What is the small blue? It is a condition. It is a fragmented mood disorder. It is a lyric state, a meditation that moves backward, an exercise in psychic time. It includes impressions, forgotten bits, broken lyricism, biographical sketches. the small blue- a feeling or perhaps the distant translation of a feeling. It is the literal translation of an obscure line from Apollinaire: ‘le petit bleu.’ 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 False Maps for Other Creatures (2005), Mycological Studies (2002), and The Ghosts of Jay MillAr (2000). His most recent collection is the small blue (2007). In 2006 he published Double Helix, a collaborative "novel" written with Stephen Cain. Millar is the shadowy figure behind BookThug, an independent publishing house dedicated to cutting edge 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. A long-time fixture of the Toronto writing and publishing scene, Jay has participated in such diverse projects as the UNBC/Via Rail Poetry Train, The Scream in High Park, Test Readings Series and Influency: A Poetry Salon. He is also the co-editor (with Mark Truscott) of BafterC, a small magazine of contemporary writing. Currently Jay teaches creative writing at George Brown College. Singled out in the introduction of The New Canon as a `young firebrand` (which he reads as `troublemaker`) working against what some hold dear to poetic tradition, Jay is one of Canada`s voices of authority and risk on innovative, experimental, contemporary poetry.

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