Perennial writer and reviewer rob mclennan has deemed MA|DE‘s debut full-length collection, ZZOO, “layered, and sharp,” full of “smart and engaged language.” Our thanks to rob for his kind reflections on our work.
“There is a bounce and clatter, but one of a density of lyric, one that works to interrogate relations and interrelations, offering a collaborative language between and across language, sparking a binary through a binary, and where they might possibly connect. The poems are layered, and sharp …”
Writing for the wonderful print journal The Ampersand Review, Matt Boylan offers the very first long-form review of MA|DE‘s debut full-length poetry collection, ZZOO! Taking its place alongside a majestic array of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, interviews and other reviews in this beautifully curated issue, Boylan offers a deep and insightful examination of our book. As Boylan writes:
“Most impressive throughout ZZOOis MA|DE’s extraordinary attention to detail, and their almost bibliophilic attention to the composition of each poem. Close readers will feel the heart imbued within the writing, the passion behind the work’s creation, and the genuine, contagious belief in the message. It seems that we live in a culture that is increasingly removing itself from natural experience, and ZZOOis a refreshing step back, away from—or perhaps across—the divide. It is fresh, authentic, genuine, and a truly deep piece of work that warrants attention and admiration; it fences in a small but powerful world that poetry lovers will want to revisit again and again to observe language on display in an artful facsimile of its natural habitat.”
“… you are trying to recognize your own patterns and push against them and write more into this other space you’re creating together. There’s a lot of intentionality behind it.”
GET LIT‘s Jamie Tennant talked to MA|DE about our debut full-length collection, ZZOO for CMFU fm / McMaster University (episode 455) — we discussed where collaboration begins, what sets ZZOO apart other contemporary lyric poetry collections, how two very serious people manage to make playful work and what’s on the horizon for MA|DE in the near future.
“We want to always be trying out new forms and approaches. This means that every manuscript is a completely new animal. For each new project, we’ve had to reset the parameters of what the collaboration means to us.”
THE MIRAMICHI READER‘s Administrative Editor, Sarah Marie, talked to MA|DE about our debut full-length collection, ZZOO in this exclusive conversation — she asked us a range of excellent and surprising questions, covering topics from ZZOO‘s conceptualization & emotional landscapes to practical matters like touring & publicity for small press poetry collections.
In MA|DE‘s first appearance on the PAGE FRIGHT podcast (episode 105), we talked with podcaster-poet Andrew French about our debut collection ZZOO, the challenges of collaboration, what we both have learned from each other, balancing a thousand different projects at once, writing poetry about animals, how performance factors into our writing (thanks to Annick MacAskill‘s question from the last episode), and getting out of artistic ruts, all in just under an hour.
