Each year, rob mclennan, the cornerstone of Canadian small press poetry, writes a birthday poem. : condition report, is 2023’s birthday poem packaged for you in an introspective little box. These sparse, spacious poems are poignant mediations, moments of contemplation and rethinking. A lot is hanging on that colon, the breathy space mclennan leaves before it and after. This collection is a beautiful consideration of the self, of the passage of time, and of each moment and the poet’s eternal dilemma, “whether to capture / or contemplate.”

Printed as an adorable little square and in a limited run of seventy-five copies at Product Photo in Toronto, this chapbook is written by rob mclennan. Typeset by Dani Spinosa who also designed the cover.