Favourite Chapbooks of 2011

Chapbooks are 32 pages or less, according to the UNESCO definition. They are usually sewn or stapled, but they can also be perfect-bound, I suppose. They are often printed in a limited edition, hard to get hold of except for at small press fairs or passed by writers & publishers in dark corners of bars. They can be typed, word-processed & laser-printed, photocopied, collaged, written out in lead pencil or crayon or calligraphy pen. Basically they can be anything. For some reason this year I purchased no chapbooks from No Press, derek beaulieu's wondrous small press. otherwise I'm sure there would be chapbooks from such on my list. Here's a list of chapbooks which I acquired this year & enjoyed. They were touching, intricate, elegant, humourous, whimsical, elevated, down in the gutter, imaginative, personal, playful, rebellious wee books made by publishers with some of those same characteristics. [& a small word of joy & praise for Christine McNair's "Notes from a Cartywheel" published by my own AngelHousePress.]

Cameron Anstee - She May Be Wary (St. Andrew Books)

Judith Copithorne - Brackets & Boundaries {Concrete & Other Accretions} (Returning Press, Vancouver, BC)

Pearl Pirie, Between Stations (obvious ephiphanies press)

Stuart Ross - Cobourg Variations (Proper Tales Press)

rob mclennan - C. (little red leaves textile editions)

After the Mountain: the A.M. Klein Reboot Project, Compiled and Edited by Jason Camlot (Synapse Press) [disclaimer, i have pome in here]

Air Out / In Air : 21 Poets for the Guatemala Stove Project, edited by Pearl Pirie (phafours) [disclaimer, i have pome in here]

above / ground press
Paige Ackerson-Kiely - Book About a Candle Burning in a Shed
Dennis Cooley - have you learned nothing Kroetsch
Ben Ladouceur - Lime Kiln Quay Road
Shannon Maguire - Vowel Wolves & Other Knots

Apt. 9 Press
Jim Smith - Exit Interviews
Emergency Response Unit
Nicholas Lea - Actual Girl

Book Thug
Alessandro Porco - The Minutes I-X
Mark Truscott - Form

Pooka Press
Catherine Owen - what is on your mind?
Gregory Betts & others - Three Words Per Poem: Collaborative Poetics from Inside the Book