Chapbooks As Living Art: Anstee, Obscura and Barclay • by David Ly • 1

Hamilton Arts & Letters         With Canadian presses increasingly diversifying their publishing mandates when it comes to poetry, I decided to take a look at where the art often mutates and evolves: in chapbooks. Across the country, chapbook outfits have proliferated with distinctive lists, techniques, and styles that help make poetry a living art. Cameron Anstee, editor and publisher of Apt. 9 Press, specializes in handmade chapbooks; Ashley Obscura, editor and publisher of Metatron Press, is part of an evolving trend towards microbooks; and Adèle Barclay, an editor at Rahila’s Ghost Press, creates chapbooks as a response to today’s vexed questions and technologies. Each of these three writers represents a unique facet of contemporary chapbook publishing, and I sat down with them to discuss the foundations of what they do, and where they are heading. David Ly: Cameron, Apt. 9 Press is one of several presses in Canada that publishes handmade chapbooks. Could you speak to some of your forebears, and the legacy of the handmade chapbook in Canada? Cameron Anstee: Canada has a rich tradition of small and micropress publishers doing work by hand, and it is a tradition very much alive today! I think immediately of jwcurry’s constellation of publishing ventures, Puddles of Sky, JackPine Press, Baseline Press, bird, buried press, No press, The Blasted Tree, Simulacrum, Coven, Gap Riot…    [  >>>>>   FORWARD ]   + [Distillate © HA&L David Ly I Cameron Anstee I Ashley Obscura I Adèle Barclay {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]