Mostly positive for the city’s new literary quarterly
As a particle floating at the edges of Ottawa’s literary bloodstream, I’ve been extremely pleased to see our fair city blossom in letters lately. Along with Paul Glennon’s recent fame, the inception of Chaudiere Books and the winter birth of The Puritan comes the city’s latest addition: Ottawa Arts Review.
The aftermath of my last review (“The Puritan,” XPress, February 22) proved to be an exercise in hardening myself against tiresome backlash – a hazard common to reviewing in general, but especially of anything local. Unfortunately I find myself simmering in the stewpot again with Ottawa Arts Review, a rebirth of the Ottawa University undergraduate English journal Heat.
Initially, what struck me the most about the Ottawa Arts Review was its production quality: Its 61 pages, containing submissions from Ottawa-based artists (and a couple of ex-municipals), are bound inside glossy covers. The other striking thing about Ottawa Arts Review is that it represents a much more collaborative effort, with a larger staff than you usually see with amateur journals.
Of course, the added value and care comes at an added price. While the Ottawa Arts Review is free to students (an extremely laudable and necessary thing), $10 (eight by mail order) for everyone else seems fairly steep, especially considering that the Ottawa Arts Review’s price range puts it broadly in the same realm as more established publications like Grain, Prism, Descant etc.
As an outlet for new and unpublished work, the Ottawa Arts Review occasionally suffers from clumsy writing. The elegance that experience brings to writing is sometimes lacking, and often the juices of youth run too hot and silly when a poem turns to intellectual conceits.
Still, the fundamental condition of the Ottawa Arts Review is of quality. As a mixed journal, it heavily favours poetry submissions but leaves room for strong prose. A handful of writers in particular grabbed my attention: Melissa Upfold, who writes poetry as a delicate chime that includes a lacy sadness that stays with you until the end, and Ranylt Richards and Octavio Quintanilla, who both manage prose that echoes the psychologically secretive and domestic, and the challenging and erotic themes (respectively) prevalent in Canadian literature (although this may be a problem, depending on what your opinion is of Canadian literature). Even Ottawa’s Rob McLennan adds his polished and powerful voice to the crowd.
As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – March 22, 2007
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/books/books.aspx?iIDArticle=11663
