parts path & A Mother is a Portal

This is the official launch event for drift/line press & reading series, with a dual focus on launching our first publication, a chapbook of ecologically focused poems called parts path by Chris Turnbull (with a reading by Turnbull, and readings by guest poets Y. S. Lee and Jennifer Baker), and featuring a special performance of Liz Huntly/Jensch’s play/poem A Mother is a Portal, described as a mash-up of ancient Greece (tragedy-comedy) and modern motherhood.

After the readings and performance, there will be a brief Q&A with the authors.

parts path will be on sale at the event.

Bios:

Chris Turnbull

Chris Turnbull is the author of cipher (Beautiful Outlaw Press), [ untitled ] in own (CUE Books) and Continua (Chaudiere Books/Invisible Press). Her most recent chapbook is x° (Gap Riot Press, 2024). Additional writing, collaborations and installations are in print, online, and within landscapes. She curates a footpress, rout/e, whereby poetry can be found on trails (www.etuor.wordpress.com). She lives near Ottawa, within the not ceded and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg.

Y.S. Lee

Y. S. Lee’s poems have won Contemporary Verse 2’s 2022 Foster Prize and been finalists for various awards in Canada, the US, and Australia. Her first full-length poetry collection, Rebuke the Ghosts, will be published by Brick Books in 2027. She is a member of The Villanelles writing group.

Jennifer Baker

Jennifer Baker is a poet, editor, and Professor of literature and creative writing living and working in Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of three chapbooks, including Abject Lessons (above/ground press, 2014), Groundling (Trainwreck Press, 2021, reissued by above/ground press, 2023), and Memento Mishka (Apt. 9 Press, 2023). Her experimental ecopoetry can be found in Canadian and international publications including Canthius, Arc Poetry Magazine, Dusie and the Delisted Project. 

Liz Huntly/Jensch

Liz Huntly/Jensch lives in rural Ontario on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee, where she farms, writes, and runs the artisan bakery Grains & Goods with her husband and three feral boys. Her poems are published in Room, Grain, Riddle Fence, Arc and elsewhere. She is the 2025 Steven Heighton Fellow at the Al Purdy A-Frame and Queen’s University.

About drift/line press & reading series:

drift/line press publishes poetry, small fictions, and small essays in the form of chapbooks and other literary art objects. Our goal is to create beautiful and perceptive works that act as: antidote to the vagaries of the world and daily life; spark to revive dormant selves, forgotten horizons, dreams; and lighthouse for future directions.

At drift/line, we lean into experimentation, encourage collaboration with other poets, writers, and artists, and seek to inspire local and broader communities through our literary art objects and corresponding events.