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Poetry

January-February 2022

Embracing water through poetry

Rita Wong, Emily Riddle, and Sacha Ouellet connect across rivers in face of a pipeline

Erica Hiroko Isomura

Art and activism are necessary to sustain hope, especially in hard times like the present. In June and July 2021, poets Rita Wong, Emily Riddle, and Sacha Ouellet joined me to record the audio project “From the Prairies to the Pacific Rim,” a poetry exchange and conversation about waterways and the Trans Mountain (TMX) pipeline […] More »
January-February 2022

Party time

New ebook press prioritizes inclusion

Jessica Rose

  When Natahna Bargen-Lema and Megan Fedorchuk launched Party Trick Press, they didn’t shy away from lofty goals. With a mission of revolutionizing eLiterature and bringing higher standards of diversity, accessibility, and inclusion to the publishing process, the digitally focused press aims to challenge the publishing industry’s complicated reputation. Soft launched in October 2020, Party […] More »
November-December 2021

Holding it together

New Brunswick poet writes about mental health from personal experience

Ashley Fish-Robertson

“Bent out of joint / in order to hold every-thing together. Won’t snap, won’t dissolve in an acid bath.” These are the opening lines of Self-Portrait as Paperclip, from Fredericton-based writer Triny Finlay’s third book, Myself A Paperclip, in which she transforms an inconspicuous office article into a clever metaphor for those attempting to hold […] More »
July-August 2021

The Magician

New poetry from our summer reading issue

Michelle Brown

He appears out of nowhere rarely ends well. It could be years until you notice how he altered your life like a hook around your waist, pulling you off the dance floor. He appeared out of nowhere. He sat down, laid one palm open on the table and hid the other. I read it as […] More »
January-February 2021

Writing through pain

Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch’s epistolary poems confront chronic pain

Shazia Hafiz Ramji

In the opening letter of their debut poetry collection, knot body, Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch writes: “The days get brighter but somehow I don’t. A dilemma, right? I thought I was swayed by the light, moods lifting as the clouds lift, yet this pain is fingers deep.” El Bechelany-Lynch’s writing is at once an intimate […] More »
July-August 2020

A letter to Audre Lorde

There's nothing wrong with being unoriginal

Hadiyyah Kuma

Dear Audre Lorde, My fingers ache. All I can do since this pandemic started locally is read and write. And not my assignments and essays; none of those thrill me. None get at what I really want to say; none encapsulate the expanse of human suffering we are seeing on our screens and streets. To […] More »
July-August 2020

Camp

Z.Y. Yang

You act like loving me     is liminal like liminal means It’s not you it’s me. Like liminal means I’m going to summer camp now.   I’m upset when Gravity, 2013   plays on the TVs at Best Buy like I should want to watch two beautiful white people in space like we should believe there’s no […] More »
July-August 2019

Poem in Which Ahad Appears

Shazia Hafiz Ramji

The house behind mine caught fire   I saw petal scrap ashes floating down first and thought   it was a wild fire thickening the sky like the last summer   I was on a bench with a boy I didn’t want to date   couldn’t say no because he had a body   I had the time it takes […] More »
July-August 2019

Hissing of Summer Lawns

James Lindsay

Wheat fields in the wind pulsing with air welling up inside a glittering of green on summerland grassland, the hissingof August lawns as air snakes out of blades like auto lot inflatables, one-legged air-dancers for a yawning audience, gazilions vying for envy, sashay stirring up sway in tinsel tassel anemones, an aquatic shimmering of chartreuse […] More »