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March 07, 2016Rethinking a Room of One’s Own
A room of one’s own, Virginia Woolf once famously wrote, is a necessary part of being able to write successfully for women, who could often not find such a thing, being loyal to a certain level of constant ...
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February 02, 2017
My issue with social justice poetry
We need to have this discussion. As the world becomes a more unstable place, with more incompetent leaders, more writers will be driven to write and perform politically-driven poetry. But, most social ...
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December 13, 1901
Thinking the Future through the Present
To begin with: many thanks if you made it through yesterday’s post; you have my gratitude for sitting with uncertainty and/or dwelling in possibility.To continue: I’ll now try to offer an account ...
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July 05, 2018Scarborough: A Setting
When I was growing up in Scarborough, I loved it and hated it. I don’t think it’s an uncommon feeling towards places where we grew up. But there are things about coming of age in a suburb as a racialized ...
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May 02, 2016By Way of Introduction
If, as I am given to understand, the point of a writer-in-residence, whether virtual or actual, is in part to hold forth on the mechanics and practice of writing, then let me start by laying bare my understanding ...
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November 22, 2017
Literary noir – a look behind the scenes
Tonight we are joined by Kevin Hardcastle, award-winning author of the collection of short stories, Debris, and the recently released, highly-acclaimed novel, In the Cage (both Biblioasis).I loved Debris – ...
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June 14, 2024Andrew Battershill is Ready for Round Two in His New Pugilist-Mystery Novel, Pet, Pet, Slap
Back for Round 2 in novel form, boxer ‘Pillow Fist’ Pete Wilson returns to the page for a big comeback fight in Pet, Pet, Slap (Coach House Books). But has he lost his edge? Will he find the motivation ...
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April 11, 2014
Revision
It’s a risky thing to put a poem out of sight in order to let it germinate or steep, whatever the science of hope might call the process. Some poems only turn up posthumously and are declared masterpieces ...
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October 22, 2018
Uncomfortable Questions
One of the most common questions any writer from a marginalized background gets is “who did you write this for?” A variation of that is “what audience did you have in mind when you wrote this?” ...
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April 10, 2015
Revision and Sedgwick and Surprise
In my head my posts this month were going to unfold more linearly than they seem currently to be doing. I imagined each post, in advance of writing it (and an advance of writing any of the posts) as a ...