I. How I Found Out About Chapbook-World
1. Vallum: Contemporary Poetry
My first experience with chapbooks was Vallum’s annual Chapbook Contest: In April 2017, somewhere in the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal (my memory tells me it was at Drawn & Quarterly), I took in readings by local poets Jason Camlot and Mary di Michele, and Vancouver poet Jami McCarty. Camlot read from his somber, witty Rules for Sadness (2012); di Michele from her haunting Montreal Book of the Dead (2014); and Macarty—the 2017 winner of the Vallum Chapbook Award—from her lush, breathtaking Mind of Spring (2017). After the readings, chapbooks by the featured readers and past winners of the contest were available for purchase. These were small, delicate, pretty books, stapled in the middle—so spare and (seemingly) ephemeral compared to the gorgeously produced issues of Vallum magazine itself (masterfully designed by then managing editor Leigh Kotsilidis).
But the little books stood out. Before 2017, I hadn’t thought much about them as nice objects to hold, as slim volumes to read through in an hour or so… to come back to again and again. This initial experience got me thinking about poetry as a small thing in a big world. Poetry punching above its weight.
