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April 15, 2014
The Best Words
Sometimes I’m haunted by Coleridge’s nifty definition of a poem as the best words in their best order. If I try to say it quickly several times in a row, “order” starts to sound like “odour.” ...
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April 12, 2014
Poet for Hire
I heard a few days ago that a colleague did a major job of editing that took the better part of a year to complete for a mere five-hundred dollars. I happen to mention this to a friend who works as a ...
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April 22, 2014
Endurance
It was a minute-and-a-half since I finished toying with a poem that hadn’t been working for weeks; I had that submarine feeling that it was sinking out of sight. But I had no time to dither with the ...
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April 18, 2014
Body Parts
Am I writing the same poem over and over again? My books are teeming with the invisible and a state of loneliness that could be a one-man cold war. I never set out to revisit these themes, but they almost ...
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March 08, 2018
Write well, write better, write often.
In my introductory Q&A I gave an abbreviated account of how I write, and in particular how I wrote my first novel. I always find other writers’ processes interesting, so I thought I’d talk about ...
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December 03, 2020Travel Back to Toronto in 1949 with an Excerpt from Caro Soles' Dancing with Chairs in the Music House
In Caro Soles's Dancing with Chairs in the Music House (Inanna Publications), a family's life in late 1940s Toronto takes a tragic turn. Ten-year-old Vanessa lives in a rooming house on Jarvis Street ...
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February 23, 2021Excerpt: Don't Miss this Powerful Glimpse into the Lives of Country Vets in Gillian Wigmore's Night Watch: The Vet Suite
In Nightwatch: The Vet Suite (Invisible Publishing), acclaimed poet and novelist Gillian Wigmore takes readers into the unique lives of rural veterinarians. Wigmore comes by the incredibly in-depth ...
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May 18, 2023D.M. Bradford on Translating Nicholas Dawson's Stunning Poetry Collection, House Within a House
Nicholas Dawson's Désormais, ma demeure (Triptyque, 2020) was received as a powerful and authentic exploration of depression when it was published, and it became one of the most decorated French-language ...
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May 12, 2023
Class, History, Fiction, and Form Part 5: The Speak o the Mearns
My parents are renters, so we moved houses a lot growing up. How can you expect continuity under those conditions, the steady passage of an uncomplicatedly teleological time? We can’t point to the place ...
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October 01, 2018
Binaakwe Giizis - Moon of Falling Leaves
Happy October! In Anishinaabemowin (the Ojibwe language), October is commonly known in many places as "Binaakwe Giizis", or the Moon of Falling Leaves. Anishinaabemowin is a very poetic and descriptive ...
