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September 20, 2019When History and Fiction Collide: On the Necessity of Irreverence
A week before I attended my first writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity last month, a historian in Vancouver gave me an envelope containing a strip of negatives. I developed them ...
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October 26, 2020You, Too, Can Be a Mediocre YouTube Star
A few fun facts about me: When I was about five-years-old, I starred as Dopey in a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at camp and killed it. Everyone was laughing. I also studied improv for ...
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October 04, 2024Undaunted Ursula Franklin Honours and Celebrates a Truly Remarkable Scholar, Scientist, and Activist
“Peace is not the absence of war, peace is the absence of fear.” The above quote comes from Ursula Franklin, the titular character in a new book for young people that explores the life of this fascinating, ...
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April 12, 2014
Poet for Hire
I heard a few days ago that a colleague did a major job of editing that took the better part of a year to complete for a mere five-hundred dollars. I happen to mention this to a friend who works as a ...
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April 03, 2014
Voice
Maureen McLane’s book, “My Poets,” goes beyond poetics and criticism into a kind of channeling of the poets themselves: her versions of their work, her obsessions with their obsessions. She not ...
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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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February 07, 2015
Re: (Whether It Is) Becoming (To Be) a Lady and the Use of the Word in Jamaican Creole (Jc)
News flash! Author copies of my novel, Red Jacket, arrived in the mail yesterday. https://www.dundurn.com/books/... About to post this exploration of the use of the word ‘lady’ in the land of my birth ...
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April 08, 2021The void gazes back: online safety for poets
Welcome back, emerging poets and friends! It’s time to talk about that place where we spend approximately 39 hours a day. This first official post of Careful Inventory is about online safety because ...
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April 10, 2021Raise your shields: performance boundaries for poets
Thanks so much to everyone who reached out to say that Thursday’s post resonated with you. Today we’re building on our poet boundaries by extending them from the Internet to the stage—before, during, ...
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October 31, 2018
We've always been here
My time here is drawing to a close and I’d like to express great thanks to the Open Book team for inviting me to this space for the past month. It’s been a real pleasure and an immense honour to have ...
