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March 02, 2022Carl Watts on Why Poetry's So-Called Shortcomings Might Be Its Greatest Strengths
It's easy to imagine the scene: at a poetry reading (pre-pandemic), an open mic-er ascends to the stage, taps the microphone, and announces with aplomb, "I just wrote this five minutes ago." Cue the ...
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February 03, 2022Robert Earl Stewart on the Power of Nonfiction to Turn Our Most Broken Parts into Connection and Comfort
Blaise Pascal once wrote that humans were born with an "infinite abyss" that can only be filled by "God himself", originating a theory that spawned the idea of "a God-shaped hole" in the human psyche. With ...
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January 12, 2022Acclaimed Poet D.A. Lockhart on Taxidermied Iguanas, Poetry "Shipbreakers", and the Importance of Endings
Poet D.A. Lockhart brings an energy, wisdom, and urgency to his writing as he shares meditations on and explorations of Indigenous identity and history. That energy clearly extends to his work ethic; ...
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January 10, 2022Iconic Poetry Publisher Brick Books Expands Their Brickyard Spoken Word Portal
Brick Books is one of the most decorated independent publishers around, with their unique all-poetry list featuring names like Margaret Avison, Parliamentary Poet Laureate Louise B. Halfe — Sky Dancer, ...
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December 21, 2021"I Did Not Choose to Become a Poet" Nduka Otiono on Ghost Writing Love Letters, Negotiating with Poems, & More
DisPlace: The Poetry of Nduka Otiono (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, edited by Peter Midgley with an afterword by Chris Dunton) gathers powerhouse poems from one of Canada's most insightful and timely ...
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December 20, 2021December Gratitude: Check Out 5 of Our Favourite Author Interviews & Excerpts from 2021
For our final instalment of December Gratitude, the series in which we are rounding up of some of our favourite postings from 2021, it's a double-whammy: we're sharing five of our favourite author interviews and five ...
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December 06, 2021December Gratitude: Check Out 5 of Our Favourite Writer-in-Residence Posts from 2021
This month, as the year winds down, we'll be looking back and highlighting some of our favourite pieces from Open Book this year. Our writer-in-residence posts, our author interviews, our book excerpts, ...
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November 30, 2021Daniel Scott Tysdal Examines the Darkness, Strangeness, & Flickering Hope of Life in the 21st Century in His Spectacular Debut Story Collection
Daniel Scott Tysdal is a beloved creative writing professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough and a decorated poet. And of course, Tysdal is also an Open Book columnist and the subject of one ...
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November 25, 2021Poet Talya Rubin on Glacier Funerals, Sacred Family Books, and "How Deeply a Poem Will Land Inside You"
How does our human connection to the natural world change in a time of climate crisis? In Australia-based poet Talya Rubin's urgent (and spectacularly titled) new collection, Iceland is Melting and ...
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November 03, 2021Irish Writer Elaine Feeney on Setting Her Darkly Funny Debut Novel, As You Were, Entirely in a Hospital
In As You Were (Biblioasis), the debut novel from acclaimed Irish poet and playwright Elaine Feeney, Sinead Hynes has a secret that no one can find out. Even when she arrives in hospital, she keeps ...
