Nancy's Poetry Book

How do you get a copy of Nancy Ellen McLennan's book of poems?

 Email the publisher - bphpublishing@gmail.com - to request one and they will help you to organize your purchase.  They will need your mailing address.

How do you pay for the book?

$15 - hand delivered in Western Manitoba 

$17.50 - by Canada Post, within Canada 

$20 - by regular mail, world-wide CAD

 _______________________________________________________________

 e-transfer to 

bphpublishing@gmail.com

or 

by paypal to nellymills

https://www.paypal.com/ca/home

or

by mail to

bphPublishing Box 1671 Minnedosa MB Cda R0J 1E0

Delivery options
Hand Delivery $15.00 Within Canada $17.50 Outside Canada $20.00 CAD

Intonation in the Poems

 Many of the  poems in Finding Strength, a collection of turn-of-the-century poems, were heard and spilled from the magical and invisible inner mind audio player onto the page or keyboard.  A tone of voice comes with intensity, or in a soothing murmur. 

This subset of poems, as listed in the afterward of the book, have a particular intonation and have been read here, in spoken word files.

Punch Out the Boys

Stripping Dignity

Depths to Depths

Deliver Me

Just a Little Bad

The Manly Thrill

 

Spoken Word for Rhythm

This subset Finding Strength - a collection of turn-of-the-century poems, represents poems that have inescapable rhythm.  Sometimes there is rhyme, but the rhythm is front and centre.

In the afterward of my book of poems, I listed seven that I felt came to me with a rhythm.  I have read them onto audio files so you can listen to them, and get a sense of how I felt the rhythm when they were written.

Away Away

 Certain Sense of Love

Deny Spell Cast

Pretense

The Possibilities

The Impossibility

Fond Farewell at Atlantic Dawn 

 

 

Turn-of-the-century Poetry - ePub file

 I have finally created a book of my poems.

A hard copy will be available within a few weeks, but in the mean time, people who enjoy e-readers can find my collection here:  Finding Strength - A collection of turn-of-the-century poems.

The link is at Open Library.  I uploaded the downloadable ePub file which works for any e-reader apps on phones, kindles, kobos, pc's etc.  Open Library automatically offers other version, all derived from the original file I uploaded.  Some of them are pretty clunky.  Use the e-pub.  Hard copy will be out before March 1.

Who I Am

Nestling and rejigging is a documented mental health tool.  My poems sit safely in the database but also there are a few big binders in hard copy.  This week I found a craft envelope with no label and spilled out a collection of 45 poems, one per page, that had been submitted to a literary critic and on the front poem was scrawled in black ink - "nancy - these are great poems  enuff to be publishable (undecipherable word), signature, exclamation point".  That was in 2009.  Today I went through the set,  one by one and agree.  I didn't get bored going through them, but then reading your own poems is like mirror gawking and reliving.  I don't spend a lot of time back there - the poems are what save me from reliving my choices over and over.  I am a forward living person.  That said, here is one that rather punctuates that thought.  It isn't the greatest of the batch - but not the oddest either.  Working title of the collection is "Finding Strength in Poetry", because after reading these 45, I feel super empowered!  Enjoy this one.  I will post a few more as I move through this .pdf to vanity press process.  I have a feeling it will be interactive multi-media, because I like that stuff too.  Today is a good day.

The Game

During the first week of isolation I realized that my main social interaction had been running errands.  So, I decided to set goals and get at some of the projects.  That's not really happening either.  I finally was hit by a poem.  I almost had a Cohen moment in my hopes that this sense of change can open up some light on the days to come.  In the mean time, time.

Found a Rogue PNG

Writing is a long unending spiral and poems pop out at me, unexpectedly, often to be set aside and usually lost.  This one arose sometime in 2011.  As I was recovering another project from a vast yet amazingly safe archive on a dusty 12 year old PC, I found another poem I had forgotten.
Thoughts disappear.  Thoughts captured can sometimes be poems.
In my ongoing theme of metaPoetry, another for that kit - writing about writing about writers - Dale and Di.

It is a bit depressing, but writers will get it.  We cannot help but spill words through our forearms to paper or keyboard, and like the frustrated water colour maker or styrofoam snowman agent, we keep spilling this so-called art until we have a hoard.

But I love finding the odd wee treasure, long forgottens, that hit home my love of word art.

~~n  (p.s.  I found it as a .png ffs!  Have no idea where the text version went. haha)

Business

Candles are for weekends

The evenings then are special

Video is for nights before sleep-ins

And sometimes time for lemon cake

Listen to the rain while you can

Before the storm windows pin down

Leave the dried flowers on the stem

And in two hundred days

Colour

Lights off so you can walk in secret

Room to room

Windows open to the moon

Deafen to the squeaks of the steno chair

The rattle of the corning

When the fridge cuts in

And thankfully, no drips

When an enthusiastic puppy

Sprints

In small space

Rugs slide, and we laugh together.

Equinox 23/09/19

nem

Your Fenders

Oh! The times we witness!  I feel joy when I come across a like-minded soul.  Our mutual silence stems from fear, from embarrassment, from reluctance to threaten our social equity.  These are really weak reasons, but we harbour them. Nurture your courage and your belief in humanity.

Green Day

It is doubtful that October 17 will become a national holiday, but there is no doubt that it will be marked as a special day for many years to come.  People no longer have to live two lives, the secret love and sharing of social pot, and the pretentious silence of denial.  Now cannabis users and non users can walk openly, side by side.  And yes, just as there are those that have disdain for sugar, or meat, or coffee, or alcohol, or fossil fuels, there will always be some who turn up their nose and tell their children to run away.  But mostly, now the police don't have to hassle non-violent folks for no good reason.  Congratulations to us.  Happy Green Day.  #oct17 #OhCanada #GreenDay  (click on the image to better-read the poem).  Share the love.

Away Away

It seems that April has become poetry month!  Whew Knew?  I shared this one on my FB feed, and said there, "I have always liked this one, from before the turn of the century.  It gallops."  And that is what I like most about it, it is an active poem, especially if read aloud.  I still feel the intensity, the speed and purpose of the message.

WBY in the Faery Dust

This morning, a BBC Radio 4 post acknowledging the passing of William Butler Yeats 78 years ago today, came across my twitter feed.

It reminded me of my reaction to his death.  No.  I do not actually remember it, but back in the early oughts,  I read W.B.Yeats: A Life by biographer, Stephen Coote.  Upon closing, after the final pages, I sat in my chilly Duck Mountain cabin, crying liberally. tears and sobs alike.  Of course, I knew this story would have death the end, but The Life absolutely grabbed me with its imperfection.

As a poet, Yeats' life made sense to me, and Coote's biography, which minimized the literary and emphasized day-to-day activity, grounded me as a poet.  His life, somehow, put mine into context.

So here is my poem to Yeats. I wondered, as I glanced back the sixteen years, if maybe it had been a poem to Coote, but no, it was indeed for William's life. (Click on the poem to get full size.)

As an aside, Stephen Coote, though a prolific biographer is an enigma.  He has no wiki profile. There are no photos of him, through any newspapers in the ethernet.  This small search elevated my respect for him.  I would love to hear him speak.  I will chose another of his biographies.

Goddess Queen Siracusa

My poems snap me out of it.  A piece of scrap paper, flipped over in a tidying whim, and here it is.  One of my favourites.  Time to post one.  So many.  So many.

copyright - creativeCommons - contact nancyellenmclennan@gmail for permissions - thanks.

Like Annie Sez

Anticipation

It is not unusual for me to discover something I have written, weeks, months, or even years after the words originally spilled from my right arm or my fingertips.  If it was hand written, it might be in a notebook, or on a piece of bond paper, or even a serviette.  If I wrote it on the keyboard, I usually find it the day I do some file management and back up work.  And that was today.  I wrote this on my birthday.  It was a long anticipated birthday and slid past with very little hoopla.  I like it.  Today, I gave it the title.

I have a thousand poems.  Some day I will make a book.

  ~~nancy

(click on the image to more easily read the poem)

Metapoetry Series #7 - The Imperfect Mind

Just click on the image of the poems to read them.

Thinking generates lists. We keep them in our heads. Or, we write them on random chits of paper, on bargain store whiteboards with quaint floral decals, in notebooks or month-at-a-glance agendas. Lists. Our mind is insecure without them. Sometimes, because I'm lazy, a list becomes a poem. It is to the poem what a pun is to the joke, or worse.

And thinking is so damned tenuous. It's on the tip of my tongue. What was that we were talking about? (shhhh. I can't introduce you because I forget his name.) Poems, like snow, evaporate or sublimate, into nothingness. What was clear and there in a flash is gone.

So that is why, to me, they are all precious.

Metapoetry #6 - Accounting

Just click on the image to read the poem.

I gave this poem its database entry count as part of its title. I seemed to be aware not only of each poem but of the body of poetry that has exited me. In 1998 I sent all of my hand-written and typed chits of paper, housing poems from the previous couple of decades into an msAccess database, and there they now sit. Everything is cozy and together there: the stupid poems and the poignant ones; the compulsive lists of thoughts and the prose that flows. My stories are there too.

So, I will dedicate this week's episiode to Sara Jeffery. I am not certain who it was listening to my woe-be-gone tales through the mirror when I wrote my 800th, but Sara will know what I mean, as will any of the queens of the shears.

Why do I keep track? Is time beneath it all?

Metapoetry #5 - The Shape of It

Just click on the image to read the poems.


The graphic novel is a now kind of medium, maturing from the comic and bringing visuals into adult literature. A graphic poem can also experiment with visual elements. Font art, like the cut-and-paste kidnapping note from magazine clippings, can make an interesting contribution to what a poem is saying. Poems and images often go hand in hand, but usually in post production, not so often during the inceptive creative process.

I find the physical shape of the poem, on the page, to be an interesting poetic element. And the shapes of the letters themselves can contribute a visual element to a poem.

In this collection, there were two, specific pieces, that took a physical shape on the page during the writing process. Possibly, it was the shape of the page that invited a long and winding graphic output, but the shape also gives a repetitive redundancy ;) that was part of the mindset. The third poem presented here, Away Away, is a galloping poem, more so than a graphic one, but I've always thought of it as a diminishing triangle on the page.

Metapoetry #4 - Silly Sounds

Just click on the image to read the poems.

Sometimes a rhyming poem can be downright embarrassing. I think it is the rhythm of the heartbeat, driving for congruence, that makes us look for meter and rhyme when suddenly we find a poem spilling forth from the pen. And yes, because of this, sometimes it can be just plain silliness. Just as the tongue plays to wrap itself around a twister, so the poem can twist and contort to make the sound come forth, just so. We know about alliteration and onomatopoeia - and my point is that these are really seldom conscious with this poet. I seem to hear my poems unfold from within my mind. And sometimes, not every time, the silliness of the sound just takes over! The message, and even the thought, actually becomes secondary.

So don't take these too seriously. Poems work best read aloud, but nobody wants to listen to poems while trying to gulp down some Grisham or Brown on the eight fifteen into the city. So, mouthe the poems. You'll look wierd, but you'll get to hear the silly little sounds that way.

Metapoetry #3 - The Where

Just click on the image to read the poems.

More than once, the paper, the page, has been the inspiration for the poem. It was there in front of my eyes and begged the ink, sucked the thought from my brain.

These four poems have that in common. All confess a consciousness of the paper housing the words. Twice, a blank page that otherwise would have gone to waste in my tiny congested notebook, welcomed a neatly written poem to fill the page just so.

In my experience, the shape of the paper also can provide some stimulus for a poem. I have some, written horizontally on a long narrow notepad and others written vertically. Some require staggered indentation to keep the flow going before the next line can begin, and others welcomed the span of a nice wide page, giving freedom to the notions that came from nowhere.

There is no link between the themes of these little poems, other than the fact that they all knew about the page where they were born.