Mark Laliberte

This past weekend MA|DE finally had the opportunity to launch ZZOO in Windsor at the always supportive Biblioasis Bookshop as part of their Canadian Independent Bookstore Day celebrations. A big cheer for everyone who came out to support us; it was a packed house. We truly felt the hometown love! 🙂

This past weekend we went on the second leg of our ZZOO tour: first stop London, ON at Jenny Berkel's lovely new Little Wren Books space (cleverly collocated with a flower shop)!

it's shaping up to be an interesting project, and I look forward to putting in more energy towards completing the manuscript in the year to come 🙂

via the Ontario Arts Council's 'Recommender Grants for Writers' program: Wolsak and Wynn (in 2023/24), and Palimpsest Press + Biblioasis (in 2024/25) … thanks to you, I've been able to dedicate precious time to developing this new idea over the last year:

Always a pleasure to chat with Andrew French for their poetry podcast Page Fright!

In MA|DE's first appearance on the podcast, we talked with Andrew about ZZOO, the challenges of collaboration, what Mark and Jade have learned from each other, balancing a thousand different projects at once...

We weren't sure what to expect from a launch in Guelph, ON; Jade had never launched there and Mark hadn't launched there for several years. But Guelph well exceeded our non-expectations. ANAF was packed, and the mix of local and visiting readers, including...

Our premiere launch for ZZOO, which happened in our old home city of Toronto a couple weeks ago, ended up being a wonderful way to bring our book out into the wild for the first time. It was lovely to catch up with so many friends, to be hosted by the charming Queen Books...

The first launches for ZZOO are happening this week, starting with Toronto's Queen Books on Friday February 28 at 6pm, with @palimpsestpress.bsky.social winter authors @teagerbeza.bsky.social & Kasia Jaronczyk, and Jim Johnstone as host. Can't wait to be back in Toronto & hope to see you there!

FEB 28 TORONTO > Queen Books MAR 01 GUELPH > ANAF Club 344 MAR 12 WINDSOR > Biblioasis Bookshop APR 12 LONDON > Little Wren Books APR 13 ST. CATHARINES > Niagara Artists Centre JUN 18 PETERBOROUGH > Take Cover Books JUN 19 KINGSTON > Novel Idea JUN 21 OTTAWA > Ottawa Small Press Book Fair JUN 23 HAMILTON > Hamilton Public Library

After 6+ years collaborating together MA|DE is FINALLY GOING ON TOUR to promote our debut full-length poetry collection, ZZOO! 🐍🫏🦆We hope you'll be able to join us at one of these launches.

🙀 ‘ZZOO’ WEEKENDER — week 3 of photographically highlighting our variant covers and their pet names … this one is the SERPENTINE version (each nickname is noted on the back cover next to the bar code) — 👁 the eye on this cover is a human one (yes, we are animals too) 🪱

Time for another EXCERPT FROM ‘ZZOO’: a notable poem from the second section (of four) of the book (this one is ‘Land’) is “As the Next Day Dawned.” It deifies/mythologizes goats who learn to walk upright. Often, in real life these are simply animals born without forelegs.

HEY WINDSOR: Signed copies of ZZOO — in all 5 cover variants! — now available at @biblioasis_bookshop … we stopped in to double-sign a stack of copies yesterday … get ‘em while they last

P.S. official launch scheduled at the bookstore for MAR 13 — special guest readers announcement coming soon 🙂

Poetry: The Extended Mourning of Orca-J3 | Savant-Garde By MA|DE. like wailing in       whalesong   or waning  on a blue morning

“The Extended Mourning of Orca-J35” originally appeared in the 7th, and unfortunately final, issue of Savant-Garde in 2022. The poem is still available to read in full on their site, if you want to get a sense of what you can expect from ZZOO: www.savantgarde.ca/the-extended...

(In the time since we wrote it, Tahlequah went on to have another calf, her third who survived, but her fourth calf, born in 2024, sadly also passed away and was again carried alongside her mother in a seeming ritual of grief.)

EXCERPT FROM ZZOO—One of our favourite poems from the first of four sections of the book (this one is ‘Water’) is “The Extended Mourning of Orca-J35.” You may remember Orca J35, aka Tahlequah, from the news in 2018, when she was observed carrying her dead second-born calf alongside her for 17 days.

LEGO 50-15 contained work by: Elizabeth Bachinsky, Jonathan Ball, Christian Bök, Steven Collis, Craig Dworkin, Chris Ewart, Jesse Ferguson, Helen Hajnoczky, Mark Laliberte, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Ross Priddle, Jenny Samprisi, Blake Smith, Andrew Topel and Janine Vangool.

Work had to be created solely using the original patent sheets given for Lego bricks with diagrams.

Print project was released in Fall ‘08, published in an edition of 60 copies.

On this day in 1958, the Lego brick patent was filed! To celebrate, I’m sharing a piece I created in 2008 for LEGO 50-15, a collaborative/ constraint-based writing & art portfolio celebrating the 50th Anniversary of plastic lego blocks (project organized by @derekbeaulieu.bsky.social for No Press)

First trip to Detroit of 2025 — came home with several books, including: JG BALLARD’s final short story collection in hardcover 🔥 ‘The Bridge’ a collaboratively-written horror novel ⚡️ ‘Dark Dreamers’ a book of interviews with authors 🧟‍♂️ + a few new additions to my ‘Paperbacks from Hell’ collection 📚

WANT TO REVIEW ZZOO? DM US ABOUT A PROMO COPY. Image of book cover.

CALL FOR REVIEWERS

Do you or your publication want a review copy of ZZOO, MA|DE's debut full-length collaborative poetry collection, out in February with @palimpsestpress.bsky.social? Message us!

PICK YOUR FAVOURITE FROM 5 VARIANT COVERS!

Signature page of ZZOO

ZZOO covers fanned out in a semi-circle.

DID YOU KNOW you can get special signed copies of ZZOO directly from us at MA|DE HQ?

Not only can you:
1) order from our publisher @palimpsestpress.bsky.social;
2) preorder from your local independent bookseller;
3) order from the big bads;

YOU CAN ALSO JUST MESSAGE US!

Thanks to Rachel Poliquin for the wonderful ZZOO blurb ❤️🐊✨

Thanks @garybarwin.bsky.social thanks @tomprime.bsky.social co-blurbing the new book! Much appreciated

New year, new book!

MA|DE's debut collaborative poetry collection, ZZOO, is available for preorder now from @palimpsestpress.bsky.social: palimpsestpress.ca/books/zzoo-m...

Unboxing our debut book of poetry does NOT go as we expected...

At a time when binaristic and hierarchical relations are being readily interrogated, MA|DE — a unity of two voices fused into a single, poetic third — takes up a critique of the human-animal divide in their full-length debut, ZZOO. From the depths of the oceans to the outer reaches of the sky, a menagerie of species trade off time in the limelight, none of them solely occupying the central space on the global stage. MA|DE’s collaborative practice foregrounds interdependence, outward focus, shared spaces and non-hierarchical thinking, all of which emerge allegorically in interzonal poems that are as richly realized as they are formally eclectic. This wild-blooded collection turns conventional exhibitionism on its head, treating humans and animals as equal subjects of art, science and selfhood. ZZOO is a bestiary for the modern world.

Covers of ZZOO fanned out in a semi-circle.

MA|DE ZZOO 2025 Anstruther Books / Palimpsest Press Edited by Jim Johnstone 124 pages trade paperback perfect binding $21.95 CAD/USD Collection available in 5 limited-editing cover designs: FOXHOLE, TANNIAN, SERPENTINE, INSECTOID, COSMICIST All 5 variants are releasing in spring 2025: choose your favourite cover, pre-order now!

WHAT IS ZZOO?

You keep hearing us talk about our (MA|DE's) debut full-length poetry collection ZZOO from Palimpsest Press. But what exactly is this book even about?

MA|DE's debut FULL-LENGTH collaborative poetry collection, ZZOO, is here! Published by @palimpsestpress.bsky.social & edited by Jim Johnstone, ZZOO stands at 124 pages & is the full & final vision of the project first glimpsed in our bpNichol Award-shortlisted chapbook A Trip to the ZZOO.

A lovely old Jimmie Rodgers record on play today while dog-sitting …

Happy to have been included in THE ANSTRUTHER READER edited by Jim Johnstone — published by @palimpsestpress.bsky.social — the reproductions of my vispo remixes of @derekbeaulieu.bsky.social (excerpted from my Anstruther chapbook ‘asemanticasymmetry’) turned out great