Selections from Oral, the last issue of The Moose & Pussy
Between 2008 and 2012, Kate Maxfield, Jeremy Hanson-Finger, Rachael Simpson, Tanya Decarie, and Pippa Rogers produced The Moose & Pussy, Ottawa’s late, great literary-sex magazine. While themooseandpussy.com no longer exists, our last issue – an ‘oral’ issue’ – remained in my iTunes and on a few dozen iPods and CDs.
It’s always bittersweet going back to projects like this, something that was ultimately Kate and mine’s “first born.” This last issue, containing poems by sixteen poets, plus a hidden track by my great friend Peter Gibbon, was largely my own making. By the time we hit issue eight, it was only Kate & I left, the rest of the team having left Ottawa (though some came back). The tracks are astounding, from the opening “Clearing Up The Question of It’s Doing By Us,” by Bardia Sinaee (who would go on to win the Walrus Poetry Prize, People’s Choice), which innocently deconstructs what defines done it or didn’t, to “Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation, or The Deer Hunter,” by that cunning linguist Jenna Jarvis (winner of the George Johnston and John Newlove Poetry Prizes), that like all her poems, is too soon and leaves you wanting more. Please enjoy these poems. Put ’em on your phone and listen to them on the bus. Short or long, each will make you shiver.
Love,
(PS: Sorry for spoiling the hidden track, but it’s pretty obvious on SoundCloud that something’s up).
Jeff Blackman 