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February 14, 2017
The importance of romantic poetry
Just like the Super Bowl, Christmas, and any other commercial holiday, I awoke today with little knowledge of its significance. Of course, it's Valentine's Day. In Japan, on Valentine's women deliver ...
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December 11, 2023Read an Excerpt from Tim Bowling's Raw & Atmospheric Return to the 1970s, The Marvels of Youth
The Vietnam War, hippies, Watergate. The mid-to-late 70s were a time of turmoil and change, and the last days of a pre-Reaganomics, tech-boom world that was lurking around the corner, with Star Wars: ...
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September 16, 2018Schmoozing for Introverts
It’s that time of year again, when students return to school, the leaves change colour, and Fall Book Season begins.The brilliant Sarah Selecky has already written this excellent antidote to those icky ...
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October 24, 2016
A Poetry Bookshop in Toronto
An exciting thing happened in Toronto while I was away. Jeff Kirby opened a poetry bookshop, knife|fork|book, in Rick’s Café in Kensington Market. Having missed the October 6th grand opening, I raced ...
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October 29, 2016
L.M. Montgomery, Ontario, and Poetry
Today I gave a reading from How to Draw a Rhinoceros from the pulpit of the Historic Leaskdale Church, a somewhat unlikely location for my first public reading from this book. The occasion was LMM Day, ...
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November 02, 2020
Written and On-Screen Selves: On Diaries and Social Media
Do you remember your first diary?Mine was a baby blue hardcover with a cute little rhyme on it that I still remember to this day:People, places, faces. My life in words and phrases. All I've thought ...
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February 10, 2014Writer's Block Does Not Exist (Part 1)
Or it does. But for the sake of this blog it does not. What is writer's block? I don't know, because it does not exist. Here's the thing, whether you are a professional creative writer, a skilled hobbyist, ...
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April 14, 2014
Ideas
I keep a list of things I think I want to write about. Back when the list was a more manageable size, I’d tackle my ideas at enough of a distance for me to have processed the simple stuff, the details, ...
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October 31, 2024Read an Excerpt from the New Anthology, Zegaajimo: Indigenous Horror Fiction
The new and frighteningly good anthology, Zegaajimo: Indigenous Horror Fiction (Kegedonce Press), derives its name from the Ojibwe term meaning "to tell a scary story." And, the author that have been ...
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May 03, 2023
Class, History, Fiction, and Form Part 2: Is the Bicycle Dead?
Before I do anything else, I have to try to say what I mean by fictional forms. I do so with a lot of trepidation, because my sense of these things is idiosyncratic and perhaps wrong. But here goes.People ...
