Poetry

Humanimus Nominated for Atlantic Book Award

So pleased that my strange little poetic collection, Humanimus, has been shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award! The book was chosen from collections published across Atlantic Canada last year. You can buy a copy of Humanimus from your local bookstore, or from the publisher, Palimpsest Press: https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/humanimus/

The winner will be announced at the Atlantic Book Awards Gala on Thursday May 13th. The online event (http://atlanticbookawards.ca/time-to-celebrate-join-us-for-the-virtual-2021-atlantic-book-awards-gala/) is free to attend. Hope to see you there!

As a follow-up, I’ll be chatting craft with Tammy Armstrong, Afua Cooper, and Anne Simpson on Tuesday May 18th. This event, hosted by Amanda Peters, is also free to attend: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_3aw5zlcFQSGM5QIztGskqQ. Come out, join the chat, get crafty!

Biophilia: Call for Submissions

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Calling all biophiles! I’m pleased to announce a call for submissions of fiction, poetry, and CNF for an upcoming special issue of The Dalhousie Review on the theme of biophilia (love of life). Please share away and consider submitting. Deadline July. Send work to dhuebert@dal.ca. Complete details on submissions here:

Biophilia__Call for Submissions

Full Mondegreens Released!

Happy to report that this flesh-hued beauty is now available from Frog Hollow Press. If you’d like a copy, contact me, co-author Andy Verboom, or Frog Hollow. Or, even better: come out to the official launch, this Tuesday at The Steady in Toronto (1051 Bloor West) at 8 p.m. Andy and myself will be reading, as will poets Carl Watts and Chris Johnson, whose contest-shortlisted chapbooks are also fresh out from Frog Hollow. Full Mondegreens is a formal experiment in the misheard lyric. It was damn hard work to write and I’m thrilled to have this lovely, fleshly book object in my grubby clutches at last.

mondegreens-cover

Poem Shortlisted for Walrus Poetry Prize

What a thrill! My poem, “Colloquium: J.T. Henry and Lady Simcoe on Early Ontario Petrocolonialism”, has been named to the shortlist of the 2016 Walrus Poetry Prize. If you go to The Walrus, you can vote for the reader’s choice award. “Colloquium” is a found erasure dialogue composed using fragments of two public domain texts. The poem arose from my current research into the history of oil in Ontario, research I’m doing for a future fiction project on this fascinating and little-known legacy. (The first commercial oil well in North America was tapped by James Miller Williams in 1858–who knew). I’ve been drunk on oil lately, and I’m happy that dark intoxication has burned into a poem I’m proud of.

Frog Hollow Contest Win!

After unplugging from internet for a 10-day trip to the Sunshine Coast in mid-August, I was thrilled to find out that my poetry chapbook Full Mondegreens–co-authored with the endlessly talented Andy Verboom–won first prize in Frog Hollow Press’s chapbook contest. This chapbook is my most formally ambitious poetic endeavour, and I have to credit Andy with inventing the “Mondegreen” form and inviting me into his mad scientist poetry lab to experiment with it. A spinoff of homophonic translation, the mondegreen pushes the institution of the misheard lyric (“cross I bear” –> “cross-eyed bear”), translating a poem back into itself through a refracted sound map. That might sound complicated, so here’s an example: “Do not go gentle into that good night” –> “Doom wrought surrender in the catfood fight.”

The chapbook is due out late 2016, and, given the lovely book matter Frog Hollow creates, I’m super excited to get my hands on it.

The Porn We Watched

I’m writing full of youthful bliss because my poem, “The Porn We Watched,” just came out in Poetry is Dead 01.06., a special issue on the theme of youth culture. It’s nice to trick people into thinking I’m young when I actually just turned 30. The cover is a kind of Nintendo-palate Eden and the issue as a whole is a total mindfuddle in the best possible way. I’m especially happy because this is the last poem from my forthcoming book of poetry, We Are No Longer The Smart Kids In Class, to be published in a journal. A great porny last hoorah.

Looking Back at April / Poetry Poetry Poetry

Dear Cherished Few Readers,

It was a great month for poetry, and a great month for David Huebert the writer. I’ve recently gotten involved in two new poetry workshops, and have become something of a regular at London Poetry Open Mic Night (http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com), where I recently had the pleasure of hearing super-talented London poet Laurie D Graham. This open mic night really is one of the best around. Anyway, all these poetry events have meant that I’ve been crafting lots of my own poetry lately and all that hard work has translated into publications. I’m happy to say that my poem, “The Call,” was published in CV2’s recent poetry only issue (37.4). The poem is a stylistic departure for me, so the affirmation means a lot. The issue–it is CV2–contains much deeply admirable verse. Among my favourite pieces: Sally Ito’s “Eye-Saddle,” Stephanie Bolster’s “Ornamental,” and Ricardo Sternberg’s “Mother-in-law.” More recently, I’ve had two poems from We Are No Longer The Smart Kids In Class appear in May’s issue of the Literary Review of Canada (23.4). This is also a thrill. It’s the second time I’ve published in the LRC and I’m deeply grateful to the staff and the poetry editor, Moira MacDougall, for the exposure. The past month or so has been a whirlwind of poetry, which has me excited and antsy for the launch of my first collection of poems in fall 2015. More on that soon!