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October 02, 2019"Delight & Surprise Have to Carry Through a Whole Poem" Chris Banks on His Process, the Poem He Reads Daily, & His Beautiful Losers
Waterloo-based poet Chris Banks' fifth collection, Midlife Action Figure (ECW Press) is uncommonly fun, with Banks' playfulness on full display in lines like his comparison of time and memory to "a ...
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February 02, 2017
My issue with social justice poetry
We need to have this discussion. As the world becomes a more unstable place, with more incompetent leaders, more writers will be driven to write and perform politically-driven poetry. But, most social ...
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February 12, 2019Poetry School: The insincerity of Louise Glück
In my invitation for you to join me this month at Poetry School, I promised to offer up morsels of wisdom about writing poetry from an assortment of essays on the topic. Today I dig into an essay by American ...
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April 17, 2017
Susie Berg on Poetry Exercises
The latest poet featured in this series on poetry prompts and exercises is Susie Berg. She's the author of two full-length poetry collections from Piquant Press, including her most recent, All This Blood. ...
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December 21, 2021"I Did Not Choose to Become a Poet" Nduka Otiono on Ghost Writing Love Letters, Negotiating with Poems, & More
DisPlace: The Poetry of Nduka Otiono (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, edited by Peter Midgley with an afterword by Chris Dunton) gathers powerhouse poems from one of Canada's most insightful and timely ...
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May 03, 2016Some of the Best Books I Ever Read Weren't Books at All
I am on the record—somewhere, or perhaps multiple somewheres—as having said that one of the stories in my first collection, What You Need, represented an effort on my part to capture the feel of a ...
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January 12, 2022Acclaimed Poet D.A. Lockhart on Taxidermied Iguanas, Poetry "Shipbreakers", and the Importance of Endings
Poet D.A. Lockhart brings an energy, wisdom, and urgency to his writing as he shares meditations on and explorations of Indigenous identity and history. That energy clearly extends to his work ethic; ...
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September 27, 2016
At the Desk: Nora Gould
Nora Gould's newest collection of poetry, Selah (Brick Books), is a long poem that engages with the titular term. Drawn from the Old Testament, 'selah' might mean to praise, to lift up, to pause, to ...
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October 04, 2018An Interview with Shazia Hafiz Ramji
“My Instinct was to Listen and Notice in Order to Survive.” - Shazia Hafiz RamjiIn her debut collection, Port of Being, Vancouver poet Shazia Hafiz Ramji manages to take the personal and make it into ...
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September 18, 2018"I Will Always Feel a Little Homesick" Poet Jenny Haysom on Writing the Wayside
Have you ever wondered what that strip at the edge of the highway is called - the one that divides the road from the land, often filled with wildflowers and milkweed? It's a wayside, and the term makes ...
