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Poetry and poetry workshops. Based in Tio'htiá:ke/Montreal.

cover / first chapbook / for whatever you keep folded / sprung from recovery, longing, memory, elsewheres / words that once lived loose / notebook in hand / me, still becoming / mtl / launch day / thank you @cactuspresspoetry

$August 12: I’ve had the pleasure of reading the poems in Ockert Greeff’s chapbook A Mass Choir of Little Things (Vallum Poetry Prize 2024) in more than one incarnation, and the poems continue to surprise me by subtle sounds and new colors as I read from different angles! The language is careful, gentle even, when building images of the aging body “[w]ith a thick, thick nail that keeps on growing” and lands that burn with bright sand and rise with flood or “the dark mass that is taking us all.” The poems describe their scenes softly at the same time as a strongly gesticulating heartbeat moves them from beneath, not only inspired by the drumming of their creator, but firing the creation. The poems hold carefully in cupped hands a beloved moment, balancing a delicate memory, as the same hands crash the scene and just as carefully shatter it into shards—refracting the million motions and emotions that gather to build that life, that meaning. For example, “Stretched Out” begins with “…sounds outside/ Between laughing and crying” and builds the sound that “could be kids/ Playing, teasing, kidding” as the speaker wakes, stretching out over a blanket, a soft comfort he recalls upon seeing the kids, now just “dark little pelts/ Black curls glistening/ Stretched out over wooden boxes.” We see them with the child speaker, “looking down” on us like the little “Jesus in my picture Bible.” The musical language slows the life, as in the desert lands of the poet’s memory. Many of these poems take place literally in the desert, the land of the poet’s early life, the land of his memories, especially of the mother and father. Some poems document the scenes of the aged parents’ forgetting from angle after angle, and the poems build this new artifact from excavating the layers forgotten. There is beauty in the simplicity of language that enhances even as it belies the complexities of living in these poems. Since the publisher explicitly asks readers not to reproduce any pages, I will show just a picture of the cover so you can find A Mass Choir of Little Things to read. #sealychallenge #ockertgreeff #chapbook$

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A poem from Karen Solie's The Caiplie Caves (2010): "A Miscalculation"

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Feeling so grateful that @vallummag chose my lil' love poem, "We Don't Say I Love You Anymore," for their 2025 digital summer series "Poems From the Crowd." Added bonus? They released a limited number of print copies! Check out their website to read more!

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Vallum Magazine

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