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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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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, ...
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June 21, 2023Your Global Indigenous Playlist: Summer Solstice 2023
Yesterday, I received 200-plus comments from an editor on the first draft of a manuscript. I love this part of the publishing process, when I’m in conversation with someone about making a book. Page ...
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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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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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May 26, 2020Read an Excerpt from Anita Lahey's Touching New Memoir 'The Last Goldfish'
When a teenage Anita Lahey met her best friend Louisa in high school, their connection was immediate and powerful. From that day on, the two girls would spend their formative days navigating the pains ...
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October 18, 2018
My friend Richard
In my last post I talked about some of the influential writers and books that inspired me to seriously pursue my own creative writing. My list is much longer than that, and there are many more storytellers ...
