Curated by Canadian writer, editor and publisher rob mclennan, the “spotlight” series appears the first Monday of every month.
STATEMENT
Writing poetry is a lifelong affliction that has made for an interesting adventure. I should have grown out of it and become a plumber with a retirement plan.
three poems from Bad Engine: New & Selected Poems, ed. Stuart Ross (Anvil Press, spring 2017)
the wrestler
the bees consort
on the purple Russian sage
in our garden
this is what passes for action in my life
several trees away, a cardinal’s barking
he’s swearing at a crow
the hum of the city is underneath everything
a siren will wail somewhere nearby
then fade into someone else’s worst day
while I fold laundry
a woman on our street
has three dogs
but walks them
one at a time
she used to be a wrestler
Mexican-style, with the mask and everything
but won’t tell me her story
which is too bad
truth usually kicks the crap out of fiction
talking giraffe
the best jokes, the ones
that make the biggest
impression
always start with
an animal
you didn’t know
could speak
…how to raise a bitter child
it helps
if you start early
with disappointments
be stingy with love
and with food
go hard on anger
teach the hard lesson often
enforce it with
the iron hand of the vengeful
be so caught up in the horrors
and lost in the demons
of your own childhood
that you are incapacitated
always best
to take away hope
at an early age
never give the child
something to look forward to:
forward
is the wrong
direction
Michael Dennis published his first chapbook, quarter on its edge, in 1979. Since then he has published several books and over a dozen chapbooks, his work has appeared in numerous magazine and journals. In April of 2017 Anvil Press will be publishing Bad Engine — New and Selected Poems, edited by Stuart Ross.
Dennis was born in London, Ontario, grew up mostly in Peterborough, Ontario and has resided in Ottawa, Ontario for the last thirty years. He lived in P.E.I. for year in the mid-80s and Czechoslovakia in 1989–90.
For the past three years Dennis has been producing a blog, Today’s book of poetry where he writes about books of poetry he admires. He posts a new blog every two or three days. So far Dennis has written blogs about 509 contemporary books of poetry.
Dennis is semi-retired from a career of varied employment. Dennis has installed public art for the Canada Council Art Bank, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Ottawa Art Gallery and numerous other arts organizations. He ran a small boutique hotel, The Cartier Inn. He drove taxi and trucks, worked in an ice-cream factory, worked on the motor line at Ford in Windsor, Ontario for a couple of years, a copper mine in northern Ontario. Dennis opened his own non-profit English as a second language school in Jablonec nad Nisou, Czechoslovakia and so on. Now he is supported by his wife and lives the life of luxury afforded most poets.
Spotlight #9 : Michael Dennis was originally published in DrunkenBoat on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.