St@nza 18.1 Spring 2021

Issue 18 Vol. 1

Spring 2021

18.1 | Spring 2021

In this issue: 2-4

Announcing the Pavlick Winners

5-6

News f rom the League

7-9

Bill Arnott’s Beat

9-15

Poetry Parlour

17-20

Book Review: Locked in Different Alphabets

20-25

New League Members

25-33

Member News

34-41

Writing Opportunities

42-50

In Memoriam

For full details, juror comments, and more visit poets.ca

The Pavlick Poetry Prize 2021 Winners 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 were awarded.

Congratulations to Group Winner Canthius and Individual Winner Andrea Thompson!

Canthius celebrates poetry and prose by women, trans men, nonbinary, Two-Spirit, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming writers. The magazine is published bi-annually, and over 8 issues, has displayed its committed to publishing diverse perspectives and experiences. Since its very first issue, Canthius has also committed to paying its contributors, before any funding had been secured. Their hard work and dedication to representation, diversity, and quality has seen them grow into a municipally- and provincially-funded literary magazine that highlights art, fiction, poetry, and non-fiction by some of Canada’s most historically oppressed communities. Their commitment to producing a beautiful print edition of the journal rewards readers and contributors alike.

This prize has been presented to Canthius to allow them not just to continue the great work they are already doing, but to encourage and enable them to push boundaries, working towards moving beyond the language of diversity and representation toward a truly equitable, joyful, and welcoming literary space. We look forward to seeing how this investment will enrich Canada’s poetry landscape.

From the jurors: “Only to explain difference must no longer be the requirement of our artistic labours. What is needed are avenues that can allow for exposure and examination with fullness, that gesture towards both criticality and care. Canthius is able to be one such avenue.”

Runner up for the Group Prize is Poets’ Corner Reading Series

Andrea Thompson is an artist. Her spoken word albums and performances have been critically acclaimed, and her work in Canada’s spoken word community has been foundational and trail-blazing. Throughout her career, she has dedicated herself to nurturing and supporting youth and emerging artists of all ages, sometimes putting her own work on a back burner to do so. With a passion for using poetry and performance as a tool for empowerment, Thompson has helped hundreds of vulnerable and disenfranchised students to develop their craft and literacy skills while increasing their emotional well-being and self-esteem. Throughout the 90s, she worked to help Canadian spoken word gain national and international recognition through radio, documentary, performance, and more.

This prize is being awarded to Andrea Thompson because an investment in Andrea Thompson is an investment in the future of Canadian poetry.

Thompson’s work will continue to change hearts and minds, and giving her the opportunity to focus on her own work will allow us all to reap the benefits when the work makes it out into the world. We are excited to see what Andrea Thompson will bring us next.

From the jurors: “It’s about time spoken word artists begin to receive the recognition they deserve. Thompson’s work is powerful and critical. I look forward to not only her new work but the inspirational ripples it will cause throughout the community.”

Runner up for the Individual Prize is Armand Garnet Ruffo

Honorable mentions: Canisia Lubrin Cicely Belle Blain Cristalle Smith David Ly Faith Paré George Elliott Clarke jaye simpson joelle baron Louise Bernice Melanie Power Michael Fraser Phoebe Wang Tanis McDonald

The jurors for this award were: Chelene Knight, Joseph Dandurand and Zarmina Rafi For full details on the winners, including statements, and juror bios, visit our announcement page

News f rom the League Leon E. and Ann M. Pavlick Poetry Prize We are thrilled to celebrate the selected winners of the Pavlick prize: Canthius and Andrea Thompson!

Check out the full details, juror comments and more.

National Poetry Month Just around the corner! Download social media graphics, our official NPM2021 poster, and more.

Send a poem to a pocket Fundraiser The LCP wants to put a poem in every pocket this year! Sign up a loved one to recieve a poecket poem (Pay-What-You-Can) Book Awards The League will be announcing the longlists of the 2021 Book Awards on April 6! Stay tuned!

Funding with the League For Reading Series and Festivals: Reading Series and literary festivals may be eligible to reserve up to $2,000 in honoraria for 8-16 unconfirmed readers for events before March 31, 2022. Honoraria can be disbursed in $125 (less than 10-minute reading) or $250 (solo, or greater than 15-minute reading) increments, and readers must be Full members of the League to receive the funding, but do not have to be confirmed at the time of reservation. Complete the event funding application at poets.ca/

funding and select “CPT Reading Series” as the program choice. Please request to reserve only as much as you believe you will need.

New: Host Database In order to submit a funding application on behalf of an organization, a reading series, a school, a festival, or another official organizer (ie. not an individual), they will need to be in our new host database. View the database or Add a host Eden Mills Writers’ Festival Showcase: National Poetry Month Celebration Thursday April 8, 8:00 9:00 p.m. EST (online) In celebration of National Poetry Month, we’ve curated a showcase featuring some of the most dynamic poetry to be published in Canada this year. Take a break from pandemic life and join these poets on a journey that will explore the depth and breadth of the human experience. Grab your favourite beverage, pull up a chair and enjoy the ride. Featuring: Roxanna Bennett, Selina Boan, Leanne Dunic, Therese Estacion, Louise B. Halfe, Steven Heighton, Dallas Hunt, Larissa Lai, Grace Lau, Jen Sookfong Lee, Garry Thomas Morse, Ken Norris, Arleen Paré, Rebecca Salazar and Ian Williams.

RSVP to this event 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: • Voices of Quebec / Les voix du Quebec • 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 • These Lands: A Collection of Voices

by Black Poets in Canada 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 Member survey Thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out our member survey. Congrats to the winners of the survey giveaway: Britta B, Natalee Caple, Greg Santos Poetry Pause Spoken Word The LCP is happy to share that spoken word poetry has a home in Poetry Pause. If you are a spoken word poet, send us your poetry to be featured!

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 Poetry’s New Normal

Part 1: Pre-Pandemic It was morning where I was, overlooking Canada’s west coast, evening for pals in Europe, and teatime for another few dozen buddies around the UK. Together we were recreating, virtually, a literature festival held in Britain each spring. This partial iteration of the annual reading series took place via Zoom, a collection of poets, musicians, and one librettist, the man we love who began this festival years ago—the in-person version.

Imagine if you will, a group of writers and our inspiration, the librettist, gazing into monitors from living rooms, kitchens, and in my case, tucked in a Harry Potter-like closet off our entryway, clothing pushed out of frame.

We live, you see, in a space the size of a hotel room—a queen-sized bed, bath, and my closet-cum-conference-room/performance space.

I had earbuds with mic on, my feet wedged amidst out-of-season footwear, ready for a poetry event like no other. Most of my festival friends who were eight hours ahead of me had their G&Ts while I, at eleven a.m., not wanting to feel excluded, clutched a juice glass of morning Malbec. Prior to this, I didn’t know such a thing existed. Turns out it does and may, I suspect, catch on.

Normally these events occur annually in St Ives, Cornwall—England’s southwest corner, near Land’s End and Penzance—the end of the line for rail and bus, and obviously, where pirates come from. Each day for the week-long festival, this eclectic group converged for evening readings along with daytime events held in a tiny park called Norway Square, a pocket of windswept greenery with peekaboo views of the Celtic Sea. I’m one of a number of “regulars” who hail from everywhere, descending on this destination to share, perform and socialize with fellow poets and mixed-media writers. The energy’s relaxed and inclusive. Something hard to find, at times, elsewhere.

The locale that traditionally holds

this festival is a venerable wood structure leaning slightly over the ocean. The building is the St. Ives Arts Club. The water, St. Ives Bay. The first time I entered the venue it was a miserable, late winter night—dark, cold, wet. I’d made some perversely discomfiting commitment to myself that I’d read my poetry in this special place, the way some might vow to one day grace a stage at Carnegie Hall. So rather than spending a cozy evening in front of the purr of BBC TV—country getaways or titillating murders—I braved the elements to see who-knows-what, plus me, reading newborn writing, ink still damp on paper.

There were six of us: my wife Deb and me, librettist Bob, a European actress, a poet from across the peninsula, and a man named Shanty who delivered fifteen exceptional minutes of Beowulf, which he did not read. The man knew his Beow-

ulf. Still does, I’m sure. And could, no doubt, do the entire thing given the chance. But all I knew was an artistic bar had been set. The people— strangers at the time—welcomed us wholeheartedly. Yet I felt if I were to truly fit in, I too needed to learn my work.

Perhaps what I love most—above and beyond the kind-hearted people and their significance to my growth as a writer—is the venue itself. This unassuming structure was where the very first motion picture was played. Before Edison was ripping off copyrights across the pond, here in remote England some guy in the late 1800s played a film of a galloping horse on the wall of this building. History in real time, albeit jumpy black-and-white vignettes.

Bob addressed the room, explaining that given the architectural limitations of this ancient structure of res-

in-soaked timber with a lone stairwell and emergency exit ladder dropping to seaside rocks, in the unlikely event of a fire, to please ensure we’ve made the most of the evening! And with an uncomfortable laugh and glances at each other (Surely I can reach the ladder before the septuagenarian with a dodgy hip) we got on with the show.

(Next issue, Part 2: Through Pandemic …)

Bill Arnott is the bestselling author of Gone Viking: A Travel Saga and The Gamble novellas. His work is published in Canada, the US, UK, Europe, Asia and Australia. He’s been awarded for poetry, prose, songwriting and is a Whistler Book Awards Finalist for Gone Viking. When not trekking the globe with a small pack and journal, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast, making friends and misbehaving. To join Bill’s Artist Showcase newsletter, click here.

Poetry Parlour See what Leaguers have to say about their “darlings”, writing communities, and f inding new books.

Thank you to everyone who responded to the most recent Poetry Pause questions! Check out our new batch of questions.

We often hear “kill your darlings” when writing. What is a memorable “darling” for you, killed or otherwise preserved?

Amanda Earl: the word “crimson.” another piece of advice i received was to go through my poems and see which words i repeated a lot. one of these was crimson. i love this darling red. it was everywhere. i have removed it from my poems, but not my lips or nails.

Anne Burke: “Kill Your Darlings” is loosely based on the life of poet Allen Ginsberg. The film tells the story of the 1944 untold murder bringing together a young Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Magie

Dominic knew Ginsberg personally.

I come to him only second-handedly. My “Howl” has always been feminist and broken-hearted. “Murder your darlings,” is a popular piece of writing advice that is often attributed to William Faulkner, but which can actually be traced back to the English writer and surname collector Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. My favourite Faulkner has always been “As I Lay Dying” which is a 1930 Southern Gothic novel. Dickens’ darling was “Little Dorrit” whom he did fictionally “kill”. I am more interested in his young secret actress Ellen Ternan and want to write from her point of view and in her voice.

Kamal Parmar: My memorable ‘darlings’ have been my cliche’s, that I used to invariably cling on to. All my poems were ‘trashed’ by most magazines and anthologies.

I was lucky to get a ‘break’ by my mentor, who told me to ‘delete’ those so-called ‘darlings ie the cliche’s that were making my poems so dull and lifeless. Today, my poems are getting wonderful reviews, just because there is a ‘breath of fresh air’ and no cliche’s! Brevity is one of the main tools in writing a poem, as it makes it rich in thought and leaves a deeper impact on the reader. When I started writing poetry, as a novice, I clung to my “darlings” such as throwing in a lot of similes , which were actually redundant and the reader got ‘’switched off.” I quickly learnt the knack of getting rid of my so-called ‘darlings’ which were actually cliches’ and made my poems lusterless. All thanks to my mentors.

Micheline Maylor: My whole first book. John B. Lee. looked at it, told me start again, and then I cried and worked at being better. Shit happens in poetry, and that lesson about phrasing and energy was an important one. Thanks, John. Wherever you are.

Crystal Hurdle: What is keeping me sane while writing my first novel whose first draft clocked in at over 400 pages is having a whole file of “recent cuts.” As I delete something, I move it to the Cut file, now about 100 pages, and I’m trying for more. I know I’m guilty of overwriting, but how all those deletions hurt! Having them “saved” for God knows what eases the pain.

And I’m getting a bit competitive with myself about making the cut file longer… I suspect that by the time the actual novel and the cut file are the same length, I’ll be done.

Bill Arnott: I stupidly lost a hundred-thousand word (travelogue) manuscript, with no back up, notes or journals (we’d moved and were living minimally). Going through photos and starting from scratch, while heartbreaking, DID result in a tighter, vastly improved MS. So while I hadn’t intended to kill my darling, it really was for the best.

Joan Shillington: Many ‘darlings’ have worked their way into my writing over my writing career in the form of stanzas, lines and whole poems that have had to be left behind; never included in a book

(in the instance of a poem), or in a poem as they distract from a poem’s meaning or do not fit into a collection’s theme. However, I keep these ‘darlings’ in my mind, in a file and every now and again they ‘pop’ into a free write or poem stronger than ever. Patience is the key, sometimes it takes years before they enter into my writing muse again.

slashing full lines or stabbing single words. I lose a lot of poetry because I don’t things down as quickly as they come to me! I could fill a ship with tattered poems...One that stands out is a collection called ‘Things I’m afraid Of’...I’ve only shared a tiny bit of this...then I got too afraid and hid it away.

Jessica Moore: I had a poem long ago with the lines “I love you as one foot loves the other / when it hollows solemnly / in the arch of its mate” and someone rightly told me to strike “hollows solemnly” - I think all kinds of matchy sound darlings like that have needed to be killed, in my work

Do you have a writing group or community of writers you share your work with? Who are they?

Penn Kemp (above): My computer is full of darlings preserved in hidden, lost and to-be-recovered files of poems and phrases and prompts that didn’t fit the work in process.

Sometimes, lines like these leftovers spring to mind and are pasted into new work. More often they wait patiently in the shade. Will they ever be used? I live in hope. My epitaph will read, “Just one more thing!”

Dianne Joyce: My mother. Killed her on a mountain. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Vanessa Shields: I’m a pretty consistent murderer of poems...by

Vanessa Shields: I own a small creative writing school in Windsor, ON, called Gertrude’s Writing Room.

There is a strong family of writers that is growing through this small business. Writers connect via virtual classes, workshops and one-to-one creative writing sessions (during the pandemic - otherwise, we meet at the school!). But, every day I connect with Charis Cotter, award-winning children’s writer, from Western Bay, Newfoundland. We text, talk on the phone, email and/or Facetime. We have done several writing retreats together (virtual and live).

I also talk to writer Erinn Banting (Toronto), Vanessa Taylour (Pelee Island), Catherine Hagey (Saskatchewan), Margo Wheaton (Halifax),

and Dorothy Mahoney (Windsor) on a regular basis. We discuss our writing lives, inspirations and challenges.

Penn Kemp: In the past, I have organized poetry reading series (in Toronto, London and Victoria) in order to meet the poets I most admired!

Many, like Robert Creeley and Phyllis Webb, became friends. Here in London, I’ve organized readings for Allan Briesmaster, Katerina Fretwell, Patricia Keeney, Daphne Marlatt, Susan McCaslin, Susan McMaster and others, sharing work. Touring in NPM is another way I connect with fellow poets as we criss-cross the country in April!, visiting or hosting for late-night discussions of writing. I collaborate over emails with Harold Rhenisch and Sharon Thesen, in particular.

Micheline Maylor: I have a multitude of writing friends spanning from England to the Caribbean to tiny towns in B.C. But once a week I work with a group in Calgary made up of multi-genre short form writers. People that heavily influence me that I only see rarely are: John Wall Barger, Susan Musgrave, George Elliott Clarke, Tom Wayman, Jan Zwicky, Pat Lane, A.F. Moritz, Russell Thornton, Jeffrey Donaldson, Steven Heighton, Richard Harrison Richard Osler, Rosemary Griebel, Basma Kavanagh.

Kamal Parmar: I am part of a local poetry organization by the name of Wordstorm Society of the Arts that meets monthly to have poetry readings as well as book launches. I

also belong to the Federation of BC writers which is an excellent media of networking with writers.

Amanda Earl: Not these days, but for many years, i took rob mclennan’s workshops and after that was a member of a group of poets who had also taken his workshops and were sympatico.

Anne Burke: No one living. Eli Mandel convinced me that that our peers do not have to come from this century or in your lifetime. That approach solved my dilemma for many years. I can glimpse the ancient, emulate the “contemporary” (in my academic career this term ended at 1920), and still embrace the avant garde.

Dianne Joyce: At the moment, I do not. Though I do have an opportunity to join one. Think I’m too much of a loner.

Joan Shillington: Yes, I have two writing communities that I share my work with. One is a Thursday night group lead by Richard Harrison and the other a west coast group that is mostly online.

Where do you get your books from? Is there a reason for your preference?

Linda Crosfield: Otter Books in Nelson or directly from the publisher (for chapbooks). And I leave lit mags in Little Free Libraries—no more than three and I add new ones to them when they’re gone.

Kamal Parmar: I get my books from a local library which is an invaluable resource and treasure chest of knowledge. Books , old as well as new, are available, literally at my doorstep. The library also organizes book launches and readings (ZOOM) so as to help me in networking with other writers.

My second choice is Chapters.

Dianne Joyce: Wherever I can: on line, used bookstores, through the library, from friends.

Crystal Hurdle (above): I am a library lover. I use my husband’s card as well as my own, which allows 30 holds on each. Today, as usual, I’m maxed out at 60 holds. I love to get books, more than I can ever peruse (hoarding?), and I love to be able to return them when I’m finished. Decluttering of anything is difficult, so due dates make things easy. Well, easier. Books I especially love and wish to have in my collection I then purchase. And visiting second-hand bookshops is soooo much more delightful than new ones. One of the things I missed about this pandemic Christmas,

as well as not seeing family and friends in Victoria (travel restrictions), was being unable to look in Sidney’s The Haunted Bookshop and Victoria’s Russell books. But, soon!

Anne Burke: My books (which I write) come from contemplation and spontaneous utterances. Those I read are the classics, although I remember when my father gave my a gift card to buy poetry in downtown Montreal. I read Louis Dudek, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Raymond Souster, and many others. I suppose you mean in print (dead trees) or online. I regard much of social media as anti-social because it seems to draw the dark and even vicious from some inner well of wickedness. Having said that, I do appreciate Project Gutenberg and most poets have discovered how long poems and long form writing are accommodated electronically.

Micheline Maylor: Shelf Life in Calgary is my favourite, Owl’s Nest in Calgary. Cafe Books in Canmore. Or I order direct from the publisher, that ensures the highest margins for them, and it’s important that we think of these things, especially now. Jeff Bezos has enough money.

Penn Kemp: The Library is where most of my books come from. If the book isn’t available, I order it, and sometimes that works! Many of my poetry books have accumulated in exchanges with other poets, and these are my most treasured!

After collecting books for 60 years,

my shelves are over-laden... but if I’m going to buy a book, it will be from a local indie store. I can’t afford many!

the 1920s that are love stories? And they find one for me! There is so much knowledge and respect for books that lives and breathes in independent bookstores. We need to cultivate this in our communities as much as we can!

JUST FOR FUN: Which poet/ writer would you most like to have a drink with, and why?

Amanda Earl (above): everywhere. i’ll try to support authors and publishers if i can, but i also get ebooks for my Kindle, and random surprises in bookstores when i can walk through a store and browse. i’ve also ordered books from local bookstores as well. small press fairs for indie and small run books and chapbooks. libraries when i need more books than i can afford, which is always.

Joan Shillington: I usually buy my books from an independent book store. In Calgary, where I live, we have four independent books stores. These days with the pandemic raging, I order online and they either deliver or have curtsied pickup.

Vanessa Shields: I get them from Biblioasis Bookstore, mainly. But I’ve also ordered from other local bookstores. I do my best to support local, independent bookstores. They are eager to help, they always find what I’m looking for...even when I’m not sure what I want, and I can say: do you know any books about Paris in

Penn Kemp: PK Page leaps to mind, as we often had drinks together when possible. I’d be curious to meet Sappho, not sure of wine of the period :) Crystal Hurdle: I have been in love with Sylvia Plath for over forty years (longer than she was alive) since first encountering “Tulips” and “Lady Lazarus” on blue mimeographed paper in university. Neurosis? Passion? Obsession? Not a clear dividing line.

A highlight of my professional, pedagogical (until recently, I taught English and Creative Writing at Capilano University), poetic and personal life was seeing, in 2000, her house, Court Green, in North Tawton, that she’d shared with her then-husband Ted Hughes, and getting dressed down by his widow, Carol Orchard, for near trespass. I delighted in touching Plath’s archived hair at the Lilly Library in 2002 when I was a featured poet at the Sylvia Plath 70th Year Symposium. The tactility of realia!

She remains my muse even after the 2003 publication of After Ted & Sylvia: poems. One might think that she should be out of my sys-

tem, but no. I require ever more frequent hits. The recent publication of her collected Letters (edited by Peter Steinberg and Karen Kukil) in two volumes (2017, 2018), each over one thousand pages, has given me accessible, rich fodder with so many piquant details. And a new gigantic bio by Heather Clark has me tingling.

Coffee with Sylvia? Hell, yes! She drank Nescafe, and I’d like to introduce her to a full-throated latte with a double shot of espresso.

Joan Shillington: Lorna Crozier.

That’s an easy answer. First of all, having read most of her books from cover to cover, I admire her work and how it’s developed over the years, her insight and the variety of her poetry. Second is that over the years I have attended numerous retreats with Patrick Lane and, of course, love and admire his work. I think it would be an interesting conversation.

Amanda Earl: that’s awkward. i would make a big pot of tea for Djuna Barnes, Beatrice Wood, Kiki, Leonora Carrington and just listen in on the sidelines, a ghost from the future in “the twilight of the illicit.”

[The Book of Repulsive Women Djuna Barnes] Anne Burke: That depends (a drink of what?) Maybe coffee with Irving Layton (Eli’s brother from another mother). Best to keep your wits about you. Probably steeped tea with Jay Macpherson whom I was planning to interview before her untimely death. I wanted to ask her all about Northrop Frye and if she knew

why he never produced a poem.

My father was a raging alcoholic so I generally avoid imbibing. Enough said.

Vanessa Shields: Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

I can’t get enough of his literary masterpieces. We’d have to meet in Barcelona, of course. We’d have to drink coffee...and wine. I think I’d have to just stare at him for the first little while...just stare in admiration and awe. Then - talk about the soul.

Kamal Parmar: I would like to draw back the curtain of time and have a drink with the great Victorian poet--William Wordsworth, in order to hear him read his poem-’The solitary reaper’ and what inspired his Muse.

Dianne Joyce: Dead? Sylvia Plath.

I’d like to know why she couldn’t bring herself to write the next poem.

Micheline Maylor: Patrick Lane, just one more time. He was the most monk-like person I ever met who used the word fuck like ground pepper.

New Poetry Parlour questions are now available! Click here to share your thoughts

Book Review: Locked in Different Alphabets by Doris Fiszer Reviewed by Allan Briesmaster

Books of poetry that combine family history with autobiography have been appearing often enough in recent years to form a notable subgenre. Locked in Different Alphabets is an excellent instance of such “memoir poetry.” The poems speak with a distinctive voice (or ensemble of voices), beyond being merely generic. And rather than too closely following well-worn paths across all-too-familiar terrain, this book reveals its characters’ personalities and recounts their struggles and traumas in ways that bespeak their, and the poet’s, uniqueness.

Three sections, each using somewhat different methodology, tell of the lives and deaths of the poet’s brother, father, and mother, also showing the indelible marks they left on the poet, for good or for ill: “trapped in the smell/ I will always associate/ with that day” and “my hands still shake/ when I strike a match.” But the impact reaches even further: “She is as near as the horned owl/ perched in the pine tree.” One by one, the three principal figures are foregrounded, while the other family members interact with them, both when present and

in memory. Most of the poems involve a single, decisively revealing incident or scene, usually fraught with conflict that is liable to scar.

For the most part, the manner of presentation is stark, plain-spoken and free of embellishments that might soften a stanza’s delivery.

The dead keep coming back― in the turn of a phrase, a stranger’s walk, the certain way a head bends.

However, the poet turns out to be equally capable of imaginative leaps and evocations of the realm of dreams, especially in the third section and with the book’s penultimate, surprisingly phantasmagoric poem, “Snapshot 3.”

In all three sections, variations in the forms of the poems prevent stylistic monotony. In less careful hands, a generally no-frills approach could allow a flattening-out into prose, but this poet’s terse, unadorned diction (“I never had the chance/ to hold you before you died”) can shade into phrasing that is subtly and stoutly “poetic.” In that way, the right balance is struck for handling her very personal, emotionally-charged subjects. The result, both immediate and cumulative, is consistently involving and moving: “Your words blunt knives/ with a silence of uncertainty and imprecision/ not stabbing but leaving a mark”. A lamenting of the difficulty of communication and lost opportunities for it runs through the book, and the poet is constantly sliding out of the immediate situation into memory, or dream, whether fearfully or yearningly, as she seeks to understand and connect.

The section about the brother begins with relatively straightforward

testimony to his troubled, at times uncontrollably violent behaviour in boyhood and youth. He torments his sister again and again, to traumatic effect. Thus, “After the time George set/ the kitchen curtains ablaze” she is afraid to be alone with him; while after a tickling incident in another poem, “I still have dreams about it. // I feel as though I’m cornered/ in a pitch-dark cave. / A shadowy form presses, / presses against me.” The section’s later poems abruptly shift to the adult George’s affliction with ALS, which reduces him from fearful to pitiable.

Within five months, in “Voiceless 2,” he cannot move, only blink.

The middle section, “My Father Andrzej,” is twice as long as the other two, and even though much of it dwells at length on his confinement in a nursing home, I found the entire sequence to be compellingly readable and touching.

The father, who as a young man was forced by the Nazis to labour in a rocket plant, is cantankerous, “proud of being unreasonable,” and cannot show appreciation or affection to the daughter who patiently tends to him on her visits, and who, “despite everything”, can “still love him.” Accordingly, the relationship is portrayed with both empathy and candor: You have always pointed out my flaws rather than praising me.

The list of all the things I do wrong

rings in my head.

Yet I’m told that you always ask others did you meet my daughter that’s her picture on the wall.

The daughter had to contend with the antique clocks, historic documents and other collected artifacts her father was unwilling to let go of, along with difficulties with his wheelchair and in feeding him. She “fell in with the rhythm of your dying”, but afterward can still assert, “My heart carries you.”

Although it was also difficult for mother and daughter to show each other much ordinary affection, the third section reveals a deeper love that underlay their relationship; and the mother, who did not outlive her son, is sorely missed. The daughter often feels her to be present and dreams of her. In a distinctly different approach from the other sections, the poems here enter into the mother’s harrowing experiences when her girlhood ended with the invasion of Poland and the Nazi atrocities in Warsaw. The mother’s own voice speaks razor-sharp memories: “After the bomb blast/ I searched for traces of my father/ found one leather glove/ smoldering.” Coming to understand how “Grief shadowed them// from room to room”, the poet gains a more complete picture of this concentration camp survivor, a worrier and inclined to be fearful – beyond what was possible when she was alive. A

few happy interludes are recalled, such as a wild mushroom-picking adventure (“Foraging”); and the knowledge that her mother did appreciate and love her is treasured.

The poet’s grandmother (“Babcia”) is also fondly and vividly portrayed.

Readers might wish this section to be somewhat longer, perhaps with more about the sunnier side of things, and yet the intensity of poem after poem evokes a powerful enlargement.

The book ends in a mood of solace with the serene meditative poem “Zen Garden.” Alert readers will have noticed earlier, though, that motifs of flowers and birds have been a recurrent indicator of possibilities of beauty and refuge, despite the insistence of “our deaf world/ repeating what/ it doesn’t want to hear.” Another potent leitmotif is the touch and warmth of hands. As well, besides the telling details and phrases of dialogue of a kind found in well-written fiction, Fiszer has an admirable penchant for “objective correlatives.” Objects and images emerge from the plain narration to resonate beyond the merely scenic with no need to become heavy symbols: “dresses, price tags still attached/ hung like warstarved ghosts/ in Mother’s closet.” A more unusual device which I don’t recall seeing elsewhere is the placement at the end of some poems of two or three succinct lines that, in a similar way to the haiku at the ends of Japanese or North American haibun, serve to clinch the preceding paragraph.

Examples: “trapped bird/ another

attempt/ to take wing” and – the last lines in the book – “A sugar-swollen monarch/ will shiver its way to warmth.”

As I have meant to imply, Locked in Different Alphabets is a courageous writing endeavour, in which the author, much like her parents, takes on the roles, all at once, of a witness, a victim and a survivor. The book holds its own among other accounts by authors of Fiszer’s generation who have memorialized their parents’ horrific early lives and their aftermaths while forthrightly exposing the effects on themselves. The effect of this book, then, though to a great degree sombre and troubling, is ultimately, when one reaches the end, consoling and an affirmation.

Locked In Different Alphabets

by Doris Fiszer Silver Bow Publishing (2020) ISBN-13 : 978-1774031063 Purchase Locked In Different Alphabets

New League Members Andrea Actis is a writer, editor, memorial maker, and secondgeneration settler living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and TsleilWaututh Nations. She teaches literature and writing at Capilano University and was Editor of The Capilano Review from 2015-17.

Her first book, Grey All Over, is an autoconceptual study of traumatic grief, white working-class identity, false prophets, and whole seriousness.

Visit www.andreaactis.com for more information.

Richard Brait R.J. Calzonetti is a youth poet who loves how the abstract, intense and dark epics poetry can be. Identifying as he/him, he was born in 1997 and is asexual. He often finds himself writing hour after hour, never satisfied. He was a finalist two years in a row at the Burlington Poetry Slam within the first two years of writing. He has since branched out from spoken word into other forms of poetry. Headline Poetry and

Press published a good dozen of his poems, and for several months he worked together with the head editor who he owes a great debt.

After leaving the magazine in order to focus more on building his skills in hopes of eventually publishing a booklet, he has been bunkered up for two years of constant writing.

His early work focused on mental illness and abstract works. These days he focuses on improving in new areas. He wants to be inspired by experienced poets, and eventually, be among them.

Margaret Code Ellie Csepregi has been a cultural worker since 1972. Born in Budapest and grew up in Calgary, Alberta, she has lived and worked in several cities: New York, Vancouver, Toronto, Chengdu, but now calls Windsor, Ontario home where she raised her two children and taught high school English for over twenty years. She studied theatre arts and creative writing in NYC, the University of Calgary and the University of Windsor. Ellie has served on several literary, art and social justice committees.

Jennifer Bowering Delisle (she/ her) is the author of Deriving (forthcoming March 2021), and The Bosun Chair (2017). She regularly teaches creative writing at the U of A Faculty of Extension, and is a board member of Edmonton’s NeWest Press. She has a PhD in English from UBC, and is also the author of The Newfoundland Diaspora: Mapping the Literature of Out-

Migration (2013). She is a settler in Amiskwaciwâskahikan/Edmonton/ Treaty 6.

Sheri Doyle Eva Halus is a painter, poet and journalist born in 1967 in Bucharest, Romania. In 1989 she came toCanada, reuniting with her father’s family. She lives in Montreal, where she completed Graphic Design studies at Concordia University in 1993, took journalism and photojournalism studies at University of Montreal (2013-2015) and some studies in organising events at the City Counsel in NDG neighbourhood.

A trilingual author, writing in English, French and Romanian, she published ten poetry books, following the same concept and format: poetry illustrated with her own paintings. The first three books are published at Reflections Publishing Editing House in California, followed by books published in Montreal (through the Association of Romanian Poets from Quebec, the Hyegrafix Press in Ville St-Laurent, L’Essor du livre, Lanoraie, Lanaudière and Cervantes Editing, Romania). Her poems are found in various anthologies in North America and Romania: Who’s Who in Poetry from San Francisco, Across the Canyons from Eber & Wein Publishing House in Pennsylvania, The Val-David Note Books from the Laurentians, The Anthologies of ASLRQ from Montreal, The Anthology of the Editing House Singur from Romania, etc. Her translation

work includes the translation of Soliloquies – a poetry book of Veronica Balaj, (from Romanian to English) and the translation of a Romanian Anthem that was the sound track of a documentary film made in San Franscisco. Eva Halus is a permanent collaborator at different newspapers and literary magazines published in Romanian in Montreal and Toronto, like Accent Montreal, and Candela de Montreal, The Observatory, as well as at the online magazine Raga zine from New York, where she writes in English.

Dharmpal Mahendra Jain Born (1952) and raised in tribal reserve of Jhabua, India, Dharm is a Toronto based author. He also writes in Hindi.

Beth Lexah Khashayar Mohammadi is a queer, Iranian born, Torontobased Poet, Writer, Translator and Photographer. He is the author of poetry Chapbooks Moe’s Skin by ZED press 2018, Dear Kestrel by knife | fork | book 2019 and Solitude is an Acrobatic Act by above/ ground press 2020. His debut poetry collection Me, You, Then Snow is forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press.

Zayn Ojoawo An emerging poet based in Tkaronto, colonially known as Toronto, and presently residing on Treaty 6 territory, Zaenab is a bright new voice in the world of spoken word. Performing under the stage

name Zayn, they masterfully weave stories of love, resilience, family, and healing. After becoming the 2019 London Poetry Slam Grand Slam champion, Zaenab was a finalist at the 2019 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word poetry slam along with their London Ontario team.

Zaenab is a prolific writer, poet, and organizer with a vested interest in helping young people like themself find their voice and speak their Truth.

Kimberley Orton is a poet/stage poet, playwright and photographer who lives and works in downtown Toronto. She has been published

by Playwrights Guild of Canada along with several other poetry publications, and her plays Raven, An Act of Ruth, and The Savage Lily have been produced in Toronto, Ottawa, New York and Chicago.

Kimberley holds degrees from U of T in Theatre and English Literature, and is currently completing her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC. Angelica Poversky (they/them) is a queer non-binary RussianJewish poet who has over 7 years of poetry experience and facilitation experience. They’ve taught poetry workshops in schools, libraries, with youth groups, in community centres, and dozens of festivals across North America. Much of their poetry has been devoted to queer and trans celebration and dreaming beyond patterns of trauma. An intuitive empath, their practice is informed by nurturance culture building and poetry as a political, personal, and spiritual power. They have

written extensively on the topics of transness and Judaism, diaspora, and healing justice. They know that language is action, and lives at the site of all transformation.

Anthony Purdy lives in Nova Scotia where, after an academic career spent at universities in New Brunswick, Ontario and Alberta, he is happily acquiring a new skill set as he repurposes himself as a writer of fiction and poetry. He started writing creatively for publication in 2020 and has since published, or had accepted for publication, three stories and eighteen poems in journals and magazines such as The Goose, Prairie Fire, The Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead, and Queen’s Quarterly. He is a member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and an Associate Member of the League of Canadian Poets.

Deanna Radford Brian Sankarsingh is a Trinidadianborn Canadian immigrant who describes himself as an accidental poet, with a passion for advocacy and a penchant for prose. Arriving in Canada in the 1980s, Brian worked tirelessly to forge a life and career for himself. In so doing, he inadvertently shrouded his love for poetry. Now, with his children all grown up, he has rediscovered his voice. With renewed vigour and an unapologetic style, Sankarsingh is committed to maddeningly screaming his poetic ponderings from whatever rooftop or soapbox he can find. Wading into controversial topics like systemic racism and

politics, Sankarsingh’s readers should think about his poetry as social and political commentary.

Lindsay Soberano-Wilson My poetry is best described as accessible, colloquial, rhythmic, repetitive, and concise sprinkled with wordplay and imagery. I seldom use punctuation and instead use enjambment. I am also a high school English and Drama teacher in Toronto. I have been teaching for over 15 years. I love working with and inspiring teenagers. My background in the dramatic arts also lends itself well to the spoken word. Watch my spoken word dramatic monologue I Call this Trauma on IG @Poetry.Matters.

I performed poems like “The Streets of Munich” (also in the upcoming chapbook) at arts festivals in Toronto and also dabbled in open mic nights in Kensington Market.

I love traveling and exploring new cultures in my writing. I have traveled to Israel, Egypt, Greece, Spain, Italy, England, Germany, Morocco, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the US and Canada. I am interested in trauma poetry and healing and also write about topics such as mental health and suicide. I am currently working on additional poetry chapbooks about motherhood, trauma healing, and sex-positivity. As a feminist, bisexual writer, I look at sexuality in the eye and question cultural norms and practices and evoke sensuality. For instance, my poem “Sex Miseducation” explores how women lack education in reproductive health and sexual

desires, while “Through the Looking Glass” questions sexual cultural norms. These poems can be found in publications on my medium platform. I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree (honors) in English and Creative Writing from Concordia University, a Bachelor of Education degree, and a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Toronto. While at the University of Toronto I was lucky enough to find a professor willing to work with me on an independent study course in Jewish Canadian Literature. I read a ton of work by Montreal writers, such as Mordecai Richler, A.M. Klein, Adele Wiseman, and Leonard Cohen.

I live with my amazing husband and my boisterous and loveable three sons in Vaughan, Ontario. We are all hockey, nature, and food lovers!

Johnny D Trinh Johnny D Trinh is an interdisciplinary and spoken word artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Exploring the use of spoken word, music, video, social media, movement, theatre, and creative technologyJohnny’s practice integrates the multi-layered realities within which we exist to create immersive spoken word experiences. Johnny’s pedagogy is rooted in the constant goal of fostering a sense of empowerment, agency, and compassion through socially engaged, community based art. Johnny recognizes that many of us are uninvited guests on this indigenous Turtle Island, and continually works to negotiate that through accountability, solidarity,

and integrity in practice. He creates opportunities to support marginalized communities cultivate their voice: “It takes a community to build an artist... whether we are nurtured by it, or resist against it.” Johnny D Trinh is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies: Theatre & Creative Technology.

Johnny’s research focuses on autho-ethnographic performance, and spoken word as a primary method in community-engaged art.

Anna van Valkenberg Matthew James Weigel Vironika Wilde / Tugaleva / Nikulya / Viro / Nika / poet / feminist / nomad / vocalist / cat fanatic / queer / immigrant / survivor / tree hugger / activist / crossing borders / gazing at the stars / pickles / coffee / getting lost in the woods / questioning authority / avocadoes / dancing in the rain

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Member News

Donna Allard A new book of poetry

by League member Donna Allard, Intl New Generation Beat Poet Laureate for Canada (2019-2020). Check it out on Amazon.

Bill Arnott is excited to announce the release of his poetry collection, Forever Cast in Endless Time (Silver Bow Publishing, 2021). This collection of work - first published in literary journals and anthologies in Canada, the US, UK, Europe, Asia and Australia - examines the cadence of exploration, discovery, and play. Watch for Bill’s LCP launch events, happening this Spring!

Rebecca Anne Banks Subterranean Blue Poetry Announces! Coming Soon! The Covid Diaries: Cat on the Piazza for March 2021 (Volume IX Issue III) Revenge of the Deep Green Forest for April 2021 (Volume IX Issue IV) 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 March 2021 launch @ Ingram Sparks.

- A Subterranean Blue Poetry Im-

print A New Age Book of Erotica, The Pink by Kimberlynne Darby Newton for launch at Amazon.com.

Hardcopy Issues of Subterranean Blue Poetry are Available @ Amazon Stations.

Currently Available: • Volume VII Issue XII (“The Leonard Cohen for Christmas 2019 Issue) • Volume VIII Issue V (“The Missing”) • Volume VIII Issue VI (“the last station”) • Volume VIII Issue IX (“A day in the life – A day at the Aquarium”) • Volume VIII Issue X (“The Blue Girl”) • Volume VIII Issue XI (“Blue Pink”) • Volume VIII Issue XII (“The Marlon Brando for Christmas 2020 Issue) • Volume IX Issue I (“Four Trees of Park Hill: angels in the forest”) • Volume IX Issue II (“Black Lives Matter”) 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. Soooo exciting!

Currently l@@king for New Age Poetry Submissions, Of Poetic Interest . . . critical essays, Masthead Art/Photos, and Books of Poetry for Book Reviews. We Pay $10 per Poem, $20 per Of Poetic Interest, critical essay, and $20 per Masthead Art/Photo, in the month of publication.

A Submission Call! Title: Thunder Under the Mountain. Theme: “An

Angel in the afternoon, winter tears in Summer longing, thunder under the mountain, the five of cups, the sky, castles in the sky. . .” Deadline: Open. Email: subterraneanbluepoetry@outlook.com 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 by PayPal. New Age Poetry. We are L@@king for Symbolist, Surrealist, Imagist, Beat Poetry progressions and The New Goth. If it bangs in the dance it’s in. Deadline: Open. Email: subterraneanbluepoetry@outlook.com. “all the poetry, everywhere” “for those subterranean blues” www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com David Brydges Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest (Canada’s oldest non-governmental poetry contest). Entry fee: $10 per poem. Cash Prizes: $1600: $300 first place, $200 second place, $100 third place, 8 honourable mentions of $75, 8 judge’s choice of $50. Complimentary anthology to all winners.

Deadline: Friday April 30, 2021 HENCEFORTH WE ARE ONLY ACCEPTING ONLINE SUBMISSIONS WITH E-TRANSFER PAYMENT TO mybrydges@yahoo.ca Visit www.springpulsepoetryfestival. com for further info and rules.

Enquires: Send to David Brydges mybrydges@yahoo.ca Fern G. Z. Carr was delighted to discover that her poetry published in “Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetry” received a complimentary

shout-out by a reviewer in the Winter 2020 issue of Division | Review. She was also pleased that the Federation of BC Writers reprised her article, “Unlocking the Door - Publishing Tips and Resources” in: “Throwback Thursday - An article from WordWorks 2020 Vol II, in which Fern G. Z. Carr shares resources that helped her be published over 700 times worldwide!”

Read the article.

Fern had a delightful light-hearted interview with Bill Arnott – “A fun interview with Fern G. Z. Carr - a poet whose work is out of this world, literally - on the latest Artist Showcase.” Check out the interview. Fern continues to curate her YouTube poetry channel featuring beautifully illustrated poems which she composes and performs, along with readings recorded live, poetry lesson plans and guides, plus her translations of her poetry. For a new

video every Wednesday, please be sure to click “Subscribe” – it’s free.

Checkout Fern’s Youtube Channel.

Louise Carson’s poem ‘Kindly burn’ appears in Prairie Fire Vol. 41, No. 4.

Louise Carson has three poems in Subterranean Blue Poetry, Volume IX, Issue III. Read the poems.

Ron Charach This spring, Ron Charach will be publishing with Friesen Press his first children’s literature book, Lemily by the Sea, illustrated by Laura Catrinella.

Conyer Clayton Conyer and Manahil Bandukwala recently released a collaborative chapbook and cine-poem, called Sprawl | the time it took us to forget with Collusion Books. Buy the chapbook, as well as watch the cine-poem on Collusion’s site.

Or check out the audio for the

cine-poem.

Julie de Belle’s interview at La Maison Felix Leclerc with Mosaik’s Stephan Daigle. Watch the interview Jennifer Bowering Delisle’s new collection of poetry from University of Alberta Press, Deriving, is out this month. Her launch event took place on March 24 with Lisa Martin and was hosted by Glass Bookshop and Shelf Life Books.

Adrienne Drobnies’ first book Salt and Ashes (Signature Editions, 2019) won the 2020 Fred Kerner Book Award from the Canadian Authors Association. It was also long listed for the Fred Cogswell Prize.

Amanda Earl is the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry, A 21st Century Anthology to be published by Timglaset Editions of Sweden in Spring, 2021. Find out more Marilyn Gear Pilling The Gods of East Wawanosh, by Marilyn Gear Pilling, a book of poetry published

by Cormorant Books and edited by Robyn Sarah has won the Hamilton Arts Council Award for Best Book of Poetry. Check out the Awards page.

Suparna Ghosh’s poetry and visual art are integrated, hence this news is relevant in the context of the League. Two of her pen, brush and ink drawings were selected by five independent jurors, for their first national show sponsored by the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto.

Check out Suparna’s website

Susan Glickman Artful Flight, Susan Glickman’s 16th book, a selection of her essays and book reviews - mostly about poetry - from 19852019, will be published in April by The Porcupine’s Quill. Learn more Catherine Graham’s seventh collection of poetry, Æther: An Outof-Body Lyric, appears this spring with Wolsak & Wynn / Buckrider Books. “Swimming through time and space, Graham introduces her mother, her father and herself and the cancers that pull them apart and bring them together. Memories mesh with visitations and multiple stories unfold of pain and loss, hidden tragedy, forgiveness and growth. With an otherworldly delicacy Graham stitches it all together to create a book-length lyric essay of lingering and profound beauty, a paean to the complexity of love and survival.” Visit Catherine’s website. gillian harding-russell At the tail end of 2020, Uninterrupted was published. The collection is about nature and human nature during the Anthropocene and the poems are sometimes speculative and dystopic but are written out of a fear for what could be lost to us.

Nature in its beauty and dynamism is a fragile system that could be lost to us – though it will continue in some form without us. ‘Uninterrupted’ nature was once our home and identity, one that we looked to for meaning and solace, a world larger than ourselves – but lately we seem to have forgotten our place in the cosmos. These poems of warn-

ing evoke terror in quasi-recognition of what could be our future.

Yet they are written out of love for what soon may be lost and they search for what may be wrong in ourselves. ISBN: 978-1-77171-410-5 Publisher: Ekstasis Editions Purchase the poetry collection from Ekstasis Editions Or to acquire a copy from the author, please email gillian@gillianharding-russell. ca.

Check out the video launch from Jan 10, 2021 Crystal Hurdle INVERSE: joint poetry reading on April 10th at 2pm pacific time sponsored by The Federation of BC Writers featuring Aidan Chafe, Crystal Hurdle, Joanne Arnott, and Laisha Rosnau, hosted

by Fiona Tinwei Lam Check out the event page.

Keith Inman has work published, or upcoming, in seven anthologies for 2020/21, most from Ontario, one Saskatchewan, and two international. He will again co-ordinate The Banister Poetry Contest / Anthology for 2021. It’s 36th edition; hIs 15th year on the board; sixth as chair. This year’s judge is Dr. Elspeth Cameron. Last fall, Keith participated in Black Moss Press’s video zoom recordings of authors discussing and reading their poetry. You can find the VZR’s at blackmosspress.com He also continues to participate in monthly poetry meetings based on the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop style of round table discussion and sharing.

Although, these are now zoomed, they continue to be extremely valuable.

Penn Kemp Forthcoming Events with Penn Kemp: April, 2021. NPM Zoom and launch of Femmes de Parole/Women of their Word, edited by Nancy R Lange. Contact: rappelparolecreation@hotmail.com for more info.

2021. “Becoming”: a poem of 80 words matched with Jim Kemp’s painting for 80mL Exhibition to celebrate Museum London’s 80th Birthday. Check out the webpage Contact: 80museumlondon@gmail. com My news is up on www.pennkemp.weebly.com and www.wordpress.com as well as facebook.com. pennkemp.poet and www.twitter. com/pennkemp.

PUBLICATIONS: “To Carry the Heart of Community Wherever You Find Yourself”. Sage-ing With Creative Spirit, Grace and Gratitude, www. sageing.ca. Spring 2021.

READINGS: April 18, 2021. 4pm.

Readings from “Voicing Suicide”, an anthology edited by Daniel G. Scott.

Contact: voicingsuicide@gmail. com, organizer Josie Andrews j_andrews@sympatico.ca April, 2021. National Poetry Month zoom and launch of Femmes de Parole/Women of their Word, edited by Nancy R Lange.

Readings: Penn Kemp and Sharon Thesen. Contact: rappelparolecreation@hotmail.com.

May 20, 3pm, 2021. Feature, Owen Sound Poet Laureate Open Mic series. Host: Richard-Yves Sitoski Check out the Facebook event R Kolewe A new chapbook titled The Wild Fox is now available from knife | fork | book.

Fiona Tinwei Lam A fun new Poetry Phone Hotline in Vancouver includes audiorecordings by ten BC poets: Fiona Tinwei Lam, Jennica Harper, Jonina Kirton, Otoniya Juliane Bitek, Christine Bissonnette, Charlie Demers, Joanne Arnott, Rachel Rose, curator Renee Sarojini Saklikar & Dina Del Bucchia. Fiona is one of 11 poets who made short video poems for a BC Farm Folk City Folk fundraiser, now posted on its Youtube channel.

She has been hosting In/Verse, a monthly online poetry series for the Federation of BC Writers.

Poetry Phone: 1-833-POEMS-4-U Paul Lisson Paul Lisson’s debut book of poetry, “The Perfect Archive” (Guernica Editions, 2019), is a Hamilton Literary Awards finalist in two categories: Poetry and the Kerry Schooley Book Award. Results coming 2021. Read

the finalists announment in The Spec David Ly was recently interviewed

by It Gets Better Canada, an organization with a mission to uplift, empower, and connect 2SLGBTQ+ youth across Canada. I talked about how poetry helped shape my queer identity!

Annick MacAskill Upcoming Event: National Poetry Month Virtual Reading: Poetry for the Cruelest Month - Hosted on Zoom by the Halifax Public Library. Join us online for a poetry reading in honour of National Poetry Month. We have three local poets ready to help us celebrate by reading excerpts from their latest works: Annick MacAskilll, Murmurations, Nolan Natasha, I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? and Anna Quon. Annick MacAskill will

moderate a QandA session after the readings. Learn more and RSVP Carol L. MacKay’s 2020 poetry appearances included publication in the League’s Poem in Your Pocket Day brochure and postcard project, as well as poems in the Life of Pie anthology (edited by Myrna Garanis and Ivan Sundal) and in the Sheri-D Wilson/Frontenac House anthology: YYC Pop: Portraits of People. Her poetry was also published in Prairie Journal (Issue #75) and in the anthology, Alone but Not Alone, published by Vancouver Island Regional Library. Her poems for children were published this year by Ladybug, Babybug and The Caterpillar (Ireland).

Susan McCaslin’s most recent volume of poetry, Heart Work (Ekstasis Editions, Victoria, BC) was released in mid-Dec. 2020. The title is currently available on the Ekstasis website. A virtual launch took place on Feb. 24, 2021 with fellow Ekstasis author Jude Neale and host Cynthia Sharp.

A video-recording of her reading of the poem “Persephone’s Nook” for the Poets Corner was posted on its One-Minute Poem Poetry Series.

Dec. 11, 2020. Susan was a featured reader at the following: In/Verse Poetry Series, sponsored by the Federation of BC Writers on Sat. Dec. 12, 2020, host Fiona Lam. The Parkland Poet’s Society, Stony Plane, Alberta, hosts SaraSwoti Lamichane & Lisa Mulrooney, Feb. 11, 2021, with fellow readers Emily Thomas & Claire Kelly.

Her poem “Corona, Corona,” from Heart Work appeared in the an-

thology The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling: a collection of Pandemic Poems. Ed. Sheila Martindale. Victoria, BC: Goldfinch Press, 2020.

Chad Norman’s new collection, Simona: A Celebration Of The S.P.C.A., will appear and be ready for purchase from him, or the publisher, Cyberwit.Net, based out of India. Also, Norman’s poems will appear in the anthologies Under The Azure Sky Black Lives Matter, UK, Second Name For Earth Is Peace, USA, and Gathering In, Nova Scotia.

Norman has started work on a new manuscript, Living Between The Brackets. Poems recently accepted

by Beltway Poetry Journal (USA), Dreich, Summer Always Anthology (Scotland). Also, virtual reading events planned for May and June.

Pearl Pirie’s 4th poetry collection, footlights (Radiant Press, 2020) is now available as an audio book read by the author. It is for purchase for $8.71 at audible or free with audible trial.

It is also available in print from the publisher or directly from the author pearl@pagehalffull.com, Kyeren Regehr I’m so thrilled and grateful to share that my manuscript of poems, Disassembling A Dancer, won the Raven Chapbook Award. Upcoming event: Poets and Pedlar Press: Ronna Bloom, Kim Fahner, Moira MacDougall, and Kyeren Regehr, reading from recent work, hosted by Beth Follett.

Frances Roberts Reilly Watershed Writers is a new radio documentary

series that features in-depth interviews and conversations with local poets and writers living and writing in the Grand River watershed area.

Watershed Writers is interested in poets and writers who are often largely ignored or left out of mainstream media. Host is Tanis MacDonald. Producer is LCP member, Frances Roberts Reilly. Watershed Writers is broadcast every other Tuesday on CKWR FM 98.5 Real Community Radio. Videos and podcasts are available on Watershed Writers YouTube channel and their website. Show runs to June 30, 2021.

Ingrid Ruthig The Essential Elizabeth Brewster, selected and introduced by Ingrid Ruthig, will be released from The Porcupine’s Quill in April 2021. Elizabeth Brewster (1922–2012), a Governor General’s Award finalist and member of the Order of Canada whose literary career spanned seven decades, was part of a second wave of modernist poets to influence the national conversation about Canadian poetry.

Cynthia Sharp With much gratitude to the League of Canadian Poets, I’d like to share my interdisciplinary collaboration with Jilly Watson and Wendy Bullen Stephenson, who created art to compliment my nature poems, while I wrote new verse to go with Jilly’s paintings.

This is a sneak peak at our upcoming book. Thanks for taking the time to give us a view on Youtube.

Candice James and I would like to invite you to our celebration of poetry, April 21, 2021, from 7-8 PM Pa-

cific Time. We’ll be sharing new and retro verse, including some co-written pieces just for this event. Please email inthelightwt@gmail.com for the Zoom link. Thank for your support!

Vanessa Shields My new collection of poetry launches on April 29, 2021.

I’m having a virtual launch beginning at 7:30pm.

Nellie P. Strowbridge My novel THE HANGED WOMAN’S DAUGHTER will be published by Flanker Press April 28, 2021. It is a sequel to the sold out novel CATHERINE SNOW. The Hanged Woman’s Daughter, a novel, will be launched (virtually) March 24th, 2021.

JC Sulzenko The Light Ekphrastic published my ‘artnership’ with West Virginian Ron Tobey in its 44th issue in November 2020. TLE had featured my poetry paired with the work of visual artists in the past. This was my first opportunity to work to a video composition. My poem “Luck.Now” is my response to this challenge. Ron’s video interpretation of “From sea to sea,” the piece he selected from what I had sent the journal appears there as well. My thanks to Editor Jenny O’Grady for the privilege. www.jcsulzenko.com Naomi Beth Wakan, the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Nanaimo has a new book out from Shanti Arts, Wind on the Heath. Now in her 90th year, the book contains a selection from sixty years of poetry writing. Carole MacRury writes of

it: “Plato said ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. The poems in Wind on the Heath are all about the examined life. Naomi Beth Wakan has spent a lifetime pondering what it means to be human. Whether writing in longer lyrical verse or Japanese five-line tanka nothing escapes her gaze or her questioning mind. What is clear from this collection of poems spanning her mid-twenties to late eighties, is that she was born inquisitive and has remained inquisitive. Whether she is writing about sex or how to cut a rose, these poems offer a bittersweet look at life with irony, humor, reflection and a healthy dose of cynicism. These are poems that speak to human nature, our existential aloneness, the fleetingness of life, the pitfalls and hurdles we all must face and as quoted from “Watchers”, one of her earliest poems, this collection offers readers a crack through which we may glimpse reality. Details are at The book is obtainable in Canada through your local bookstore, from Amazon or from mail@pagesresort. com Nan Williamson I am giving a weekly workshop, “Poetry 101” during National Poetry Week Offering Poetry 101 for beginning poets. Exclusive offer for would-be poets…only $25 for four workshop sessions. April is National Poetry Month. To mark it, The CAA will sponsor Nan Williamson to lead a four week course that is free to CA Peterborough members and Affiliates who want to explore how poetry works. For anyone who is

interested but is not a paid up CA Peterborough or Affiliate member the fee will be $25, to be paid to Canadian Authors Peterborough. This offer is open to 5 persons only on a first come first serve basis. Registration. Ends on March 25th. Over the course of 4 sessions, participants will read the work of established poets, do some in-class writing, and share work in progress. There may be some homework. If there is a demand, Nan might be persuaded to run it again. If you are interested please email CA Peterborough at ptbocaa@gmail.com. Nan has listed the following potential times. When signing up, please indicate all times that are workable for you.

Sundays, April 11 to May 2 1:30 – to 3:15, Or Mondays April 12 to May 3 1:30 – 3:15, Or Wednesdays April 7 to 28 7pm -8:45 Nan Williamson is a teacher, artist, and author living in Peterborough. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers, Toronto, 2013. Her chapbook, leave the door open for the moon, was published by Jackson Creek Press in 2015. Always interested in the verbal-visual connection, she plays with shapes, colours, and texture to wed form and content in paint and poetry. More than 50 of her poems have been published in juried literary journals and anthologies in Canada, the US and the UK. She has had 4 poems accepted in the past 3 months. She is also the illustrator for Delicate Impact, a Canadian anthology of poetry, A Beret Days Book, The Ontario Poetry Society, 2018.

Writing Opportunities Calls for Submissions Dreamers Submit your short stories, poems, personal essays or excerpts (that stand alone) from any genre of writing. We’re willing to consider any form of writing that is well-written and from the heart. We especially love writing that has some connection to writing for wellness – narrative medicine, medical memoir, writing the self, healing writing, etc. Deadline is March 31, 2021. Find out more.

Open Minds Quarterly Accepting submissions from poets well-versed in mental health challenges for the Summer 2021 Issue Sickness & Health. 4 piece/8 page limit. Deadline is March 31, 2021. Find out more.

The Hellebore Press is accepting submissions for upcoming digital issues and features until April 1, 2021.

Micro poetry, prose poetry, flash fiction, flash nonfiction, chapbook reviews, craft essays, and visual art submissions are welcome. Find out more perhappened Submissions are open now through april 3rd for perhappened mag issue 10: DAYDREAM, featuring guest reader taylor byas!paint us a picture. let us in

on your wildest dreams, your imagined encounters, your but-what-ifs. we want your reality with a heaping side of fantasy, as long as you don’t tell us which is which. Deadline is April 3, 2021. Find out more.

Pøst Accepting submissions of poetry in English or French by poets of colour for the upcoming issue.

Deadline is April 14, 2021. Find out more Literary Review of Canada Accepting poetry submissions for the annual 2021 Reading Period. Poems must be under 50 lines. Deadline is April 15, 2021. Find out more.

CP Quarterly (formerly Crèpe & Penn). Accepting poetry submissions of up to one page. Simulataneous submissions are accepted.

Deadline is May 28, 2021. Find out more CV2 Annual submission period is now open. Deadline is May 31, 2021.

Find out more.

Lammergeier Accepting submissions of up to five poems. Simulatenous submissions are accepted.

Submissions period opens April 1.

Find out more

subTerrain Accepting poetry submissions for the upcoming issue with the theme of “neighbours.” Whether we love them or hate them, we all have them. There’s the “Good Neighbour” policy and the unwritten but often spoken of “Bad Neighbour” policy. We welcome essays, fiction, opinion pieces, and poetry that reflects upon this unique designation — whether it be warm and fuzzy, awkward and prickly, or strained — that we call “neighbour.” Deadline is June 1, 2021. Find out more

cations. Deadline to submit is June 21, 2021. Find out more

Tree Poem Anthology from Caitlin Press This is a call for submissions from Caitlin Press for an anthology of tree poems, to be published in collaboration with Christine Lowther, Tofino Poet Laureate. Send your submission in an email or as Word Doc to tofinopoetlaureate@gmail.com or mail to Box 127, Tofino, BC, V0R 2Z0, with a cover letter. Deadline is June 1, 2021. Find out more

Arc accepts unso­licited sub­mis­ sions of pre­vi­ously unpub­lished poetry in English, or translations of poetry into English, on any sub­ject and in any form. Submissions period opens April 1 until July 31, 2021.

Find out more

Understorey Magazine Accepting poetry submissions for Issue 21, we want to hear from women and non-binary writers and artists living in rural and remotes areas. Understorey is primarily a digital magazine.

However, we recognise that many rural and remote communities do not have reliable access to the internet.

For that reason, we will be creating a limited-distribution print edition of Issue 21. If you do have reliable internet and live in a rural location, please help distribute this call for submissions. Download and print our call for submissions and post the call in community centres, libraries, women’s centres, grocery stores, and other lo-

Puritan Accepting poetry submissions. Baffle us, tangle us up, or break our hearts. We’re looking for poems of any length (including sequences and long poems) Deadline is June 25, 2021. Find out more.

Cloud Lake Literary Accepting submissions for the Fall 2021 Issue.

Deadline is June 30, 2021. Find out more.

Subterranean Blue Poetry We look for Symbolist, Surrealist, Imagist, Beat progressions and the New Goth. If it bangs in the dance it’s in. Optional Pay-What-You-Can Reading Fee ($1 per Poem, up to 5 Poems). Everyone hears back from us. We pay $10 per Poem, $20 per Of Poetic Interest . . . article, and $20 per Masthead Art/Photo in the month of publication. Thank you to all Contributors, Readers, and Supporters of Subterranean Blue Poetry. Deadline: Open. Find out more Beliveau Books Seeking chapbook submissions by BIPOC poets, to be published in August 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 listed deadline.

Find out more Antigonish Review 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 listed deadline. Find out more Beliveau Review Open to year round submissions of poetry. No listed deadline. Find out more.

Cotton Xenomorph Accepting submissions of 3-5 poems. No listed deadline. Find out more Cypress Press Accepting submissions of up to 3 unpublished poems and a 75 word bio in a single Word document to poetrycypress@gmail. com. Please make sure your submission is no more than 5 pages. No set deadline. Find out more The Dalhousie Review Accepting submissions of poetry year-round.

No listed deadline. Find out more Damaged Goods Press accepts 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 listed deadline. Find out more Existere Accepting unpublished submissions of Poetry. No set deadline. Find out more filling Station Open to poetry submissions. No listed deadline. Find out more Friction Magazine accepts yearround submissions of poetry and other writing Experimental, nontraditional, and boundary-pushing literature is strongly encouraged. No listed deadline. Find out more Geist Accepting submissions of a maximum of 5 poems. No set deadline. Find out more The Mackinac Accepts poetry yearround. Submit up to five poems. No listed deadline. Find out more Malahat Review Poetry submissions should consist of three to five poems (10 pages of poetry maximum), on any subject and in any style. Submissions longer than 10 pages will not be read. The magazine often accepts several poems by the same author; therefore, please do not limit your submission to a single poem.

No listed deadline. Find out more The New Quarterly We print free verse, ballad, sonnet, epic, and prose poems, and there’s no need to rhyme unless you want to. TNQ is a generalist magazine, interested in work in a wide variety of formal and stylistic modes. Freshness of style, subject matter, perspective is something

we look for. Submit up to 3 poems.

No listed deadline. Find out more Okay Donkey Accepting submissions of poetry for weekly publication on mondays. No deadline. Find out more Pace Magazine Accepting submissions of poetry. Submit up to five poems. No set deadline. Find out more.

Plenitude Accepting submissions of up to five pages of poetry. No listed deadline. Find out more Prism accepting year-round submissions. No listed deadline. Find out more Pulp Literature Accepting submissions of poetry year-round. Submit up to three poems. No listed deadline. Find out more Q/A Poetry Journal Q/A Poetry 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 listed deadline. Find out more The 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 listed deadline. Find out more Qwerty Accepting poetry submissions for the upsoming Spring/Summer 2021 Issure, with the theme of FOOD x IDENTITY. 2SQ+BIPOC artists are invited 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 We like poetry that doesn’t try too hard but gets under our skin in the best kinds of ways. Submit up to 4 unpublished poems. No listed deadline. Find out more Riddle Fence Accepting general submissions of poetry, up to 10 pages. No deadline. Find out more.

Room Magazine is accepting submissions of up to 5 unpublished poems. No listed deadline. Find out more Shrapnel Accepting poetry submissions on a rolling basis. Submit up to five poems. No listed deadline.

Find out more Train Accepting submissions of poetry. No listed deadline. Find out more

The Walrus currently accepting poetry submissions and other writing.

No listed deadline. Find out more

Awards and Contests

Grain Magazine Short Grain Contest Three prizes will be awarded in each category: 1st = $1,000 and publication in Grain, 2nd = $750 and publication in Grain, 3rd = $500 and publication in Grain. Poetry judge is Phil Hall. Entry fee is $40. Deadline is April 1, 2021. Find out more The 20th annual Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, sponsored by Winning Writers and Duotrope. There’s no fee to enter. Top prize: $2,000. Total prizes: $3,500.

The 12 funniest poems are published on our website. Submit published or unpublished work. Limit: 250 lines. Entries close on April 1.

Find out more.

Pulp Literature Magpie Award for Poetry At Pulp Literature, we have an affinity for poetry, the hard liquor of literature. We like it strong, neat, and we don’t mind if it makes our eyes water. Our judges, will be looking for a fusion of musicality, imagery, feeling, and thought. May the best poem win! This contest is for previously unpublished poems of up to 100 lines in length. 1st place prize is $500. Deadline is April 15, 2021. Find out more Association of Italian Canadian Writers Venera Fazio Poetry Contest Three poems of up to 40 lines each or 1 longer poem of up to 140 lines. Submissions can be in English, French, or Italian. Deadline is April 30, 2021. Find out more

Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest (Canada’s oldest non-governmental poetry contest).

Entry fee: $10 per poem. Cash Prizes: $1600: $300 first place, $200 second place, $100 third place, 8 honourable mentions of $75, 8 judge’s choice of $50. Complimentary anthology to all winners.

Deadline: Friday April 30, 2021 HENCEFORTH WE ARE ONLY ACCEPTING ONLINE SUBMISSIONS WITH E-TRANSFER PAYMENT TO mybrydges@yahoo.ca Visit www.springpulsepoetryfestival.com for further info and rules.

Enquires: Send to David Brydges mybrydges@yahoo.ca 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 recently extended to April 30, 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 Memorial contest for a chance to win $100. 2020 Judge is Natalie Meisner. Deadline is April 30, 2020.

Find out more

Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize Outspoken, risk taking, looking at a topic in an unexpected way. It would be nice if it had a good potential for being performed. Why these criteria? Because that’s Muriel. She was not only a poet but a fabulous performer and had no problems tackling things from an unusual, makesyou-wake-up-and-listen point of view. All winners and honourary mentions will be published in Fire In The Heart, the Muriel’s Journey Chapbook for 2021. Deadline is April 30, 2021. Find out more. bpNichol Chapbook Award recognizes excellence in Canadian poetry in English published in chapbook form within Canada. The prize is awarded to a poetry chapbook judged to be the best submitted.

The author receives $4,000 and the publisher receives $500. Awarded continuously since 1986, the bpNichol Chapbook Award is currently administered by the Meet the Presses collective. Chapbooks should be not less than 10 pages and not more than 48 pages. The chapbooks must have been published between January 1st and December 31st of the previous year (2020), and the poet must be Canadian. Interested authors or publishers should submit three copies of eligible chapbooks. Translations into English from other languages are eligible. Deadline is May 31, 2021.

Find out more.

Dreamers Magazine Haiku Contest Submit up to 3 haikus. Winning prize is $120 USD. Deadline is May 31, 2021. Find out more The 36th Banister Poetry Contest Dr. Elspeth Cameron will be this year’s judge for the Niagara Branch of Canadian Authors Association poetry contest, open to residents of Ontario. All poems must be in English and not under consideration elsewhere. Entry fee is $15 for up to three poems and $4 for each additional poem. Number of entries is unlimited. Prizes are: 1st prize: $300; 2nd prize: $200; 3rd prize: $100.

Please feel free to share this information with your writing groups and friends. Stay safe. Stay sane.

Deadline is May 31, 2021. Find out more.

Poetry and Short Prose Contest From the Icelandic festival of Manitoba The Icelandic Festival of Manitoba invites you to submit previously unpublished poetry (three entries per person) and/or a short story (one per person-maximum of 1200 words). Prize entries will be awarded and successful entries will be published in the festival program and/or on the festival website.

NEW: Winning entries and honorable mentions may also be published in the Icelandic Connection magazine.You do not need to be of Icelandic descent to submit an entry however material reflecting Icelandic culture and interests will be given preference, as will entries that reflect our 2021 theme, “Icelandic at Heart / Íslenskt Innst Inni” Deadline

is June 4, 2021. Find out more The VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award For a book published in Canada in 2021 that is a hybrid genre, or straddles two or more genres. The winner will receive $500 at a ceremony at The Vancouver Writers Fest in Fall 2021, presented by judge Wayde Compton with Betsy Warland, special guest of honour. Two Honourable Mentions (no cash prize) will also be awarded. Deadline is July 30, 2021.

Find out more.

Job Opportunities Managing Editor at Room Magazine Room Magazine is seeking to hire a new Managing Editor. The ideal candidate will have previous work experience in literary, grassroots, scholarly, or academic magazine or book publishing, especially in the selection of material for publication and with knowledge of Canadian literature. Working creatively as part of a small team, the Managing Editor manages all editorial and production aspects of the magazine, which is published four times a year. This is a permanent full-time position that commences May 1, 2021. Deadline to apply is March 31, 2021. Find out more Editorial Assistant at McLelland & Stewart We’re looking for an Editorial Assistant to join the team at McClelland & Stewart. Do you read widely and enthusiastically, with an eye for books that impact the way

our culture evolves? Do you enjoy working on a team where ideas are heard and respected and collaboration is key, where things move quickly but exacting detail and dedication to making a project the best it can be is never sacrificed?

Do you love to make a workflow and process as effective as possible, while contributing to the vision and direction of the group? Do you enjoy working with a wide variety of people, getting a full picture of every piece of a project’s life cycle, and every stakeholder who’s a part of it? Do you hate comma splices and love Pomeranian emojis? Deadline to apply is April 2, 2021. Find out more.

Editor at Arsenal Pulp Press Arsenal Pulp Press of Vancouver is looking for a dynamic, detail-oriented, and highly motivated individual to become our full-time Editor beginning in May. The Editor manages the editorial process, including substantive editing, copyediting, research, and fact-checking, and usually is the principal editorial liaison with authors and freelancers. The Editor also contributes to the development of the editorial list, including management of manuscripts under consideration, and assists with the writing and copyediting of marketing materials, including catalogues and press releases. The Editor also coordinates editorial and production meetings. The ideal candidate should be familiar with Arsenal’s publishing program and its mandate, and have a strong understanding of its audience, including BIPOC and LGBTQ2S+ commu-

nities. Deadline to apply is April 10, 2021. Find out more.

Poet Laureate for the City of Nanaimo The Poet Laureate is a literary ambassador for the City of Nanaimo. Through their role they raise the profile of literary arts in our community by creating and presenting poetic works and activities that are relevant to our times and respond to our place. Nanaimo’s next Poet Laureate will engage and inspire, bring their own unique voice and experience to collaborate and realize poetry projects for the benefit of our community.

Deadline to apply is April 30, 2021.

Find out more

Residency, Fellowship & Grant Opportunities Access Copyright Foundation Call for Professional Development Grant Applications. The Foundation offers grant funding to facilitate professional-development opportunities for Canadian writers, visual artists and publishers as well as staff members at arts organizations. Deadline to apply is April 1, 2021. Find out more.

The Banff Centre is underway in reopening their programs, residencies, workshops and more for online. Stay tuned for more details.

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 Don Kerr, Lesley Strutt, Jeff Steudel, and Luciana Ricciutelli.

Jeff Steudel

he showed endurance, grace and much kindness. Jeff was a teacher, author and musician. He loved to read, run, swim, think, write and walk in nature. His steadiness of mind and calm demeanour were a strength to others. He is survived by his devoted wife of 25 years Susan Steudel, sons Christopher and Wil Steudel, parents Hildegard and Willy Steudel and sister Cecile Steudel (Peter Kochevar). He is loved by his extended family, friends and students in all directions. There will be an outdoor celebration of his life at a future time. In lieu of flowers please consider a donation to BC Cancer.

Don Kerr Tribute by Scott Larson, CBC News:

Jeffrey Mike Steudel died in Vancouver on February 2, 2021, at the age of 54 after giving everything he had toward his healing. He took every opportunity to find a way through the challenges of cancer. Through these experiences

Former Saskatchewan poet laureate, historian, playwright and English professor Don Kerr passed away on December 8, 2020. He was 84. “He had a huge personality,” said his son David Kerr. “[He] was introduced to a bunch of painters and artists. And they were all talking at the top of their voices — practically yelling — and all smiling and having conversations. He

walked into the room and thought to himself, ‘I’ve met my people.’”

David said Don talked loud, loved life and was open to all arguments and points of views.

Kerr spent 44 years as an English professor at the University of Saskatchewan. He wrote numerous books of poetry along with short stories, plays and even a musical.

Born in 1936, Kerr spent most of his life in the Broadway area of Saskatoon. He received the provincial

with the heritage community without talking about Don Kerr,” said Peggy Sargeant, president of the Saskatoon Heritage Society.

“Without Don, there would not have been a Heritage society as early as the seventies. He was behind it all.” Sergeant said Don had a huge personality. “He was not afraid to say anything, which was quite wonderful for us,” she said. Sergeant said one of her favourite poems by Don is Capitol Punishment, about the demolition of the iconic Capitol Theatre.

“It was very sad and he was very upset about it,” Sergeant said “I think he never quite got over it.”

Order of Merit in 2007 and became the province’s poet laureate in 2011.

His musical Tune Town, with music written by Angie Tysseland, was staged at Persephone Theatre in 2006.

Don was also one of the founding members of the Saskatoon Heritage Society back in 1976.

“You actually can’t talk about heritage preservation or anything to do

Fellow writer and U of S colleague David Carpenter said Don was a real influence in many ways.

“He always stressed that in spite of the fact we were teaching the classics, we ought to show just as much attention to local culture, local history, local writing,” Carpenter said. “He lived those words in many ways.”

Carpenter said Don was a prolific writer. “Some of my favourites were his wartime plays. One is called Lanc, short for Lancaster, and The Great War.” Carpenter said another favourite is Don’s latest poetry collection, called The dust of just beginning. Bob Calder was a friend and fellow teacher at the U of S and has known Don since the 1960s.

Calder said he always thought of Don as “Mr. Saskatoon”.

“He loved the city. He wrote one of his greatest poems in a volume with the same name called In the City of Our Fathers. And it’s a paean, a poem of great love for Saskatoon.”

As much as he respected Don for his teaching and art, Calder said he appreciated him even more as a

friend. “He was a wonderful guy to be with. He threw parties that were fun and, you know, enjoyable. He was very great and kind and supportive.” Carpenter said Don always had Saskatoon in his heart.

“If Don isn’t around to remember what happened to our city and to remind us and to write about it, it is like we will lose our memory,” Carpenter said. “I hope people will take up the slack.”

Remembering Luciana Ricciutelli-Costa

by Adebe DeRango-Adem

There are certain people who startle you with their kindness; who offer a soft place for you to land where you are heard, fully, and loved, completely. There are those rare people who startle you with how easily they embrace you, invite you in. To know them is to feel as cared for as kin.

shoes. In rooms that always seem sunlit, even in stormy weather.

Who weathered too many storms for one life, but also served as a lighthouse for countless Canadian authors as well as editors. Who was a fierce editor who read your work and took it to heart, the only way she knew how. And kept it there.

Rarer still are friends like Luciana Ricciutelli, Editor-in-Chief of Inanna Publications, who was all of these things, and more. To me and to many, as so many who knew her loved her like family from the start. Friends like Lu who knew me before I could write, or tie my own

Luciana lived for women’s writing; both Inanna and the journal Canadian Women’s Studies / Les cahiers de la femme were both central to her life’s work. But if you’ve had the blessing of knowing Lu outside the publishing realm—of having received one of her safe, all-en-

compassing hugs, or eaten one of her extraordinary meals, or simply being in the presence of her light— then you may very well imagine how the loss of someone that rare is a loss like no other.

When I heard about Luciana’s fast decline, I felt myself thrown out to

space, floating in and out of various registers of grief and disbelief. Then when faced with trying to imagine a world without her, I began to pray for Tino and the family, Stefano and Claudia. But prayer, too, became a difficult endeavor. Language had mostly served me as a glowing vessel, waiting to be filled with words, with meaning. But how do you write about emptiness? The vessel that fills only with inconso-

nant words, if even words; muffled, incredulous sounds. As though a prayer in the mouth of one who does not believe.

And still, I can scarcely believe she will no longer be, let alone believe in these words as testament to her having been. Incongruent, too, trying to write about someone who was so life-affirming, so full of living—anima—in/as memory. And then the familiar shapelessness of shock that comes in, first, as a distinct wave that sets forth a smaller collection of crests, which dissipate amongst the hours we fill with the various modes of tending to and caring for, working on and surviving through. There is the attempt to continue, as usual, despite the tectonic shift in which even the linearity of days isn’t promised.

Still, you must try and navigate the new landscape. “I want to write a novel about Silence,” says Teret, a character from Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out. “The things people don’t say.” Woolf knew how to paint the scenery of lives who face (or will come to face) the emotional vicissitudes of loss. Of self, of others. But it mustn’t have been an easy practice or task for Virginia. Nor for Luciana, whose years of dedication to literature was her way of saying to her authors—I hear you, even what you don’t say. Go on and speak your truth. To carry on that echo is to know that writing and bringing justice to a suffering have something in common; they both “deal” in silence. And to be an activist, as Luciana has been her entire life, is to work on behalf of voices yet to surface. Luciana was also a

Woolfian scholar. And Woolf, like Lu, was lost too soon.

Not even the author’s own ability to delve into the psychology of things could deliver her from the shadows of her inner world. But Woolf gave coherence to the brutalities of life in a way that seemed to say, the pain is the truth.

Lu, losing you is painful and that is the truth. But say I am learning that being a strong editor means being invested in the delicate work of bringing a text closer to its truth. To the author’s truth. The truth is, writing is a struggle. But say the struggle itself is the source—the sand in the shell, the clearing after the storm, the abject beauty of broken, refractive light. Say metaphor— loved by multitudes of poets, if not

all—is supposed to help us imagine new worlds. Say I refuse to imagine a new world without Lu. Sorry, Lu. Say I will spend the rest of my life trying to write about this loss, however irresolute the words show up.

Say, even, that the grief returns in bigger waves; say I still show up.

Lu, let’s say this is a thank you for believing in the power of words.

For being the best editor in the world. For believing in my words, which has meant quite literally the world to me. Say my discomfort is evidence I’m doing something right. Say I know you can hear me, Lu, even when I do not say a word.

I love you, Lu, and I will say it again and again.

by Adebe DeRango-Adem

Remembering Lesley Strutt

by Claudia Coutu-Radmore This article was first published by the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter.

So what’s all the fuss about Lesley Strutt. A poet has died, not one who had published a hundred books, or even poems, or been awarded any of the great prizes. A poet who does not yet have a trade collection out.

We haven’t seen or heard from her

much recently.

And I say there hasn’t been enough fuss yet, there hasn’t been a parade, balloons or banners strung across roads.

I say bring on the parade. The drum majors and majorettes, the floats, the banners.

I wasn’t fortunate enough to have known her for a lifetime, only since 1998, but since then on so many occasions we would sit and catch up with each other. I had to pry things out of her, because she wasn’t one to spend time talking about herself.

When we talked family or relationships, we delved deep. Perhaps I knew more about the interior Lesley than the exterior.

Lesley was, for several years, the Associate Members representative on the League of Canadian Poets council. There’s not enough being done for the associate members, she declared and so started Fresh Voices, a space on the League’s website for poems only by associate members. She was one of its first editors, and then found others to keep it going. The League council never knew what trouble she would stir up next, trouble meaning the council’s work to get her ideas

going. She had a way of expecting that you would do what she suggested, but it was always for the good of the League. Her voice was strong in the League’s Feminist Caucus.

Outgoing, she struck up conversations with poets at League conferences. Joanna Lilley of Yukon was struck by her vivacity and vibrancy.

Alice Major wrote that Lesley has been a gift to this world; Brenda Siberras, League of Canadian Poets representative from Manitoba wrote to Lesley ‘what an impact you made in this world. You will be missed and thought of often’. Lynn Tait, a poet from Southern Ontario wrote that now Lesley is part of everything, which is perfect, because that was her ultimate goal, to be one with the earth, the sky, the universe.

Ottawa poets have loved Lesley for many years. Nina Jane wrote about the little conversations they had about poetry in cramped book stores. Doris Fiszer wrote of the impact she made on everyone who knew her. Sneha Madhavan-Reese said Lesley was one of the most beautiful and compassionate people she knew.

Another League council member says that she was a powerhouse, and I know that from experience.

Lesley had an idea to have the League representative of each province edit a section of poems on trees, and that the books would

be sold with profits going to The League of Canadian Poets, and Heartwood: Poems for the Love of Trees was born. She went on to launch it with a film by Diana Beresford- Kroeger, Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees where many included Ottawa poets read their contributions. She knew Ms. Beresford-Kroeger and asked for a blurb for the cover of Heartwood. She gave a presentation online recently; on the shelf behind her was her copy of Heartwood, which Lesley saw when she was at a low point. It was exactly what she needed, she said. Lesley supported TreeSisters, an organization that plants trees all over the world.

Please feel free to leave a donation at https://treesisters.org.

Lesley won the Tree Reading Series Chapbook Contest in 2015 with Small as Butterflies and was a featured reader at Tree. I have an elegant handmade chapbook, White Bowl, printed in New Haven, a series of poems about her parents.

She and Chuck had joined Kado, Ottawa’s Haiku group, for a while.

They both had haiku hearts, and

wrote haiku, but the reason they left it was because they had discovered how difficult and how long it would take to learn to write a good haiku, and they wouldn’t do it unless they had a chance of writing good poems. She knew herself so well, and made wise, thoughtthrough decisions. Haiku was not her form. She had other things to do.

Other projects involved going to reading series and launches, and spreading poetry in the community she then called home. She held workshops in Merrickville for poets, started a poetry group, produced a chapbook of their work, and made plans for further workshops and readings. She and I and Jessica Heimstra also formed a group we called Poets Three that was so stimulating I would drive home in an almost euphoric cloud.

Inanna Press published her Young Adult novel, On the Edge, in 2019, and she blogged about the research she’d done for it. I read the novel and was entranced even though I know nothing of sailing.

I suggest it to anyone, not only young people, who are interested in sailing, as Lesley has done a great amount of sailing in her life. She knew the sea and what to do when one is on top of them.

In her last weeks she arranged with Inanna that I would see the publication of her new collection, Window Ledge, accepted recently,

through its last steps. Imagine my answering a phone call from this amazing woman who was barely able to speak for the cancer taking over her throat, asking me if I would do her that favour. Yes, Yes, I’ll crawl up mountains for you…

Louise Schwartz wrote of how Lesley contributed a piece on James Strutt’s Magical House, on the Mountain Road, for a History Journal called Up The Gatineau, how Lesley was exceptional and such a pleasure to work with.

Friends wrote that they felt blessed to have known Lesley and the bright, beautiful light she was. Another friend who had met Lesley while they were becoming certified as journey practitioners, wrote of how they recommended books to each other, how Lesley shared wisdom and knowledge, how she always found ways to include laughter, how they would laugh and laugh until they cried. Another tells how Lesley’s lovely energy held her in a warm embrace through difficult times, another wrote that she was encouraging and illuminating,

still another notes how selfless she was and generous, full of consideration of others.

How many people referred to the light in her. Jazz musician Alrick Huebener wrote that she was a literary and loving light.

Mike Beedell, internationally known conservation photographer, wilderness guide and outdoor educator, writes that when he was working with the film maker John Houston developing a virtual reality platform celebrating the Arctic world, Lesley brought together professors and departments, and sought funding.

He was amazed at her energy and commitment, saying she was a fount of ideas.

Nate Mayer told how he and Lesley worked together at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. As Program Officer, her role was to go over grant applications from the top Canadian minds in Social Sciences. Her extensive knowledge and brilliance in literacy was invaluable, that she had made him, as a young man, feel at ease and comfortable in the corporate world, making sure his voice was heard.

Heather Sims tells of Lesley’s being Program Officer for the Canada Research Chairs Program, a government funding agency, how she had such excellent relationships with colleagues and stakeholders,

and always welcomed new staff with open arms, just a sweetheart of a lady with the kindest soul and amazing spirit.

I was at Lesley and Chuck’s wedding, held in their beautiful back yard. Nearly the whole town was there. I heard comments such as She should run for town council!

Because having moved there, she and Chuck became so involved in community activities, and were especially active in the Merrickville Artists’ Guild (MAG). Chuck is a photographer, while Lesley constructed intricate painted paper vases that contained poetry. She had a leading role in organizing literary events for MAG. The Guild has started the Lesley Strutt Poetry Prize fund, and I’m pleased to be associated with that project. Should anyone wish to contribute, please go to the MAG Facebook page.

Lesley had a PHD in Linguistics and taught sessions at the Ottawa Universities, but her heart lay in counseling. She started a new blog in the last two years. In Living Starts with Love, the publication now on Kindle of her blog posts, she offers suggestions for when we feel life is perilous and full of disappointment.

She’s had much of that in her life too, but suggests that life is an incredible adventure, and we can live it fully. She believed that to her last morning.

And I am devasted, lost. My hours with her when, perhaps we talked poetry and read it or listened to her daughter Dee Dee Butters’ latest recording, perhaps played with Farley, her dog or discussed the birds in her garden, were almost magical.

Her husband, Chuck Willemsen, wrote that she gave to all who asked of her willingly with kindness and grace which they gave back in abundance. She lived her life filled with joy and love in her heart. He wrote that her joy was infectious, that she never ran out of it. Two days before her planned medically assisted death, I texted her that I would give anything to see her face once more.

Her answer was Me too! Me Too! followed by three heart emojis, and a smiley face.

Years ago, a friend of mine was dying from cancer. She and her husband had loved New Orleans music and so, in her memory, a New Orleans Brass Band made up of musicians from all over the city, along with hundreds of friends, paraded along Bank Street.

I say bring on the bands and the balloons and the floats. Parade to be held when the pandemic is over.

Or for now, let’s have that parade in our minds.

by Claudia Coutu-Radmore

Don Kerr is survived by his wife Mildred and their three boys Bill, Bob and David.