Wild Horses is rob mclennan’s 21st book of poetry, written while the incredibly prolific Ottawa author spent 2007 as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. Mclennan is a poet of place, always finding his voice out of the material of his surroundings, the continuity of its existence through history. “It’s an Edmonton book,” he says. READ MORE
Dry paper Nothing beats a book in autumn Missing Persons by Rob McLennan (Mercury Press) Autumn is a season that more than any other seems devoted to reading. The crispness of leaves reminds you of the firm dryness of paper, the smell of a book lingers sometimes in your memory like that of firewood. Fortunately,…
Some of Decalogue 2’s authors break wood effortlessly, others use brute force I have no idea what good writing is. But in my limited experience, I usually liken it in a very particular way to martial arts. In the correlation of joints, sinews and mind there are a thousand different ways to throw a punch.…
Rob McLennan and Nicholas Lea lead Ottawa’s literary rise As an amateur cynic, I always hesitate to trumpet things. So often they arc up like a rocket and plunge elliptically, falling below my expectations. This is almost certainly due to some immense and unforeseen flaw in my own makeup. My point: Whenever I witness something…