Search
-
September 21, 2017The Word on the Street interview with Shannon Bramer
Shannon Bramer understands the strange intersection between the sad and the funny, the strange and the precious. Hence the title of her fourth collection of poetry, Precious Energy (BookThug), which ...
-
July 17, 2025Read an Excerpt From A Phial of Passing Memories by James Yékú
Poet and scholar James Yékú’ has written in a variety of forms, but he returns this month with a second poetry collection that is deep and evocative, and that firmly grounds the reader in particular ...
-
December 12, 2024Perfect Gifts for Writers
Tis the season to ask the most pressing of all questions: What is the perfect gift for the writer in your life? Books? Pens? Journals? A six-figure book deal: (Note: we all want the latter!)Authors Farzana ...
-
April 13, 2015
Thinking with M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong!
I thought today I’d write about a text that beautifully, painfully, brilliantly performs some of the affective and political work that I’ve been writing about in past posts: M. NourbeSe Philip’s ...
-
May 23, 2025Carolyn Ramzy Shares Profound Poetry About a Coptic Girlhood in Taslim: We Are the Prophets
Carolyn Ramzy's scholarly endeavours have taken her to a professorship in Ethnomusicology at Carleton University, where her main focus is on Egyptian Coptic Christian music-making. So it's no surprise ...
-
October 15, 2019"We Wanted to See Just How Nuts People Could Get" Sandra Kasturi on ChiZine's Hilarious "War on Christmas" Story Anthology
Maybe you're the person who can hardly wait until Halloween has passed before pulling out the winter holiday decorations — the person who is first in line for the first tree that's been chopped down, ...
-
May 04, 2023Emily Osborne on Weaving Together Translations of Old Norse Skaldic Poetry with Personal Lyrics in Her Bold Debut
Sometimes in discussing poetry, there is an idea that a collection must swing towards either the personal and emotive, creating powerful connections with readers in that vein, or towards a more form-focused ...
-
February 12, 2025Tea Gerbeza Challenges Ableist Perceptions of Normalcy in How I Bend Into More
Among the many complex themes in Tea Gerbeza's work, reclaiming disabled identity, disability justice, and disabled and queer joy are just a sampling. These concerns and more find their way onto the ...
-
February 07, 2017
My Plastic Bag of Words (Part 2 of 2)
Rule #2: Everything must get publishedEverything. You'll find pieces, ideas and concepts from 20 year old raps, and reggae lyrics in my poems. Inspiration can come from anywhere. What matters most importantly ...
-
October 23, 2016
Poetic Inspiration III
This is the third in a series of posts highlighting inventive poems that have broadened my sense of what poems can be and do, and sparked me to stretch further in my own work. (The previous instalments ...