Ontario book news, interviews and more

How I look at a map (part two): found poetry

In previous posts you’ve seen some of the things I’m thinking through when I’m creating visual poetry. And in the last post we got started working on a new piece by looking through archival material. ...

Keith Garebian on Reinventing Nature Poetry as Unsentimental & Giving the Suburbs Its Poetic Due

The western suburbs of Toronto might not seem like an obvious spot to inspire a poet, but Keith Garebian turns the Lakeshore Road area of Mississauga and Etobicoke into something meditative and striking ...

"This is the First Time I’ve Kissed a Girl" Meet Sophie Labelle's Nonbinary Teen Protagonist in an Excerpt from Wish Upon a Satellite

Sophie Labelle, creator of the popular web comic Assigned Male and an acclaimed writer, activist, and artist, has created a memorable, witty, and vibrant nonbinary protagonist in Ciel, the teenage ...

Get Ready for Poem in Your Pocket Day This Friday

Poetry Month is nearing its end for 2022, but that doesn't mean there isn't plenty of time to indulge your love of verse. One of the best ways Poetry Month helps us honour the form is the creative Poem ...

How I look at a map (part one)

Art is all about process. Community spurs us on and the practice of creation is an active one. There is of course the cliché about art never being finished, merely abandoned, but in my opinion, neither ...

How to Start a Writers’ Group

I spent years working on a novel about a lifeguard who was terrified of drowning. Years, of sitting in the same corner of the same coffee shop bashing out draft after unreadable draft. And the only feedback ...

"If You Have a Deep Longing to Write, You Must" Indra Ramayan on Her Debut Novel Set in Edmonton's Dark Underbelly

In Indra Ramayan's Mud Lilies (Cormorant Books), we meet Chanie Nyrider who, at just 18, has already survived four years in the darkest corners of Edmonton. After escaping her abusive parents and with ...

Erin Emily Ann Vance on Earning a "Poetic License" & Her New Collection of Silenced "Mad" Women's Voices

Hysterical. Emotional. Crazy. Words can be weaponized, and have been through history, especially when it comes to the behaviour of women and other groups who threatened a social or political status quo. ...

"Only a Grandma Could" Shenaaz Nanji on Joyfully Celebrating Identity & Culture Against Bullying & Prejudice

Everyone can remember the dread of walking in to a new situation as a kid – especially if you're the only one who's new. For Alina, in Shenaaz Nanji's newest book Alina in a Pinch, moving to a new ...

Treaty Parchments, and what I'm looking for when I look in the archive

In the summer of 2019, I was searching through library collections globally to track down copies of parchments of the Numbered Treaties. These copies were produced sometime between the mid 1870s and the ...