Small studies in blue
rob mclennan
Lilting and poignant, these poems layer in family, memories of people and places: each piece sings of loss and longing, the page a site of small hauntings, calling us to read, and read again. Small studies in blue captures an essence of the poet's search for origins and lineage, words set as photographs; or, perhaps, as mirrors, filled with beauty, and bittersweet remembrances. These poems, delicate and precise, invite our own origin stories as we respond to place names and the lives of others.
- Renée Sarojini Saklikar, author of Bramah’s Discovery, an epic fantasy in verse
published May 2026 in a print run of 125 copies
ISBN 978-1-997722-03-8
Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.