Spring News

Termpapers are nearing completion, spring book launches are taking place across the city, and patios are setting up, which also means that Echolocation’s volunteer editorial board can at last dive into the batch of submissions in earnest. We’ve made a good dent and read 25% of the submissions so far, so if you’ve submitted for Issue 12 you should expect to hear our decision by early summer.

This blog has been neglected as thesis-es have been handed in and defended, but now that the long, close winter of squirreling away in our graduate carrels is over, here’s what you can expect from Echolocation these coming weeks:

• Announcement of our 2012 Poetry Contest winner and finalists! Three judges (one from across the country), and Echolocation’s editors have weighed in and we have a winner and five finalists chosen. We’re just waiting for confirmation from the printers before it’s announced. The winning poem is an excellent interpretation of our revisions/revisiting theme. Keep checking to read the judges’ comments, and an interview with the winning poet.
• Our editorial board chime in with insightful comments and guidelines about what they are looking for in a publishable submissions, what is the “deal breaker” for each of them, and what they think Echolocation’s next issue is going to be like. Often, you send out a submission to a group of anonymous editors with very little inkling of what they are looking for, what their preferences and prejudices are– here’s your chance to get a glimpse!
• We’re working on joining the 21st century and getting online sales up through Paypal. Soon you’ll be able to order issues online, pre-order issue 12, pre-order the 2012 Poetry Contest broadsheet and chapbook at a lower price, and even donate your hard-earned cash to ensure that we can keep publishing the freshest emerging and established writing.
• Finally, more pithy reviews and posts are currently in the works, including what we hope will be interviews with two young and flashingly talented poets both with recent books out… you’ll have to keep checking to find out which ones.

Spring’s turning to be just as busy a season as the previous months! Thanks for reading!

2012 Poetry Contest

photo credit: Jason Dewinetz

Ever since first seeing the beautiful broadsheets produced by Greenboathouse press, this is a project I’ve long wanted to do for Echolocation. I have a fascination with old letterpresses and lithographic processes, and I hope someday to be able to learn how to set type and print chapbooks. After a visit to the Massey College’s print shop for a demonstration during a required bibliography course, I heard master printer Brian Maloney mention how much he wished that the nineteenth-century handpresses were used more often for University of Toronto student projects. This got the cogs in my brain rotating, but at the time I didn’t have an editorial role with Echolocation, and my own coursework kept me too busy to take on this extracurricular project, as fun as I sounded. I could almost envision the broadsheet in my mind— perhaps a coloured ink for the title and edition marks, black for the poem’s text, a little woodcut image, on a sheet of about poster-size.

At the beginning of this fall, I pestered Elisa, a very busy graduate student in the Book History and Print Culture Collaborative Program, about the feasibility of printing a broadside with Massey College’s facilities. At last, after launching Issue #11, opening submissions, I could turn my attention to this project. In the past, Echolocation published two issues of year, but scaled it back to a single issue in order to cut costs. This has meant that other than our fall issue launch, there is no other activity to keep our small audience aware of our presence. A chapbook, poster, or broadsheet would be the ideal and affordable thing to produce in the spring months. After hearing from Elisa that Brian was willing, I inundated her with more questions about costs, timing, design, all those logistical issues that would help me and the staff to plan this project.

So I’m very excited to announce that Echolocation invites entries to its 2012 Poetry Contest on the theme of REVISIONS/REVISITING. This is a spin on our magazine name, which implies the notion of echoing, spelling out one’s location, and locating oneself or others by listening to the deeps. The theme of revising another poet’s work, of revisiting an idea, place, or homeland is one that riffs on those notions.

The winner, in lieu of a cash-prize, will have 50 copies of a limited edition letterpress broadsheet printed of his or her poem, and receive 5 copies. The remainder will be sold to support future Echolocation endeavors, for instance, funding the printing of the 5 finalists in a chapbook. For now, though, these finalists will have their work included in a digital e-chapbook. The winner and finalists will be invited to read during the broadsheet launch in May 2012. The very affordable entry fee of $12 includes a copy of the current issue. Up to two poems can be entered with a single entry fee, at a maximum of 50 lines each. The submission guidelines are below, and all submissions must go through our submissions manager.

Good luck!

2012 Poetry Contest Submission Guidelines

Launch Report: T-minus Ten Weeks Ago

Readers from L-R: Anna Veprinska, Laboni Islam, Suzannah Showler, Andy Vatiliotou, and Daniel Perry. Photo credit: Nora Parker

Comrades and fellow citizens of Internetland, harken unto me! Issue 11 of the Fair Mag Echolocation was successful launched on Tuesday, November 29. If you were there: congratulations, thanks for coming, I hope you had some fun! Maybe you bought a copy? If you weren’t there: I’ll do my best to tell you what you missed. Don’t be sad, just come to our next event.

Our gracious host was The Ossington (#61 guess what street, Toronto). I stress ‘gracious,’ ’cause, through some scheduling snafus and communication breakdowns, our previous venue backed out on us just 36 hours before launch. Maximum yikes! Luckily, The Ossington was able and willing to give our launch a home, and we soldiered on.

You’d think a last-minute venue change on a rainy late-November night would mean a poor turnout. That thought is incorrect. We packed The Ossington’s with friends, supporters, acquaintances, and people who like their literature eclectic and entertaining.

So, like a good knife slicing a tomato in midair, LAUNCH WAS GO:

Justifying my choice of simile

Michael Collins emcee’d. Contributors Suzannah Showler, Aerin Fogel, Laboni Islam, Andy Vatiliotou, Daniel Perry and Anna Veprinska read, whirling us through space and time like some magnificent Reading Rainbow spin-off for grown-ups. Naturally, people applauded. Intrigued? They’re all contained within the pages of Echolocation 11, pictured above.

Reader Aerin Fogel, photo credit: Nora Parker

Door prizes, generously donated by Sam James Coffee Bar, Parmenar Café, Descant Magazine and Book City in the annex, were door’d. Do people who like literary journals also enjoy coffee? Probably.

Incoming Editor-in-Chief and Phoebe Wang thanked Outgoing Editor-in-Chief Annie Russell in absentia (for the very good but also sad reason that she lives in Oregon now) and outgoing Design-Layout-Webperson-General-Doer-Of-Things Rebecca Niles not in absentia. Volunteers were thanked all around, because volunteers make us go and there ain’t none of us making any money off this. More beer was beered and the night came to a cheerful, energetic close.

Merci, The Ossington! Merci, our readers! Merci, our volunteers! Merci, merci, merci!

Bill Howell

If you are wishing you were elsewhere this Christmas, Bill Howell’s poignant poem should help you to escape in your thoughts at least. Happy holidays from all of us at Echolocation and thank you for following our fledgling blogging efforts.

Bill Howell has five poetry collections, including Porcupine Archery (Insomniac Press, 2009). He was a network producer director with CBC Radio Drama for almost three decades, and still lives in Toronto. Recent work: Antigonish Review, ARC, Fiddlehead, Grain, Nashwaak Review, New York Quarterly, Nthposition, Toronto Quarterly, and The White Collar Anthology (Black Moss Press). Further information can be found at the Tree Reading Series.

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Christmas in Bolivia

I never go out on the marsh anymore.
Doubt I could name most of the birds, if I saw any.
And none of this takes season, weather or foliage
into consideration. Spent the best part of yesterday afternoon
hacking the tops and sides off the cedar hedge out front.
Lots of incidental sparrow dismay. But now nobody
will get soaked shortcutting to the recycling bins.

Molly Lynch

Here is another excerpt from Issue 11 to whet your appetite, from Molly Lynch. Issue 11 would make a wonderful stocking stuffer, wouldn’t it? Visit us at the Small Press of Toronto Winter Fair to pick up your copy.

Molly Lynch writes fiction and poetry. She studied English and Religion at Concordia University and is now finishing her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. She has recently finished her first novel.

* * *

from “Homage to Dinosaurs: A bedtime story for late children”

Olga had frequented the Library of domed ceilings since she was a child. She had spent hours studying the mysterious figures and rows that marked up book pages with the faith that one day the mystery of the imprints would be unveiled to her. One day she became desperate, determined, violent. She wrestled with it on the floor, sweating and gasping and straining with her eyes, until something broke. Floating figures coalesced and she read her first line of language: progress and barbarism are bound together and yet history continues despite all destruction…