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April 26, 2014
The Most Important Skill
Someone asks me what’s the most important skill a poet can have and I start to say the power of observation. The world awaits us with all sorts of small truths that can’t easily be seen. When I lose ...
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April 24, 2014
Poetic
Tell a classroom of wannabe writers to try their hands at a poem and the stilted, strangely wrought language that ensues can be alarming. It’s like they’re being told to write in some World War II ...
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April 23, 2014
More Revision
A friend confesses that he could spend the rest of his life revising a handful of the same poems. One change leads to another. It’s like a glassblower unsure whether to make a swan or a squirrel, the ...
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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 21, 2014
Devoured
Some days I want to tear chunks off the alphabet, chop up syllables, sink my teeth into the gristle of grammar. I discovered a ferruginous hawk up a tree in my backyard the other day with the peeled pink ...
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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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September 05, 2023Something to delight in: Why I became a book publicist
From my bookish beginnings as an anxious kid who preferred the certainty of a good story to the probable humiliation of trying to make new friends, I always believed that making a career out of books ...
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May 13, 2021"We Always Knew Our Talents... We Just Needed a Space" Adrian De Leon on Celebrating Scarborough Writers in a Stunning New Anthology
What do the writers Shyam Selvadurai, David Chariandy, Carrianne Leung, and Catherine Hernandez have in common? They've all written beloved books set in Scarborough. And they're far from the only literary ...
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July 08, 2020EMWF: Souvankham Thammavongsa on What Makes for a Great Event
While this year's physical edition of the Eden Mills Writer's Festival may be cancelled, fans and creators alike were thrilled to hear that organizers had decided to make the experience virtual, presenting ...
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May 31, 2022June Writer in Residence NShannacappo on Rhythm, Flow, and Writing More than 1500 Poems
Ottawa-based Nakawe graphic novelist and poet NShannacappo knows how to tell a story in myriad different forms, using art, verse, and dialogue to weave compelling tales that take in everything from ...
