Online Exclusives
Finding the Form with Phoebe Wang
I am intimidated by the idea of a novel so I made myself believe that short stories would be easier. Short stories also fit my intention, which was to tell the stories of my community– the other mothers my mother met at the Chinese Community centre, neighbours, friends of our uncles and aunties, related through […]
Finding the Form with Susan Olding
In the winter of 2020, just before the pandemic hit, I was editing my most recent book, Big Reader. To keep the more creative part of myself engaged, I enrolled in Nicole Breit’s Visual Essay course. It’s an ungraded online six-week program that encourages participants to experiment with diptychs, triptychs, photo essays, graphic work, and […]
What is Alison Braid Reading?
The bus ride to work is when I get stuck into an essay from Bringing the Devil to His Knees, edited by Peter Turchi and Charles Baxter. Off the bus, I continue reading as I walk the two blocks to work, slowly coming back to the day, looking away from the page to cross the […]
Poetry Review: Poisonous if Eaten Raw
Ever since my mother died almost two years ago, memories of her surface into consciousness at all times of the day, evoked by events and objects both trivial and significant. I suspect that the same process was at work as the motivation and impetus for most of the poems in Alyda Faber’s third collection, Poisonous […]
Book Review: The Whole Singing Ocean
In Jessica Moore’s book-length poem, The Whole Singing Ocean, an oceanic pull – called Story – insists that the author go on a voyage. She sets out to discover what the musical vastness of language, the sea of memory, and the oceans of our globe hold in their mingled depths. She encounters monstrous islands of […]
Finding the Form with Kevin Irie
A poem is another home for words, one of varying size but where the consideration of weight must be applied stringently, not just in order to avoid collapse, but to provide shelter to thoughts we want to survive. To build more with less without anything missing. When I wrote the poem Windblown, it was originally […]
Finding the Form with Melody Goetz
Well. I was minding my own business one morning, dutifully fulfilling a promise I’d made to my writerly self – that for 5 days a week I would set an egg timer (you remember those!) for 20 minutes, take out a battered old notebook, and write whatever came. This was nonplussing, as you could well […]
Natalia Zdaniuk’s Writing Space
I write well on the plane. There are the practical reasons, ones that I’ve seen other writers point out: the benefit of few distractions, the discomfort of the narrow chair keeping you awake, the potential inspiration from unknown passengers. But for me there is also a specific emotional experience that comes from the liminality of […]
What is Ami Sands Brodoff Reading?
During the early days and months of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I found I could not read. Normally, my reading times—a bit with morning coffee, a longer swathe at teatime after I knock off my own writing, a scoach before bed—are among my favourite parts of the day and compose a ritual. Like so many of […]
What is Heather Paul Reading?
My reading life is typical of the rest of my life: always a lot going on. I usually have three to four books on the go, one of which will be an audiobook. Often the audiobooks will be nonfiction, usually in the realm of health and wellness, food and drink. Recent non-fiction reads (approximately two […]
