The Small Blue

What is the small blue? It is a condition. It is a fragmented mood disorder. It includes impressions, forgotten bits, broken lyricism, biographical sketches. All of which culminates into the small blue – a feeling, or perhaps the distant translation of a feeling; the literal translation of an obscure line from Apollinaire: le petit bleu. A lyric state, a meditation that moves backward, an exercise in psychic time. What is the small blue? It is a book of fragments.

Jay MillAr is a Toronto poet, editor, publisher, teacher and virtual bookseller. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which are the small blue (2008), esp : accumulation sonnets (2009) and Other Poems (2010). He is also the author of several privately published editions, such as Lack Lyrics, which tied to win the 2008 bpNichol Chapbook Award. MillAr is the shadowy figure behind BookThug, a publishing house dedicated to exploratory work by well-known and emerging North American writers, as well as Apollinaire’s Bookshoppe, a virtual bookstore that specializes in the books that no one wants to buy. Currently Jay teaches creative writing and poetics at George Brown College and Toronto New School of Writing, where he is also the co-director.