ST@NZA 16.2 | Summer | June/July 2019

16.2 | Summer | June/July 2019

In this issue: 2 5

2019 League Award Winners

Ask a Shortlister: What keeps you going as a writer?

6 11

News from the League

Thirteen: New Collected Poems from LGBTQI2S Writers in Canada

12

Keep in touch with the Feminist Caucus

13

Council Corner: Rayanne Haines

15

Reviewing the Shortlist

17

New Members

23

Member News

30

6 Pieces on Poetry, with Nisha Patel & Allan Briesmaster

37

Writing Opportunities

38

Bookish Bits & Industry News

40

In Memoriam

2019 League Award Winners The League of Canadian Poets is proud to announce the winners of our annual awards: the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Raymond Souster Award, and the Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Award. These awards are given in recognition of incredible talents in Canadian poetry. Each winner will receive $2000, thanks to funding from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and Canada Book Fund. Congratulations to all!

Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for a debut book of poetry 2019 Winner: Obits. by Tess Liem (Coach House Books) From the publisher: Can poems mourn the unmourned? In Obits. a speaker tries and fails to write obituaries for those whose memorials are missing, those who are represented only as statistics.

She considers victims of mass deaths, fictional characters, and her own aunt, asking what does it mean to be an ‘I’ mourning a ‘you’ when both have been othered? Centring vulnerability, the various answers to this question pass through trauma, depression, and the experience of being a mixed-race queer woman.

From the jurors: Tess Liem’s Obits. is a rare success for any book, let alone a debut. Namely, it manages to create what feels like an entire intellectual world: whole ethics, aesthetics, aspirations, fears, and philosophies, line by line and trope by trope. The book takes real risks dangling over the edge of amateurism with its emotive openers and its centre-alignment, and relies on nothing but prosody and guts to win a skeptical reader back. It contains one of the most complete treatments of depression in Canadian poetry and an expansive, challenging, new approach to the idea of mourning. Most importantly, Liem’s ability to manage the collection itself as a gestalt object, tying images to one another across pages and reusing titles, sounds, and lines, is downright symphonic. It feels like someone’s life’s work.

Click here to read “Adaptation” from Obits. and here to order a copy of the 2019 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award-winning title from Coach House Books. .

Tess Liem lives in Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyaang—unceded Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe territories (Montreal QC). Her writing appears in The Puritan, Plenitude, Cosmonauts Avenue, THIS and elsewhere.

Her debut collection of poetry, Obits. (Coach House 2018), was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary award.

Pat Lowther Memorial Award for a book of poetry by a woman 2019 Winner: Ekke by Klara du Plessis (Palimpsest Press) From the publisher: Multilingually inflected, Klara du Plessis’ first collection of poetry explores the multiplicity of self through language, occupying a liminal space between South Africa and Canada. A sequence of visceral, essay-like long poems, du Plessis’ writing straddles the lyrical and intellectual, traversing landscapes and fine arts canvases. Ekke is a watershed debut from one of Canada’s most exciting young voices.

From the jurors: An intelligent book constructed of long poems, Ekke reflects on the strange vagrancy of meaning and slippage of sounds between different languages. Both politically conscious and aesthetically beautiful, Ekke reads like a combination of the best parts of Lisa Robertson and M. Travis Lane: brainy and beautiful meditation with a beating lyric heart.

Click here to read an excerpt from “Someone Other Than Else” from Ekke and here to order a copy of the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award-winning title from Palimpsest Press.

Klara du Plessis is a poet residing in Montreal. Her debut collection, Ekke, was released from Palimpsest Press in 2018; and her chapbook, Wax Lyrical—shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award—was published by Anstruther Press in 2015. Klara is the editor for carte blanche magazine, a PhD English Literature student at Concordia University, and currently expanding her curatorial practice to include experimental Deep Curation poetry reading events. Follow her @ToMakePoesis.

Raymond Souster Award for a book of poetry by a League member 2019 Winner: I left nothing inside on purpose by Stevie Howell (McClelland & Stewart) From the publisher: Poems of stringent aesthetic demands and volcanic emotional release make up Stevie Howell’s wondrous I left nothing inside on purpose. These poems–bewildering in their linguistic beauty–verge on prayer in their intense plea to be truly seen by another, a sort of devotional sequence addressing the psychological construct of attachment. Can we change? Has anyone ever changed?

Does it matter? Lives marred by injury and violence, both physical and psychic, emerge in the book as meditations on trust, endurance, faith, destruction, and love. Howell’s voice combines ferocious intimacy and moral rigour with precision and compassion. The Hawaiian surf, the neuropsychologist’s lab, the deliriums of social media, and the recovery room. From geology to theology, lyric pain to the contemplative mind of the quasi-saint, I left nothing inside on purpose is a deeply affecting, glittering analysis of who we are when we claim to be ourselves in the world.

From the jurors: Stevie Howell’s poems create a dazzling sense of contemporary experience, with all its wounds, as well as the bruising quality of the past: an AI bot named Tay learns to be racist and

sexist from “Talking w/ humans;” Kintsugi pottery and fragments from Kierkegaard, D.H. Lawrence, and the vocabulary of self-help rattle through the deceptive transparency of Howell’s lines. The voice here insists on ironic distance and uncomfortable intimacy, poetic history and the banality of the present, “crowdfunded innocence” and “how pain never knows when to stop.”

This collection is sophisticated, funny, and sad, often within the same line.

Click here to read “I welcome the wound &” from I left nothing inside on purpose and here to order a copy of the 2019 Raymond Souster Award-winning title from McClelland & Stewart.

Stevie Howell is a psychometrist & writer who lives in Victoria, BC. Stevie’s second collection of poetry, I left nothing inside on purpose, was released last spring by Penguin Random House Canada.

Stevie is currently writing a thriller, & forever working on her afterlife.

Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Award for excellence and innovation in spoken word poetry 2019 Winner: Andrea Thompson From the jurors: Andrea Thompson is a Canadian icon of Spoken word and her submissions reflect her long and praiseworthy career. The work is well-written and professionally produced with top notch recordings—as Andrea presents a strong-woman voice filled with spirit and fierce power, intelligence and musicality. Andrea Thompson explores and pushes boundaries—as artist practitioner, activist, educator and historian. The gifts she brings to Spoken Word on all levels is unsurmountable, memorable and extremely valuable!

Andrea Thompson is a writer, educator and spoken word artist who has been publishing and performing her work for over twenty-five years.

In 1995 she was featured in the documentary Slamnation, as a member of the country’s first national slam team. In 2005, her spoken word CD One was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award. She is the author of the novel Over Our Heads and co-editor of Other Tongues: MixedRace Women Speak Out (both Inanna Publications). Thompson currently teaches at Workman Arts, as well as through the Ontario College of Art and Design University and The University of Toronto’s Continuing Studies departments. She has written several academic essays on spoken word, “Spoken Word: A Gesture Towards Possibility” (Writing Creative Writing: Essays from the Field, 2018). Her most recent CD, Solorations, is available through iTunes, Amazon and most online streaming services.

ASK A SHORTLISTER: What keeps you going as a writer?

We asked the poets shortlisted for our 2019 Book Awards some questions about their writing lives, inspirations and -of course – poetry. To view the other installments of the series and to review the 2019 Book Awards shortlists, visit our website. *** What keeps you going as a writer?

Mikko Harvey: Writing is one of my main methods of processing experience. Writing allows me to pull some things closer that I may have been hiding from, push other things away to a safe distance by transforming them, slow down what feels like it’s happening too quickly, figure out what a joke a fox told me in a dream meant, etc. Writing doesn’t feel like a choice so much as a natural reaction at this point.

When certain inner weather conditions arise, a poem starts happening. On several occasions I’ve tried to take a break from writing, but never successfully for very long. So I guess I’m extending the question to “what keeps you going as a writer to the extent that it feels hard to stop?” That version makes me squirm a bit, because maybe it’s a result of some capitalistic impulse that I’ve internalized? Or maybe I lean so hard on writing as a way of avoiding other life-work I should be doing? Or maybe—hopefully—I simply have an enduring love for the art? Most likely the answer is some combination of all three, for better or for worse. Which means my job is to just try and push the whole tangled up mess in the direction of love.

Jenny Haysom: Espresso and steamed milk. Hot buttered toast.

Stevie Howell: Friends, strangers, cats, the view of the sky from my apartment, & God. Jim Nason: I love writing and am somewhat obsessed with it so I don’t need any motivation to keep me going. I am extremely motivated by the potential of the blank page and those moments just before the perfect word is found or the right sentence. More than anything, I am motivated by the surprise of not knowing the answer. That sense of wonder is everything to me in my writing.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji: Recently, history has taken hold of me. When I don’t have to be up early the next day, I’ll stay up until 3 or 4 a.m. looking through pages and pages of microfiche and records of the dead, and weeping.

Deanna Young: Recently I’ve been focused on the value of education. So, learning is what keeps me going as a writer. Learning about the world, the animals and plants, other cultures and ways of knowing,

4 2019 AGM recap 4 Canada Poetry Tours applications open 4 Fresh Voices 17 4 2019 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize winners 4 2019 National Broadsheet Contest winner 4 Highlights from NPM19 4 Announcing the League’s new $10,000 prize!!!

4 LCP Chapbook Series: open call for submissions for Black poets 4 Poetry Pause: subscribe, submit, select?

News from the League > St. John’s Recap - the League’s 2019 Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting: The League had an incredible time visiting St. John’s, NL for our Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting this June. Thank you to all the members that were able to join us and join in the celebration of our community! Some highlights from the weekend included the launch of Thirteen: New Collected Poems from LGBTQI2S Writers in Canada (LCP Chapbook Series), the stunning annual Szumigalski lecture delivered remotely by 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize-winning poet BillyRay Belcourt, an enlightening panel on Poetry, Resistance, and Democracy featuring Klara du Plessis, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, and Andrea Thompson - moderated by the League’s president Sarah de Leeuw, our Awards Ceremony featuring a moving performance from Andrea Thompson - this year’s Golden Beret winner, and of course, our Member Reading and open mic where Leaguers gathered to share and delight in their poetry. For a look at 2018 in review from our members, be sure to visit our Membership update page this month.

Below, you can find a list of documents circulated at the League’s 2019 AGM – click the document title to view in detail: Approved Minutes – AGM 2018 2018/2019 Annual Report 2018/2019 Draft Financial Statements Draft Minutes – AGM 2019 2019/2020 Slate of Nominees We’re thrilled to announce that, in 2020, we will be partnering with The Writers’ Union of Canada to hold our Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting at McGill University in Montreal, QC! More details will be posted to this page as they become available.

> Canada Poety Tours Funding Program - NOW OPEN: Want to bring a League poet to your event or reading series? League members: want to receive funding for a reading you have planned?

Applications for our Canada Poetry Tours funding program will opened on July 1st for readings taking place between September 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020. We do accept late applications that will be added to our waitlist; however, it is likely that a waitlisted application would not be approved until after the date of the reading. Most waitlisted applications will likely hear if their funding has been approved in March 2020. Waitlisted events should be scheduled to take place even if funding is not approved. Applications must be completed by the host, including an application fee. For more information, program rates, and to download a current application form, visit poets.ca/cpt. *Applications for reserved readings may be submitted any time at least 3 weeks prior to the reading date. > Fresh Voices: Fresh Voices is a quarterly project from and for the League’s associate members, edited by Joan Conway and Blaine Marchand. Fresh Voices 17 is here, featuring poems by Frances Roberts Reilly, Meena Chopra, Joanne Belanger, kjmunro, Martha Swinn, Sonja Arntzen, Yonathan Asefaw, Razielle Aigen, Harold Feddersen, Sharon Goodier, Michael Goodfellow, and Jennifer Wenn. Read it here.

Submissions to the next issue of Fresh Voices are now open! Associate members of the League are invited to send 3-5 poems to joanconwayamr@ gmail.com. You may submit only once per quarter, but you may submit every quarter until your poetry is selected for publication. Poets may have their work published once per calendar year.

Deadline: September 27, 2019. > 2019 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize for Canadian Youth winners announced! This year, we received a record number of three-hundred

and eighty-one submissions and we’re so excited to share the winning poems: FIRST PLACE: Jonathan Chu (junior category) & Nazanin Soghrati (senior category) SECOND PLACE: Sophie Choong (junior category) & Angelina Shandro (senior category) THIRD PLACE: Jamie Wang (junior category) & Max Zhang (senior category) HONOURABLE MENTIONS: Rashid Al-Abri, Jewel Cao, Stephanie Ya Wen Chang, Jonathan Chu, Madhavan Thevar View the full announcement, winning poems, and interviews with the winning poets here. Thank you to our jurors for the junior category – Bianca Lakoseljac, Lois Lorimer, and Diana Manole – and the senior category – Barbara Black, Laura McRae, and Naomi Beth Wakan – for all their hard work in selectin this year’s poems. Congratulations to the winners, honourable mentions, and all the poets who submitted! > 2019 National Broadsheet Contest Winner: Congratulations to the winner of the League’s 3rd annual National Broadsheet Contest, Eleonore Schönmaier! Eleonore’s winning poem, “it didn’t happen here” was selected by our judge D.A. Lockhart for its “strong images, and captivating lyric voice.” This year, our judge felt there were so many notable submissions that he also selected a Runner-Up and three Honourable Mentions! We’re thrilled to share these outstanding poems: Runner-Up: The Country East of Rossville, Indiana by Phillip Crymble Honourable Mentions: Alone and together by Lenea Grace You Shall Have Homes, 1928 by Kim Fahner Last Words by Katherine Pilon See the full winner announcement - including Eleonore & Phillip’s poems and an interview with Eleonore here. Congratulations to all the distingiushed poets and thanks to all who submitted! Thanks also to D.A. Lockhart for his work jurying this contest.

> Highlights from National Poetry Month 2019: The League of Canadian Poets invited all of Canada to celebrate the 21st annual National Poetry Month in April with nature – whether mountain ranges, deserts, forests, oceans, or plains; whether cityscapes or landscapes. We invited people to read, write, and share poetry that translates the emotional, practical, and reciprocal relationships we build – as individuals and communities – to the natural world onto the page. We were very lucky to feature guest posts written by Canadian poets on our blog - browse them if you didn’t get a chance, or re-read here: - Place by Gwen Benaway: on interrogating what it can mean to name “nature poetry” a genre in a Canadian context and the possibilities that exist past clinging to colonial binary distinctions; - Animal, Vegetable, Mineral / Rock, Paper, Scissors: On Living Both the Urban and the Rural

by Jennifer LoveGrove - What might grow from this by Terrance Abrahams : on queer and trans embodiment in nature and nature writing; - the music of other mother’s movement and voice

by Rita Bouvier, the League’s own Saskatchewan Regional Representative: on the force of nature and its inspiration; - and a guest post by Fenn Stewart on what inspired her collection Better Nature (Book*hug, 2017) and how such narratives have evolved since the book’s publication, plus a call to action.

To celebrate nature with poetry, we shared a poem-a-day from Heartwood though Poetry Pause. In other great news, we released Thirteen: New Collected Poems from LGBTQI2S Writers in Canada (LCP Chapbook Series), edited by Ali Blythe. We celebrated Poem in Your Pocket Day with our 15 official PIYP Day poems, written by Yvonne Blomer, Marilyn Bowering, Heather Cadsby, Lorne Daniel, Adebe DeRango-Adem, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Allison LaSorda, Kathryn Mockler, Lorie Miseck, kjmunro, Jim Nason, Charlie Petch, Harry Posner, Eleonore Schönmaier, and Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang.

As is tradition, The Academy of American Poets published these poems in their PIYP Day Booklet, but for this first time, the League also created our own 100% Canadian booklet to celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day! You can view and download the League’s booklet here. We mailed a PIYP Day postcard out to every member of the League to make sure all had a poem to carry!

Through our #PoetryMeans National Poetry Month fundraiser, we were able to raise $940 for Canadian poets & poetry, thanks to our generous and supportive audience! We are grateful to our partners in poetry for all donations we received during NPM19! If you’d like to make a donation to the League or learn more about how donations help us help Canadian poets, visit poets.ca/support. > Introducing the Leon E. & Ann M. Pavlick Poetry Award, a $10,000 prize for an emerging poet: The Leon E. & Ann M. Pavlick Poetry Award is being established to honour and encourage an emerging Canadian poet whose work displays ample creativity and promise. It will recognize the ambition of a Canadian poet with a portfolio of work to be excited about! Two prizes will be awarded, one each in the years 2019 & 2020, in the amount of $10,000.

The League of Canadian Poets extends our exuberant thanks to Larry H. Mueller and Ann M. Pavlick whose contribution made this wonderful award possible. Through the Leon E. & Ann M. Pavlick Poetry Award, we have the chance to provide an emerging Canadian poet with funds to encourage the growth of their creative practice, furthering our organization’s goal of nurturing a professional poetic community in Canada. We are honoured to have this chance, with thanks to Larry and Ann. Submissions to the Pavlick Poetry Award are set to open in Fall 2019, at which time we will release more information about guidelines, eligibility, and our esteemed jurors! Stay tuned!

> Call for submissions from the LCP Chapbook Series: Black Poets Edition: We’re now accepting submissions for a chapbook spotlighting the work of Black poets, with guest editor Chelene Knight! In celebration of contemporary writing in Canada, the chapbook will amplify Black voices that continue to enrich, question, and propel literature in Canada, playing a part in doing away with single-thread narratives of the Black Canadian experience. We encourage writers with intersecting marginalized identities to submit.

Submit 1 - 3 poems for consideration.

Chelene wants to see writing that pushes rigid boundaries of form and writing that’s infused with an unapologetic voice. NO submission fee.

Deadline: October 31, 2019.

Submissions are open to members of the League of Canadian Poets. With this project, the League aims to create space and facilitate representation for marginalized poets and we recognize that folks holding marginalized identities may face barriers to access in gaining membership to the League. We are committed to working with those folks facing barriers, specifically financial barriers, who have an interest in participating in this project. We welcome non-members to email info@poets.ca if the cost of membership is a barrier to participation in the League. > Your poetry could be featured in Poetry Pause: Poetry Pause is the League’s daily digital poetry dispatch program and it’s growing every day! We deliver a daily poem to over 750 subscribers and we are always accepting submissions of published or unpublished poems!

Poetry Pause is a great way to introduce new readers to your work. Visit poets.ca/poetrypause for submission guidelines and to subscribe if you haven’t already! If you’d be interested in a term on the Poetry Pause selection committee, email madison@poets.ca.

From the Blog The Writing Parent: On Work Column by Vanessa Shields “Writers are some of the hardest workers I know. Writers exemplify what discipline, time/ money management, creativity and self-confidence really can look like. We also exemplify what burn-out, sadness, insecurity, and utter desperation can look like too. We are single vessels with many selves battling in our brains and hearts to support.”

Click here to read the full column.

Left Coast Poetry Beat: DTES Writers’ Collective Column by Bill Arnott “You wouldn’t think it would work but it did.

The people there reading, sharing, listening, warmed the grey of concrete, dissolving the stanchions. For some it was their first time reading publicly, first time on a stage. One poet bowed, the way kids do at recitals. It was the greatest thing I’d seen at a reading.”

Click here to read the full column.

Interested in writing a column or article for the League? Email info@poets.ca with a pitch! We’re always looking for volunteer contributions to our newsletter and blog. Let’s talk!

Thirteen

(LCP Chapbook Series)

I know it has taken decades of the heart’s muscle to build these spaces we can gather, and quite a few more to invite others in to listen. I know good authors who have had to keep hammering on the doors of granting bodies, publishing houses, festivals. Then took up positions as doormen to let others through. Then built their own spaces with their own doors.

– Ali Blythe, editor

Thirteen: New Collected Poems from LGBTQI2S Writers in Canada is a chapbook made in celebration of LGBTQI2S voices that continue to enrich, question, and propel literature in Canada. This project aims to create space for LGBTQI2S poets to express the complexities of being, perception, experience, and relationship. Glimpse inside 13 rooms, 13 ways of being. 13 poems by 13 poets, plus an introduction by Ali Blythe.

Limited edition, handbound and made to order. 5.5×8.5in, 28 pages. $10.

Allow 2-3 weeks for shipping. Order a copy from our website.

Contributors: John Barton, Karin Cope, Tanis Franco, Keith Garebian, Kayla Geitzler, matthew heinz, Rachel Lallouz, Chloe Lewis, Nisa Malli, Trish Salah, Jane Shi, Matthew Stepanic, John Emil Vincent This chapbook was produced as part of the LCP Chapbook Series. The series publishes fresh and exceptional Canadian poetry guided by various themes and forms to increase visibility and recognition for folks contributing to and belonging in the vibrant Canadian poetry community. For more information about the LCP Chapbook Series - including calls for submission and available titles, please visit our website: poets.ca/lcpchapbookseries.

Keep in touch with the Feminist Caucus The Feminist Caucus is evolving! At this year’s AGM, some new positions were elected: 2019-2020 Feminist Caucus Roles: Chair: Ayesha Chatterjee Past Chair: Anne Burke 2020 Chapbook Coordinator: Shazia Hafiz Ramji 2019-2020 Review Committee Members: Tracy Hamon, Joan Conway, Rita Bouvier, Anne Burke, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, office staff (voice no vote) Welcome to all the new committee members and to our new Feminist Caucus chair, Ayesha Chatterjee!

Born and raised in Kolkata, India, Ayesha Chatterjee has lived in England, the USA and Germany, and is now based in Toronto.

Her poetry has appeared in Magma Poetry, The Missing Slate, CV2, Exile Literary Quarterly and elsewhere. She has two poetry collections, The Clarity of Distance (2011) and Bottles and Bones (2017), both published by Bayeux Arts. Chatterjee is Past President of the League of Canadian Poets.

Become a Member of the Caucus All members of the League are welcome to join the Caucus! Members can volunteer to lead or be on Feminist Caucus panels, contribute to the newsletter, participate in Feminist Caucus business discussions and readings, and much more as we continue to grow this important committee of the League.

Interested in staying up-to-date- on the Feminist Caucus’ new chapter? Subscribe to Lit

Feminist, the FC newsletter.

Vote on next year’s Feminist Caucus Panel!

We’re collecting ideas for next year’s Feminist Caucus Panel, to take place at our 2020 Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting in Montreal, QC. Have an idea?

Want to cast a vote? Submit your feedback here. We’re grateful for your input & help in shaping the future of the Feminist Caucus.

We’ll be accepting votes/feedback through the submission form until August 15, 2019.

The 2018 Living Archives Chapbook: Feminism – Revisit, Revise, Revolutionize: A Two-Part History The essays in this publication discuss the history of the League’s Feminist Caucus, as well as a history of feminism in Canadian poetry, in order to look forward and reimagine how feminists and feminism can engage with and improve the Canadian literary landscape, within and outside of the League.

Essays are based on the presentations and discussion of the 2017 League of Canadian Poets Feminist Caucus panel.

Purchase a copy for $10 at http://poets.ca/ product/feminism-revisit-revise-revolutionize-a-two-part-history/

Meet your Alberta-NWT Regional Representative: Rayanne Haines Rayanne Haines is an award-winning fiction author and poet, and the co-host of the poetry podcast, Let’s Get Lit. She was executive director of the Edmonton Poetry Festival from 2012 to 2019. In 2018, she was a feature artist for Capital City Press with Edmonton Public Library. In January 2019, she was the Writer in Residence at Audreys Books. In both 2017 and 2019, Rayanne was shortlisted for Edmonton Poet Laureate. She’s had work published in Canada, the USA and the UK. An engaging reader, Rayanne has showcased from coast to coast. Stained with the Colours of Sunday Morning, her debut novel-in-verse (Inanna Publications 2018) released to positive critical acclaim.

Find Rayanne on social media: Facebook: Rayanne Haines Instagram: @rayanne_haines Twitter: @inkrayanne

What does poetry mean to you?

Right now, poetry means finding a way to be in the world. Poetry offers me solace, celebrates the joys of living, asks the hard human questions, makes me gasp with awe, and reminds me of what language can do.

What is your favourite thing about the Alberta poetry community?

The Alberta region is rich with poetry! The artistry in this province is fantastic. I think what I love most is seeing the connections between the different poets. Page and Stage, professional and emerging, have all found a way to be in this together. Alberta is beautifully close. We celebrate each other.

We are each other’s ambassadors.

Members should contact me...

For any questions about the different organizations in parts of the province.

Though I’m from Edmonton I intend on reaching out to poetry peers in Calgary, Red Deer and other smaller communities to get the lowdown on what’s up in each area. I’m here to help poets get the word out about what they are doing and where they are doing it. Have questions about the League of Poets? Ask me! Have questions about poetry across Canada? Ask me. I may not have all the answers but I’ll help find them.

Learn more about the League of Canadian Poets’ National Council here. Thanks to all members of council for volunteering their time and expertise to the League.

How to tell Heart Stories

by Rayanne Haines Mia Nonna taught me how to fall in love.

She taught me to tell heart stories.

My Grandmother’s life was song.

Her music made men weep.

Her story told through 10,000 steps on the streets of Firenze, floating naked in the Black Sea, painting her skin with the spices of Bombai, drinking red wine from the bottle in Paris.

Vero Amore, she would say, dances in the street in the evening air, forgives with the rise and fall of the moon.

Vero Amore, she would say, are fingers covered in flour, a tattered apron, the kiss of cherries on your child’s chin.

My Grandmother’s hair hung to her waist.

Grandfather would pause to inhale whenever she was close. Stand bewitched.

Even then, when their love had aged, his fingers would curl with the memory of getting lost in the scent. Her hair smelled like cinnamon and the coffee cake she baked every Sunday morning.

Adorare Vita Bambina she would say, as she kneaded the dough.

This is love.

Copyright © Rayanne Haines.

Originally published in Stained with the Colours of Sunday Morning (Inanna Publications, 2018).

Reviewing the Shortlist Reviewing the Shortlist was a weekly series in which poets shortlisted for our 2019 Book Awards reviewed books written by their peers! See all the installments below: The Missing Field by Jennifer Zilm (Guernica Editions) Reviewed by Kim Trainor “We met in Banff, but live in the same part of east Van, ride the same busses and SkyTrain lines, never once crossed paths.

I write a line in a poem about the “Read the Koran” sign picked out in white on the roof of a house as I ride the Expo line. She knows it instantly—“22nd Street Station,” just past the Schara Tzedeck Cemetery— has already been there” Read the full review here.

Listen Before Transmit by Dani Couture (Wolsak & Wynn) Reviewed by Klara du Plessis “A vivid memory from exactly one year ago seats me in a public courtyard in Madrid, sipping a small glass of coffee, reading Dani Couture’s Listen Before Transmit.

At the time, I pronounced it a read-everypoem-twice kind of book, as I pleasurably made my way through the linguistic density, the tonal shifts, and emotional load of each poem, then reread it immediately with the newfound familiarity of words I’d made eye contact with before. The words and I would recognize each other as having exchanged confidences in the near past. Now, twelve months later, as I recline around my Montreal apartment with the collection in hand again, I realize that it’s also a read-thewhole-book-twice kind of work. At least.

It’s a book that adds layers to the reader’s

experience over time, that allows for new discoveries, that shares deeper affective intricacies with each cumulative access point. “ Read the full review here.

Unstable Neighbourhood Rabbit by Mikko Harvey (House of Anansi Press) Reviewed by Jim Nason “Almost all of the poems in this collection have those jaw-dropping endings that I keep coming back to. Harvey accomplishes this by juxtaposing people and/or objects that normally don’t belong together and lacing them together with image, plot, and emotional tension – story-telling techniques not often found in poems.

There is a fabulist quality to several of the poems that invite us to inhabit a ‘once upon a time’ place. Once we settle into that magical and unstable place, Harvey masterfully pulls the rug out from under us. He leaves us gasping for air, we don’t know what hit us, but in a good way.”

Read the full review here.

Ledi by Kim Trainor (Book*hug) Reviewed by Jennifer Zilm “The poet knows so much about Ledi’s body, about her burial, about the grave goods accompanying her into her coffin and yet next to nothing about her former lover’s grave site. Thus she has imagine one. While the Ledi’s excavators work backwards: from the unearthed body and the grave site to create a speculative identity of Ledi, the poet has to work in the opposite way with her dead lover: from her incomplete memories of him, which are frustratingly unaccompanied by any artifacts (“I have no letter written in your hand. No photograph”), in order to give him a proper burial. (“I place you here– in the Mojave.

In this sere blue.”) What Ledi reminds us is that dead bodies shadow us in our lives and ultimately how little we know about our dead– even those with whom we were intimate.”

Read the full review here.

Welcome to the Anthropocene by Alice Major (University of Alberta Press) Reviewed by Jenny Haysom “Each section contains smaller poems on a wide variety of topics––like local ecology, office life, mathematics, community, the domestic sphere, time, cognitive illusions, and more. Though varied in subject, so many of these poems bring us back to the problem of being human; that is, we place ourselves at the centre and see the world around us through a distorted lens. To twist the words of Wallace Stevens, ours is the perspective of the vital, dominant, fatal, arrogant I. Read the full review here.

Interested in reviewing for the League? As it stands, we are currently looking for volunteer reviewers. It’s a small, small poetry world out there, and we know there’s a large chance reviewers have met the poet they’re reviewing at least once, so we want to embrace that: friends, review friends! Publishers, review your own books!

Discuss, discuss, discuss–as long as you disclose your connections and keep your writing transparent. We’re looking for reviews that speak to the reviewer’s personal experience with the book, but we’re also looking for reviews that can connect a book with other legacies, initiatives, and creators in CanLit. For submission guidelines and a list of suggested reviewable titles from this publishing season, visit our website.

New Members Paloma Alaminos

Gavin Barrett

Jenna Lyn Albert is a poet, cat enthusiast, and proud acadienne living in Fredericton, New Brunswick. A recent graduate of the University of New Brunswick’s Creative Writing program, her poetry has appeared in many Canadian literary magazines such as The Malahat Review, The Puritan, Riddle Fence, and The Temz Review.

Albert is a member of The Fiddlehead’s editorial board and a first reader for Goose Lane Editions’ Icehouse poetry imprint. Her debut collection of poetry, Bec & Call, was published with Nightwood Editions in September 2018. She is currently serving a two-year term as the City of Fredericton’s Poet Laureate (2019-2020).

Madeline Bassnett is the author of two chapbooks, Pilgrimage (2016) and Elegies (2011), as well as a literary monograph, Women, Food Exchange, and Governance in Early Modern England (2016).

She is currently on the board of Poetry London and teaches in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Western University. She lives in London, Ontario.

Adèle Barclay’s writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Heavy Feather Review, The Pinch, Fog Machine, The Puritan, PRISM international, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2016 Lit POP Award for Poetry and the 2016 Walrus Readers’ Choice Award for Poetry and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Her debut poetry collection, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You, (Nightwood, 2016) was nominated for the 2015 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and won the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her second collection of poetry, Renaissance Normcore, is forthcoming from Nightwood Editions in fall 2019. She was the Interviews Editor at The Rusty Toque, a poetry ambassador for Vancouver’s Poet Laureate Rachel Rose, and the 2017 Critic-in-Residence for Canadian Women In Literary Arts. She is Arc Magazine‘s Poet in Residence and an editor at Rahila’s Ghost Press. She lives on unceded Coast Salish territory/Vancouver, BC. Melanie Janisse-Barlow

Roxanna Bennett is a disabled poet living in Whitby, Ontario. She is the author of unseen garden (chapbook, knife | fork | book, 2018), The Uncertainty Principle (Tightrope Books, 2014) and Unmeaningable, forthcoming from Gordon Hill Press in fall 2019.

Lindsay Bird Carolyn Boll Lucy Brennan Neall Calvert has twenty-five years’ experience as a journalist, book editor and writer. His essays on the German-speaking spiritual poets Friedrich Hölderlin and Rainer Maria Rilke can be found at neallcalvert.blogspot.com/, at academia.edu (see westernu.academia.edu/NeallCalvert) and in his Kindle book Hölderlin & Rilke: What I Learned from Two Great German Poets (see www. amazon.ca/HOLDERLIN-RILKE-Learned-GreatGerman-ebook/dp/). Neall has been published in The Men’s Journal, Borrowed Solace, a Douglas & McIntyre anthology and online and in print at Recovering The Self. Éric Charlebois

Elizabeth Cunningham Liana Cusmano Emily Davidson’s poetry has appeared in publications including Arc, CV2, Descant, The Fiddlehead, Room, subTerrain, and The Best Canadian Poetry 2015. Originally from Saint John, New Brunswick, Emily currently resides on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she works as an editor. Her debut collection, Lift, is new this spring from Thistledown Press.

When Brigette DePape was 11, she received a wonderful gift – a journal from her big sister. This led to her love of writing. She studied Creative Writing at The University of Ottawa. She has written three plays for fringe festivals across Canada. Her work explores the themes of healing, sustainability, joy, and love. Her first collection of poetry will be published by At Bay Press. She is happy to call Winnipeg home.

Liana Di Marco Adrienne Drobnies is a graduate of the SFU Writer’s Studio. Her origins are in Texas and California, and she has also lived in Toronto, Boston, Grenoble, and Luxembourg. She has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and has worked at SFU and the Genome Sciences Centre in Vancouver. For more detailed biographical information, see www. adriennedrobnies.com.

Deidre Dwyer Klara du Plessis is a poet residing in Montreal.

Her debut collection, Ekke, was released from Palimpsest Press in 2018; and her chapbook, Wax Lyrical—shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award—was published by Anstruther Press in 2015.

Klara is the editor for carte blanche magazine, a PhD English Literature student at Concordia University, and currently expanding her curatorial practice

to include experimental Deep Curation poetry reading events. Follow her @ToMakePoesis.

Paola Ferrante‘s poetry and fiction have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Puritan, The Fiddlehead, CV2, Joyland, Room Magazine, Carte Blanche, Canthius, Minola Review, Overland, and elsewhere. Her poetry was a finalist for the Malahat Review‘s 2018 Open Season Awards, nominated for the 2018 Best of The Net award, and long listed for the 2017 Thomas Morton Memorial Prize. Her fiction won first prize in Room Magazine‘s 2018 Fiction Awards, was shortlisted for PRISM International‘s 2018 Grouse Grind, and long listed for SmokeLong Quarterly’s 15 anniversary Flash Fiction Award. Her chapbook, The True Confessions of Buffalo Bill, was published by Anstruther Press. Her first full length poetry collection, What to Wear When Surviving A Lion Attack, is forthcoming from Mansfield Press in Spring 2019. She resides in Toronto, Canada.

Her twitter handle is @PaolaOFerrante.

Laurie Fuhr Kayla Geitzler is an editor and writing consultant from Moncton, NB. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Gnaw & Gnarl: A Chapbook of NB Writers, Hamilton Arts & Lights, Les Effeuilleuses, Poetry Is Dead, The Fiddlehead, QWERTY, and Galleon. Her first collection of poetry, That Light Feeling Under Your Feet about the slogging and surreal world of cruise ship workers, was published by NeWest Press in April 2018. She is a recipient of the Bailey Prize for Best Unpublished Manuscript and has been nationally recognized by the CBC as a poet who reflects “the enduring strength of the literary form in this country.” For more information about Kayla Geitzler and her work, please visit www.kaylagwrites.com.

Chantal Gibson is an artist-educator living in Vancouver with ancestral roots in Nova Scotia.

Her visual art collection Historical In(ter)ventions, a series of altered history book sculptures,

dismantles text to highlight language as a colonial mechanism of oppression. How She Read is another altered book, a genre-blurring extension of her artistic practice. Sculpting black text against a white page, her poems forge new spaces that challenge historic representations of Black womanhood and Otherness in the Canadian cultural imagination.How She Read is Gibson’s debut book of poetry. Her work has been published in Room magazine and Making Room: 40 years of Room Magazine (Caitlin Press, 2017), and she was shortlisted for PRISM magazine’s 2017 Poetry Prize. An award-winning teacher, she teaches writing and visual communication in the School of Interactive Arts & Technology at Simon Fraser University.

Susan Glickman is the author of six volumes of poetry, most recently The Smooth Yarrow (2012), three novels for adults, most recently Safe as Houses (2015), the “Lunch Bunch” trilogy of children’s books. She works as a freelance editor and teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto and Ryerson University.

readings at various venues throughout the GTA. Along with poetry Troy has also written songs, plays, screenplays, short stories and novels. His first collection of poetry, Casting Shadows, was published in the spring of 2019 through Kelp Queen Press / ChiZine Publications. Two of his novels, The Dark Stars of Morning, and Red Rover will be published by ChiZine Publications in the following year.

Michelle Hillyard (She/Her) is an award winning spoken word/page poet from Mississauga, Ontario. She’s the poetry editor of the new literary magazine Alt-Minds (which focuses on the topics of mental health), workshop coordinator for the Mississauga Writers group, and board member of Spoken Word Canada. In 2018 she competed internationally as a part of the Burlington Slam Project Team. Proudly neurodivergent, her work focuses on autism acceptance, body positivity and mental health.

Born in Montreal, Chris Hutchinson has lived all over Canada and the US, working in restaurant kitchens, then later teaching English literature and creative writing in colleges and universities.

He holds a BA in Writing from the University of Victoria, an MFA in Poetry from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. He currently teaches Creative Writing at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta. His newest poetry unstitches the lyric voice from certain historical assumptions. “We impose our rage for immortality on things” is how Don MacKay succinctly puts it, writing of our darkest tendencies towards appropriation. In the face of this rage for order, authenticity, and permanence, Hutchinson seeks to express the ephemeral and fluid nature of our linguistic experiences, and to find new ways through and around the ‘egotistical sublime’ of neoliberal ideology.

FROM THE BLOG

Michael Goodfellow lives in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. His poetry has mostly recently appeared in The Nashwaak Review.

Matthew Gwathmey was born in Richmond, Virginia and studied creative writing at the University of Virginia. His poems have appeared in Grain, Crazyhorse, Prairie Fire, The Iowa Review, and other literary magazines. He became a Canadian citizen in 2013 and lives with his wife and children in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where he is a PhD student at UNB. He also works at The Learning Bar on Confident Learners, an Indigenous literacy program. Our Latest in Folktales is his first book.

Troy Harkin was born in Nova Scotia and grew up in and around Toronto. He first began writing and publishing poetry through University of Toronto literary journals in the 1990s and gave regular

Juliette Blake Jacob

Danny Jacobs Shannon Kernaghan Eva Kolacz Chloe Lewis is new to the poetic community, having only just had their debut publishing in Thirteen (LCP Chapbook Series). They wish to establish themselves as a talented poet before they graduate, when they’ll be able to throw themselves more fully into the community.

Tess Liem lives in Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyaang—unceded Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe territories (Montreal QC). Her writing appears in The Puritan, Plenitude, Cosmonauts Avenue, THIS and elsewhere. Her debut collection of poetry, Obits. (Coach House 2018), was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary award.

Josephine LoRe started her sharing her poetry in the Calgary scene in 2009 and has since been invited to perform and feature in numerous venues. She has participated in opportunities where her poetry has been rendered into visual art, accompanied by music, and interpreted through dance. She has workshopped with and been mentored by some of Western Canada’s foremost poets and immerses herself in the pages of poets present and past. She is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, the Alexandra Writers’ Center Society, and Haiku Canada. She completed a Maîtrise en Arts (MA) in Comparative Literature from l’Université de Rouen in France and an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Modern Languages and Literature from the University of Toronto. She also has a Bachelor of Education from l’Université Laurentienne and is a French Immersion teacher, Language Arts and Humanities. She has facilitated peer editing workshops and taught a class in Metaphor at the Alexandra. Website: jolore62.wixsite.com/ josephinelore Stuart Ian McKay is a Calgary poet. He began

writing poetry when he was eight, publishing his work in his early twenties, and has been performing his work in public for thirty years. Central to his work are themes of place, language and memory.

Visual art and sound poetry are essential to his aesthetic, and are often critical parts of his work. The long poem is his favoured means of expression. Stuart has a particular interest in poetry about disabled persons and issues of disability. “a cognate of prayer”, his second book of poetry, is a series of four long poems celebrating the lives of persons living with a disability. He welcomes any opportunity for collaborative work with artists in other disciplines. For years, he and fellow Calgary poet and sound/noise artist Matt Smith have been creating soundscapes to accompany the public performances of Stuart’s poetry. Stuart serves on the poetry editorial collective of filling station.

Peter Midgley writes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, plays, and children’s literature. He also edits, translates and tells stories (folk tales, children’s stories, stories for adults, huge whoppers). He wrote his first book when he was twelve. It was awful, and he hopes his writing has improved since then. When he is not writing, he imagines the past life of his parrot—he thinks it may have been a pirate. He gets lost in his own city. Best to avoid travel with him entirely. In the course of thirty years working as a festival director, freelance editor, university lecturer, managing editor, acquisitions editor, clerk of court, bartender, janitor and doorto-door salesman, he has acquired an honours degree in Afrikaans and Dutch literature, and an MA and PhD in English. It’s astounding what people leave in the garbage.He has opined about Writing, Editing, Creativity, African Literature and Politics, the TRC and other topics in far-flung places—from Botswana, Canada, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland and Tanzania, to the United Kingdom and the United States of America. He is working on the rest of the alphabet.

David Miller is a poet living in northern British Columbia. He was born in Toronto in 1952 and

came to British Columbia in 1971. He has worked a variety of occupations from logging, commercial fishing, to working with those suffering mental illness and addictions. His poetry reflects a hidden edge of masculinity that bubbles beneath the surface from the dark alleys to the forest and sea.

Hasan Namir was born in Iraq in 1987. He graduated from Simon Fraser University with a BA in English and received the Ying Chen Creative Writing Student Award. He is the author of God in Pink (2015), which won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction and was chosen as one of the Top 100 Books of 2015 by The Globe and Mail. His work has also been featured on Huffington Post, Shaw TV, Airbnb, and in the film God in Pink: A Documentary. His first book of poetry, War / Torn (Book*hug) was published in 2018. He lives with his husband in Vancouver.

Geoffrey Nilson is a writer, editor, visual artist, and the founder of pagefiftyone, a BC-based poetry micropress. A regular contributor to Coast Mountain Culture, he is the author of four poetry chapbooks: In my ear continuously like a stream (above/ground, 2017), O (Swimmer’s Group, 2017), We Have to Watch (Quilliad, 2016), and Alchemy Machine (2015). Nilson’s poems, essays, and journalism have appeared widely in magazines and periodicals such as PRISM international, Event, Poetry is Dead, subTerrain, The Capilano Review, CV2, The Rusty Toque, Lemon Hound, Qwerty, and the Glasgow Review of Books. Nilson holds a BA in Creative Writing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, is an alumnus of the Banff Centre Wired Writing Studio, and has been shortlisted for The Malahat Review Far Horizons Award for Poetry and the Alfred G. Bailey Poetry Prize. As a visual artist, Nilson is preoccupied with the use of analog technologies in a digital world and what bpNichol called the “borderblur” between writing and visual art. His artistic practice includes photography, video, collage, printmaking, and visual poetry.

In a past life, Nilson was musician, songwriter, and recording engineer for various solo and

collaborative projects. He lives with his daughter in New Westminster on the unceded territory of the Qayqayt First Nation.

Nisha Patel is an award-winning Indo-Canadian poet and artist. She is the Festival Producer of the Edmonton Poetry Festival, and a member of the Breath in Poetry Collective. In 2018, she was selected as a recipient of the 2018 Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund. She is the 2016 Edmonton Indie Slam Champion, a finalist of the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam and a finalist of the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. Her work has been published in a collection of poems called Water and a solo chapbook Limited Success through Glass Buffalo Publishing. She has performed across Canada and the world, sharing her work on multiple tours and international features. Her poetry speaks to themes of race, feminism, and identity, focusing strongly on her struggles and triumphs as a woman of colour. She has worked with youth poets, adults, and students through storytelling and poetry workshops as the Artist in Residence in The Nook Cafe, Artist in Residence at The Sewing Machine Factory, and in 2016 gave a TEDxUAlberta talk discussing the intersections between poetry and politics. She is also a graduate of the Alberta School of Business with a bachelors in Business Economics and Law, a minor in Political Science, and a Certificate in Leadership. Currently, she is working on a full-length manuscript as well as an album of spoken word poetry.

Branka Petrovic Tom Prime Natasha Ramoutar is an Indo-Guyanese writer by way of Scarborough (Ganatsekwyagon) at the east side of Toronto. She is a graduate of the Master of Professional Communication program at Ryerson University and the English/Creative Writing Undergraduate program at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her work has been included in projects by Diaspora Dialogues, Scarborough Arts, and Nuit Blanche Toronto and has been

published in The Unpublished City II, PRISM Magazine, Room Magazine, Living Hyphen and more.

Born in Halifax, Trish Salah is the author of Wanting in Arabic (TSAR 2002, Mawenzie House 2013), and of Lyric Sexology Vol. 1 (Roof 2014, Metonymy 2017). She has coedited special issues of the Canadian Review of American Studies and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. In 2014 Wanting in Arabic was awarded a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction, and in 2018 Salah was shortlisted for the Dayne Ogilvie prize for emerging LGBTQ writers. At the University of Winnipeg she co-organized two conferences: Writing Trans Genres: Emergent Literatures and Criticism, and Decolonizing and Decriminalizing Trans Genres. Her essays, fiction and poetry appear in recent issues of Angelaki, Anomaly, Cordite Poetry Review, Prism International, The Puritan, Somatechnics, Supplement, TSQ, and in the collections, Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers and Current Critical Debates in the Field of Transsexual Studies. She is associate professor of Gender Studies at Queen’s University and in Spring 2019 she is a Writer in Residence at Pierre Berton House.

been published in Canadian and international journals. She was also a finalist for a National Magazine Award in poetry, the Robert Kroetsch Award, The Santa Fe Writers Award, and two Irving Layton Awards. Previous chapbooks include, Summations: Travels Through Italy and Searching for a Species (above/ground press). She lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Charmaine Ward

Conrad Scott Suzanne Zelazo is a poet, editor, and educator. She has a PhD in English with a speciality in modernist poetry. Suzanne is the author of the poetry collection Parlance (Coach House) and is the co-editor of Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (MIT Press) as well as Crystal Flowers: Poems and a Libretto by Florine Stettheimer (BookThug).

Eleni (Helen) Zisimatos is the Co-Editor-inChief and Co-Founder of the poetry magazine, Vallum. She holds two MA degrees and has

Fresh Voices 17 is here! Click the logo to read new poems from some of the League’s associate members.

Member News In celebration of our Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting, which took place in June 2019, here’s a look at what our members celebrated over the past year, plus some current happenings & excitements!

Members (and non-members) are always invited to submit their readings, book launches, panels, or any other poetry-realted events to our national events calendar. We are now accepting entires though an online form which can be found at poets.ca/events.

Rebecca Banks presents: Subterranean Blue Poetry Announces! Coming Soon! . . .

Working on “Dear Oprah” by Michael Ellis.

Famous California Poet and Rap Artist’s much celebrated poetry manuscript. A young girl in the ‘hood who is a rape survivor tells her story in first person poetic narrative. A must read. A Subterranean Blue Poetry Imprint.

A Book Review for “Between the Spine” by Adrian Ernesto Cepeda and a series of Book Reviews for Emily Bilman (to include “A Woman By A Well”, “Resilience” and “The Threshold of Broken Waters”) will be published in future Issues of Subterranean Blue Poetry.

Coming Soon! The July 2019 Issue of Subterranean Blue Poetry.

Titled: “birds and blues” Featuring: Deborah Guzzi, Autumn Cooper, Joseph Campbell, Collin van de Sluijs . . . and more. www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com “all the poetry, this Summer” “for those subterranean blues” Jeevan Bhagwat co-facilitates the Scarborough Poetry Club – meetings monthly - and is actively involved in promoting poetry in his community.

As part of the City of Toronto’s Cultural Hotspot

celebration last year, he helped organize a poetry workshop series that allowed participants from the community to read, write, and present their own poetry. bill bissett’s new collection, breth (Talonbooks) is out now. breth presents both new and selected poems.

Rita Bouvier’s poetry, previously published and new, was included in two publications dedicated to Indigenous writers, ndncountry (Prairie Fire CV2, 2018) and kisiskâciwan, edited by Jesse Archibald-Barber (University of Regina Press, 2018).

Shannon Bramer has just published Climbing Shadows: Poems for Children with Groundwood Books. Illustrated by Californian visual artist and puppeteer, Cindy Derby, this new collection resulted from Bramer’s work as a kindergarten lunchroom supervisor and explores an evocative range of children’s joys and sorrows, worries and fears, with both sensitivity and humour.

Allan Briesmaster’s poetry was published in Heartwood (League of Canadian Poets) and the Tamaracks anthology. His book, The Long Bond: Selected and New Poems, is coming out from Guernica in the fall.

Ronnie R. Brown’s work appears in Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology (Mansfield Press) and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century.

David Brydges organized Poartry North, an exhibit at the Temiskaming Art Gallery in Haileybury, Ontario - poems with matching artwork. Several League of Canadian Poets Members were in the winner’s circle for this year’s Dr. William Henry Drummond National

Poetry Contest. Second Place went to Marsha Barber, while Honourable Mentions were won

by Kate Marshall Flaherty, Keith Garebian, and Bruce Meyer. Judge’s Choice honours went to Josie Di Sciascio- Andrews, Ronnie R. Brown, Kathy Fisher, and Debbie Okun Hill. A big thank you to all poets who supported and contributed to the contest’s success.League member Bianca Lakoseljac was the judge.

Barbara Bucknell is working on and submitting manuscripts; one called Autobiography that gives an overview of her life, containing poems she has written from the age of 19 to present, another an English verse translation of a medieval French word the Laise of Marie de France – stories of love affairs.

Fern G. Z. Carr’s debut poetry collection, Shards of Crystal, was released by Silver Bow Publishing. Her book has received much acclaim thanks to positive reviews, interviews, articles and speaking engagements including a guest reading for the Federation of BC Writers. Over the course of the past year, Fern’s poetry has been published in: California; Illinois; Indiana; Maryland; Michigan; Minnesota; Missouri; Montana; New Westminster; Pennsylvania; Toronto; Vancouver and Zomba, Malawi with more slated for publication in France. While she writes poetry in six languages and has been published in five, her goal is to have her Mandarin poems published.

Louise Carson will be one of the featured performers at a celebration of over 30 years of the existence of Montreal Serai, an online magazine on Friday, June 21 at 7 PM, Espace Knox, 6215 Godfrey Avenue, QC. Chelsey Coupal’s Sedley (Coteau Books, 2018) was shortlisted for three Sask Book Awards: the Poetry Award, the First Book Award and the Regina Book Award.

Robert Currie’s One-Way Ticket (Coteau Books, 2018) was short-listed for the Poetry Award at

the 2019 Sask Book Awards. Two poems were published in the Spring 2019 edition of Grain Magazine.

Anthony Di Nardo’s newest book is SKYLIGHT (Ronsdale Press, 2018). He is finishing up a manuscript, tentatively titled It All Depends.

Anita Dolman’s poetry has been published in Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, Ottawater, Experiment-O 11, Crush, the Sawdust Reading Series 4th Anniversary Collection chapbook, and on the Chaudiere Books website as part of National Poetry Month. She has written poetry book reviews for Room and Arc Poetry Magazine.

Amanda Earl, managing editor of Bywords. ca, oversaw the publication of 12 online issues featuring approximately 40 poems and 12 reviews. As the fallen angel of AngelHousePress/ DevilHouse, she oversaw the publication of 6 chapbooks and two online magazines (NationalPoetryMonth.ca and Experiment-O. com). She received an Ontario Arts Council Recommender Grant, was a feature at two Ottawa-based readings, and had poetry published in 6 print and online literary magazines.

As a visual poet, she had work exhibited in Toronto, Ottawa, and forthcoming in Windsor and Niagara Falls. She had 5 visual poetry chapbooks published in Ottawa, Burlington, Toronto, Calgary, and Sweden and her visual poems were published in 3 online journals. She was on the 2019 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award jury and was the editor for the first issue of Guest (above/ground press, 2019). AngelHousePress is creating a collaborative map for women and gender non conforming visual and concrete poets. See the map as more names from around the world are added here: https://tinyurl.com/ y6mm7djg.

Keith Garebian’s poem “Dungeness Documentary” from his collection Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems (2008), was set to music for choir and instruments by Gregory Spears.

Another poem (“Queer Artist Haiku”) from the same collection was published in Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman (Squares & Rebels, 2019). “The Old Lovers” was selected for Thirteen, the League chapbook, edited by Ali Blythe ahead of the publication of his 8th collection, Against Forgetting, by Frontenac House as part of their Quartet 2019.

Kim Goldberg had 3 poems included in Multiverse: an international anthology of science fiction poetry from Scottish sci-fi publisher Shoreline of Infinity. She also had poems included in two Canadian anthologies released in 2018 -- Refuse: CanLit in Ruins (Book*hug Press), and Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology (Mansfield Press).

Brian Henderson’s 12th collection of poetry, Unidentified Poetic Object (Brick Books) is out Spring 2019. Last fall, he read at the Elora Poetry Centre for the 100,000 Poets event with bill bissett.

Debbie Okun Hill had a busy year with 42 poems published in numerous publications and anthologies including Heartwood, In/Words Magazine, Poetry Pause, Tamaracks, and The Windsor Review. Ten of her previously published poems were also translated into Greek for the anthology Hellenic Encounters. She judged contests, posted 23 features on her literary blog Kites Without Strings, and wrote over 15 reviews for Goodreads. Her ash tree inspired poems have been shared at featured readings and open mic events held in southern Ontario and in Winnipeg.

This April, she was named a Life Member of the Ontario Poetry Society for her contribution to the poetry community.

Maureen Hynes is delighted that her fifth volume of poetry, Sotto Voce, will be published by Brick Books in the fall.

Keith Inman adjudicated a poetry contest called Fresh Ink for the St. Catherines Public Library last fall. He coordinates the Banister poetry contest

for his local Canadian Authors branch. He is working on two manuscripts, one about walking 800k of the Camino-Frances.

Susan Ioannou read her work for recording on Vallum’s Poem of the Week blog. Other poems appeared in the League’s Poetry Pause, The Feathertale Review, Big Pond Rumours, and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century.

Patricia Keeney’s latest books are Orpheus in Our Time (NeoPoiesis) – a combination of lyric poems based on ancient Greek hymns and contemporary dialogue, and One Man Dancing (Inanna) – a novel based on the life of an African Canadian actor involved in an experimental Ugandan theatre company during the murderous reign of Idi Amin – currently being considered for film.

Penn Kemp launched new poetry books Local Heroes (Insomniac Press) and Fox Haunts (Aeolus House). She participated in festivals including Day of the Poet, The Edmonton Poetry Festival, and Wordsfest.ca. She was featured in the London Public Library Trailblazer Series and Gathering Voices 2019. She was the Kalamlka Writer-in-Residence at Vernon’s Caetani House in Fall 2018.

Monica Kidd’s fourth book of poetry, Chance Encounters with Wild Animals, was published in April 2019 by Gaspereau Press.

Daniel Kolos has continued Salons at his home in the village of Durham, Ontario. In February, he hosted the Fifth Annual Erotic Poetry Salon with fiteen local poets reading from all around Grey County. He continues to organize and lead a bi-weekly poetry workshop that has been ongoing since 2012. This year, fourteen members of the workshop are collecting poems for their first anthology, Echoes.

Fiona Tinwei Lam’s animated poetry videos were selected for screening at the Zebra poetry

film festival in Germany, the International Video Poetry Festival in Athens, Greece, as well as at festivals in Montreal, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Houston, among others. She co-edited and contributed to Love Me True, an anthology of poetry and creative nonfiction about the ups and downs of long-term relationships, which was launched in spring 2018 with Caitlin Press. She has been putting the finishing touches on her forthcoming book of poems, Odes & Laments (Caitilin Press, fall 2019).

John B. Lee hosted a reading in Port Dover with George Elliot Clarke launching their collaborative book These Are the Words (Hidden Brook Press, 2018). He continues his annual July 7th tradition of hosting a poetry reading dedicated to PEACE & LOVE inspired by Ringo Starr’s birthday when he invites people all over the world to celebrate Peace and Love in the world.

Yukon poet Joanna Lilley toured Alaska in December 2018, organized by 49 Writers which included readings, craft talks, and workshops in Juneau, Cordova, and Anchorage on her “Human Geography” theme of writing about place. She participated in a “poet responder” event at the Anchorage Museum, writing poems on the spot in response to prompts provided by museum visitors.

D.A. Lockhart’s third collection, The Gravel Lot that was Montana (Mansfield Press) was released in October 2018. His forth collection, Devil in the Woods (Brick Books) will be out in Fall 2019. His fifth book, Wenchikàneit Visions (Black Moss Press), a collection of lyric essays is due out around the same time. He received 5 nominations for the Pushcart Award for his poetry. One poem was selected for Best Canadian Poetry in English 2019 (Biblioasis). He hosts the By the River reading series in Waawiiyaatanog and publishes American and Canadian poets through his small press, Urban Farmhouse Press.

Jeanette Lynes’ The Small Things That End The World (Coteau Books, 2018) won the Muslims for

Peace and Justice Fiction Award at the 2019 Sask Book Awards.

Randy Lundy’s Blackbird Song (University of Regina Press, 2017) won the Saskatchewan Arts Board Poetry Award and the Saskatoon Public Library Indigenous Peoples’ Publishing Award.

Diana Manole has seen her poems in the anthologies Dis(s)ent (In/Words, 2018) and Things That Matter (Ontario Poetry Society, 2018), and in magazines The Loch Raven Review, The Feathertale Review, NationalPoetryMonth.ca, POEM, The Sleep Aquarium, Revista Neuma, and eCreator.ro. Her work has also been featured through Poetry Pause. Her translations of Romanian poetry into English appeared in Comparative Critical Studies (Edinburgh UP, 2019), New Humanist, Columbia Journal, Washington Square Review, The Loch Raven Review, Ezra:An Online Journal of Translation, and The Bitter Oleander; Întoarce-te (Come Down) by Fiona Sampson, Diana’s first translation of an entire collection of poems from English to Romanian, was published by Tracus Arte in Bucharest in April 2019. Her literary translations have earned her second prize in the 2017/18 John Dryden Translation Competition and the invitation to present at the National Poetry Day Translation Summit, organized by the University of Roehampton and Newcastle University in London, UK, on 4 Oct. 2018. As an advocate of diversity in Canada and internationally, Diana’s most important accomplishmenthas been designing and teaching at Trent University the fourth-year course “Advanced Studies in Canadian Literature” as a survey of works by over thirty first- and second-generation Canadian poets. Students have explored how displacement, multiculturalism, and multilingualism, as well as racial, gender, and/or sexual discrimination inform poetics.

Dave Margoshes’ A Calendar of Reckoning (Coteau Books, 2018) was shortlisted for the 2019 Sask Book Awards poetry prize.

Susan McCaslin launched her recent book, Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine (Wood Lake) – a mixed-genre work of creative nonfiction -, in Vancouver in Feb. In early April she toured with her collaborating author J.S. Porter in Ontario. rob mclennan has two poetry collections out this year, A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press) and Household items (Salmon Poetry, Ireland). Life sentence, will be published next year by Spuyten Duyvil in Brooklyn. He has chapbooks out this year with Penteract Press, Happy Monk Press, No Press, post ghost press, and above/ground press. above/ground press is 26 years old this year, as is The Factory Reading series.

Michael Mirolla was interviewed on World Poetry Café with Ariadne Sawyer in December 2018. His work was featured in the anthology Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century. Through Guernica Editions, of which he is publisher/editor-in-chief, he launched a diversity-focused poetry mentorship program. He will be the Writer in Residence at the Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver this upcoming winter.

Lynda Monahan along with Saskatchewan poet, Rod Thompson, have co-written a collection, A Beautiful Stone: Poems and Ululations to be released by Radiant Press in the fall of 2019.

Lynda facilitates a writing group for the Canadian Mental Health Association – Prince Albert Branch and is compiling an anthology of the group’s work to be released this spring.

Dwayne Morgan illustrated one of his poems and released it as a children’s book. He coordinates a poetry slam league/competitions for students in grades 6-12 with both the Halton District School Board (20 schools) and the York Region District School Board (50 schools). In

June, Dwayne will start filming the second season of his TV show, Poetically Speaking, which airs on the AfroGlobal television network.

He will headline the opening night of Kalmunity Music Week in Montreal. In December 2018, he celebrated the 20th anniversary of his spoken word showcase, When Brothers Speak. This March saw the 19th edition of When Sisters Speak.

Bruce Meyer published selected poems The First Taste (Black Moss Press) and a new collection of short stories A Feast of Brief Hopes (Guernica Editions). More of Bruce’s work, Pressing Matters: The Story of Black Moss Press, a new collection of poems McLuhan’s Canary (Guernica Editions), and a book of translations from Chinese from Exile Editions will come out this year. He was shortlisted for the National Poetry Competition in the UK, the Fish Flash Fiction Prize (Ireland), the MacEwen Prize (Canada), and won The Woolf Prize (Switzerland). In 2020, Guernica Editions will publish a volume of essays on his work. kjmunro’s first collection – contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019) – was launched in Whitehorse on International Haiku Poetry Day. Since January 2018, kjmunro has curated a weekly blog feature for The Haiku Foundation, now managed with guest editors. She gave two workshops in June 2018 as Artist in Residence at Jenni House. She has work in Collected Haiku, the first edition of the LCP Chapbook Series, and her poem placed first in the Very Small Verse Contest!

Mary Ann Mulhern was named Poet Laureate of Windsor, with Marty Gervais as Poet Laureate Emeritus. She just completed a poetry collection on the tragic Donnelly family of Lucan, ON to be published with Black Moss Press.

Honey Novick’s book Undefeated Relevance, was published by Flowertopia Studio. She was

accepted by Poetry In Voice, an educational program of the Griffin Foundation. She sang tributes to Leonard Cohen and Austin Clarke with George Elliott Clarke at the Toronto Public Library.

John Oughton is still enjoying retirement from college teaching. He has two manuscripts out awaiting publishers’ reactions: a new poetry collection, and a primer on how to teach in colleges and universities. He has been taking guitar lessons and started writing songs (six, so far). Recently, he retired from the volunteer committee running the Art Bar series. He has given a number of readings in and around Toronto, including one in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s house west of High Park. She is supposed to haunt it, but didn’t appear during his reading.

Concetta Principe is happy to announce that Frog Hollow Press (Vancouver) is publishing a suite of her poems this spring as part of their Dis/ Abilities Series, titled Conversion – Or A Theory.

Claudia Coutu Radmore was a director and presenter at this year’s VersEfest Ottawa which featured 81 poets, including poets from Iceland, Denmark, and Germany. She had about 24 poems accepted in journals, a chapbook manuscript published by above ground press, and a chapbook of Fogo Island poems by The Alfred Gustav Press. A full collection has been accepted for publication in Fall 2020.

DC Reid is organizing an anthology - Hologram for PK Page - which he will produce in support of the League’s PK Page Trust Fund for mentoring. This project is currently open for submissions! For more information and the call for submissions, click here. This project is independent from the League - please contact DC directly with the email provided in the call for any questions. Thanks to DC for organzing this initiative!

Giovanna Riccio has a new book, Plastic’s Republic: Featuring the Barbie Suite published

by Guernica Editions.

Bruce Rice was named Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan, effective April 1, 2019. He will serve in this capacity for a two-year term.

Utilizing the resources of the Regina Public Library’s Digital Studio, Bruce has started The Poet and The Poem interviews and voice recordings for NPN. A new collection, based on street photographer Vivian Maier, will be released in 2020 by Radiant Press. Bruce serves as Saskatchewan rep on the TWUC National Council.

Rob Rolfe’s work was included in the recent poetry anthology Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press). He did a CIUT radio interview on Patrick Lane and on his own tenure with Larry Jensen as Owen Sound Poets Laureate for 2015-2017. gillian harding-russell’s poetry collection IN ANOTHER AIR (Radiant Press, 2018) was shortlisted for a Saskatchewan Book Award. An excerpt from the sequence “Making Sense” is published in the latest issue of ELQ/Exile vol42, no1. The sequence won first place in Exile’s Gwendolyn MacEwen poetry competition in 2016.

Paul Sanderson’s new chapbook Falling Forward, edited by Allan Briesmaster, is to be published in 2019 with graphic design

by Julie McNeil Graphic Arts. Includes a CD insert, Beauty for Ashes, a collection of original instrumental guitar and piano pieces and songs written and performed by and poems read by the author, recorded at Blue Sound Studio in Toronto.

Vanessa Shields owns and operates Gertrude’s

Writing Room (GWR), located in Windsor, ON – the only dedicated creative writing office and school in Windsor/Essex County. GWR offers workshops, classes, and editorial/mentorship opportunities for writers of all stages of their career. Since its humble beginnings in July 2018, GWR has offered an average of one (5-6 week) class and 3 workshops per month – teaching, inspiring, and motivating over 125 writers.

Vanessa is currently working on a new poetry manuscript slated for publication with Palimpsest Press (2021).

top books of 2018. Josie also co-ordinated a new anthology of Ontario artists, Things That Matter (HAT, 2018). Soon, she will launch a new collection of poetry and photography, Sunrise Over Lake Ontario, with cover art by John Kinsella.

David Silverberg’s latest book of poetry As Close to the Edge Without Going Over was published in May 2019 from ChiZine’s poetry imprint Kelp Queen Press. This book focuses on spec poetry (sci-fi, horror, magic realism). David also created a solo theatre show Jewnique which he toured across Ontario and Alberta in 2018.

Eva Tihanvi collaborated with Toronto musician and composer Carlie Howell on a 14-song cycle called When Lightening Strikes the River, for which they received a Canada Council collaboration grant. One song is her previously published poem “My Heart Hears You Dreaming” set to music; the other 13 are brand new poems/ lyrics.

It has been a busy year for Glen Sorestad.

His poems appeared in four separate anthologies published during the past year: The League’s Heartwood, edited by Lesley Strutt; Saskatchewan Hockey, selected and edited by Allan Safarik; Beyond Forgetting, celebrating Al Purdy; and, Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century, selected and edited by James Deahl. In 2018, ten poems appeared in English and Italian translations in The Journal of Italian Translation in New York, while another five poems by the same translator appeared in English and Italian translation in Il Foglio.Letterario in Italy. Another seventeen poems appeared in both print magazines Grain and Amarillo Bay, andonline journals or websites in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews’ poetry appears in Another Dysfunctional Cancer Anthology (Mansfield Press, 2018) edited by Priscila Uppal and Meaghan Strimas. This anthology was selected by Chatelaine Magazine as one of the

Mary Lou Souter-Hynes’s fourth collection of poetry, Any Waking Morning, will be out from Inanna Publications this May. Her poetry will appear in Vallum and The Maynard for Spring 2019.

Bernadette Wagner received the 2018 Hyland Volunteer Award for outstanding leadership in the Saskatchewan writing community. She edited a redesigned Spring Volume II: Emerging Saskatchewan Writers. Her my second collection, The Dry Valley (Radiant Press), will be out this fall.

Elana Wolff has edited seven collections of poetry, had work published in three anthologies – including Heartwood – and submitted a sixth collection of poetry for release in 2020. beholden: a poem as long as the river by Rita Wong and Fred Wah has been shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Wong and four others who were arrested for opposing the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion went to court on April 15 in Vancouver, arguing a defence of necessity based on climate change. The Crown has suggested that Wong should spend 28 days in jail for her principled action to defend the land and water, and the date of the judge’s decision

will be released on May 1.

Anna Yin participated in the 2019 PoetryNow Battle of the Bards and shared her poem “My Accent.” She has translated work by poets in Canada into Chinese and had them published in USA and China. She is working on a manuscript of translations of Canadian, American, and Chinese poems.

In addition to running Shab-e She’r, Toronto’s most diverse and brave monthly poetry and open mic series, Bänoo Zan has also been published in some magazines, journals, and anthologies (16 pieces in 13 places), read at different events, and also started collaborating with Happening Multicultural Festival for their poetry and spoken word showcase. She was the librettist for the opera The Journey: Notes of Hope – an opera about exile that ran for 2 nights in Toronto.

6 Pieces on Poetry is a new series from the League to help members - and our wider audience - get to know each other better. Who are the members of the League of Canadian Poets? With over 750 members – growing every day -, our membership is diverse. Of course, though, all members have one thing in common: poetry! 6 Pieces on Poetry is our new quarterly series where members of the League will answer our 6 questions. We’ll talk poetry, writing lives & lessons, and inspiration, and through 6 Pieces on Poetry, you’ll get to know our membership a little better.

6 Pieces on Poetry with Nisha Patel

Nisha Patel is an Indo-Canadian poet, artist, and public speaker in Edmonton, Alberta. She is the 2019 Canadian Individual Slam Champion, the 2019 Edmonton Slam Champion, and the Executive Director of the Edmonton Poetry Festival. She is the author of Limited Success and co-author of Water, available now. She is the 2016 Edmonton Indie Slam Champion and a four-time member of the Edmonton Slam Team. She is a finalist of the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

She is the former Artist-in-Residence at The Nook Cafe and The Sewing Machine Factory.

Her work has also been published in The Glass Buffalo Vol. 2 No. 3 & The City Series: Number Four - Edmonton, as well as The Polyglot Issue 3: Curating our Canons. Nisha holds a Bachelors of Commerce from the University of Alberta school of Business with a major in Business Economics and Law, a minor in Political Science, and a Certificate in Leadership.

How did poetry become part of your life?

I saw a spoken word poet perform and it brought me to tears. And months later, living up in Treaty 8, falling into a period of loneliness and isolation, I thought to myself—I could do that. And so I took up the pen, and I wrote, and when I returned to Treaty 6 I found an open mic. I brought myself to tears that night, along with the audience. I didn’t look back.

What themes do you explore most consistently through your writing?

The body, and the shame and joys and difficulties of being alive inside a body. I speak so, so much about consumption of my person, or my own consumption of my culture. I speak to the diaspora and the identities I occupy, and all the ways they weigh me down and uplift me.

Do you feel that you’ve found a writing practice that works for you? If yes, can you tell us about it? If not, describe the challenges that you face that prevent you from feeling this way.

My writing practice is to work under pressure. I never, ever write a poem leisurely. Instead, I function under time constraints and deadlines, self-imposed or external, which are normal for my life as an artist. And when I get stuck, I read a good poem so I remember what poetry is supposed to be, before returning to my own work and trying to remember that I, too, am a poet.

What lesson that you learned through a creative writing course/workshop/ lecture/book sticks with you most presently?

You don’t have to write poems about queerness to prove that you’re queer. You can write a poem about trees, and it is queer because YOU wrote. And that’s enough. That’s what poetry asks of us.

What is the importance of community to your writing life?

There is no meaning to art without community. My poems don’t complete their intentions with the universe unless they find a home within people. And people deserve to come up and be vulnerable in safe spaces, so it’s our jobs as poets to foster the writing and the place the writing lives at the same time.

What keeps you going as a writer?

Someone needs to hear it. If, in my loneliest stories, I am writing something that is heavy for me I know that is part of being human that there must and will always be another person who needs this story as much as I do. And as long as I believe that, I will keep on.

Nisha was recently appointed the 8th Poet Laureate of of Edmonton, Alberta! The Edmonton Arts Council chatted with Nisha about her poetry, being appointed Poet Laureate, and what she has in store over her term. Read some excerpts from their interview: Q: What most excites you about the role of Poet Laureate?

A: I’m most excited to find new audiences to work with. It’s been exciting to be an artist in Edmonton because it’s a city that really allows you to experiment. I want to bring those new ideas to a wider audience with my new platform and really uplift people who might not have had the opportunity to access poetry or literary arts before.

Q: What are some projects you’re hoping to take on as Poet Laureate?

A: I want to invest quite a bit of time into mentorship. Mentorship is something this city thrives on in the business community, and I think we should treat art the same way. Art is work, art is a commitment people have made, and we should honour that by offering them the same opportunities for development as we would any other profession. I’m also excited to have deep learning workshops and hosting them both in-person and online to reduce any barriers to entry so that anyone who is serious about improving their craft can really access those opportunities.

I’m also just excited to perform for new audiences in the city.

Q: You had done a mentorship residency at The Nook earlier this year, can you share more about that?

A: Having a residency in a physical location that the public frequented meant that that location became a place for our profession. Poets started treating The Nook as a place to gather as a side effect of my residency there, so more people started to frequent The Nook as a business and as a performance venue in the city and that’s helped to establish a reputation for The Nook.

Personally, it helped me grow very, very quickly into a role where I teach others.

Q: How would you describe Edmonton’s arts community?

A: The Edmonton arts and poetry communities are so forgiving, if you have an idea and you want to go through with it and it doesn’t work out, there’s always an opportunity to try something else or try again. I find in other arts communities there can be a lot of competition, but Edmonton is a community that really wants to grow together and pull everyone up along with them so you’re not leaving anyone behind.

6 Pieces on Poetry with Allan Briesmaster Allan Briesmaster has been active on the Toronto-area literary scene since the 1980s as a workshop leader, reading series organizer, events coordinator and volunteer. He was an editor for Seraphim Editions in 2000-2008, and a partner in Quattro Books in 2006-2017. Since 2003 he has published limited-edition art and poetry books with his own small press, Aeolus House.

Allan’s eighth full-length book, The Long Bond: Selected and New Poems, is forthcoming in Fall 2019 from Guernica Editions. He has read his poetry, given talks, and hosted readings and launches at venues across Canada. He lives in Thornhill, Ontario

How did poetry become part of your life?

There is a sense in which poetry lives inside every child until, for most people, socialization and schooling suppress it. For me, being read to by a mother who loved books and an ear for song lyrics played parts in sustaining that not-yet-buried life. But unlike the many poets who started writing precociously, I’m a rather late bloomer. A science student, I chose to major in chemistry. However, I was always a bookworm, and excellent English teachers helped spur an appetite for quality literature. Novels comprised most of my extracurricular reading, though I also returned to the likes of Frost and Dickinson voluntarily. I was well into my first university year when the realization dawned, thanks mainly to the classics I read in a World Literature course, that I must be a creator, not just an admirer, of literary texts. At the same time, I made the assumption, which later proved wrong, that an academic career would suit me. Although I read widely and intensively, the poems I wrote in grad school and in the few years when I taught literature at two universities weren’t much.

When there turned out to be no permanent jobs available in my field, I went into computer programming.

Only then, once things had stabilized, did I begin to find my voice: writing steadily, even composing some poems on lunch hour walks. I attended poetry readings (impressed with Al Purdy and Gwendolyn MacEwen), was befriended by a couple of accomplished poets, and was coaxed into visiting Phoenix Poets’ Workshop, which, to my surprise, I found congenial. So much so, that within a year I was asked to lead the group. By then, my series of

jobs in I.T. were leaving me enough energy for further involvement in Toronto’s poetry scene on evenings and weekends. In 1994 came the offer to run the weekly Art Bar Poetry Reading Series, which I’d gone to since it began three years earlier. This brought on connections with poets across Canada. I went to other reading series frequently and sometimes was a featured reader myself. I was seeing poetry take on a social dimension and how, in important ways, poets can constitute a community. As relationships strengthened, opportunities came about for giving editorial advice. Involvement in the short-lived watershedBooks publishing co-op resulted in my belated first collection (1998; with six more, plus nine chapbooks, to follow over the next 20 years) and gave me a feel for book production as well as editing full-length manuscripts. Poetry might appear to have almost completely taken over my life when, in 2005, I forsook the 9-to-5 in favour of freelance work seven days a week on various literary projects, and especially when, the year after, I co-founded Quattro Books. (I do have other interests, though!) But well before then, poetry enabled travel from coast to coast and the forging of vital personal and artistic ties, besides being an outlet for expression without which life would be inconceivable.

What themes do you explore most consistently through your writing?

My writing is not particularly consistent. Individual poems are usually multi-themed and deal with a broad and shifting range of topics. These reflect many, though by no means all, of my lifelong interests and concerns and obsessions. The divided self and its efforts at integration. The different stages of a life and the sense of identity. Love, friendship, family. One’s relationship to nature and the increasingly imperiled ecosphere. Landscapes and biomes of southern Ontario and elsewhere in Canada. What science illuminates for us in the cosmos – phenomena and laws. The impacts of electronic technology. Experiences of visual art and music and the value they have. Transience and loss. Aging. Mortality. And gratitude. (Freely conceding that some topics of great interest to me, e.g., politics, social justice, trauma, illness, history, pop culture, biz culture, seem best left to poets more adept at handling them. But this might change.)

Do you feel that you’ve found a writing practice that works for you? If yes, can you tell us about it? If not, describe the challenges that you face that prevent you from feeling this way.

I’ve never found, or wanted, a single set of procedures to facilitate writing. My poetry has variable sources and catalysts and is sporadic, not regulated. Although I write each day, it’s without any set time or routine for composition or for revision. I go with whatever works at the moment to unblock my receptors and get me primed to let the flow start and keep on. Not long beforehand, it seems essential to have been exploring varieties of other poetry and literature while thinking along serious lines. Maybe to have felt peculiarly unsettled or troubled. Restless. A long walk or decisive change of scene will induce a clearing effect. Sometimes a poem springs up of its own accord, a complete surprise. The germ could be just a few words with a rhythm. Sometimes a phrase from a

text leaps out and piques a reaction. A longer passage could excite or annoy. Other times I’ll be in a workshop or social gathering where a prompt or challenge is issued. The vibes in the air in those situations are conducive, or perhaps merely grant permission, for creative risk-taking. And once in a while an experience, verging on an epiphany, insists on a poetic response, whether straightforward or by extrapolation (making the familiar strange – or the strange familiar). A striking remark in a casual chat, or something objectionable overheard, could spur a delayed riposte. I carry a notebook or at least a piece of paper where I’ll jot some first inklings and in rare instances draft a whole piece that stays largely intact. One added component of my practice that’s crucial is the willingness to revise for as long as it takes for every word to feel right. Worth noting along with all that is how a sense of creative play needs to be engaged while a poem grows into its form, no matter how fraught the subject may be.

What lesson that you learned through a creative writing course/workshop/lecture/book sticks with you most presently?

In the past year, Kate Marshall Flaherty’s StillPoint writing workshops reaffirmed a cluster of common-sense precepts. … Before beginning, empty the mind of what was weighing on it; relax, open up; set your habitual self-consciousness, self-criticism and self-censorship aside.

Then get down everything you can without pausing. Suspend judgment until after you’ve reached the endpoint or hit a definite impasse. This is especially desirable when there is a scant ten minutes to respond to a prompt – a situation which has, in fact, generated a number of successful poems. Afterward, if the piece holds real promise, stick with it until it is all that it wants to become.

And later, be amenable to constructive criticism from your peers

What is the importance of community to your writing life?

Community is all-important. In every conceivable way, the giving and gaining of practical and moral support to and from fellow writers – along with all who appreciate poetry – makes life not only more bearable but actively fulfilling for me, in this one central zone anyway. I’m not referring to wide acclaim or narrow favouritism or forming a coterie. I mean what I have experienced as an arc of goodwill and generosity among diverse poets and poetry-lovers that spreads. A sphere, ultimately, wherein creative energy and value circulate freely, through reading, performing and listening, so as to include and encourage instead of wall off. Poets help each other’s writing improve and find more of an audience, and in so doing broaden horizons, deepen our friendships and solidify a common purpose. In claiming this I’m no wishful idealist but an observer and a contributor. While I acknowledge that there is much more still to be done in this area, I have witnessed a remarkable flourishing in the past few decades throughout what I like to call a “community of communities.” It extends to workshops, study groups, soirees, readings, launches, book fairs, salons, and multimedia performances. It even applies to prestigious festivals and award presentations. Private gatherings, too, where poetry is shared – and not among poets alone. And, certainly, in interpersonal exchanges, including electronic media (fractious though that can become). At its best and most characteristic, this community is tolerant, welcomes difference, and reaches out to beginners in the art, to those who may be inveterate outsiders, and to those otherwise on the margins. By and large, it exists regardless of the all-too-human tendencies that run counter, such as petty feuds, closed-mindedness, a self-serving careerism, networks of privilege, inflated pretension, and passing fads. I’ve learned not to generalize overmuch about

poets, but I think it is safe to say that most of us are somewhat introverted and unassertive. We can be standoffish and are at least as quirky and touchy as the rest of humanity, with an added knack of being able to wound with words – and yet, altogether, we benefit more than most loose aggregations when we befriend and mentor one another and feel solidarity. After all, the material rewards, book sales and degrees of fame and prestige enjoyed by even the most renowned Canadian poets tend to be rather limited. And while it is in our natures to compete and to envy, we seem mostly in favour of enlarging the shared pie. I believe that such sharing also entails finding means to expand the audience of non-poets who “get” what we do – which means inviting them, as well, into our communities. Of course, the foregoing is all from a personal perspective which, up to now, has shown me a largely positive trend. In fact, the number of mini-communities continues to increase and diversify. I’m hopeful but don’t take for granted that the alignment of basic benevolence and enlightened self-interest that has so long been so favourable will hold.

What keeps you going as a writer?

I harbour the sense, as Wordsworth’s line puts it, “of something evermore about to be.” That is so even while I feel increased concern about the climate crisis and about social inequity. I won’t go into what actions I take outside of my literary life, though admittedly the relationship is problematic. Obviously, there are more effectual platforms for raising awareness and alarm. But I see poetry, among its other impacts (not the least of which can be the linkage of incomparable aesthetic pleasure with a spiritual intimation), giving consolation and seeding empathy in unique ways. Perennially. I find, too, that poetry still lightens “the burden of the mystery.” Also, that ongoing community-building through poetry will, at this time as much as ever, enrich lives. Participation in such exchanges, both in events that involve poets and in written texts, is essential to what I intend to pursue for the rest of my life. More specifically motivational for my writing is the knowledge that subjects remain which my body of work up to now has only touched on: ones that will want techniques and styles I haven’t yet tried. In addition, subjects that were broached in my previous books are far from exhausted and will themselves demand different treatments when I revisit them. Together with that comes the realization – life being short – of the need to quicken the pace for what I hope is further high-quality output. At the same time, I plan to carry on with the editing and publishing activities that have been bound up with my writing life. But if they start to crowd into my own creative flow, I’ll phase them out. Then, knowing of people who find my poetry worth reading encourages me to keep on preparing the poems for a book which is to follow my forthcoming Selected and New Poems (Fall 2019). And what is most immediately keeping me in the game, as it has for over three decades, is anticipation of the next poem I’ll write. *** + recommend a book or performance by a fellow League member: The Broken Face by Russell Thornton (Harbour Publishing)

Writing Opportunities Calls for Submission Poetry is Dead: Small Towns Poetry is Dead seeks submissions of poetry and creative non-fiction for their Small Towns issue. “Farming districts, factory villages, ghost towns, bedroom communities, alternative societies, touristic hamlets, and shtetls: Poetry is Dead wants your poems and creative nonfiction on the subject of small town life. It isn’t necessary to have grown up in a small town to have an experience of one. Whether it be a memorable diner or an otherworldly villager—from bizarre rural folklore to little-known sites of phenomenal occurrences—send us your best work from those lesser-known onehorse municipalities.” Guest editors Kayla Czaga & and Julie Mannell. Deadline: July 15, 2019.

Room Magazine: Hair Room Magazine seeks submissions of poetry, creative non-fiction, and art for their upcoming themed issue: Hair. “Intimate space.

Roots. Growth. Identity. These are all things we think of when we consider hair. How does hair define us and affect the way we navigate the world? Our hair holds history, memory, tangible sacrifice, intangible inheritances, culture, fierceness, boldness, and sometimes even indifference.” No submission fee, publication rates of $50 CAD for one page, $60 for two pages, $90 for three pages, $120 for four pages, $150 for five or more pages. Deadline: July 31, 2019.

Open Minds Quarterly Open Minds Quarterly are seeking submissions for their Fall 2019 issue. OMQ publishes writing by folks with lived experience of madness/mental health challanges/accessing mental health services. No submission fee. Deadline: July 31.

Minola Review The Minola Review - giving space to women’s voices - is currently accepting submissions of poetry & prose! Pieces selected for publication will receive payment of $20/piece. Publishing on a rolling basis, no stated deadline.

Awards and Contests Vallum Magazine Award for Poetry The Vallum Magazine Award for Poetry 2019 is now open for submissions! Submit up to 3 poems, $25 entry fee. 1st prize $750 + publication, 2nd prize $250 + publication. Judged by 2019 Trillium Book Award-nominated writer, Gwen Benaway! Deadline: July 15, 2019.

Glass Buffalo Glass Buffalo’s 2019 Poetry Contest is now open! To be awarded to the best poem by a resident of Canada in English, judged this year by Ben Ladoucuer! $30 entry fee. $500 + publication for the winner. Deadline: August 2, 2019.

Aesthetica Magazine International Creative Writing Award Aesthetica Magazine is now open for submissions in poetry and short fiction for their international Creative Writing Award! Entry fee £18 fiction, £12 poetry. Winners receive £1,000 prize, publication in an anthology, consultation with literary agents + more! Deadline: August 31, 2019.

Thomas Morton Memorial Prize in Literary Excellence The Puritan’s annual Thomas Morton Memorial Prize in Literary Excellence is now open! Accepting submissions in fiction and poetry (poetry judged by Souvankham Thammavongsa). $20 entry fee, first place prize of $1000 + publication!

Deadline: September 30, 2019

Job Opportunities

Publicist for Biblioasis Biblioasis (Windsor, ON) is now hiring a full-time publicist. This position primarily entails the promotion of titles to media, planning and logistics of author touring and travel, and assisting marketing staff with sales materials and bookseller outreach. Deadline: July 7, 2019.

Executive Director of the LPG The Literary Press Group of Canada (Toronto, ON) is now hiring an Executive Director. The Executive Director leads the organization in successfully implementing its strategic plan and developing and implementing annual plans in concert with staff and board leadership. The ED is responsible for executive, strategic, operational/administrative, and staff leadership. Deadline: July 8, 2019.

Poetry Editor for carte blanche carte blanche (Montreal, QC) is seeking a new Poetry Editor! Knowledge of both English & French is an asset. Modest annual stipend.

Deadline: July 12, 2019.

Acquisitions Editor with the University of Alberta Press U of A Press is now hiring a full-time acquisitions editor. The Acquisitions Editor (AE) is responsible for soliciting, developing, and acquiring manuscripts for University of Alberta Press, both scholarly (primarily humanities disciplines: history, literary and cultural studies, cinema and media) and literary (poetry, short fiction, literary nonfiction). Deadline: July 20, 2019.

University of Alberta Writer-in-Residence Applications for the University of Alberta’s WIR program are now open! Successful applicants must have published at least one book in a literary genre. The term lasts from September 1, 2020 until May 31, 2021. Deadline: August 31, 2019.

Parliamentary Poet Laureate The Library of Parliament is calling for nominations for the position of Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate 2020-2021! This is a paid position to help expand the understanding and appreciation for written poetry! Submit nominations by September 16, 2019!

Bookish Bits & Industry News It’s awards season! Check out this incredible list of honours in Canadian poetry that have been given out recently: > 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize winners announced: Congratulations to the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize winners - Eve Joseph for Quarrels (Anvil Press) and the international prize winner Don Mee Choi’s translation of Korean poems written by Kim Hyesoon in Autobiography of Death (New Directions)!

We are thrilled for the winners of the biggest poetry prize of the year! > 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers announced: Congratulations to poet John Elizabeth Stintzi, the winner of the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers! > 2019 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize: Congratulations to the winners of the 2019 BC Book Prizes, including the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize winner, Leaguer Laisha Rosnau for her collection Our Familiar Hunger (Nightwood Editions)! > 2019 J.M. Abraham Poetry Award: Congratulations to the winners of the 2019 Atlantic Book Awards, including the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award winner, Alison Smith for her collection This Kind of Thinking Does No Good (Gaspereau Press)! > 2019 Saskatchewan Book Awards: Congrulations to the winners of the 2019 Saskatchewan Book Awards, including the Saskathewan Arts Board Poetry Award winner, Leaguer Randy Lundy for his collection Black Bird Song (University of Regina Press)! > 2019 Trillium Book Awards: Poetry had TWO big wins in the 2019 Ontario Creates Trillium Book Awards! Congratulations to Dionne Brand, whose book The Blue Clerk (McClelland & Stewart) won the Trillium Book Award, and Leaguer Robin Richardson, whose book Sit How You Want (Véhicule Press) won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry!

Awards season is a beautiful time of year where we get to delight in the recognition of incredible talents in the literary community!

How can you support your favourite poet?

Here’s 10 ways! > June is Indigenous History Month: Create space for Indigenous stories on your reading list with these 14 books to read for Indigenous History Month from CBC Books. The list includes poetry by Lee Maracle, Columpa Bobb, Tania Carter, Arielle Twist, and Katherene Vermette. > Pride Month reading recommendations from CBC Books: CBC Books celebrates Pride Month with a list of 12 books you should check out by Canadian LGBTQI2S writers, including titles by Leaguers: Mad Long Emotion by Ben Ladouceur (Coach House Books) and War / Torn

by Hasan Namir (Book*hug)! See the full list. > Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage releases long-awaited report on artist renumeration: We stand with The Writers’ Union of Canada in applauding the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage’s report and its recommended sweeping progressive improvements to copyright law! Learn more from TWUC. > Devastating Cuts to Ontario Libraries: We stand with The Writers’ Union of Canada against the recent cuts to operating budgets of the Southern Ontario Library Service (SOLS) and the Ontario Library Service - North (OLS-North).

“We believe robust access to public libraries and the inter-library services provided by both SOLS and OLS-North contributes to economic growth, creates a better-informed society, and fosters a healthier democracy.” Read TWUC’s full statement here. > Results of the ACP 2018 baseline survery measuring diversity in publishing released: The Association of Canadian Publishers released results of its 2018 baseline survey measuring diversity in English-language Canadian publishing, confirming the premise on which the working group was founded: Indigenous and racialized folks are underrepresented. Read the detailed results here.

> Poetry is back at Coach House Books: Coach House Books announced a new poetry program with a board of six poets to make acquisitions for the 2020 publishing cycle and shape the program for the future. The members of the interim advisory board are Billy-Ray Belcourt, Susan Holbrook, Nasser Hussain, Tess Liem, Matthew Tierney, and Ian Williams. Read the full announcement. > The Quick and Dirty on Demystifying the Slush Pile with Leaguer Chelene Knight: Wonder what goes into the editorial decisions at a literary magazine? Check out this article on Magazines Canada for some insight. > Poetry in Voice launches a literary journal for youth: The first issue of VOICES/VOIX, Poetry in Voice’s high school student poetry journal, is now live! The journal features poems in English & French written by students from across the country. Read it here. Congratulations to all the newly published poets!

In Memoriam The League of Canadian Poets has a large community that has stood strong for over 50 years. Early this year, the League lost some members of the community. We’d like to take this chance to remember Carl Leggo, Patrick Lane, Joe Rosenblatt, and Barbara Williamson.

Carl Leggo (1953 - 2019) All my emotions and experiences, all my hopes and desires, are steeped in poetry. I live in poetry, and poetry lives in me.

– Dr. Carl Leggo Scholars, poets, teachers and students across Canada who know Carl Leggo speak of experiencing a particular ‘Leggo’ phenomenon––hearing his voice while reading a poem or essay he’s written. Even for those who have never heard him speak, the intimacy and nuance of his writing perform off the page in Carl’s evocative, Newfoundland lilt - from UBC’s memorial page.

The University of British Columbia has eastablished the Carl Leggo Graduate Scholarship in Arts-Based Inquiry Fund in Dr. Carl Leggo’s memory. Learn more and support here.

Patrick Lane (1939 - 2019) Yvonne Blomer, Victoria’s poet laureate from 2015 to 2018, said Lane’s death is huge loss to Canadian letters. Blomer said she met Lane 30 years ago when she was a first-year creative-writing student at the University of Victoria. It was the beginning of a long and supportive relationship, in which she always enjoyed his friendship and sense of humour. “Patrick has been mentor to a great many Canadian poets over the years,” she said. “He will be missed.” - from the Times Colonist. For a look at Patrick Lane’s expansive life & career, see his obituary on BC Book Look, Joe Rosenblatt (1933 - 2019) Joe Rosenblatt’s iconoclastic proclivity and linguistic abandon were apparent right from the start of his long and lauded career. The Toronto-born writer and artist – who relocated to Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island in 1980 – announced his eagerness to buck the recondite conventions of Canadian poetry with the title of his 1966 debut, The LSD Leacock, one of the first books released by Stan Bevington’s Coach House Press (the house’s original motto, “printed in Canada by mindless acid freaks,” perhaps indicated a certain dovetailing of sensibilities between poet and publisher). - from Quill & Quire. Read the full article, This wild menagerie: remembering Joe Rosenblatt, including a poem written in his honour by Catherine Owen.

Barbara Williams Barbara Williams was a member of the League since 1982. She is remembered by her daughter.

The League sends condolences to the friends, family, and communities affected by the passing Carl, Patrick, Joe, and Barbara.