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The Ottawa City Project

By rob mclennan

Reviewed by Carmelo Militano

Rob Mclennan is an accomplished poet, having published twelve-trade poetry books in Canada and England previous to this collection aside from his appointment as writer-in- residence at the University of Alberta for the 2007-8 academic year. I came to mclennan (his spelling) neutral; this is my first contact with his work. His latest work, as the title suggests, is to poetically write about the city of Ottawa. He does this by defining and dividing his poetic gesture into several parts, though he always maintains a steady eye on his subject, the city of Ottawa.

Part one is under the heading of "Ottawa poems (blue notes)."
In this section we get a series of poetic snapshots, or Polaroids of Ottawa. The poems here deal with the city's history while others focus on the present, as he is after all a full time resident and not a tourist. Clearly, mclennan is on intimate terms with the city. He knows and describes the streets, the seasons and how they colour his experience of the city: "in winter / when dark so long / at night, so cold held tight / her seminal body." The 'her' is the city of Ottawa and what comes before this final, lovely image is an imagining about the stones and quarries used to build the parliament buildings.

The idea of the building and creating of Ottawa is linked in part one to the creation of poetic meaning. Frequently, poems and individual lines in the poems are linked to the geography of Ottawa, its past political figures, the construction and change he sees in the city, or his interest and search for a poetic meaning. In short, the writing about Ottawa in the present parallels the historic building of Ottawa and its past political personages: "I am thinking of the dark line / that hangs on the edge, / queen elizabeth drive ... a cadence suggested geographically / from popular burlesque / to question period, / the end of the line, / the rhyme." He knows, however, as a poet that "poetry / & formal history / speaks, but they are / not the same." In other words, poetry and history use a different language to talk about the city, but clearly one informs the other. This duality is also present when it comes to understanding the personas...continue reading

Featured Review

U.S. Sonnets By George Bowering

Reviewed by Alex Boyd

Canadians have an odd relationship to the U.S. We define ourselves against them, first of all. Many of us in urban centres find guns appalling, our history is closer to compromise than conflict, possibly born out of the need to accommodate both French and English, and the same need has introduced a greater love -- at least in theory -- of diversity, and a recognition diversity is a strength, not a weakness. There is a distinct Canadian identity that Canadians...continue reading

Featured Interview

Chris Banks

By Paul Vermeersch

Your second collection of poems, The Cold Panes of Surfaces, is out now. Your first book, Bonfires, won the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award in 2004. Did winning a national award for your first book bolster your artistic confidence while working on your second, or did you find it daunting, as though you had more to live up to than other poets working on a second collection?

I think it certainly gave me a boost of confidence and the permission I needed to do what I wanted to do artistically with the second book. I didn't feel any outside pressure because of winning the CAA award, or feel that I had any expectations to live up to. Winning the award was terrific, and it was good publicity, but it was also an education on how fleeting such praise can be, and how it leaves your writing life virtually...continue reading