Columnists

A draft

For years my partner and I lived in a condo, one of the four sides of which was flanked by windows, only one. The world was out there and we were in here, boxed, safe, separate, tucked away in the proscenium. ...

On Middles

Recently I sat at the booksellers’ table during a poetry reading. This is best-case scenario seating. You might feel a little nervous that you’ll spill your drink on hundreds of dollars of merch, ...

An Interview with Justin Million, host/star of KEYBOARDS!

For the last few years, Peterborough poet Justin Million has been hosting (starring in? living? breathing?) a weird interpretation of the poetry reading called KEYBOARDS! As with any reading, poems are ...

Behind Every Story, A Less Interesting Story

Lillian is trying to write a good play. When progress alludes her, she tears the false starts out of her typewriter, scrunches them up into balls, and kicks over the wastebasket that brims with bad drafts. ...

Reading Books While Desperately Avoiding Loneliness

There was a tree surrounded by countless of its kind, but also all alone, as the only one alive. Its nearby kin debarked and digested, steamed into slop, robbed of their resin and lignin, cleaned, screened, ...

Considering the Incomplete

I love to buy something then cut it in half. I did this recently with a product called the World’s Best Dishcloth and felt like a genius. Now I had two dishcloths and they were both the best dishcloth ...

An Interview with David O’Meara, organizer of the Plan 99 Reading Series

In the Manx Pub, a basement bar on Ottawa’s Elgin St., there’s a slim shelf of books – lots of poetry, but also some prose. The books are often browsed, often borrowed, and often returned. They’re ...

Happy Birthday, Marian Engel!

Today is the eighty-fourth birthday of Marian Engel, or it would be, had the novelist not died of cancer in 1985. Now, instead of a person, she is a name, survived like all people by her family and friends, ...

In Praise of Those Who Publish Nothing

Like many of my time zone, I spent the night of November 9th with my smartphone on the same pillow as my head, awakening every now and again to check, and get my mind around, the news. I also had very ...

How to Feel, What to Eat

I just got a latte at Starbucks. My drink took a long time. While I waited I eavesdropped on a good chunk of a date, between a man and a woman, taking place at a table near the pick-up station. I believe ...