Search
-
April 01, 2024
Jody Chan's New Poetry Collection Challenges Systemic Failings in Community Care
Writer and therapist Jody Chan has had plenty of experience with systems of mental health treatment in Canada, and the ongoing shortcomings in care for citizens who are ill and look to these entities ...
-
March 19, 2024
Writing a Love Poem
I’m writing this column on Valentine’s Day, which is important to note because the column will be published well after Valentine’s Day. Writing a love poem isn’t limited to a specific day, however, ...
-
March 11, 2024
Kim Trainor's New Poetry Collection Gives Readers a Blueprint For Survival
Whether an expression of love or loss, of hope or fear, a collection of poetry can frame the most important happenings of our time and give readers a pathway through them. The poems in A Blueprint For ...
-
February 28, 2024
Emily Austin Uses Her Trademark Sass to Rewrite Bible Verses for the LGBTQIA+ Community
For an author with a background in Religious Studies, Emily Austin is well placed to call up passages from The Bible and examine them closely. This also gives her the ability to look at the text from ...
-
February 02, 2024
Facing (the Failure of) an Empty Event
There’s a particular kind of feeling to describe preparing and planning for a literary event, only to show up and find the room empty, or nearly empty. You keep looking at the door hoping the passers-by ...
-
December 20, 2023
The Transition to Short Stories (as a poet)
I’ve spent years now honing my craft as a poet. I know how to edit individual poems, as well as to approach and rewrite entire manuscripts. Why did the need to do the same in fiction seem so daunting ...
-
November 27, 2023
I think I have a manuscript
This is what I said to myself about four years into publishing my poems in journals, magazines, and through chapbooks. Sifting through folders to put poems into a single Word document, I saw the page ...
-
October 25, 2023
Governor General's Literary Award Finalists Revealed, with Nods for Suzette Mayr, Iain Reid, and More
Today the Canada Council for the Arts revealed the nominees for the Governor General's Literary Awards in both English and French. The seven categories for English nominees include 35 books, five in each ...
-
October 03, 2023
Bradley Peters' Debut Poetry Collection Takes Readers into the Prison Experience & the Systemic Problems Within
One of the poems in Bradley Peters' Sonnets from a Cell (Brick Books) closes with the musing "A sonnet is not memory. More so/ It is a room the shape of my own face." This lyrical creativity and exploration ...
-
October 02, 2023
Book Launch Season, Part 2: Being an Audience Member
In the first part of “Book Launch Season,” I talked about how to enter this period of time as an author. Writers are (I hope) readers. As a poet especially, going to readings and sitting there as ...