Jay MillAr
Biography
Jay MillAr is a poet, editor, publisher, bookseller and environmental research assistant. His published works include The Ghosts of Jay MillAr (Coach House), Mycological Studies (Coach House), False Maps for Other Creatures (Nightwood Editions), and Double Helix, a collaboration with Stephen Cain (forthcoming, The Mercury Press). He lives in Toronto, where he runs BookThug and Apollinaire's Bookshoppe.
Poet's Note on the Lack Lyrics
Imagine the conflictual aesthetic that might arise out of being downsized from what essentially amounts to a dead-end job you don't find particularly meaningful; a job you've held for five years and can't bring yourself to leave of your own free will because of some psychological or mental blindspot. You are generously given many months to find a new position, yet because of the hopes and dreams you have, as well as the mental blindspot, you find it impossible and morbidly depressing to seek a new position. One day at work you begin to e-mail yourself nasty little messages that accumulate into poems containing all the things you wish you could say, but can't. The only outlet you have is the poem, and you understand how unfortunate that is, how useless it is, but that's all you have. And then one day you go into work and it's your last day, and you shake your employer's hand good bye, and you leave. And that's it. All you have left are your poems.
Sample Poem
External Links
Test Recording
29 March 2006
Jay MillAr (43:32, 41.8 MB, info.)
Rachel Zolf (36:58, 35.5 MB, info.)
Question and answer session (20:06, 19.3 MB, info.)
Photographs by Sharon Harris