks in the bundler.
And finally, Keagan Hawthorne. Here he is standing in some old building.
Well, that’s all for now.
—Freddy Hyun Smith, your intrepid Publishing Assistant
This post first appeared in our Substack newsletter.
