Writer-in-Residence BlogTag

Writer at Work: “Identity is a pain in the arse” (On Zadie Smith)

Last month, Zadie Smith said: "identity is a pain in the arse." She said this at a festival in the context of a discussion about identity politics and her (white) partner, Nick Laird. Here's a snippet ...

Writer at Work: Speaking with the Dead

A couple of weeks ago, I had the honour of speaking on panels at Room Magazine’s Growing Room Festival. During a Q&A session with the audience after the intersectionality, diaspora, and Asian-Canadian ...

Writer at Work: A Book Is A Community

Yesterday, my first book of poems, Port of Being, was shortlisted for the 2019 BC and Yukon Book Prizes (BCBP), for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. I expected to feel happy but I feel disbelief. The ...

Writer at Work: Where I’m Writing From (On Dionne Brand, Black Earth Rising, and Writing with “Love”)

Books that change us challenge us and console us. They break our hearts, they make us think, but most of all, they make us see people as people. Aside from being a generalized and sentimental statement ...

Writer at Work: Journaling, Instinct, and Self-care

Before last week, it had been months since I cried. This is unusual for me. I cry often when I’m alone, especially when I’m writing. Last week, I opened the Word doc that is my journal. Counterintuitively, ...

Writer at Work: Reading Tarot for Story

You do not have to believe there is a divine order to read the Tarot. You do not have to believe that your future can be read to read the Tarot. You do not have to be spiritual to read the Tarot. You ...

Poetry School: Dana Gioia on the matter of poetry

Twenty-eight years ago US poet Dana Gioia’s essay “Can Poetry Matter?” was published in the Atlantic, sparking “a firestorm of debate and discussion” over the role of the poet in contemporary ...

Poetry School: Getting specific with Amiri Baraka

Writing is reading, teaching is learning. As I said in my invitation for readers to join me this month-long online Poetry School, I expected to benefit the most from these researches into the craft and ...

Poetry School: Rilke’s advice against advice

My aversion to the poetry workshop grew quickly many years ago. Let me correct that: my aversion to the untutored, undisciplined poetry workshop.Although I’ve been writing poems off and on since I was ...

Poetry School: Denise Levertov on form as a revelation

After reading poet Denise Levertov’s 1965 essay “Some Notes on Organic Form,” I had a revelation: I write poetry mainly in organic form. Given that the notion of the work of art as a self-germinating ...