ABOUT SKY OF INK PRESS

Montreal's Sky of Ink Press was founded in 2007 with the express purpose of featuring talented poets in finely crafted chapbooks. It has also published a couple of visual art books. Brian Campbell is editor and publisher.

Sky of Ink chapbooks are printed on high-quality paper with card-stock or hard covers.

Here are the chapbooks published so far. Click on them for quick access to info., cover image and a sample poem of each book.

Karen Ocaña: Red Bolero: $15

Ethel Meilleur: Tinkle Little Tootie: $15
Zav Levinson, Reverb: $15
Ethel Meilleur, Funny Girl: $15
Zav Levinson, Trelliswork: $15
Brian Campbell, A Private Collection: $25
Raphael Bendahan, Sit Up: $15
Jocelyne Dubois, Hot Summer Night: $15
Nina Bruck, Still Light at Five O'Clock: $15

And here, the art books:

Jocelyne Dubois, Doodling Moods: $30
Brian Campbell, Remnants of Autumn (photos + 2 poems): $35

Prices in CA for Canadian orders or US for international orders, including postage

The press does not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

To order, contact: beedeecee@videotron.ca

 

Published:
1st edition, 100 copies: April 2024
ISBN: 978-1-7782741-1-4
Price: $15 CDN/US including shipping
32 pages
Standard paper, cardstock cover
Status: In Print

These are well-wrought, lyrical, humorous poems that often poke fun at our foibles. I thoroughly enjoyed them. — H. Nigel Thomas, novelist, poet, essayist
2022 Laureate John Molson Prize for the Arts

 

1st edition, 75 copies: November, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9868890-9-7
Price: $15 CDN/US including shipping
33 pages
Standard paper, cardstock cover
Status: In Print

REVERB proceeds through a series of dissolves not unlike an experimental film which takes spectators from Montreal's sepia-toned autumn neighbourhoods to the DayGlo colours of Golden Gate Park. While the reader follows Levinson on an avid (and sometimes somber) quest for experience, glints of humour keep surfacing to give REVERB a light-footed poise, complemented by moving portraits of parents and a life-changing courtship.

— Peter Richardson, author of Bit Parts for Fools

Evocative writing... a beautifully conceived and constructed collection.

— Sue MacLeod, author of Mood Swing with Pear

HER JOY

My mother did not live long enough to grow

old. To become frail or delicate. She died in hospital

three months after they took her away. I thought

she would return.

I would see her resting in bed lunch times

when I got home from high school.

We didn't talk about it. I think

she wanted to spare me the pain.

I didn't know I loved my mother.

Her joy was like the hum of a motor. Her "Devoir,"

that lovely evocative French word — homework,

how perfect! For a woman whose life centred 

on the home. And duty, but also something

of the Hebrew "mitzvah", commandment, holiness.

My mother did her homework!

I see her. Seated comfortably, on a blanket,

on a lo ridge above a lake. Her friend Esther

beside her. A Scrabble board between them. 

We romped and splashed, squawked our

summer holiday whale talk. She, there, a talisman

infusing shape and structure into our unfettered play.

My brother and I, and all the other children

insensate witnesses to the silent ticking.

Zav Levinson studied English literature at McGill University and Université de Montréal (M.A., Études Anglaises.) A trained cabinetmaker, he ran the studio workshop for the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia for 33 years. He is poetry co-editor at JONAHmagazine and co-fonder of the 2-Susan's Poetry Circle. His chapbook, Trelliswork, was published by Sky of Ink Press in 2017. His poems have appeared most recently in Montreal Writes, Canadian Jewish News and Dreamers Magazine as well as in the QWF fundraising chapbook My Island, My City and in the 2 Susans Poetry Circle 6th anniversary chapbook What Lasts. 

 

Published:

50 copies: June, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-71-503924-0
Price: $30 CDN/US including shipping
30 pages
Hard Cover, 8" x 10"

Printed by Blurb

Status: In Print

During the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, I have been filling a book with doodles reflecting my various moods during these trying times. I drew them in black pen and coloured pencils. Having never trained in drawing, and, apart from my writing, having focussed over the last few years on abstract mixed media creations, this was for me a discovery of sorts of a new visual language. Here’s a choice of a few of them. 
—Jocelyne Dubois, June 10, 2020

Samples:

Jocelyne Dubois’ mixed media creations have been exhibited in various Montreal galleries.  Visit her painting blog at www.duboispaintings.blogspot.com

Her novel, World of Glass, was a finalist for the 2013 QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for fiction.  Her stories have appeared in Matrix, The Dalhousie Review, Exile, carte blanche, Transition and The Toronto Quarterly. Her poetry has appeared in Canadian Women Studies, Brèves littéraires, and Truck. Her poetry chapbook, Hot Summer Night, was published in 2008 by Sky of Ink Press.

Published:
1st edition, 100 copies: December 2019
2nd edition, 100 copies: January 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9868890-7-3
Price: $15 CDN/US including shipping
33 pages
Standard paper, cardstock cover
Status: In Print

Ethel Meilleur's Funny Girl is absolutely a must-read:

Lusty in lung and busty in breath, these poems are

gusty with gusto. You gotta read em aloud, shout em out,

and bust out laughin--appropriately--when you comprehend

the gutsy Black, back-country wisdom, the Africadian, 

aphoristic backtalk, and the bluesy narratives that the poet

throws down. These lyrics are hoe-down, show-down, and

get-down at sundown. Only a serious Funny Girl can deliver

lines like these: "Wrap me in your personality / and roll me

off your tongue // open your mouth and let the river run through /

while I fish into your taste buds." Mmm, mmm, mmm. Amen,

Amen, Amen-Ra, Rah-Rah-Rah.

George Elliott Clarke

7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016 & 2017)

DUST BUNNY GRANNY HERE

Someone asked, Hey Dust Bunny Granny

was ya ever married

damn straight I was

I was married to Bugs Bunny but

he hopped around on me

I divorced him for Goofy

that was a goof-up

I left him for Dagwood

Dagwood fed me so many fattening sandwiches

I gained one hundred and fifty pounds

I left him for Porky Pig and now

I’m full of shit!

Ethel Meilleur was born in 1950 in Truro, Nova Scotia and moved to Montreal in her teens, where she now lives. She has worked in factories, in sales, in domestic and customer service, and late in life returned to high school and continued on as a mature student in creative writing at Concordia University. She has two children, seven grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. Her work in the Timeless Voices anthology by The International Library of Poets earned Meilleur their nomination as Poet of the Year in 2006. Meilleur’s poetry has also appeared in Kola, The Blasted Tree, Concordia Write Nights and various other publications.

Published:
1st edition, 100 copies: October 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9868890-5-9
Price: $15 CDN/US including shipping
35 pages
Linen paper, cardstock cover
Status: In Print

Trelliswork is constructed from the framework of the poet’s life, interweaving love, loss and play; the whole reflected and renewed in studious attention to the craft of poetry.    

Hinterland

Not elderly, not young,

he sits in his easy chair,

next to a window,

a light on,

a book in his lap.

Eyes closed, asleep

perhaps only resting -

does he rest easy,

do warm memories

caress his body?

Or does he recite his pain

and measure his decline?

Does he dream

of running  across fields to a far horizon,

his thoughtless body

rejoicing under a broad sky?

Will his mind turn,

like a compass needle to the north,

to those he held in his arms,

hearts beating

against his chest,

whose thoughts

he could read in their faces?

Is he moved,

as a thunderclap moved our ancestors,

to fear God’s mighty grip?

      

       I fall so easily

       into these places,

       where the light meets the dark.

Zav Levinson began writing poetry five years ago. This is his first book. His poems have appeared in Poetry Quebec, SWEPT, and Umbrella Factory. He is poetry co-editor of JONAHmagazine, an online literary review. Zav lives in Montreal. 

Published:
1st edition, 50 copies: November 2016
ISBN: 978-1-36-686820-6
Price: $40 CDN/US including shipping
54 pages
Photo book: Photos on glossy paper, two poems
Glossy paper, hard cover
Status: In Print

During the fall of 2015, I acquired a macro lens for my Olympus EM10 camera, and became enamoured with the vividness and detail of the minutia I could capture. An obvious subject was the autumn leaves, and soon a project evolved: to photograph changing and fallen leaves on my front lawn, and only on my front lawn, that season. Although mine is a typical front yard in Montreal's Mile End neighbourhood — a patch of grass, hedge and flowerbed of about sixty square feet — it proved a surprisingly rich subject. Certain twigs, leaves, and grape bunches caught my eye. I began to relate to them as to human characters, documenting their changes through hundreds of photos. Other leaves — maple, aspen, and who knows what — blew in from outside, and although I couldn't resist the temptation to position a few, for the most part they were photographed as they had fallen. The whole exercise became a meditation on mortality, randomness and seasonal renewal.

— Brian Campbell, Montreal, October 2016

Sample photos: 

a single rose

in a field of green —

the first red leaf