Winner of the 2016 bpNichol Chapbook Award
ISBN 978-1-926889-24-5
4.5×7, 48pp, /100, $10.00
Apt. 9 Press is now sold out of Small Waterways. You can read most of the poems in the book in Chewing Water from Mansfield Press.
Small Waterways is Nelson Ball’s second chapbook with Apt. 9 Press, following Minutiae (2014). It shares many of the same concerns as that book (aging, perception, growth) and continues exploring and extending Ball’s characteristic minimalism. Marked by his humour, formal playfulness, and ever-sharpening attention to detail, Small Waterways will feel immediately familiar but also quietly and insistently challenging to longtime readers of Ball’s work. Small Waterways is a necessary companion to Minutiae, and a vital book for Ball’s fans.
Ball’s detailed notes to the poems also include a brief interview with filmmaker Catherine Stevenson discussing her remarkable film project Nelson Ball & Barbara Caruso / Home Project / A Photo Documentary (2014).
Poetry (November 2015)
Media:
29 December 2015 | Ryan Pratt: “With each recent title from the prolific, Paris, Ontario based author, we’ve been gifted stunningly clairvoyant poems in Ball’s minimal style. And Small Waterways is perhaps the sharpest, accenting stark vistas with almost imperceptible, existential flourishes that balance his explicit sadness with a renewed acceptance.”
18 November 2015 | Pearl Pirie: “Beautiful encapsulations. Simple but not simplistic. Thought over not to make clever but to make clear as if drawing a line around one awareness. Not around an object or a story or an image but a small eureka, not tied up with a ribbon of form but the size it needs to be.”
17 November 2015 | rob mclennan: “And at thirty pages, Small Waterways reads as a substantial collection (in chapbook terms, at least) of powerful poems, some of which read like sketched out notes, some as deep meditations and others as small thoughts stretched to beyond their outer limits.”
Apt. 9 Press 