17.4 | Winter 2020
In this issue: 2-4
News f rom the League
5-6
Bill Arnott’s Beat
7-11
Poetry Parlour
13-16
Louise Carson’s review of The Vivian Poems: Street Photographer Vivian Maier, by Bruce Rice
17-22
New League Members
24-28
Member News
29-34
Writing Opportunities
35-39
In Memoriam
News f rom the League Spontaneous Poetry Writing Webinar - Jan 30, 2021 12pm EST This webinar is an excellent opportunity for both experienced and emerging poets to sharpen observational and descriptive skills, develop new interpersonal tools and the art of guiding questions, all in a manner that fosters weaving words and images into spontaneous poetry. Master the ability to write poetry in the moment, a practice to develop and incorporate into your writing alone and with others. FREE to attend for LCP Members Learn more and register Poetry + Union Call for Volunteers On February 14th, 2020, Kate Marshall Flaherty will be hosting a fundraiser for the League of Canadian Poets, and we are looking for volunteers to help raise some much-needed funds! This fundraising event provides the opportunity for poets to practice a new skill, connect with new people, and provide an incredible poetic experience, all while helping the League to grow and provide more for members. Let us know you’re interested Leon E. and Ann M. Pavlick Poetry Prize The Leon E. & Ann M. Pavlick
Poetry Prize seeks to honour and encourage a Canadian poet whose work displays ample creativity and promise as well as an outstanding poetry group or collective with a positive and ongoing impact on poetry in Canada. Two prizes of $10,000 will be awarded. Deadline to nominate is January 22, 2021. Learn more LCP Contests now open! Very Small Verse and Broadsheet contests The winner of the Broadsheet Contest will receive $250, publication in the 2021 Poem In Your Pocket Day Booklet, and a special broadsheet of their poem handcrafted by artist Briar Craig. The winner of the Very Small Verse Contest will receive $250, publication in the 2021 Poem In Your Pocket Day Booklet, as well as have their poem professionally designed and printed on a T-Shirt or tote bag. Deadline for both contests is January 22, 2021. Fresh Voices 21 is here! Fresh Voices is a project from and for the League’s associate members, edited by Joan Conway and Blaine Marchand. The League’s associate members are talented poets who are writing and publishing poetry
on their way to becoming established professional poets in the Canadian literary community. We are excited to be taking this opportunity to showcase the work of our associate members in this series! Fresh Voices 21 includes poetry by: • Lisa Alletson • Moni Brar • Neall Calvert • Melanie Flores • Michelle Hillyard • Frank Klaassen • Joseph LaBine • Josephine LoRe • John Oross • Nan Williamson Read Fresh Voices 21 LCP’s Poetry Neighbourhood, a Facebook Group for members of the League Join us in this private Facebook Group to share your news, discuss poetry, connect with other poets and more! Join today! LCP Holiday Hours Please note that the office of the League will be closed from December 18, 2020 to January 4, 2021. The LCP Chapbook Series Order a chapbook today and know that you are supporting the continued success of the Series that brings publication opportunites to underrepresented poets as well as some new, top-notch poetry for your bookshelf. Available now for order: • The Time After: Poetry from Atlantic Canada • The Next Generation Vol 1: Poems from Young Poets
• i am what becomes of broken branch: A Collection of Voices by Indigenous Poets in Canada • Fresh Voices: Tending the Fire • These Lands: A Collection of Voices by Black Poets in Canada Call for Nominations: Join our board, become a juror for upcoming awards Would you like to take on a larger role within the LCP? Do you know someone who is looking to take a deeper dive in Canada’s vast poetry community? We are looking for recommendations and people interested in participating on our board, juries, and volunteer positions. Let us know by filling out this form Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize for Canadian Youth Established to foster a lifelong relationship between Canadian youth and the literary arts, specifically poetry. The prize is supported through a generous donation from the Stursberg family and other donors in honour of Jessamy Stursberg. The prize accepts submissions from young poets all across Canada, with three prizes awarded in both the Junior (grades 7 to 9) and Senior (grades 10 to 12) categories. Deadline is April 30, 2021. Find out more Book Reviews Are you interested in reviewing a book of poetry for the League? Have you published a title recently and would like it to be reviewed? We are happily accepting review submissions for recent books of poetry from Canadian poets. Find
out more Member News The League has simplified the process to submit member news for St@nza and social media promotion. If you are a member and have news you would like shared, fill out this quick form. Poetry Parlour We invite League Members to respond to three poetry-related questions each month: Check out Poetry Parlour (League member exclusive) 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 1000 folks and we are always accepting submissions of published or unpublished poems! Poetry Pause is a great way to introduce new readers to your work. Tell your poets and poetry-loving friends! Subscribe to Poetry Pause Call for Proposals – Webinar Facilitators The League of Canadian Poets will be hosting digital webinars and professional development opportunities for our members. If you have a skill that you can teach other poets, we would love to hear from you! Please let us know more about your idea by filling out this form Tech support for online events We are looking for members or non-members who are comfortable
with online platforms like Zoom to provide basic tech support for online poetry events. This is a paid opportunity for members or nonmembers. Submit your interest in providing tech support. Volunteer with the League The League needs volunteers to run the many programs and services that we operate across Canada - and you can help! Please let us know what kind of volunteer work you are interested by filling out this form Donate to the League Support poets and poetry in Canada. Please consider donating monthly to the League of Canadian Poets. Donate via Canada Helps
Bill Arnott’s Beat Real Life Pandora
ed Poets, and ten years of poetry readings in the Zack Gallery at Vancouver’s Jewish Community Centre, with support from the Waldman Library and Yosef Wosk. And how did they celebrate their tenth birthday? Well, with a poetry reading, of course. But not just any poetry reading. A big one!
A tenth birthday’s no big deal. Sure, you hit double digits, but it’s not like becoming a teenager or getting into those high, round decades people lie about. Unless, of course, you’re a poetry group that convenes in a gallery. Then it’s a very big deal. Pandora’s Collective is one of those, a remarkable group lead by Bonnie Nish. Pandora’s has been hosting successful events in Greater Vancouver for over twenty years. It’s a true collective, not only creating and running but promoting a host of writing-inspired events around the city and beyond: Victoria’s Planet Earth Poetry, Surrey Muse, New Westminster’s RCLAS, TWS readings, Zero to 360, the Downtown Eastside Writers Collective, SFU’s Lunch Poems, Burnaby’s Spoken INK, Co-op Radio’s Wax Poetic, the Word Whip Series, Twist-
This particular night a decade was celebrated with an ekphrastic-inspired exhibit and readings. Twenty prominent Vancouver poets formed ten duos to write and read new work inspired by featured photos and paintings at the JCC Zack Gallery: Heidi Greco and Timothy Shay, Sita Carboni and Leanne Boschman, Kevin Spenst and Amanda Wardrop, Bonnie herself along with Mary Duffy, Rosemary Nowicki and Christy Hill, Jude Neale and Lindsay Kwan, Fran Bourassa and David Geary, JC Cortens and Candice James, Natasha Boskic and Angela Rebrec, as well as Kyle Hawke with Chelsea Comeau. Featured artists – muses to the poets, were: Michael Seelig, Jack Rootman, Ira Hoffecker, Claudine Pommier, Larry Green, Olga Campbell, Robin Atlas, Carl Rothschild, Ian Penn, and Ivor Levin. I considered this collective’s moniker cheeky until I saw Nish in action, akin to the Greek goddess name-
sake-trickster who disseminated hot fire amongst mortals. (Isn’t all fire hot?) Not that kind of hot. Although, yes, it was. Pandora’s fire was, like, stolen hot. So, hot hot you could say, without redundancy. And man, can that goddess disperse fire. I’m talking about Bonnie now. New poems sizzled and sparked through the gallery, a fiery incandescence of creativity. I was worried (and couldn’t have been the only one) the sprinkler system would be triggered. I lost most of my eyebrows in the backdraft. People said I look surprised. But Pandora herself (the much older, Greek one) would’ve been proud – surveying the room with a Jim Carrey green-mask smile. Smokin’! There was food, camaraderie and a hum of enthusiasm in the packed room amongst a stunning array of artwork. Funds were raised through donations and sales of the newly published Celebrating Ten Years: Po-
etry & Art – Sydney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, a well-blended feature of poems and visual art. All in all, a great celebration, showcased through collaboration. It was a pleasure being part of it. No post-party sugar meltdowns that I was aware of. And with this series, I’m actually looking forward to the teenage years. Originally published by The Miramichi Reader and the Federation of BC Writers. Bill Arnott is the bestselling author of Gone Viking: A Travel Saga, Dromomania, Allan’s Wishes, and Wonderful Magical Words. His Indie Folk CD is Studio 6. Bill’s work is published in literary journals, magazines and anthologies around the globe. He’s received songwriting and poetry prizes and is a Whistler Independent Book Awards Finalist with Gone Viking: A Travel Saga. Visit Bill @billarnott_aps and Gone Viking on Amazon here
Poetry Parlour See what Leaguers have to say about writing, the publishing journey, and life in poems.
Thank you to everyone who responded to the most recent Poetry Pause questions! Check out our new batch of questions.
How long did it take to land your first poetry book, from submission to acceptance? What was the journey like? Anna Yin: It took me more than one year from submission to acceptance. The journey was like a dream. Looking back I could see myself very brave, ambitious and full of joy. I attended poetry workshops and reading events. I edited my manuscript again and again, meantime I mailed it to various publishers and submitted my poems for poetry contest. I was not afraid of rejections and open to suggestions. I remember in 2008 me with a group of Oakville writers visiting Mosaic Press’ office, I prepared a chapbook of my poetry and brought it along. We didn’t have a lot of time there, I left it on the table with my email. Later in 2009 a friend of mine helped to contact Mosaic Press again, they asked me for more poems, I quickly grouped 60 poems. in 2010 Mosaic Press agreed to publish my first poetry collection. In Feb, 2011, Wings To-
ward Sunlight was published. I was happy to work with my editor Terry Barker and publishers since I found I could learn so much. Anne Burke: This depends on what we mean by “book” UNESCO definition or not. I wrote recognizable poetry since I was about ten years old. In fact, my father demanded that he was “the writer in the house” (so poetry was a subordinate genre, which it is not!) Some of the books were dispatches and others contain my own artwork (oil paintings). David Fraser: Can’t really remember clearly, but I’d say the best part of a year, what with conception, writing, many revisions, sharing, spoken-word performances, then working with an editor/publisher, back and forth in person and online. Liana Cusmano: Still in the works. Susan Ioannou: I submitted the manuscript of Clarity Between Clouds, my first collection not self-printed, to 12 consecutive publishers. In 1990, Goose Lane Editions accepted it and launched the book 18 months later. Such a lengthy wait was discouraging, but I busied myself with other writing projects
and persisted. Each time a rejection darkened the mailbox, to keep my hopes up, the following day I shot the manuscript off to the next publisher on the list I had researched. At last, when Goose Lane’s acceptance letter arrived, it was so gracious I cried. Kamal Parmar: I seem to have lost count. However, years do not matter as every time I got a rejection, it was a stepping stone toward success, in that I learnt a lot --from getting rid of all the ‘cliches’ to ‘polishing’ my poems, to reading them with a ‘critical eye.” It all worked when I finally got my reward and the publisher said,’ I am interested.’ That was my day of victory, of celebration after years of sweating and toiling over the written word and scratching my head to get the right word or meaning! As they say, ‘sweet are the fruits of labour!” Henry Beissel: Less than a year from submission to publication. It was called New Wings for Icarus (1966) and was, I believe, the first poetry collection published by Coachhouse Press in Toronto. Graham Ducker: About a month. Fine. Kate Braid: It was a long time ago, but I think it took about 9 months. (Seems like an appropriate time for the first gestation!) I submitted it to (I think) 2 or 3 publishers and there was one I really hoped would take it. They didn’t, but I was very lucky and one of the others did.
Kyeren Regehr: I stumbled through my submission-journey for five years before Pedlar Press accepted my manuscript (in 2018), and I use the word stumbled, because even after being schooled on submission during my MFA, I didn’t really know what I was doing. At first I sent it far too soon, so of course that ended in rejection. Then, after MANY revisions, I sent it to the wrong places– to publishers who didn’t usually consider genre-bending memoir/ narratives-in-poetry with voicey monologues (and a lot of prose), and so that too ended in rejection. At one stage I actively imagined deleting the whole thing--fortunately I have poet-friends who talked me off that cliff. Finally a friend from my poet’s workshop put my name forward to Pedlar’s acquisitions editor (who was at the time looking for manuscripts). Then I hurtled through a mad two week edit, where I began seeing the manuscript in new and exciting way (which wasn’t hard after a year of ignoring it) and a few of the roughcut facets of my work began to shine. Pedlar became curious about those little polished bits and gave me a chance.
In your opinion, what do well-written poems have in common? Liana Cusmano: They express a feeling or a moment we can relate to and that we know to be true in a way we had not previously thought of. Graham Ducker: Poetry is not like
prose. You cannot judge a poem! It is usually spur-of-the moment. Some are great! Some are just thrown together and barely understandable. Kamal Parmar: A poem should be one that remains etched in your mind for a long time. A poem should be evergreen; should make the reader pause awhile and ponder--’Vow” A poem should give you a ‘aha’ moment, where you lose track of Time and Space. It should be healing to the mind and the body, like a surreal dream! Kyeren Regehr: II’m going to cheat here... this is a slight variation on an interview back in 2012 when I was on the board of The Malahat Review, and it’s still how I feel about good poems: “My ideal poem is one that lingers. One that stays in my head for days, or longer. So I guess the question for me is, why does a poem linger? I think it’s partly to do with its construction: the rhythm, the musicality and precision of the diction, the beauty or freshness with which something is phrased, the emotional capacity of the imagery—but it’s more than that, isn’t it? There’s something timeless about a good poem, something that captures the essences of the human consciousness, or the essence of a thing, or the thingness of a person. And then there’s another intangible element, one that you can talk about, but you can never really pin down. Not truly. Because in the act of pinning it down, you’ve tamed it, you’ve lost what it was that rode off with your soul. I’m personally
attracted to poetry that still has a dribble of rawness, that isn’t chiseled into an over-polished poetic gem—I want a bit of emotional leakage, or exposure, or wildness in there. I want evidence of craft and poetic control, and a simultaneous falling apart... I think that every good poem has torn a little something from its maker.” Kate Braid: They move me. Anne Burke: Immediacy of tone and cadence, poems which I wish I had written. They are timeless (transcendent). I am reading Marcel Proust (in seven volumes) and his supposed novels are actually poetry. So, I am also composing long poems. Henry Beissel: It speaks in metaphors that reach behind the surface meaning and embodies experience in music to the inner ear. Susan Ioannou: I do not follow fashion. What I look for in others’ free verse and strive to reach in my own is clarity derived from precision in sensuous detail, and imagery that delights without being forced. To lift words above the page, my ear longs for underlying music – even jazz, if the subject dictates, but more often simple melody. Visually, I appreciate a poem that is sculpted, its shape complementing, not antagonizing, meaning. Anna Yin: I think well-written poems let you believe in them. The words are not just words but mag-
ic and stories. They show but not tell, they reveal the truth and leave much room for reader to imagine and to think. They are clear, not muddy but much in depth. Poets apply their writing skills in the effortless way and the poems appear very naturally and elegantly. David Fraser: Appropriate language for the style of the poem, resonance with an audience, a true voice, brevity, cadence and rhythm.
What period of your life do you find yourself writing about most often? Kate Braid: For a long time, it was my 15 years in construction but lately I’m moving on, and it’s mostly now poems about my current life, environment. Susan Ioannou: Most of my lyric poems dwell on the questions and wonders that preoccupy me at the present moment, as in Part 3, Passing Seventy, of my 2016 book Looking for Light. However, I also enjoy stepping outside my own skin to gaze at a larger world. An example is my collection Looking Through Stone that finds fascination in exploring geology, metals, minerals, and mining history. Anna Yin: Since 2003, I have been continuously writing. I wrote more often when I was sad. Sometimes writing is like light slowly warming me up. Later on, I write wherever I feel I want to write, although at the beginning I might doubt if I write a good poem, with some words and
lines re-arranged, the poem seems good to me. David Fraser: The here and now. Kamal Parmar: My poems are always evolving from past to present and even future. They are often a rewinding of the spool of Life ie of the years gone by. yet there is no remorse or sorrow for the Time that will never come back...instead my poems look forward to the next phase or milestone with Hope and positive optimism. Henry Beissel: I don’t write about my own life (with one exception, COMING TO TERMS WITH A CHILD), but about the lives of my fellow-humans. Of course, my views are filtered through my own experiences. All stages of our lives fascinate me. Graham Ducker: Wide range....middle age I suppose. Liana Cusmano: Early adulthood. Kyeren Regehr: I seem to be working through various periods of my life, out of sequence. My book focuses on the three years I spent in a rather cultish ashram in my late twenties, but now I’m writing about time I spent in the Amazon jungle. I think I’m drawn to the ripest fruit, then I squeeze it onto the page and move on. Nietzsche said something like “poets treat their emotions shamelessly, they exploit them.” In my case, he’s probably right. Anne Burke: I suppose dreams are the great architects of poetry,
imagination, and verbal dexterity. I try not to reminisce because it is expected.
JUST FOR FUN: if your poetry was a room in a home, which one would it be and why? Note from Laura, Comms Coordinator at the League and producer of St@nza: It made me smile that everyone who replied to this question picked a different room! Henry Beissel: The most private room in the house because a poem yields completely only in an intimate exchange with the reader. Kamal Parmar: My poetry would be the parlor from where one assesses the character and general set-up or framework of the house. My poems would be like the heart of a home setting its heart beat; defining the home as a haven of tranquillity. Kyeren Regehr: It would be a secret turret at the top (with a spyglass that peeks into every other room). David Fraser: I think of places in the home that can have walls or not, be outside, beneath a willow, on the deck, on in a cluttered office with its headphones on, the door closed, all the important pieces of collected junk that at a glance bring back memories and emotions, stuffed animals that watch over me, muses such as a Buddha, a gargoyle, the tiger and the bear, all the lambs and the border collies, the dead things in the terrarium--fossils, bones, moon snail shells, collected stones, all dead things that
came to me as visitations that I brought back. Anne Burke: Probably the kitchen since it offers so much synesthesia and still life subjects for ekphrastic poetry. Admittedly, I wish it was the bedroom (very Dorothy Livesay’s “The Woman I Am” or was). Graham Ducker: The bathroom equiped with a phone and my computer. Its private and I can lock the door. Kate Braid: The front hall - a bit messy but full of neat stuff, telling a story about who’d been out, where, and what the weather was. Susan Ioannou: It would be my living room, set at the back of the house, where large windows look out over trees and grass, birds and squirrels, even an occasional groundhog, but I can still pick up distant sounds of neighbours and children. My poetry needs space and calm to listen to what the Muse whispers, but must also keep a few toes in the busy world. Liana Cusmano: The den in the basement - a general, all-purpose space where anything can happen.
New Poetry Parlour questions are now available! Click here to share your thoughts
Poetry is an evergreen gift. When you donate to the League of Canadian Poets, you give a gift of poetry. All year-round, the LCP works to make your gift count through our programs, funding, projects and events. This year, we saw the LCP reshape our funding programs to accommodate virtual spaces. We distributed over $80,000 to poets and the literary community for online readings, hosting, and school visits. We opened nominations to the Leon E. and Ann M. Pavlick Poetry Prize, which will provide $10,000 to an exemplary poet, as well as $10,000 to a poetry/literary arts group or organization. We saw five collections that celebrate marginalized and underrepresented voices come to life in the LCP Chapbook Series. We sent out over 200 Poetry Pause poems. We hosted our most-attended AGM and awards ceremony ever, and we had a blast with #NPM2020: A World of Poetry. This is only a sample of what the LCP had to give this year. Next year, we want to give even more.
And we need your help. A donation given to the League of Canadian Poets delivers funding, career opportunities, community and more to the ever-growing and always inspiring Canadian Poetry landscape.
Give the gift of poetry this Giving Season.
Accessible: a review of The Vivian Poems: Street Photographer Vivian Maier, by Bruce Rice Reviewed by Louise Carson
thought, and began to get interested. I’ve long been an admirer of Bruce Rice’s writing. To me, he is one of the best least known Canadian poets working today. In his books he sometimes writes from a theme or narrative as in his Life In The Canopy, an homage to the city of Regina, or the multi-themed The Illustrated Statue of Liberty, which focuses on madness and immigration among other things, and The Vivian Poems is one of these. According to Rice in the preface “More than anything else, these poems are a translation of what she left us.” He’s looked at the photographs and given his interpretation of Vivian’s life through the poems.
I’d seen a documentary about this woman, a Chicago nanny, born 1926, died 2009, who never seemed to want to display her work, but who saved much of it. It was found after her death. But I’d forgotten about her until reading the preface to Bruce Rice’s latest poetry collection. Oh, that street photographer, I
But the first section, Vivian Writes Her Own Prologue, which contains one long poem ‘Making a Spy’ makes it clear that Rice tries to get out of the photographer’s way as much as possible, helping us find her voice. Reading this first poem I was intrigued. A few hints, a few facts – what was coming? Well, it’s all about knowing the right questions to ask, right? So in the next section, aptly titled Neces-
sary Questions, I went to the poem ‘A Necessary Question’ to find out more. “My Rollei shoots from the waist / through it I see / like a child who’s not very tall / and from whom much can be learned:”. She shoots mothers, children, bums, and concludes “there is too much to fix in ten thousand lives / all we can do is put up with it / it’s why I never ask people to smile myself / I don’t ask for anything”. Back one poem – ‘a slip of paper in a stack of self-portraits’ – we see that the photographer wishes to be
invisible. Rice has her say explicitly “don’t look at my legs / don’t look at my body”. Familial and childhood trauma are hinted at. In ‘Human River: Vivian Maier’s New York Proof Sheets’, a collection of nine vignettes, Rice links one of them – ‘the man in Bryant Park’ – with ‘A Necessary Question’, the previous poem. The point of view is the man, how he may be a derelict or maybe just disappointed, and it’s winter and he’s cold; the river is frozen. In the previous poem “water is a mirror / if in spring God / were to walk by a puddle in Battery Park / even he would pause to look at his reflection”. Between the two poems we think about spring, winter, God, the man in Bryant Park; God or man’s inability to care for everyone. And the man in Bryant Park/Rice/Vivian speaks: “I must look confused / as if I’ve arrived in someone else’s future // its insouciant hour / and the remains // of a daydream no longer in love / with what lies ahead”.
Christmas Eve 1953. East 78th Street & 3rd Avenue, New York, NY by Vivian Maier. www.vivianmaier.com
The other po
ems in ‘Human River’ often take the POV of the subject of the photo; in one instance the subject turns his gaze on Vivian, saying, “put down that camera // smile lady V” and we hear Rice’s compassionate voice coming through. And a page later in ‘a domestic’ we have a lovely mingling of our own imaginings of the life of a domestic servant with the photo’s mute witness and Rice’s statement:
Self-portrait, 1954 by Vivian Maier, www.vivianmaier.com
“but humble or great who’s to judge / what poets know / of the light in the heart of a panther / or the contents of any life but their own”, pulling back as the photographer does, just taking the picture. Rice really gets into full lyric and rhythmic swing in ‘how Vivian sees it’. This is the last third or so of the poem. “the art she looks at looks back this is her light which digs its own grave each dried ring of milk on the boarding house table a sour aside
there are her Things with a capital T this is her face refracted these are the children of the grace she’s abandoned elegiac in their innocence everything ends yet her task is endless a paradox and just to conclude my dear iron park bench of Brooklyn my dear Miss Quixote I’m not your Sancho I creak and I turn like the rest of your dreams” By now (page 25), I remember what
it is to read a Bruce Rice poetry collection and make a note to purchase the two of his six books that I don’t already own.
anyway / and I was never that heavy // none of us are / so we may be lifted”; “our common selves worn like a coat”.
I could go on throughout the book, but will content myself with talking about three poems which appear at the end of the volume.
See what I mean?
‘Proofs of Winter’ has lines like “the colors we invent / are still true colors / known all along to the first light that hits them”; “and so it seems to me my pictures of things / are true things / real as ice / on a clump of hawthorn berries / the same ruby flesh / the same burden”; and “Things I know / I know by walking through them /…and if this wind with its reasons takes me / then we are even”. ‘To the 12,000 Unmarked Graves Under Lincoln Park’ gives us “hallowed the bones / beneath my feet these catholic dead / a footing for the Archbishop’s house // hallowed the dog that walks here and the roots gravefed / of the grass it walks upon”; “some day I’ll lie down like this / grass will grow / Lincoln Park will go on / and her lovely saints too”; and “a lake / a thought or kind of seeing / that has no shore except the last one and that / well-known to sleeping men”. And in the book’s final poem, ‘Epilogue: Intestate’, “It comes down to ashes. / If it’s ashes // it’s only the heart’s grey inflections / quite grainy with ten thousand faces looking this way. // I leave you the audacity / what I saw every day”; “I was almost gone
Louise Carson has published eleven books, two in 2020: Dog Poems, Aeolus House; and her latest mystery The Cat Possessed, Signature Editions. Her previous poetry collection A Clearing was published by Signature in 2015. Louise also writes historical fiction. One such, the novel In Which, Broken Rules Press, 2018, was shortlisted for a Quebec Writers’ Federation prize. With her daughter and pets, Louise lives in the countryside outside Montreal. Bruce Rice is a writer and editor living in Regina. He writes about community, reclaiming the voices of those who live on the margins, and how we are transformed by landscape even as we leave our footprints on it. He has five award-winning books of poetry. He received his second Saskatchewan Book Award for his most recent collection, The Trouble With Beauty (Coteau). In 2019 he was appointed to a twoyear term as the Saskatchewan Poet Laureate.
New League Members H. E. Casson (they/them) is a queer writer and voice actor whose words have recently been shared by Cast of Wonders, Scifikuest, 845 Books, Malarkey Books, Serotonin, and Taco Bell Quarterly—among others. Their works are usually literary or speculative and explore gender, religion, sexuality, food, poverty, homelessness, survival, and family. They are the winner of Apparition Lit’s Topside Test Flash Fiction Contest, a Best of the Net nominee, and were included in the Best Indie Speculative Fiction 2020 anthology. H. E.’s voice can be heard in the Moonbase Theta Out and Disenchanted podcasts. Mike Chaulk Stephen Collis is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Commons (Talonbooks 2008), the BC Book Prize winning On the Material (Talonbooks 2010), Once in Blockadia (Talonbooks 2016) and Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten (Talonbooks 2018). In 2019 he was awarded the Latner Writers’ Trust of Canada Poetry Prize in recognition of his body of work. In 2021 Talonbooks will publish A History of the Theories of Rain. He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and
teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University. Julie de Belle Born in Ottawa Ontario, but living in Quebec, Julie de Belle has been writing poetry in both official languages since her early teens. She was a member of the Literary Translators of Canada where she first trying her hand at translation with Words on the Move. One of her French poems was chosen for a publication Writing Against Racism in 2001, and another in Le Bel Âge magazine in 2002 She also has a few English poems on line with Sunday@6 mag and Poets Against War. One of her translations was featured in Jonah Magazine last year. In 2013, she published her first collection of poetry in both French and English (not in translation but rather as two separate minds) called 2FACES with Broken Rules Press. In 2018, she published Ensaigner – her life as a teacher over a period of 28 years - with les Éditions du Cram. Peter Dubé was born and raised in Montreal and, with the exception of a handful of extended, multi-month stays in Europe, has lived there all his life. Dubé works across the literary genres (fiction, poetry, nonfiction), hybridizing and exploring both their limits and their potential. He is the
author, co-author or editor of eleven books, and, in addition to his creative writing, writes on the visual arts and cultural issues; in this capacity his is a member of the editorial committee of the magazine Espace art actuel. His most recent book, The Headless Man: a Novel in Prose Poems ,was shortlisted for the A. M. Klein prize for poetry. Jean Eng is a visual artist and author from Toronto, Ontario. Her debut collection of poetry “Festival of All Souls� was published by Inanna
Publications. Her writing has also appeared in literary journals in Canada, the U.S. and U.K. Shelley Grace Kevin Heslop Mike Johnston is a champion Slam Poet and Spoken Word Artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. A long serving Poetry Slam Master in Winnipeg as well as the co-director of the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, creator of the Inside Voice/ Outside
Voice High School Spoken Word Festival in Winnipeg, Mike dedicated much of his life to creating space for the poetry and the voices of others as a community builder. While becoming three time provincial champion, National Underground Independent Co-Champion and more, Mike also toured extensively, released several chapbooks and worked with countless students and educators across the country. This work with students and his background as a school teacher inspired him to author the upcoming You Are Poetry. ; a resource manifesto that seeks to help educators build space and opportunity for student voice, story and poetry. Laura Lane Sharon Lax Curtis LeBlanc is a poet and writer residing in Vancouver, BC. He is the author of Little Wild (Nightwood, 2018) and Birding in the Glass Age of Isolation (Nightwood, 2020). His work has appeared in Joyland, Geist, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, EVENT, PRISM International, Prairie Fire, Grain, and elsewhere. Curtis holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. He is the recipient of the Readers’ Choice Award in the Arc Poem of the Year competition and has been shortlisted for The Walrus Poetry Prize. He’s also the co-founder and Managing Editor of Rahila’s Ghost Press. He is currently at work on his first novel. Represented by Akin Akinwumi at Willenfield Literary Agency.
Christine ML Lee is an emerging writer, musician and poet. Participant in the first Poet-in-Residence program led by Elise Partridge in 2009-2010 at ArcPoetry Magazine, Christine has since performed her work at the “Wired on Words” show curated by Ian Ferrier in 2017 and 2019. Following the completion of her bachelor’s in Music, Instrumental Composition at University of Montreal, she continues to take courses in writing, including the QWF Poetry workshop ledm by Sue MacLeod in 2018 and the Film Poetry workshop given by Rachel McCrum in September 2019. Interested in both music and writing, Christine is currently working on a musical theatre piece, Just a Note, following development with the 2019-2020 Canadian Musical Theatre Writers’ Collective Workshop in Montreal with Jonathan Monro and with the 2019-2020 Young Creator’s Unit at Playwright’s Workshop Montreal with Jesse Stong. Christine is excited to be part of the 2020-2021 Young Innovators at Nightwood Theatre. Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon Conor Mc Donnell is an Irish physician & poet who landed in Canada in 2004. He has published two chapbooks, The Book of Retaliations (Anstruther Press), and, Safe Spaces (Frog Hollow Press) and received Honourable Mention for The Fiddlehead’s 2018 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, was shortlisted for the RawArtReview 2019 Charles Bukowski Prize, and was runner-up in the Vallum 2019 Contemporary Poetry Prize.
Recovery Community (2020) is his debut collection. He is a paediatric anesthesiologist and Associate Professor at University of Toronto, his non-clinical research interests are patient outcomes in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement methodology, Medication Safety and Opioid Stewardship, he chairs national committees on Patient Safety, has published numerous peer-reviewed research articles and is an organizing committee member for Harvard’s annual International Conference on Opioids. He has also recently created and launched Mixed Medicine in Media program at the University of Toronto under the umbrella of Health & Humanities Narrative medicine program. Although he sounds really busy he loves doing readings so please do feel free to invite him to yours Jessica Moore is the author of two
poetic narratives, Everything, now (Brick Books 2012) and The Whole Singing Ocean (Nightwood 2020). Everything, now is a love letter to the dead and a conversation with her translation of Turkana Boy (Talonbooks 2012) by Jean-François Beauchemin, for which she won a PEN America Translation award. The Whole Singing Ocean is a true story blending long poem, investigation, and family history in an exploration of the affair of the École en bateau. Mend the Living, Jessica’s translation of the novel by Maylis de Kerangal, was nominated for the 2016 Man Booker International and won the UK’s Wellcome Prize in 2017. Also a singer-songwriter, she has released a duo album (Charms, 2010) and a solo album (Beautiful in Red, 2013). She lives in Toronto. Anita Ngai Melanie Power Michael Prior Sally Quon is a photographer and writer living in the beautiful Okanagan Valley where she writes a nature blog. Her photography has appeared in Canadian Geographic Magazine and Nature Alberta’s various birding brochures. Sally was recently published in Chicken Soup for the Soul – The Forgiveness Fix and was a finalist for
the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award. Rasiqra Revulva Janet Rogers is a Mohawk/ Tuscarora writer from Six Nations of the Grand River. She was born in Vancouver British Columbia in 1963 and raised in southern Ontario. Janet traveled throughout 20172019 working within numerous residencies in Vancouver BC, Santa Fe NM and Edmonton AB. Janet is based on the Six Nations territory of the Grand River where she operates the Ojistoh Publishing label. Janet works in page poetry, spoken word performance poetry, video poetry and recorded poetry with music. She is a radio broadcaster, documentary producer and media and sound artist. Her literary titles include; Splitting the Heart, Ekstasis Editions 2007, Red Erotic, Ojistah Publishing 2010, Unearthed, Leaf Press 2011 “Peace in Duress” Talonbooks 2014 and Totem Poles and Railroads ARP Books 2016, “As Long As the Sun Shines” (English edition), Bookland Press 2018 with a Mohawk language edition released in 2019. “Ego of a Nation” is Janet’s 7th poetry title which she independently produced on the Ojistoh Publishing label 2020. Janet currently serves as the
McMaster University and Hamilton Public Library Writer in Residence 2020-2021. Janet and collaborator Jackson Twobears as 2Ro Media. They combine their individual talents and skills along with National Screen Institute training to produce two short documentaries; NDNs on the Airwaves about Six Nations radio (APTN 2016), Moving Voice, a Telus STORYHIVE sponsored digital broadcast 2019 featuring the travels of literary trailblazer and Mohawk poetess E. Pauline Johnson, and The Spirit of Rage a short experimental video poem about anti-racism. Claire Sherwood jaye simpson is an Oji-Cree Saulteaux Indigiqueer whose roots hail from the Sapotaweyak, Keeseekoose & Skownan Cree Nations. they are published in several magazines including Poetry
Is Dead, This Magazine, PRISM international, SAD Magazine: Green, GUTS Magazine, SubTerrain, Grain and Room. They are in two anthologies: Hustling Verse (2019) and Love After the End (2020). it was never going to be okay (Nightwood Ed.) is their first book of poetry. they are a displaced Indigenous person resisting, ruminating and residing xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), on səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations territories. Emily Skov-Neilsen Rob Taylor Paul Daniel Torres Deborah Anne Tunney While working at the National Research Council as a Communication Officer, Deborah-Anne completed her B.A., M.A. and worked on her PhD in English Literature at the University of Ottawa. Since then, through the Humber School for Writers, she’s worked with Bonnie Burnard, Guy Vanderhaegle and Isabel Huggan. In 2014 she attended a writing course in San Francisco run by the renowned editor, Tom Jenks, who accepted two of her stories for publication in Narrative, a highly respected American journal. She is a Canadian citizen and has lived most of her life in Ottawa. Ian Williams Ash Winters is an emerging Toronto-based poet. Genderqueer and sober, their work navigates
complex and colourful emotional landscapes. They graduated with their BA in English from Lakehead University in 2010. They currently live in Parkdale with their gorgeous partner and rambunctious dog. Lina Ramona Vitkauskas is an evaporating language photographer / award-winning cinepoet / poet who moved from Chicago to Toronto in early 2020. She is a Canadian-USLithuanian citizen. Recently, she received a PEN America Relief Grant (due to COVID-19) and is working on a manuscript about the pandemic and kleptocracy the US. She was also a finalist in the Midwest Video Poetry Festival for her cinepoem about the commodification of poetic pursuits.
Follow The League! Instagram @canadianpoets Twitter @canadianpoets Facebook League of Canadian Poets
A special offer for League members from Learn Writing Essentials Learn Writing Essentials is an online creative writer’s studio that helps writers locate their voice, write from a deeper level of consciousness, construct a high functioning narrative and most importantly, tell their stories authentically—all via private coaching, memberships, workshops, strategy sessions, and self-paced courses. Here’s a taste of what folks are saying: “I took the Power of the Personal online workshop with some of my educator colleagues and we were all left so inspired and informed by Chelene’s approach and expertise. I will absolutely use the discussion we had about creative nonfiction as a genre, the writing exercises we did, and the resources Chelene provided to inform both my teaching practice as well as my own writing. This was time well spent!” —Tanya Boteju, author of “Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens” We are offering LCP members a 25 percent discount on anything in our store. Please apply coupon code LCP25 to receive the discount. Check out LWE.podia.com to learn more and redeem
Member News Rebecca Anne Banks Subterranean Blue Poetry Announces! Coming Soon! The Christmas 2020 Issue (Volume VIII Issue XII)!
Henry Beissel My latest collection of poetry: FOOTPRINTS OF DARK ENERGY (Guernica Editions, 2019) received the 2020 Ottawa Book Award.
Title: “Tide Pool: On the Waterfront: Marlon Brando for Christmas” @ www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com. Working on a New Age Book of Poetry, PoemZ 4 U AND YourZ by Zo-Alonzo Gross. An arthouse book (8.5” x 11”) collection of 40 poems with original artwork for February 2021 launch. Hardcopy Issues are Available @ Amazon Stations.
Louise Carson This fall Louise Carson has had poems published in The Maynard, The Quilliad, The Haiku Canada Review and Soliloquies Anthology. Her fifth mystery - The Cat Possessed, Signature Editions - is now available, as is Dog Poems, Aeolus House, published last summer.
Currently Available: Volume VIII Issue IX, Volume VIII Issue X, Perfect bound 7” x 10” in full colour with colour art/photos, midnight blue font, in French and English. If you want a Hardcopy Issue in the back catalogue, please Inbox. The more requests for an Issue the sooner it is created. Sooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooo exciting! Currently l@@king for New Age Poetry Submissions and Books of Poetry for Book Reviews. Influences of Imagist, Symbolist, Surrealism, Beat progressions, the New Goth. If it bangs in the dance it’s in. “all the poetry, everywhere” “for those subterranean blues”
daniela elza Daniela Elza’s fourth poetry collection the broken boat (Mother Tongue Publishing) came out in April right after the pandemic lockdown. slow erosions is about to emerge all spiffed up with Collusion Books as part of a set of three chapbooks, all written in collaboration between two authors. The covers match covers across the set. In the meantime she has an essay “The Poem and The Carrot Went For A Walk One Day” is coming out in Riddle Fence (Issue 38) and her essay “But where are you really from” is forthcoming in the Winter issue of the Queen’s Quarterly (2020). Order the broken boat
Order slow erosions chapbook For more information on daniela visit her blog Doris Fiszer Silver Bow Publishing presented: Double Virtual Launch December 6th 4p.m.-5:15 p.m. EST Doris Fiszer, Locked in Different Alphabets, and Susan Atkinson, The Marta Poems. View an excerpt from Locked in Different Alphabets Purchase the book via amazon Melanie Flores Melanie Flores was awarded an Honorable Mention for her poem “Waiting” in the Polar Expressions Publishing 2020 National Poetry Contest. Meg Freer Awards: • 1st prize, TOPS Rain on the Brain
anthology contest • Honourable Mention, Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, September 2020 Poems published in: • Fresh Voices 20, League of Canadian Poets • quatrain.fish, July 1 and October 23, 2020 • Months to Years, Summer 2020 • Tiny Seed Literary Journal, September and October 2020, • Rat’s Ass Review, Winter 2020 • Juniper Poetry, Volume 4, Issue 2, Fall 2020 Lorraine Gane Salt Spring poet Lorraine Gane’s chapbook Arc of Light was published by Raven Chapbooks in November. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections, including The Blue Halo (Leaf Press, 2014) and The Way the Light Enters
(Black Moss Press, 2014) and three other chapbooks. She is completing a fourth full-length collection of poetry and book about writing in addition to mentoring writers through online courses, workshops, and manuscript development/editing. www.lorrainegane.com Susan Glickman Artful Flight, a book of my selected essays from 1985-2019, will be coming out from The Porcupine’s Quill in April . Donna Kane My third book of poetry, Orrery, was published in September, 2020. The launch of Orrery was carried out via a virtual countdown: ten days, ten readings of poems from the book by notable personalities including the host of CBC’s Quirks and Quarks and the Curator of Planetary Science at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Some of the poems in the book are also being featured on the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Voyages to Mars podcast in December. And one of the poems is included in the new anthology, Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight published by the University of Arizona Press. • Learn more about Orrery (Harbour) • Watch Countdown Poems: • Smithsonian’s Voyages to Mars podcasts • Beyond Earth’s Edge Adeena Karasick Salome: Woman of Valor From
acclaimed New York-based Canadian poet, Adeena Karasick, comes Gap Riot Press’ second chapbook, Salome: Woman of Valor. Salome: Woman of Valor includes poems from Karasick’s Italian-English libretto of the same name. The poems explore, exalt, and reclaim the figure of Salome as feminist. The poems enjoy joyful linguistic play, using references to Hebrew texts, popular music, Italian opera, and various other texts to reveal a feminine form that refuses to be a static object, dancing, praying, and fighting for herself. Learn more Paula Kienapple-Summers My poem “Onion Skins and Brushing Hair” made the Notable List in Best in Canadian Poetry 2019. Two poems, “Resurrection” and “At the Threshold” were published in the anthology Voicing Suicide, edited by Daniel G. Scott and released in September 2020. Fiona Tinwei Lam Fiona’s shaped poem, “Z” from her recent collection, Odes & Laments, has been selected as one of the poems featured on BC’s Poetry in Transit, and her poem “Ode to the Potato” was chosen for the Best Canadian Poetry 2020 anthology. Her animated video poem “Plasticnic”, a collaboration with local animators, was selected for screening at the Zebra Poetry Festival (Nature poetry segement) and Berlin’s Interfilm Short Film Festival (Green/ Nature segement), both online This November/December.
Susan McCaslin Susan McCaslin has a new volume of poetry titled Heart Work forthcoming from Ekstasis Editions (Victoria, BC) in Jan. 2021. She will be reading poems from the manuscript at the In/Verse Poetry Series, sponsored by the Federation of BC Writers on Sat. Dec. 12, 2020, 2-3 pm Pacific time, hosted by Fiona Lam. People wishing to attend the In/Verse reading on Dec. 12 are required to register She is currently editing a volume of the last poems of Canadian poet E.D. Blodgett (1935-2018), to be published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in the spring of 2021. She is also editing a poetry anthology titled An Avian Alphabet consisting of a union of wood-cut bird prints by artist Edith Krause with poems on birds by award-winning, established, and emerging poets. On Nov. 7, Susan read for “100,000 Poets for Change,” on the theme “The personal is political,” hosted by Archna Sawhney. A video-recording of the 100,000 Poets for Change event of Nov. 7. (Susan is the last reader) Her poem “Rosie’s Story” (with photo), was published on Facebook by the Federation of BC Writers, Oct. 31, 2020. Susan’s reading of “Rosie’s Story” The following poem and essay are forthcoming in a tribute anthology to P.K. Page: “A Meditation on P.K. Irwin’s Pen & and Ink Drawing, Winged Footprint” and her short
essay, “Still Waters: P.K. Page’s Reservoirs of Silence,” in Hologram: Homage to P.K. Page. Ed. Yvonne Blomer & D.C. Reid (Spring, 2021). Colin Morton Colin Morton has poems forthcoming in The New Quarterly and Prism international. Ruth Panofsky My new book, Radiant Shards: Hoda’s North End Poems, is now available from Inanna Publications: Kamal Parmar I am to read my poem in an online ZOOM book launch of an Anthology titled-Alone but not alone: “Poetry in isolation.” compiled by the Vancouver Island Regional Library, Nanaimo, on Dec. 5th. Greg Santos My new poetry book, Ghost Face, was published Sep. 2020. Here is a brief description of the book: “In his third DC Books title, Ghost Face, Greg Santos explores what it means to have been a Cambodian infant adopted at birth by a Canadian family.” And I was recently interviewed for a Poetry Today feature at The Kenyon Review. Daniel G Scott Nose in Book Publishing has released my new chapbook [Kleeshays] Undone Volume One and Ekstasis Editions has published Voicing Suicide an anthology of suiicde poems I edited. I am also stepping down as Artistic Director of Palnet Earth Poetry turning over the reins to Zoe Dickinson and
Leanne Boschman. I will continue to wokr on our geotagging poets project Poets Caravan. See the first phase of Poets Caravan Richard-Yves Sitoski As 2019-2021 Poet Laureate of Owen Sound, Ontario, I’m proud to announce the publication of my legacy project, No Sleep ‘til Eden, by the Ginger Press in conjunction with KP9 Interactive. It is an augmented reality collection of verse on environmental and social justice themes, featuring videos, audioclips, animation, and still images. While not the first book of AR poetry, it is among the first specifically designed for use with mobile devices and tablets. The poems deal with everything from endangered species and habitat loss to social inequity and the effects of COVID-19. It is a book for those grieve with elephants, who soar with penguins,
and who take out battered guitars to sing the blues with piping plovers in the dark of a new moon. Glen Sorestad My poem “Visiting Poet in Lockdown” was nominated for Best of the Web 2020 by the Editor of Burningword Literary Journal. The poem appeared in July of 2019, Issue 91. Archana Sridhar My first chapbook, entitled Renderings, is available for pre-order from 845 Press. The poems in “Renderings” focus on themes of midlife and feminism, woven together with stories and images of my ancestors and South Asian culture. www.archanasridhar.com Derk Wynand The Essential Derk Wynand, edited by John Barton, The Porcupine’s Quill
Writing Opportunities Calls for Submissions
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Perhappened mag is accepting submissions to issue 7: SNOWFALL. Deadline is December 11, 2020. Find out more
Anomaly is accepting submissions to a Special edition: WRITING OURSELVES / MAD with GUEST EDITOR: Cavar Sarah. All Mad, psychiatrically disabled, mentally disabled/ill, developmentally disabled, and neurodivergent people are welcome to submit, regardless of diagnostic status. We especially encourage submissions from queer creators, trans and gender-nonconforming creators, Black creators, Indigenous creators, creators of color, fat creators, poor creators, multiply-disabled creators, creators residing outside North America, and those who sit amid some or all of these positions. If you or someone you know is currently incarcerated (whether in a hospital, prison, or other congregate care setting) and wish to submit, email editorialcavar@gmail. com to arrange submission by mail. Deadline is January 2, 2021. Find out more
The Puritan is accepting submissions of poetry for their upcoming Winter 2021 issue. Deadline is December 25, 2020. Find out more Arc is open to submissions for their annual reading period for the Summer 2021 issue. Deadline is December 31, 2020. Find out more Bone & Ink Press is accepting chapbook-length submissions until December 31, 2020. Find out more Cloud Lake Literary is accepting submissions for publication in our digital magazine from Canadian writers. Current submissions are for the Spring volume (2021). Deadline is December 31, 2020. Find out more Existere is open to submissions for upcoming Spring/summer 2021 issue. Deadline is December 31, 2020. Find out more Pub House Books is accepting submissions for their chapbook series. Deadline is December 31, 2020. Find
Room Magazine invites unpublished writing and art for their Indigenous Brilliance issue 44.3, edited by the Indigenous Brilliance team Karmella Cen Benedito De Barros, Emily Dundas Oke, Patricia Massy, jaye simpson, and Jessica Johns. Deadline is January 31, 2021. Find
out more The Maynard is accepting submissions for their Spring 2021 Issue. Deadline is January 31, 2021. Find out more Understorey Magazine is accepting poetry submissions for Issue 20: Laughter. Deadline is February 26, 2021. Find out more Anomaly is accepting poetry submissions during their annual review period, from November 1, 2020 to March 1, 2021. Find out more. Parentheses Journal is open for submissions of poetry during their current reading period from November 1, 2020 to March 10, 2021. Find out more Literary Review of Canada is accepting poetry submissions for the annual 2021 Reading Period, open from November 15, 2020 to April 15, 2021. Find out more. Grain Magazine’s annual 8 month reading period is now open. Deadline is May 15, 2021. Find out more CV2’s annual submission period is now open. Deadline is May 31, 2021. Find out more Another New Calligraphy seeks work exploring the human experience, our internal worlds, and life among others; these complex systems are often clearest in our slightest moments. No set deadline. Find out more Antigonish Review is now open to general submissions. The quality of the writing is the chief criterion. We
also consider it our mandate to encourage Atlantic Canadians and Canadian writers - although excellent writing can come from anywhere. We also welcome new and young writers. No set deadline. Find out more Carousel presents CHAIN: Call for response poems Poems are often in conversation with other poems — from those that recreate or re-envision long-standing formal conventions, to those written “after” or “inspired by” poems that came before them. Here at CAROUSEL, we want to experiment with this tradition in a deliberate way, on a large scale, over time. We therefore bring you CHAIN, an ongoing, global series of response poems — each connected to the one that came before it but also different enough to stand on its own and lead somewhere new. It starts with one poem — one link in the chain — and it gets built, link by link, indefinitely. We want to make something massive, meaningful and maybe a little bit monstrous. No deadline. Find out more. The Dalhousie Review is accepting submissions of poetry yearround. Find out more. Damaged Goods Press is accepting chapbook length and fulllength manuscripts on a rolling basis, and is currently reading for publication in late 2020 and beyond. a small press specializing in books by queer and trans people. No set deadline. Find out more
Eudaimonia Press is accepting submissions for their online journal. No set deadline. Find out more filling Station is open to poetry submissions with no set deadline. Find out more F(r)icton accepts year-round submissions of poetry and other writing Experimental, nontraditional, and boundary-pushing literature is strongly encouraged. No set deadline. Find out more Gap Riot Press is accepting chapbook length submissions. No set deadline. Find out more Half a Grapefruit is accepting poetry submissions. No set deadline. Find out more Harper Collins Open Inbox BIPOC Writers in Canada can now submit their unagented, unpublished middle-grade manuscripts to HarperCollins Canada. No set deadline. Find out more Hellebore Press is accepting submissions to multiple issues: Black Liberation, Issue 6 Winter/Spring 2021: Open! Submit micro poetry, prose poetry, narrative poetry, flash fiction, flash CNF, or art that relates to to the following topics: The Global Black Diaspora, Culture, Identity, Family, Mental Health, Police Brutality, Discrimination, Perseverance, Joy, Adolescence, Rituals, Tradition, Kinship, & Survival LGBTQIA+ Pride, Issue 7 Summer/Fall 2021: Open! Submit micro poetry, narrative poetry, lyrical poetry, prose poetry, flash
fiction, flash CNF, or art that relates to the following topics: LGBTQIA+ Pride, Popular Culture, Online Relationships, Nostalgia, Chosen Family, Technology, Self Acceptance, Rebellion, Celebration, Joy, Mental Health, Forgiveness, Healing, & Authenticity. No set deadline. Youth Empowerment, Issue 8 Winter/Spring 2022: Open! Submit micro poetry, lyrical poetry, flash fiction, flash CNF, blogs, hybrid, or visual art that relates to the following topics: Adolescence, Young Adulthood, Joy, Self Expression, Relationships, Gender, Friendship, Family, Culture, School, Memory, Mental Health, Overcoming Trauma No set deadline. Find out more The Mackinac is accepting poetry year-round. Find out more The Malahat Review is accepting submissions on a rolling basis. Find out more Okay Donkey is accepting submissions of poetry for weekly publication on mondays. No deadline. Find out more Plenitude is currently accepting poetry submissions with no set deadline. Find out more Prism is accepting general submissions on a rolling basis. Find out more Pulp Literature is accepting submissions of poetry year-round. Find out more Q/A Poetry Journal exists to amplify
the voices of womxn and nonbinary poets, and to expand the subjects deemed “appropriate” for womxn to be writing about. Send us your poems on your postpartum body, spider veins, lip hair, your favorite liquid eyeliner, your anguish over glass ceilings, your sex work, your ode to stay-at-home tedium, your list of your most beautiful and unlikeable qualities. No set deadline. Find out more Queen’s Quarterly seeks submissions on any topic that presents a novel perspective and point of departure for thinking about our contemporary world. Whether fiction or non-fiction, a premium will be placed on singularity of voice, accessibility of ideas and relevance to issues of common concern. Honoraria are paid, editorial services are provided and the chance to kickstart a national conversation is on offer. No set deadline. Find out more Qwerty is accepting poetry submissions for the upcoming Spring/ Summer 2021 Issue, with the theme of FOOD x IDENTITY. 2SQ+BIPOC artists to submit work that explores food(s) in relation to racial, queer, gendered, etc. identities and bodies. No listed deadline. Find out more Rejection Letters is open to poetry submissions. No set deadline. Find out more Riddle Fence is accepting general submissions of poetry. No deadline. Find out more Subterrean Blue Poetry Title:
The Garden. Theme: The Garden, the garden sleeping through the dark months, the seasons of the moon, seed catalogues, the garden dreams, Eden, Eden in the sky, time, time that stops, the herbs and flowers, roses that bud that bloom into Spring, into Summer . . . Optional Pay-What-You-Can Reading Fee ($1 per Poem, up to 5 Poems). We pay $10 per Poem, $20 per Of Poetic Interest . . . critical essay and $20 per Masthead Art/ Photo. Payment in the month of publication. New Age Poetry. Influences of Imagist, Symbolist, Surrealism, Beat progressions and the New Goth. If it bangs in the dance, it’s in. No set deadline. Email: subterraneanbluepoetry@outlook.com Terse is accepting poetry submissions on a rolling basis. No set deadline. Find out more Train: a poetry journal is accepting submissions on a rolling basis. Find out more. The Walrus is currently poetry submissions and other writing. No set deadline. Find out more
Awards and Contests Arc Poem of the Year In 2021, Arc will be awarding one $5,000 grand prize to the Poem of the Year and a $500 prize for an Honourable Mention. Early bird deadline is December 31, 2020. Find out more Accenti Poetry Contest was launched in 2020, inviting submis-
sions for original unpublished poems. The Contest offers a top prize of $1000 and publication, as well as three runner-up prizes of $100 each. Deadline February 1, 2021. Find out more Exile: The $3,000 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition $1,500 for Best Suite by an Emerging Writer. $1,500 for Best Suite by a Writer at Any Career Point. Deadline is February 1, 2021. Find out more The New Quarterly Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest Sponsored by former The New Quarterly editor Kim Jernigan and family in celebration of her father, Nick Blatchford, of the man who sparked the family’s love of poetry. This contest is for poems written in response to an existing occasion, personal or public, or poems that make an oc-
casion of something ordinary or by virtue of the poet’s attention. Deadline is February 28, 2021. Find out more The Ontario Poetry Society Spring Peepers Poetry Competition First Prize: $100 - Second Prize: $50 - Third Prize: $25, Plus 17 Honourable Mention Awards. Deadline is February 28, 2021. Find out more The Ontario Poetry Society The Love-Lies-Bleeding Anthology Contest. First Prize: $200 Second Prize: $150 Third Prize: $100 Fourth Prize: $50, plus up to 55 Honourable Mention Awards. Deadline is April 30, 2021. Find out more Freefall Annual Prose and Poetry Contest Over $1700.00 in Prizes. All contest entries are also automatically entered into the Lynn Fraser Me-
morial contest for a chance to win $100. 2020 Judge is Natalie Meisner. Deadline is April 30, 2020. Find out more
Job and Volunteer Opportunities The ECW Press Acquiring Editor(s) ECW Press is looking for people who could be good book acquirers: people we don’t know, people we do know but never considered for the role. As for acquiring books before, no experience necessary. Someone in acquisitions needs to be knowledgeable in the face of technical issues, persuasive in the face of indifference, and tenacious in the face of unfounded criticism. You don’t need to edit. Some of our acquirers don’t edit their books, but instead use freelancers or other staff. Yet you need to understand the craft of editing, as well as other aspects of book publishing. No listed deadline. Find out more Crèpe & Penn Quarterly CPQ READER We receive a high volume of submissions and would love your help in determining the work that best fits our magazine. The ideal applicant is familiar with the magazine and loves reading a variety of writing styles in several genres. This is a volunteer position. Find out more Anomaly: Call for Blog and Feature Writers We’re looking for writers who are interested in contributing in an ongoing manner to the Anomaly Blog, either by proposing a column
or series, or by joining a team of staff writers who both pitch and take on assigned pieces for the blog. We are particularly interested in writers to focus on reviews, interviews, and profiles of artists and writers; and in getting pitches for columns or series that focus specifically on a particular artistic or writing community within the purview of our expanded mission. If you are interested, please send an email to Features & Reviews Editor Sarah Clark with a paragraph about what you’re interested in writing about and your CV attached. No set deadline. Find out more
Residency & Fellowship Opportunities 2022-23 Writer in Residence - Calgary Distinguished Writers Program For 25 years, the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program (CDWP) has fostered promising Canadian writers. Our Canadian Writers-in-Residence have gone on to great success, including alumni such as Eden Robinson, Larissa Lai, Suzette Mayr, Sina Queyras, Deborah Willis, and Governor-General’s Literary Award winners Oana Avasilichioaei and Richard Harrison. Do you have what it takes to be the next CDWP Canadian Writer-in-Residence? Deadline is January 15, 2021. Find out more
In Memoriam The League of Canadian Poets has a large community that has stood strong for over 50 years. Over these past few months, the League has lost members and friends from the poetry community. We’d like to take this chance to remember Doris Hillis and RM Vaughan. Doris Hillis Doris Mary Hillis, age 90, passed away after a short battle with cancer on July 26, 2020 in Penticton, B.C. Canada. She was born on December 1, 1929 in Epson, Surrey, England to Douglas and Doris Bennett. In her early years, she attended the City of London Freemen’s School where she developed her interest in English literature and history. She went on to earn an honours bachelor degree from the University of Nottingham. She began teaching school in southern England and the Channel Islands. She immigrated to Canada in 1955 to take up teach-
ing jobs in rural Saskatchewan and Winnipeg, Manitoba and earned a master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Manitoba. She married William Hillis in 1960 and moved to Macklin to start a new life grain farming and to raise their daughter Sandy. Her passion for literature never waned through the family years and she stayed active among the Saskatchewan writers circle, publishing books of poetry, reviews and a memoir and working on plays and a novel. RM Vaughan “I met RM Vaughan once years ago. It was an impressionable moment. I cannot understand why he decided to leave us all. This is so tragic for the poetry community in Canada. Unfortunately I fear he will not be the only poet/writer during these confusing times. Condolences to all his family and friends. International Beat Poet Laureate Donna Allard, Richibucto NB. Note: If you feel overwhelmed call 211 (NB) they are there to guide you through <3” – Donna Allard International Beat Poet Laureate for Canada 2019-2020
Writer RM Vaughan lived with me during COVID-19, before he died — we were friends, confidantes, collaborators By Nathaniel G. Moore Special to the Toronto Star Sat., Oct. 24, 2020 If anyone were to be the inspiration for a reboot of Oscar Wilde’s classic story “The Selfish Giant” it would be my friend Richard Vaughan. But the title would have to go. Yes, to fit his legacy properly, and to modernize it for the current climate, perhaps we could go with “The Selfless Giant,” or “The Gregarious Crafting Giant,” or “The Community-Building Giant”. Yeah, that might work all right.
When the police told my wife the news about finding Richard’s body on Friday, Oct. 23, she came into the garden and told me to go speak with him — the officer standing in our kitchen. He’d gone missing Oct. 13 and was found dead 10 days later. I didn’t want to talk to a stranger about someone who means more to me than almost anyone else in my life. Richard Murray (RM) Vaughan, 55, was one of my closest friends, confidantes and collaborators. Two decades after I first met him, while growing up in Toronto publishing streams, Richard came home to New Brunswick in January, where I had been living for three years — when he was appointed Writer In
Residence at the University of New Brunswick. It was a sort of CanLit relocation program and I was happy to see him. He was here only a short while when COVID-19 hit and he was booted from his digs in downtown Fredericton, so we asked him to live with us which, thankfully to us all, he did, on March 1. My wife, 11-year-old daughter, four cats and a new puppy were soon familiar with his hilarious personality, and his love of crafting — which would greet us in many forms every few days. Sometimes a collage would appear on my desk, left like a proud grade-school child bringing home work he’d made during art class. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts Degree and his Masters of Arts in English from the University of New Brunswick, Vaughan moved to Toronto and became a fixture in the city’s art and literary scene in the ’90s and 2000s, working in visual art (video, performance, collage) as well as being a regular arts columnist and critic for newspapers and magazines. He’s a board member of This Magazine, and has a large section of filing cabinets at the Gay/ Lesbian archives just teeming with his work. (He took me there once). His recent projects included editing a collection of Queer poetry by New Brunswick writers with Frog Hollow Press, and he had recently published a chapbook called “Contemporary Art Hates You,” with Anstruther Press .
His vast bibliography includes poetry collections “A Selection of Dazzling Scarves,” “Invisible to Predators,” “Ruined Stars,” “Troubled” and “Ve1Xe”; the novels “Quilted Heart” and “Spells;” the play “Camera, Woman” and “The Monster Trilogy;” and “Compared to Hitler: Selected Essays,” which came out in 2013. He was taught by his mother to be a kind and well-mannered Maritime boy. Young man. He once cancelled a sushi date with me because he had to interview Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund — oh, the laugh we had because he was ditching me to talk to Freddy Krueger. Always there were the laughs, and the anecdotes. They helped define our friendship, as they did with so many others — the amount of personal mail he receives every week from friends across Canada and beyond, attest to his ability to keep in touch, to draw people towards him, and his dedication and pride towards those he loved, dated, admired and collaborated with. When he wasn’t working on his poetry, his novel, or writing his widely loved columns and articles, he was in our large lovely garden, nurturing life, planting seeds and proudly watering his towering sunflowers. He also grew potatoes for the first time this summer, and shared his bounty with us. More than once a day his phone alarm would sound off and he’d be off to talk to one of
his many friends across the world on Skype. He treasured his connections to “my gays” as he’d call them affectionately. We were his “straights.” When a television reporter came to talk to me, reporting on his death, they cut out what I felt was more important than what he meant to me personally: I talked about his impact on the Queer creatives who were so oppressed when he came of age in the 1980s and ’90s; how important his work and advocacy was to their empowerment, how the mainstreaming of Queer culture is because of the efforts of icons like him. He’s like Andy Warhol and Douglas Coupland, Truman Capote and Kathy Acker all in one, with just the right amount of his fave actress, Jodie Foster. Richard was a true pioneer and made a joke of being what he called the “token gay” — “We need a gay? Let’s get Richard!” — but it really meant he was always in demand. He carried an undercurrent of sadness — about his mother’s death in 2015; the abuse he faced as a child from his father for being chubby; for being different — that sometimes clouded our bonfire conversations. He would drift away, only to recover again quickly, picking up another train of thought, making us laugh again. His gregarious personality created a curtain for his pain;
his heart was big, he connected people. “You should talk to …” he’d say. “I’ll introduce you.” Our writing community is full of hot-heads and saints, egoists and divas. But it’s changing, becoming filled with influencers and those without experience. Last week saw both the retirement of beloved Brick Books publisher Kitty Lewis and the announcement that Pedlar Press will end this year. In an interview, Pedlar founder Beth Follett talked of her fears of leaving the publishing world in the hands of those who don’t know. “There’s a lot of expertise in the small-press world and if there aren’t excellent succession plans getting worked up then it could be really dicey in a couple more years,” she told Quill and Quire recently. RM Vaughan’s death is that kind of loss. Who can possibly replace him, his ability to make everyone feel welcome, loved, curious about the world of creative types around them, all the while making them spit their drinks out from laughter. You can’t go to charm school to learn any of that. When Richard first went missing I prayed we’d find him. He’d been suffering bouts of isolation, sometimes staying in his apartment downstairs for four days straight, not even leaving to check the mail.
I prayed he was holed up in a motel with a cute boy and some weed and was just taking a break. I’m so sad that he wasn’t. I dreamt recently that I found him with cuts on his body. Again I thought of Wilde’s story, the part where the Giant finds a little child he had loved standing in his garden, with his wounds of crucifixion, and the child says “These are the wounds of Love.”
I hope Richard is in his garden, in Paradise, covered in white blossoms. I pray that, like the boy in Wilde’s story, his wounds were the wounds of Love. Nathaniel G. Moore is a Fredericton artist and writer.