three zine reviews

dig.12
Wayward Armadillo Press
Toronto ON
waywardarmadillo.blogspot.com

It seems like it's been a long, long time . . . "a year," wrote Jennifer LoveGrove, busy with her soapmaking enterprise, hockey playing, and other activities . . . since she produced a new issue of dig. so this one is great to see. The issue, with its individually collaged covers, contains a collection of little treasures by Zoe Whitetall, Hugh Thomas, Alexandra Leggat, Jim Johnstone, Ray Hsu, Jason Heroux, Salvatore Difalco, Gary Barwin, and Sandra Alland. There are rings of connectedness between some of the writers through anothologies and chapbook publishers so reading this feels like you've decided to sit in on a group of friends: a poem for bp without saying so, several short stories and prose poems, a writer interviewing writer. Great pieces by Hugh Thomas and Ray Hsu.


Unquiet Desperation
June 2007, volume 1, issue 14
ISSN 1752-9247
myspace.com/unquietdesperation
www.facebook/com/profile.php?id=659690389
editor@unquietdesperation.co.uk
Editor: Mike Drabble
Co-editor: Steven Logg

First time I've see this publication. It was dispersed, distributed free, at span-o's ottawa small press book fair–spring edition in June by contributor-to-this-issue Warren Dean Fulton, of Pooka Press, back in Ottawa from Vancouver for a visit, the book fair, and to shoot a rogue mime short movie.

This issue of Unquiet Desperation is a compact 12-pages, including cover. Many pages are two-column to fit in more poems, a curiously segment artwork, a few prose or prosepoem pieces, and an editorial-rant-manifesto-statement to position the unsettled unquiet . . . Many pieces of articulate poetic anarchy, of narrators living existentialist lives, of natural rebelliousness in the face of corporate- personal- and interpersonal-exploitation, and so many fukshit governments' actions and inactions in the wrong places at the wrogtimes for the wrong reasons . . . What's an artist to do? Some wrote poems that were then published in this great, edgy zine.


Creativity's Canvas, Premier Issue, July '07
Open Door Press
95 Laura Lane
Moncton NB E1E 3S9
creativityscanvas@hotmail.com

A surprise in my mailbox was this new publication launched in early July. It's is a project of Eric Miklos and Abby Collette and its intent is to be a quarterly of the work of local and regional independent writers. Not surprisingly this first issue features writings by its organizers. A collection of poetry and short fiction, this issue has 32 pages laser printed with a cloth tape reinforced cover spine and a curiously woven twine binding. One interesting feature is the commencement of a "Continuing Story" wherein writers are encouraged to write the installment to be published in the next issue (and so on . . .) One thing that shocked me was the $40 annual subscription rate.

---

shirt: Quod nos non necat, etiam maxime laedit
loc: Siestanoloco
temp: 28 C feeling like 34
sound: NOFX Wolves on Wolves' Clothing