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October 08, 2016
Early Encounters with Poetry
A couple of interview questions recently posed to me got me thinking about my early encounters with poetry. For though my first book of poems has just been published a couple of decades after my first ...
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May 14, 2009
More Duppy Business?
Many years ago I read a book called HEALING THE FAMILY TREE by a psychiatrist, Dr. Kenneth McAll. I won’t go into the theories he presents in the book (it’s still available, for anyone who’s interested) ...
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June 12, 2023Research, Research, Research
I thought I had mended my ways. I thought I had discipline. The evidence is clear: I don’t put all my digital research materials into one folder on my desktop computer anymore. I actually have sub-folders! ...
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January 14, 2026Dani Netherclift Tries to Capture the Shape of Absent Bodies in VESSEL
Our featured title today, Vessel: The Shape of Absent Bodies (Assembly Press), is a unique, genre-bending work of memoir, literature, history, and translation by a very exciting author who writes ...
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April 07, 2020Poets in Profile: Irfan Ali on Vulnerability, Strong Endings, and His New Collection
12th century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi created an iconic, seemingly indestructible work when he birthed the tale of Layla and Manjun. Over the years, the re-telling of the classic story has become ...
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May 14, 2009
Should Professors of Poetry at Oxford Be Without Sin?
A friend of mine, a Jamaican man, told me many years ago that he disliked going to bars in England, where he’d been a student. Why? Because if a man put his hand up under a woman’s skirt, he was likely ...
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January 17, 2018Jaime Lee Mann's Writing Nook: "Writing is More About Mental Space than Physical Space"
The Legend of Rhyme series by Jaime Lee Mann Blood and Stars (Blue Moon Publishing) is exactly the kind of children's fantasy series we all longed for as kids. Packed with fairies, witches, ogres, and ...
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December 11, 2018December Spotlight on Excerpts: Read About the Maple Leaf from Symbols of Canada
Symbols of Canada, edited by Michael Dawson, Catherine Gidney and Donald Wright (Between the Lines Books), delves into the titular symbols, whether they're as storied as Indigenous carvings or as ...
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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, ...
