Search
-
April 23, 2020
Who Do You Think YOU Are?: A Shady Love Letter
I think that, perhaps, my last post here was a bit too hard on universities. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still angry as all hell at the larger structures of the academy. In these pandemic times, the academy ...
-
July 30, 2020Mom's Turn
While Accretion, my recently published debut, is a collection of poetry, it’s also a narrative closely based on a really transformative moment in my life a few years back. Given that family and tradition ...
-
April 28, 2017
Test Driving the Poetry Exercises
Today’s post marks the conclusion of my series on poetry prompts and exercises. Huge thanks to all the poets who responded so generously to my questions and offered their unique approaches and experiences. ...
-
May 10, 2017The Dirty Dozen, with Mark Kingwell
Professor and author Mark Kingwell is Canada's cultural guardian angel, bringing a rare wit and insight to his philosophical and cultural writing and teaching. His writing, which has covered everything ...
-
April 25, 2015
Geology, Thinking, and a Tent
As Jan Zwicky’s Wittgensteinian “The Geology of Norway” kept and keeps circling through my mind and body, I remembered Liz Howard’s gorgeous poem, “Thinktent,” which also works with, among ...
-
June 25, 2015
Stuff Happens
The other day I picked my almost-7-year-old daughter from school. I asked her, with my usual level of enthusiasm, “How was your day?” “Good,” she said, with her usual lack thereof. “What did ...
-
December 30, 2020Just because I don’t “look” like an editor...
Just because I don’t “look” like an editor... I remember the first time I went to pick up the mail from our post office box, when I was the managing editor at Room magazine, and was told by one ...
-
March 09, 2022Rejection
No one likes rejection. I’ve been told that some people handle it better than others. It depends on your baggage.I had my first official manuscript rejection when I was nine years old. I received a ...
-
February 26, 20232 dreams
The last dream I had about working at the coffee shop, I met one of my coworkers in a park that never existed. It was behind the Safeway up the street from our work. We talked a bit about how our lives ...
-
March 27, 2017I’m an Immigrant and I’m Going to Take Your Job
A few months ago somebody I know—a Polish immigrant—tried to convince me—an Iranian immigrant—that immigrants are taking all the jobs. Putting aside that this assertion has been proven wrong, ...