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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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October 11, 2023Vulnerability is a Writing Tool
My most reflexive apology is, “I went to theatre school.” Usually delivered with a shrug or a knowing smirk as if to say I can’t help it, it gets a laugh from the creative set about 82 percent of ...
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May 30, 2009
Walk Good
If you had asked me I’dhave said that whenthe time had come for meto say au revoirofficially by thenit would be warmand we would be outsidein shorts and T’s.But it ain’t so.Of course each year there ...
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January 08, 2018Walking Cities Project Pairs Dionne Brand with Edinburgh-based poet Author Vahni Capildeo to Explore the City
One thing the CanLit community can agree on is that we all love Dionne Brand - one our most versatile, powerful, and eloquent writers. So it's a treat to see her represent Toronto in this video created ...
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February 03, 2023Warm Up with a Glimpse into Marie-Andree Gill's Heating the Outdoors, a Collection of Heart-Piercing Micropoems
One of Quebec's most celebrated poets, Marie-Andrée Gill is a member of the Ilnu Nation who engages with the oral storytelling tradition in her award-winning French language work. Also an acclaimed Radio-Canada ...
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April 01, 2014
Welcome to National Poetry Month
I always feel a bit uncomfortable when Poetry Month commences. It’s like I’ve had a secret for the last eleven months, no one really interested in how I’ve spent my days, successfully managing to ...
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August 25, 2017Welcome to the Great White North
A lifelong Torontonian, I left my hometown several years ago for the Far North. I watched Toronto transform from a big city with the heart of a small town to an enormous city that seemed heartless. I ...
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February 01, 2016
Well, hi.
Well, hi. How’s it going? What you up to? Are you having a good evening?I’m talking to you from Open Book: Toronto as the Writer-In-Residence for the month of February. I’ll be taking you through ...
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April 24, 2019What a Poem Does, Not what it Means
In an earlier post, I wrote that both writer and reader should focus more on how a poem comes to be.We seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to understand what a poem means as opposed ...
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April 25, 2019What Agents Are Looking For: Interview with Marilyn Biderman
One afternoon, when I was feeling particularly angsty, I tweeted out to my followers, “How do BIPOC writers get agents?” I received some encouraging responses, as well as some that had me questioning ...
