Ever think about publishing a chapbook? Montreal poet Carolyne Van Der Meer answers common chapbook questions

Carolyne Van Der Meer’s chapbook Birdology is an exploration of loss of memory, of autonomy—and ultimately of the loved ones themselves. Against a backdrop of urban and natural environments filled with everyday birds, she considers how our relationships with our parents evolve as they age, need us more—and eventually leave us. Through a quintet of flash essays and a handful of poems, Van Der Meer moves through what she calls the “spell of grief,” accompanied by flocks of gulls, house sparrows and rock pigeons.

Ever think about publishing a chapbook?

Chapbooks are short collections of poetry that can range from just under 10 pages to just under 50 pages—and we love them! Chapbooks can be a perfect one-sitting poetry immersion.

We are delighted to have Montreal poet Carolyne Van Der Meer join us for an appropriately brief but powerful interview on chapbooks.

Carolyne’s wonderful chapbook, Birdology, will be published in May by Montreal-based micro-press, Cactus Press.

Why publish a chapbook? Why not wait and publish a full book of poetry? 

Publishing a chapbook is a great way to get your stuff out there, especially if you are an emerging poet. And for any poet, it’s a way to experiment with new work without committing to a full collection. The other thing is it’s fast! The lead time for publishing a chapbook can be quite short so you are not waiting a year or three to see your work in print. And finally, you can decide to self-publish a chapbook, which is an inexpensive way of doing all of the above: getting your new, experimental work out there quickly. Nothing says you can’t also be pushing towards publishing a full collection and you are doing this while you wait.

What is one piece of advice you have to poets thinking about publishing a chapbook?

Make sure you do your homework. Have a good look at all the chapbook publishing options in Canada so you can see where your collection fits best. And also, decide whether you actually want a publisher or whether you want to go it alone. There are plenty of reasons for doing one or the other. Just make sure you explore your own goals, desires and expectations before you decide.

What are some of your favourite chapbook presses in Canada?

Of course, I am rather biased about Cactus Press as they have taken me on. But that’s not all there is to it—Cactus has given a home to both emerging and experienced poets—this combined with their beautiful designs has given a real richness to the Montreal poetry scene. 

But other Canadian chapbook publishers I like are Raven Chapbooks (imprint of Rainbow Publishers) on Salt Spring Island in BC; Agatha Press in Edmonton; Anstruther Press in Toronto; Gasperau Press in Kentville, NS; Turret House Press in Montreal; and Baseline Press in London. All these publishers produce original concepts on beautiful paper—and some are hand-sewn. Stunning to hold—and behold.

Birdology II: Excerpt from Birdology by Carolyne Van Der Meer

Birdology II 

On our way to run errands, we passed a parked car and heard 
splashing. A look down revealed a host of house sparrows 
bathing themselves in a convenient puddle—an unexpected 
beginning to a warm fall morning. 

Sometimes we don’t know what awaits us. How suddenly, on a 
random day of puddle splashing, there is also a feeling of 
bereftness that cannot be contained. A highway pile-up of grief. 
When I woke up one morning to find the family dog—my dog—
had been given to a farmer, no goodbyes. The young man who 
got electrocuted in our backyard after his hedge cutters hit the 
arc of a high-voltage line. My father’s skeletal face as he moved 
towards death, unconscious in a palliative ward. How my mother
-in-law lost her speech after dementia took its final hold. And 
now, how my father-in-law is a prisoner in his hospital bed, 
awaiting diagnosis as death’s beacon is bright. And as my 
mother gives in and says a care home is the only next step—a 
place of antiseptic loneliness, its dotted line the one I sign on. 

I am overcome by the anchor of loss, rooted somewhere in my 
pelvis, my body wracked with a melancholy for what I cannot 
change, for what is normal, for what is the cycle of life. I am not 
unique, this is not unique. As my father-in-law said today, we all 
begin and end in the same way: it is the middle that makes a life. 
And the wisdom of a faraway Dutch cousin: live slow, for we will 
all get there eventually. 

There was nothing weighing down the sparrows in their puddle, 
no sadness that I could discern. They flapped their wings, 
flicking the water off their little bodies. And dove in again.

Excerpt from Birdology published by Cactus Press, copyright © 2025 by Carolyne Van Der Meer.

Birdology (Cactus Press, May 2025) by Carolyne Van Der Meer is a tender collection of poems and essays moves through what she calls the “spell of grief,” accompanied by flocks of gulls, house sparrows and rock pigeons. I’d love for you to consider this chapbook for review. 

Birdology is an exploration of loss of memory, of autonomy—and ultimately of the loved ones themselves. Against a backdrop of urban and natural environments filled with everyday birds, she considers how our relationships with our parents evolve as they age, need us more—and eventually leave us. Through a quintet of flash essays and a handful of poems, Van Der Meer gently dissects the layers of emotion in grief with the delicacy of a feather. 

Carolyne Van Der Meer

About Carolyne Van Der Meer:

Carolyne Van Der Meer is a Montreal journalist, public relations professional and university lecturer. Her articles, essays, short stories and poems have been published internationally. Her five published books are: Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience (WLUP, 2014); Journeywoman (Inanna, 2017); Heart of Goodness: The Life of Marguerite Bourgeoys in 30 Poems | Du Coeur à l’âme : La vie de Marguerite Bourgeoys en 30 poèmes (Guernica Editions, 2020); Sensorial (Inanna, 2022) and All This As I Stand By (Ekstasis Editions, 2024). Chapbook publications include One Week’s Worth but a Lifetime More (Local Gems Press, 2022) and Broken Pieces: Hospital Experiences (2023); Birdology is forthcoming from Cactus Press in May 2025.

Power Q & A with Alex Gurtis

We became aware of American poet Alex Gurtis through his work as a literary critic and then further familiarized ourselves with his work in the literary community—specifically, his work uplifting Canadian authors. Then, we learned more about his poetry, and our interest was doubly piqued. We picked up his chapbook, When the Ocean Comes to Me (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and were blown away. His work is wild and rangy and polished and devotional. We had to talk to him, and are delighted he agreed.

Welcome, Alex, to our Power Q & A series.

When the Ocean Comes to Me (chapbook) by Alex Gurtis, Bottlecap Press, 2024.

Q: Your poetry seems to exist in the midst of perpetual motion: a ribboning out to times and places and people. Would you tell us about creating this energy in your writing which makes it feel alive and electric.

A: My creative process for this collection was grounded in answering how we project our emotions onto the landscapes around us and how those spaces come back to us. As someone living in an area that is a North American ground zero for climate change, I wanted to capture the interplay between, as you put it, “the ribboning out between time and place and people.” That last word, people, is the most important. My work is very anthropocentric, focused on real people living within changing spaces. There is an ecopoetic aspect too, but I wanted to focus on humanizing the climate crisis and parallel political crisis. In the same way a landscape painter pulls from their surroundings, my subject matter was the people around me. I like to think I applied an ekphrastic gaze in freezing the world around me like a still life in motion and then bringing it to life on the page. 

In my opening poem, “Hurricane Party,” the anxiety of watching a storm barreling at you non-stop for 48 hours while you are being told the apocalypse is now, is mentally exhausting. It leaves you a little unhinged. It’s a space where you “walk backwards out of a store/with a bottle of wine” and “watch a man as cracked as the sidewalk/ juggling a baseball, football, and basketball” as entire communities are devastated. None of those experiences are made up. A lot of these poems started as collages of images around certain thematic events like Hurricane Ian. The other half of the collection is political by way of economics and really pulled from my time working in grocery, as a barista, running a bookstore, and working as an adjunct. So many people in my life have been close to or spent time houseless. Rent is high and pay is low in Orlando, Florida and the storms keep coming. My poem “Absence of a Diet Coke” began as a riff off a comment made by a peer in MFA who couldn’t buy a coke. Her credit card bounced because our TA pay got delayed a month. 

Ultimately, the real currency we are lacking isn’t dollars but time. We are reacting too slow to stop the climate crisis. Florida is under Neo-Fascist control (as is America as a whole) and the life plan we were all sold, the “American Dream” is a bunch of bollocks. “Post Capitalist Americana” could be retitled “Life in Late-Stage Capitalist America” but wouldn’t have the same snap. Still, it raises a question about identity and how it relates to place. What is America after capitalism? Is there one? Similarly, what is the Floridian identity after “the sea began to rise”? Worst case is probably an archipelago thanks to the Lake Wales Ridge but that's a lot of displaced people when we are just struggling to survive. This isn’t a uniquely Florida problem either. So many people around the country are dealing with disasters like fires that are forcing us to rethink where we live. 

Anxiety is a perpetual motion, a sort of flight response, I’m trying to capture though, to borrow a phrase from Carolyn Forché, “the poetry of witness” which I try to apply to communities and spaces that are being erased by extreme weather events incited by the political refusal to accept carbon’s role in changing our planet. Similarly, I want to create a space to help readers find anxious affirmations and grieve while also maintaining a space for readers to hold hope for the future, even if it looks vastly different than we imagined or want it to be. There is something powerful in recording the stories of the people now so people can look back and see that the world was scary, we were scared, but also, we lived.

More about When the Ocean Comes to Me:

When the Ocean Comes to Me is a collection dripping with the anxiety of the Anthropocene. Salt water rises along Florida’s coast as inhabitants watch a clock’s “hands chase each other/ along their predestined path.”

These poems meditate on how “education is a type of trauma” and ask how we can cope with the knowledge that our planet is changing before our eyes. Imagist studies of built environments come unraveled as late-stage capitalism erodes cities and natural landscapes alike.

Writer Alex Gurtis

More about Alex Gurtis:

Alex Gurtis is the author of the chapbook When the Ocean Comes to Me (Bottlecap Press, 2024). He is an assistant editor for Burrow Press and runs an occasional interview series at Barrelhouse.

A ruth weiss Foundation Maverick Poet Award Finalist and a winner of Saw Palm’s 2022 Florida Fauna and Flora contest, Alex received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. His work as a poet and critic has appeared in or is forthcoming in anthologies and publications such as Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, Barrelhouse, Bear Review, HAD, Heavy Feather Review Identity, Identity Theory, Rain Taxi, The Shore and West Trade Review, among others.

An avid believer in community and leaving the world a little better than he found it, Alex serves on the board of the Kerouac Project of Orlando and is often found at the intersection of writing and place making. You can follow him on Instagram @apbg_alex, Bluesky @alexgurtis.bsky.social and Substack,