NEW IN THE SERIES

SHOOKY SESSION 2: FRANZ KAFKA, THE BLUE OCTAVO NOTEBOOKS, 12 MAY 2023, PARC TRENHOLME
Vallum Chapbook Series No. 42
JASON CAMLOT AND STUART ROSS

…each creature carries a means of hearing that reflects the environment…one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

—Franz Kafka, from The Blue Octavo Notebooks

This chapbook presents poems written during the second of seven listening poetry sessions that Stuart Ross and Jason Camlot held between December 5, 2022, and December 18, 2024. It is “Shooky Session 2: Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks, 12 May 2023, Parc Trenholme” from the larger manuscript THE SHOOKY SESSIONS (A Litany).

About the Authors

Jason Camlot is the author of five collections of poetry including The Animal Library (DC Books, 2000), What The World Said (Mansfield, 2013) and Vlarf (McGill Queen’s, 2021). His critical works include Phonopoetics: The Making of Early Literary Recordings (Stanford, 2019) and the coedited collections Collection Thinking (Routledge, 2024), Unpacking the Personal Library (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2023), CanLit Across Media (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2019), and a recent jumbo special issue of English Studies in Canada on “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies.” Jason is director of the SpokenWeb research network that focuses on the history of literary sound recordings and the digital preservation and presentation of collections of literary audio. He is Professor of English at Concordia University and President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE).

Stuart Ross has published 23 books of fiction, poetry, and memoir/personal essays, most recently the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky (Coach House Books, 2024), the memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers (ECW Press, 2022), and the story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub (Anvil Press, 2022). He has won the 2023 Trillium Book Award, the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize, the 2017 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry, and the 2010 Relit Award for Short Fiction. Stuart teaches poetry at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and has been writer at residence at Queen’s University and University of Ottawa. He runs the 1366 Books imprint for experimental fiction under Guernica Editions and the Feed Dog Books imprint for surrealist poetry under Anvil Press. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

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