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April 16, 2019A Poem is a Rhetoric of Substance and Selection
We shape and are shaped by language. It orients who and where we are.The operational shape of a poem’s plan is always emergent; its layering is a rhetoric of substance and selection:POETIC LAYERINGdiscovery ...
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June 09, 2016A Poet, a Novelist and a Toddler Enter a Room
Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be one of those literary power couples, talent just oozing from their pores, words pouring from their pens, seemingly effortlessly? Meaghan Strimas & Nathan ...
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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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April 14, 2011
A Poetry Love-In: The Poetry In Voice Recitation Finals
Someone, I think it was Robert Bly, said you feel a good poem all along your body, which probably explains the goose bumps I got when I attended the Poetry In Voice/Les voix de la poésie recitation finals ...
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November 01, 2018
A Question of Motivation
If you ask any group of people about future goals they hope to one day accomplish, one of the most frequent responses would probably be that they’d like to write a book. Some of them may have ideas, ...
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July 22, 2020a quick aside on breaks, interpretations, and momentum
i realized two things after my last post. first, that i was missing video games more than i’d probably like to admit. and second, that after three months of online teaching and attempts at book promo ...
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October 28, 2013
A Response to Ann Elizabeth Carson's We All Become Stories, Blue Denim Press, 2013
Ann Elizabeth Carson’s WE ALL BECOME STORIES is a generous book. This recounting of journeys the author has made with a baker’s dozen of elders (she makes the thirteenth) is an intimate exploration ...
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July 04, 2015
A Roadblock All Writers Set for Themselves Every Now and Then
When I teach classes in creative writing at U of T’s School of Continuing Studies and at Haliburton School of the Arts, I have on occasion faced this predicament: A bright, talented, energetic student ...
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August 08, 2020A sentence & a breath
You want to write a book. Terrific! You've thought about this for years. In fact, whenever you tell your stories, people always say, you should write a book. And they’re right! You should. There’s ...
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February 16, 2017
A series of questions
Today, instead of waking up with answers, or advice for members of the literary community, I awoke with a series of questions. I've wrestled throughout the day, wondering if a set of questions were worthy ...
