Issue 18 Vol. 4
Winter 2021
18.4 | Winter 2021
In this issue: 2–7
News f rom the League
8–9
Bill Arnott’s Beat
10–13
Book Review: Thimbles by Vanessa Shields
14–18
Poetry Parlour
19–25
New Members
26-31
Member News
32-38
Writing Opportunities
39-43
In Memoriam
News f rom the League Feminist Caucus Business Meeting will take place on Friday December 10, 2021 at 2pm EST via Zoom. Members and non-members are welcome to join this meeting. Click here to register for our December meeting (all attendees will be required to register and to provide a first and last name and email for the safe participation of all attendees). Once you have completed registration, you will receive full access details for our Zoom meeting in your email. Learn more. Poem in Your Pocket Day Contest The League is excited to announce that we are officially accepting submissions for inclusion in the Poem in Your Pocket Day Postcards and Booklet. There will be 10 selections made from contest submissions for the Poem In Your Pocket Postcards and Booklet. Selected poets will receive $300, the full Poem Postcard Pack, and will be invited to provide an audio recording of their selected poem. LCP Members are invited to enter the contest free of charge and non-members are asked to include a $10 entry fee. Deadline to enter is December 15, 2021. Learn more. LCP Contests are back! Very Small Verse Contest & Broadsheet Contest Winners will recieve $300 and publication in the 2021
Poem In Your Pocket Day Booklet. Deadline to enter is January 21, 2022. Learn more. Holiday Hours Please note that the LCP office will be closed form December 20, 2021 to January 4, 2022. LCP Poetry Consultation Program Work with Laurie D. Graham Apply today for a short term, one-on-one poetry consultation with poet and LCP Member Laurie D. Graham. Approximate start date will be Feb 2022. Poets may send an excerpt from or the entirety of their booklength work in progress, along with a few paragraphs about the work; its overarching concerns, subjects, or forms; the poet’s aims for it; the trouble it might be presenting; and/ or what sort of assistance or feedback is sought. Open to LCP members and non-members. Submit your application by completing this form. Deadline is December 12, 2021. Virtual Event Funding (Limited) in January, February, and March 2022! A limited amount of funding is available for virtual events featuring Full league members taking place in January, February, and March 2022. Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis and approved until funding has been disbursed. Please check poets.ca/funding for eligibility
guidelines and honorarium options. Find out more and apply. NEW! In-Person Event Funding The League of Canadian Poets is thrilled to announce a new funding opportunity for poets, made possible by the Canada Council for the Arts. This funding will be provided to support poets who are participating in and/or hosting local, in-person events that take place between January 1, 2022 and June 30, 2022. Funding for this program is available to member and non-member poets, but at least one League member must be a participant in the event. Find out more about this program here. Applications currently open. Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis. Learn more. Opening Soon! April 2022 Virtual Event Funding Applications for general virtual events taking place in April 2022 and beyond will open in mid-January, 2022. Members will be notified by e-mail when applications open. Applications will include funding for National Poetry Month events, which is available to members and non-members. Opening Soon! April 2022 Poets in the Schools funding Applications for Poets in the Schools visits happening in April 2022 and beyond will open in late February, 2022. Members will be notified by e-mail when applications open. Accepting Applications: Consultation and Workshop Fund The League is thrilled to be supporting ten upcoming workshops and four one-on-one consultations through our new
consultation and workshop fund! The fund has now re-opened for applications. If you are a poet who is organizing a workshop, or if you are working one-on-one to support another poet, you may be eligible to receive funding through this program. Review eligibility guidelines and apply New Member Readings Have you joined the League since Summer 2019? Starting in 2022, we’ll be organizing a series of events to showcase new members in virtual readings celebrating poets across the country! If you’d like to sign up to read, please complete this form. Poets have until January 3, 2022, to express interest in participating, and in January we’ll follow up with more details around scheduling. Please note this form is just to express interest in participating at this time. Call for Nominations and Volunteers If you are interested in becoming more involved with the League, now’s your chance to let us know! Starting in Spring 2022, we will be gathering nominations for our book award jurors, prize judges, and incoming council and committee members. Council, committee, judge, and volunteer roles all run on different timelines, but nominees would be contacted in Spring 2022, and elected at the AGM in June 2022. Nominate yourself or another poet. Annual General Meeting The 2022 League of Canadian Poets Annual General Meeting will once again be virtual, and is scheduled to take place on Monday, June 27, 2022. Registration will open in Spring 2022.
Fresh Voices 24 is here! Check out the twenty-fourth edition of Fresh Voices, a project from and for the League’s associate members, edited by Joan Conway (Check and Blaine Marchand. Fresh Voices 24 features poetry by: Jonathan Bessette, Dagne Forrest, Carol Good, Samantha Jones, Norma Kerby, Josephine LoRe, Anthony Purdy and Vironika Wilde. Read Fresh Voices. Guide to LCP Communications for Members Are you a member of the League who may need a refresher on what the LCP can do to help promote your poetry and build a bigger and better poetry community? We love to support our members in every way we can! Check out this webpage for a low-down of 12 great ways to get involved.
The LCP Chapbook Series Order a chapbook today and know that you are supporting the continued success of the Series that brings publication opportunities to underrepresented poets as well as some new, top-notch poetry for your bookshelf. Available now for order: ◊ the way out is the way in: an anthology of disabled poets, edited by Stuart Ian McKay. ◊ Voices of Quebec | Les voix du Québec. ◊ You are a Flower Growing off the Side of a Cliff: poems about mental health and resiliency ◊ What has been left out: 2020 Feminist Caucus Living Archive Series Chapbook ◊ 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 Book Reviews The LCP is proud to share that we can now offer payment ($25 per review) for select reviews each month, as well as continuing to accept reviews from other publications, or without payment. Check out our new reviews page, including our titles gallery and simplified request form. Learn more. Land Acknowledgements The League is seeking poets to create a series of powerful and poetic land acknowledgements to share at our digital poetry events. This opportunity will pay $250, and we are particularly interested in working with First Nations, Inuit and Métis poets with knowledge in the history and culture of many Indigenous groups. Fill out this form if you are interested in helping with this opportunity. Member News The League has simplified the process to submit member news for St@nza and social media promotion. If you are a member and have news you would like shared, fill out this quick form. The next issue of St@ nza will be out in September. Suggestion Box Do you have a great poetry-related idea that you think the League might be interested in? Do you have any ideas that may broaden or enhance our current programming and projects? Let us know via the Suggestion Box! Let us know about your suggestion
LCP’s Poetry Neighbourhood Facebook Group Won’t you be our neighbour? Share your poems, your releases and events, and chat about all things poetry. Exclusive to LCP Members. Join us today in The Neighbourhood! Poetry Parlour We invite League Members to respond to three poetry-related questions each quarter: Check out Poetry Parlour (League member exclusive) In Memoriam Any time we lose a member of the poetry community, that loss is felt deeply and with great love. The LCP has created a webpage where all are invited to remember, reflect and share memories of those from the poetry community who have recently passed. Visit our In Memoriam page. Poetry Pause Poetry Pause is the League’s daily digital poetry dispatch program and it’s growing every day! We deliver a daily poem an audience of over 1200 subscribers and we are always accepting submissions of published or unpublished poems! Poetry Pause is a great way to introduce new readers to your work. Submit your poetry today! Tell your poets and poetry-loving friends to subscribe 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 Crafting Arts
ing himself. As erudite. I assumed it meant asshole. The other reason I was reading Vonnegut was because I figured Kurt couldn’t be all bad, having been cited so often and more importantly that he’d made a cameo appearance playing himself in a Rodney Dangerfield movie—hired by Rodney’s wealthy character to write a college book report, on Vonnegut. Vonnegut wrote the paper. And got a B. Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. — Kurt Vonnegut I was reading Vonnegut. For no other reason than to say I was reading Vonnegut, thinking it would make me sound erudite. And wanting an opportunity to say erudite. First time I heard the word it was used as part of an introduction. A guy describ-
Now, three decades and two lifetimes later, I’ve taken Vonnegut’s words to heart, not Rodney’s college paper but Kurt’s quote regarding the arts—not solely to make a living but for the joy and significance of creation. Something from nothing. Alchemy. Even the rubbish. The inherent majesty of manifestation: poetry, painting, writing and song. Effort and reward. The rumpled foolscap in a bin. The polished, published hardback, bookended on a shelf. Library stacks and album sleeves, digital recordings and paperless chapbooks—every innovation, interpretation and collaboration grasped from the ether, atmosphere and mental space, thought-bubble-drifting-clouds where pictures, words and eighthnotes merge, converge and find
ply come along and pick us up when fates and norns and crystal balls align, those instances and instants in between the second hands, firsthand experience and nanoseconds serendipitous. A moment between moments cast in time.
their way to fingers, keyboards, fretboards, staffs and paper—tangibility now birthed then berthed to lifebuoys, hawsers, docks that stretch beyond the sea in fathomless depths of pure potentiality. This, I understand, have tasted, shared. And long to savour any, every time the motivation, muse and inspiration rear, arise, reveal themselves and beckon, welcome us to where we still don’t fully understand. And yet we know this space, that place, is beautifully, frighteningly, mindbogglingly real. The trip, unscheduled, to which you simply have to hold your ticket—destination blank—and saunter, wait, next to those tracks and platform landings, terminals and transit stands. Hail all you like, your ride, our ride, will sim-
And Kurt, despite your faults and foibles, rest in peace. The words you shared, you share, remain—this art the greatest legacy of all.
Bill Arnott is the award-winning author of Gone Viking: A Travel Saga, Gone Viking II: Beyond Boundaries, and the #1 bestseller, Bill Arnott’s Beat: Road Stories & Writers’ Tips. For his expeditions Bill’s been granted a Fellowship at London’s Royal Geographical Society. When not trekking the globe with a small pack, journal, and laughably outdated camera phone, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast, making music and friends. @billarnott_aps
Review of Thimbles by Vanessa Shields Reviewed by Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews
Thimbles by Vanessa Shields (Palimpsest Press, 2021) In poetry, everything has a deeper meaning. A thimble as a mythopoetic symbol evokes a sense of immunity and self-protection against the pain and bloodletting of life’s allegorical needles. It is a shield
against pain. Interestingly, the poet’s last name is Shields, giving the title a more layered sense, whether intentionally or synchronistically. Thimbles are also evocative of fairy tales. At the beginning of Snow White, a queen sits at an open window during a winter snowfall, when she pricks her finger with her needle, causing three drops of red blood to drip onto the freshly fallen white snow on the black windowsill. * Then the queen makes a wish to have a daughter with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony.* The fairest one of all, a wish that came true when she gave birth to Snow White, the girl who engendered envy and vindication by a competitive step-mother queen. The story is a quintessential archetype of the danger of not wearing a thimble, of the danger of goodness and beauty at the mercy of narcissism. Even upon the death of the queen mother, a daughter carries the gift of beauty and goodness forth into the future. Love is a transformative power across the generations, across continents and time. In her new collection of poems, Vanessa Shields spills thimbles of memories of her beloved grandmother: images and words that stitch back
the fabric of the soul of a woman’s life, a love story, a tale of endurance and resilience. Poet Vanessa Shields wonders what she can keep of her grandmother’s, to make sure she is remembered. On the cover of the book, pleats of incrementally darkening hues of red fabric, upon which shine two silver thimbles, spread across the spine to the back cover, where scissors, a spool of thread, a needle and measuring tape are laid ready for new creations. As we turn the cover, a blood-red page welcomes us into the collection followed by white pages with the title, the name of the poet in lower case cursive and an eclectic couture of poems. Thimbles is dedicated to the poet’s grandmother, Giuditta Merlo Bison and it is divided into three sections: un bacin d’amor, only the good lasts, domani è un altro giorno.
up and rebuilt again and again. Like pieces of a puzzle soon to reveal the portrait of the poet’s beloved nonna, each poem in the first part of the collection metaphorically stitches together a tapestry of a life: from childhood to old age, of a woman whose life spans from the mountains of Veneto to the shores of Windsor Ontario. She is a woman who sews through a world war, thinks less of the bombs than the bobbins and basting. Thinks about her heart reaching out for nonno. Handsome. Religious. Soon they will spend time alone in the mountains. We see a young nonna whose smile is bigger than the valley and has mischief in her eyes, with shoulders squared to the horizon, courageous and ready. A young woman who willingly emigrated to Canada to follow the man she loved because that’s what life was for, to be married, to make a family.
In un bacin d’amor, the poems give us sketches of nonna as a young woman. Here we get a description of who she was as a person before she moved to Canada, married and had children. This first section begins with a quote in Italian, written on a bridge in Italy. On the bridge of Bassano we will hold hands and we’ll share a kiss of love. Then the images of memories turn to sound and nonna’s inner child emerges lost in need of a mother turned to dust. Her pain is an ohh drawn out like a line with no ending thickening in the sunrise, as she points back in time to fingers unbent, shining tips thimbled, sewing sewing sewing. The poet likens her grandmother to Ponte Vecchio Palladio’’s architectural gem, blown
The second section of Thimbles is entitled Only the good lasts. In its pages we see a deepening summation of Vanessa Shield’s beloved grandmother. The poem Nonna Never Complained, is pivotal to the cover image of the book. We read: I wept in the woven fabric of her. In the middle section of poems there is an intensifying of the weaving of threads that reconstitute nonna’s image, then a sporadic unravelling which alerts us to the slow, but steady decoherence of her mind afflicted by dementia. In I Call Them Episodes, nonna freezes mid-step or sentence, the disease a seam ripper, her eyes vacant with loss of patterns, entranced in an unanticipated loss of self. The poet’s grief in knowing she is losing her precious
nonna seeps through: you were our thimble. The metal casing holding us together, grief holding me like blood holds memories and pain and colours. The grand-daughter understands her grandmother’s life more clearly now that she’s about to lose her. Maybe she wanted to make all the decisions, but it was too hard a fight and so she made the best decisions of all, turn dignity into a pattern, stitch the needs into a shirt sleeve, sew, cook, clean, iron, drink and love. As nonna approaches death in the ghost silence of the hospital room, the poet and her grandmother wait for the end, alone in the healing purgatory of time. As nonna is about to leave the earthly plane, the poet sees nonna’s spirit in the hue of red in her cheek skin. We read you are an extension of me and a synopsis of nonna’s life: out of all of it, only the good is what lasts. Soon grandmother will die and her grand-daughter will take over as lead seamstress. She will follow in nonna’s footsteps, be her mouth, her voice, tell her stories. She will use the same threads, the same thimbles. As nonna’s dying body becomes a realm slowly separating from the motherland, her body an ocean liner death at the helm. The
poet knows nonna is very close to death by her mouth always open now, an inviting entrance for the IT that wants to take her. The third and last part of the collection is domani é un altro giorno (tomorrow is another day). You can tell these are words nonna used to say, words she would probably use in a situation like this. Words of wisdom, to make existence bearable when it becomes too painful to go on. This last portion is briefer than the other two sections. There are no words to describe the ultimate loss of someone we love at death. The poet writes: The language of loss is wordless. Nonna’s stillness is impossible, she is just a body now. In the poem Black Body Bag On a Stretcher, we hear the zipper, its chain of teeth, its closing mouth a final hymn. At the funeral home people drone in like vibrating memories, but the poet knows nonna’s spirit is not there in the casket. She stands courageous on her favourite mountain in Italy, our mourning a songbird’s trill caressing her earlobe. We feel the poet’s grief intensely in the last few poems as the realization of the finality and irrevocability of death becomes her reality. I want
you back in the kitchen and where are you nonna? As a living legacy to her grandmother’s life, the poet writes that it is her responsibility to extend the story of her life where the language of her essence moves like blood. The last poem in the book is written in the style of a responsorial psalm. It is a prayer from a granddaughter to the nonna she loved so much and who loved her unconditionally. The choral response is when I die I want your thimble on my finger, a thimble of talent, of craft, of selfless dedication and sacrifice, of love. A thimble pushed on so tight it can match the memory of nonna’s heartbeat; a song of memories stitched into the poet’s soul. Storms rush out of me sometimes as I gather tears in my thimble, she writes, and as we turn the page, we see a photo of the poet with her beloved nonna Giuditta. Above the photo and below is a definition of the word closure, or chiusura in Italian: the area of a garment that opens and closes for dressing. And as we zip up the book and Vanessa Shield’s nonna’s life, we are glad to have been introduced , not only to the story of one amazing woman, but to the eternal legacy of love and relationship she wove with her grand-daughter, who with her writing re-stitches and re-embodies her memory through space and time. *Excerpt of the tale of Snow White from Wikipedia. Thimbles by Vanessa Shields (Palimpsest Press, 2021)
Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews is a poet, author, teacher and the host & coordinator of the Oakville Literary Cafe Series. Her latest book of poems Sunrise Over Lake Ontario, was launched in 2019. Her previous poetry publications include: Sea Glass, The Whispers of Stones, The Red Accordion, Letters from the Singularity and A Jar of Fireflies. Josie’s poetry has been shortlisted for the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award, Descant’s Winston Collins Prize, The Canada Literary Review, The Eden Mills Literary Contest and The Henry Drummond Poetry Prize. Her poetry has won first place in Arborealis Anthology Contest of The Ontario Poetry Society and in Big Pond Rumours Literary E-Zine. Some of her poems feature on The Niagara Falls Poetry website. One of her pieces was included by Priscila Uppal in Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, Mansfield Press, in 2018, rated by Chatelaine Magazine as one of the best Canadian poetry books of 2018. Josie teaches workshops for Poetry in Voice and for Oakville Galleries. She writes and lives in Oakville, Ontario. Vanessa Shields is the owner of Gertrude’s Writing Room—A Gathering Place for Writers. She is the author of Laughing Through A Second Pregnancy (2011), I Am That Woman (2013), and Look at Her (2016). You can find her mentoring, editing, teaching, and writing at Gertrude’s or having a dance party in her kitchen with her handsome husband, two amazing kids, and two golden retrievers. Visit her website: www.vanessashields.com. She resides in Windsor, Ontario.
Poetry Parlour See what Leaguers have to say coping with rejection, getting into poetry, and non-writing activities!
Thank you to everyone who responded to the most recent Poetry Pause questions! Check out our new batch of questions.
What kinds of tips or tricks would you give to someone looking to start reading poetry more, for integrating poetry (reading or writing it) into one’s day-to-day life? Paul Sanderson: Read one poem per day, either at night before going to bed, or preferrably, in the morning with your morning tea or coffee at breakfast. Neall Calvert: Start anywhere, including the poetry section of your local library. Study the lives of poets (yes, some people’s lives are that strange). Keep a journal beside the bed and write down dreams: a dream can become a poem. Keep track of unusual or mystical experiences: make notes. Always have a notebook and pen in your pocket or purse. To write more: learn to deeply relax / meditate / pray / laugh; take care of all put-off household tasks and unfinished communications with significant others so your mind is more free to imagine;
spend days / weeks / months close to nature. Care about your past, your future, and your present moments. Daniel Scott: read them aloud first very quietly then with more gusto and pay attention to line breaks don’t try to understand but listen and let the poem take you, seduce you” Amanda Earl: borrow a contemporary anthology from your local library; read through it, and if someone’s work resonates with you, borrow a collection of their work from the library as well. read only what excites you. don’t make it a chore. don’t try to decipher it like it’s a puzzle. pay attention to what’s on the page in terms of shape of the poem, its line breaks and punctuation. read the poem aloud. listen to the sound. take a line from the poem that resonates and write your own poem. go back and see how the poem starts and ends. write a bunch of questions about the poem. work your way through the book this way. read actively. record yourself reading the poem. write a note about the poem and post it on GoodReads.ca or your blog. don’t be afraid to explore and to share your thoughts and ask questions. that’s what it’s all about.
Josephine LoRe: Find a poet-loving friend and take turns sending each other cool poems that come in from Poetry Pause or Poem a Day ... once in a while, use one of these as inspiration for your writing. Dagne Forrest: I really believe that making a habit of reading poetry is essential for anyone who writes poetry, but more than that, I find that poetry and other short literary forms are a wonderful way to expose ourselves to many more voices and perspectives. When book-reading dominated my reading list, I lamented how few titles I could get through -- and by extension, how few voices I could benefit from reading -- but poetry and other short literary forms are an incredible way to broaden one’s horizons quickly and in more depth. It’s been life changing for me and has of course also informed my own poetry. Carla Harris: I’ve discovered a lot of poets that I especially enjoy by gathering a list of names as I read literary magazines. Each time a poem intrigues me, I add that name to my list and search the library catalogue for more work by that writer. Susan Alexander: Keep poetry books and journals in the bathroom and in the car. Kerry Jo Bell: Join your local library, goodreads and poetry platforms on Instagram and get your poetry on. Read at least one poem a day. Set a goal to write one poem a week about anything — your dog, a winter sunrise, breakfast, twisted love, autumn … eccentrically, read and
write poetry everyday. That’s how you grow as a poet.
How do you cope when your work is rejected? Susan Alexander: I think it is good to feel all the feels -- as much as I’d like just to shrug it off. It definitely hurts less than than it did at first, if at all. I try to remember that if I prefer this poem to that one, then I must give everyone else the same freedom to choose. And I have to make an effort NOT to compare myself to the poets who were accepted. Neall Calvert : I review in detail every positive thing that has happened in the past three months or so. I reread W. S. Merwin’s poem “Berryman”. I take a long walk in nature, whose Big Picture gladly ignores all evidence of rejection. I have my latest published poem posted near my desk so I can always see it, to remind me of that success. Also, I have fresh cut flowers in my home, one or two bunches (yes, for men too), replacing them every two weeks; their colourful radiance raises my spirits over and over again. Carla Harris: Still looking for a solution to this one. I tend to jump in and send in several applications, and then step back from it to focus on my process of creation. Anne Burke: Not very well and the more I produce the more rejections I have received. So, working as an editor, I strive to be positive and supportive. Daniel Scott: dream up rationalizations, file the response and wonder
where else it could go and then read what did get accepted there recently. Kamal Parmar: Well, I consider this as an integral part of my poetry writing. One must accept critical analysis--both positive as well as negative. The latter is a gentle nudge to further improve the poems and ‘polish’ them. In fact, there has been no successful writer without a rejection! A successful writer has to have true grit. Kerry Jo Bell: I read the works that were accepted and the emails that came along with it. I talk with my writing tribe — we are a close knit party of three — and we discuss our failures and triumphs, giving each other encouragement. Dianne Joyce: It’s often a big blow to the ego if you’re work is rejected, especially because it’s such a long process allowing the poem to come forward, putting the work through the editing phase, finding a publisher and waiting up to six months before you even hear back. I find myself rereading the submission again to see if it was truly the best it could be. If it needs work I make changes. If it doesn’t I put it in a box and wait until I find the right publisher and send it out again. In the meantime, I keep writing because it’s really all about the joy of creation. That keeps the discouragement syndrome at a distance, and keeps me connected to what truly matters. Amanda Earl: i always say that i supply raw material for a journal or press. if it works with the vision they have in mind, they’ll publish
it. more often than not, it wil not fit that vision, and that’s ok. also, i make sure to differentiate between myself and the work. i never say, “i got rejected” but rather, the work was rejected. i expect to have work rejected. i write quirky, oddnick stuff that is meant to help kindred misfits know they are not alone. Stephen Kent Roney: I assume a conspiracy involving the Illuminati. Dina E. Cox: Not well... I wish I could easily jump back into the saddle, but I tend to shrug and leave the rejected poem(s) on the shelf for a while, often a long while. I am really looking forward to reading others’ answers to this one!
What do you love to do when you’re not writing? Kerry Jo Bell Dance! Salsa, rhumba, cha cha, bachata. I have quite the dance party in my living room. I also paint. I’m no Piccadilly but it’s a great way to get my creative juices flowing. Stephen Kent Roney: Think about what to write; compose in my mind. Anne Burke: That would be reading. It involves expanding the dimensions of what I thought possible about the world and the people who inhabit it. Paul Sanderson: Play and write music. Photography. Read biographies and auto- biographies. Watch documentaries and film noir. Go for a walk. Have a beer.
Neall Calvert: Getting poems capably edited. Thinking about what to write next. Singing, memorizing new songs; playing piano. Spending time in nature. Having good conversations. Getting foot reflexology sessions. Daniel Scott: look, watch, listen, read, garden, sleep, talk Kamal Parmar: Of course, without batting an eyelid, I would say- reading is my next best love. Besides this, there are other activities like going for long walks, sketching and painting, that I enjoy. Dianne Joyce: I love to paint or do collage when I’m not writing. I don’t judge myself. Just creating images gives me a lot of satisfaction and release. I love working with texture and colour and I never take myself too seriously! Amanda Earl: have intense conversations with kindreds over pots of lapsang souchong tea and small delicacies or go on long walks with them and chat and stop off to get tea and small delicacies. Josephine LoRe: Attend poetry readings (online) to hear new voices, and take long walks in the woods and along river banks ... Dagne Forrest: Walks and exploring outside, including snowshoeing in winter, riding my bike, hanging out with my husband newly-adult kids, baking, a bit of gardening, and reading, lots of reading (I love reading about science and the cosmos, both jumping off points in my writing). I love music, but have a brain that can be dominated by
music which is difficult when I want to write. I have to limit exposure to music when I’m trying to create something new. Carla Harris: I took a class from an artist in my community, Melanie Monique Rose, on needle felting wool, and I love to listen to an audiobook while allowing my hands to create things without a design in mind, letting my hands flow while I focus on the story.
Just for fun: If your poetry were a season, which one would it be and why? Susan Alexander: Late winter, early spring. Because that is my most inspired time to write. The earth is quiet, the garden doesn’t need my attention, the rain comes and the dark arrives early and stays late. I am easily distracted, so I need the help this season brings. Kamal Parmar: I would say Fall. My poetry connects with Nature ie. communes with it and it has a lot of visual imagery in the form of words . In other words, it is colorful and I try to make it vibrant, just like the Fall season where the landscape comes alive with bright splashes of color! Anne Burke: Fall or autumn because that is when the seasons markedly shift from the promise of spring, the buoyancy of summer, and before the dormancy of winter. Paul Sanderson: Autumn. It’s my favorite season. Warm days. Cool nights.
its deepening, almost spicy odours, its scuttling sounds, its music, the way it sends my senses reeling, and the feeling of being on the edge of something, whether discovery, or something more dire; in this way it aligns with my feelings about creativity when they are at their juiciest. Dianne Joyce: If I were to attach my poetry to a season it would be the season I happen to be writing through. So even though I am not young, I can write about beginnings, about new life, the heat of summer, the harvest, or approaching death. And with each season comes new revelations, excitement, and cause for joy even if the subject is a difficult one. Dagne Forrest: Definitely a long, cold Canadian winter. My style is measured and focused on craft, and the quiet of a winter that reduces demands from outside for many months is a balm for me. I think the primary voice in my poetry reflects the sense of consideration and remove that winter gives me. Dina E. Cox Autumn. Why? It’s brilliant colours,
Carla Harris: my poetry is a winter, setting lightly, layer upon layer, pressing into itself to harden. my winter is a resting in the absorption of words that decay, to soften. Kerry Jo Bell: Spring! New beginnings after a cold season, hope, pretty flowers, a sense that something better is in the air, et cetera.
New Poetry Parlour questions are now available! Click here to share your thoughts
New Members Kerry Jo Bell I started writing poetry at the tender age of seven, about cotton-candy sunsets and the turquoise Caribbean Sea and such. By thirteen I was writing essays and short stories about the world as I saw it, through the eyes of an island girl, longing to experience the places I read about in books. But it wasn’t until five years ago that I got an inkling I could be a professional writer. In that time I have been published in various literary journals and magazines. I have written a full length autobiographical fiction manuscript, an assortment of short stories, and 25 pieces of poetry — and counting. Being a part of The Writers Union of Canada’s 2020 mentorship program for emerging BIPOC writers taught me invaluable craftsmanship and solidified my love of storytelling in all its forms. I am so excited to be included in the wonderfully talented League of Canadian Poets and look forward to sharing my voice with the existing distinguished collection. I live in Toronto with my French bulldog Zeus. You can find me on Instagram @kerryjoylaine David Bradford is a poet, editor, and translator based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). He is the author of several chapbooks, including Nell
Zink is Damn Free (Blank Cheque Press, 2017) and The Plot (House House Press, 2018). His work has appeared in The Capilano Review, The Tiny, filling Station, The Fiddlehead, Carte Blanche, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Guelph and is a founding editor of House House Press. Dream of No One but Myself is his first book. Anne Archer (aka Archer Lundy) is a musician and poet who is reinventing herself. Sheri Benning Simon Brown (he/they) is a poet, translator and artist from southwestern New Brunswick (Peskotomuhkati traditional territory) based in the Quebec City area (Wendat and Abenaki traditional territory). His texts have been presented in books, interdisciplinary artworks, collaborative performances, and via platforms such as Lemon Hound, Estuaire, Le Sabord, Vallum, Poetry Is Dead, Watts, and filling Station. As a translator, he has adapted texts by Erin Robinsong, Maude Pilon, Alice Burdick, Maude Veilleux and Danielle LaFrance, among others. His collections and artist’s books have been published in Quebec, Canada and France by Vanloo,
Moult, Le laps, squint press, Paper Pusher and Frog Hollow.
New League Members
Anto Chan is a spoken word performance artist, writer, facilitator, entrepreneur, mentor, producer & caregiver. He performed his one-person show “Love So Far” at the Montreal Fringe Festival in 2019. He has featured on Guelph Poetry Slam, Shab-e-She’r Poetry & Rise Poetry. He currently co-curates and hosts the variety show “FreeFlow Showcase”, and his chapbook Romantic Reflections was released in 2020. He facilitated events for the Art Gallery of Mississauga, Art Everywhere and the City of Toronto StreetArt program. He is passionate about mentoring the next generation of artists in Spoken Word and storytelling, sharing authentically on stage. His life’s work is to create and support meaningful art that centre around
the journey of growth, self-love and healing intergenerational trauma. He is currently a student at Create Institute studying Expressive Art Therapy. MLA Chernoff (they/them/@ squelch_bb) was born at Women’s College Hospital in December of 1991––oops. They are a six-hundredyear-old Jewish, non-binary poem machine, a Postmodern Neo-Marxist, and (somehow) a PhD Candidate at the Neoliberal University of York University, where they once held a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship––no kidding. They would like to recall a slightly edited version of their first widely published “bio,” featured in Bad Nudes, Issue 2.1. MLA Chernoff hacks, lacks, and really needs you to cut them some slack(s). They are the fullness of a floor-swept boredom: dusted, through and through. Their poems
have been featured in ditch, The Hart House Review, AND Acta Victoriana, AND angelfire.com. MLA Chernoff lives in Toronto and (naïvely) believes in love and/or/as resentment. The velocity of this bio is their dissertation––a thanatropic tepidity in the key “dang.” That was quite nice; MLA thanks you for reading about one of their former selves. In any and all cases, MLA now has IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), as well as a few more publications both under and over their “belt”: their first chapbook, delet this, was released by Bad Books in 2018. Their second collection, TERSE THIRSTY, was released by Gap Riot Press in 2019. MLA has also been featured in The Bad Dog Review, Peach Mag, Spam Zine, Train, Trash Magazine, and other loveable publications. What a wild ride it’s been for them! They are currently spewing out a sequel to TERSE THIRSTY, entitled TONGUE HUNGRY, but most of all, they are taking time to work on themself. MLA would like to add that they are a settler living, working, kissing, and hissing in Tkaronto, particularly in Treaty 13 territory. Their debut full-length collection of poetry, [Squelch Procedures], is now available from Gordon Hill Press. Megan Gail Coles is a graduate of Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, the National Theatre School of Canada, and the University of British Columbia. She is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Poverty Cove Theatre Company for whom she has written numerous awardwinning plays. Her debut short fiction collection, Eating Habits
of the Chronically Lonesome, won the BMO Winterset Award and the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and earned her the Writers’ Trust of Canada 5×5 Prize. Her debut novel, Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a contender for CBC Canada Reads, and recently won the BMO Winterset Award. Originally from Savage Cove on the Great Northern Peninsula of the island of Newfoundland/Ktaqmkuk, Megan currently lives in St. John’s where she is the Executive Director of Riddle Fence and a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University. Megan’s debut poetry collection, Satched, was recently published by House of Anansi. David Delisca Born in Port-AuPrince, Haiti, and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida residing in Scarborough. David Delisca is a writer, poet, actor and humorist. A versatile artist, he uses stories about the immigrant and diasporic experience, as well as other various human realities, to bridge realms of communication. His works and performances have been featured in Toronto Star, CBC, Netflix. Em Dial is a queer, triracial, chronically ill poet and educator born and raised in the Bay Area, California. A 2022 Kundiman Fellow and recipient of the 2020 PEN Canada New Voices Award and the 2019 Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award, her work also appears in or is forthcoming from Literary Review of Canada, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Crab Fat Magazine, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. Amatoritsero Ede is an
internationally award-winning poet born in Nigeria. He has published three poetry collections: A Writer’s Pains & Caribbean Blues (Yeti Press 1998), Globetrotter & Hitler’s Children (Akashic, 2009) and recently, Teardrops on the Weser (Griot Lounge, 2021). His debut won the prestigious All Africa Okigbo Prize for Literature in 1998, the second was nominated for the Nigerian Literature Prize in 2013. In 2004, he won second prize in the first May Ayim Award: International Black German Literary Prize. He appears in 15 anthologies locally and internationally. Ede is also a literary scholar and Assistant Professor of English at Mount Allison University, New Brunswick. He is the Publisher and Managing Editor of the Maple Tree Literary Supplement, MTLS at www.mtls.ca Paul Edward Costa is a literary artist from Mississauga, Ontario. He served as Mississauga’s 3rd Poet Laureate, has featured at many poetry reading series in the Greater Toronto Area, and has published over 60 poems and stories in literary journals such as Train: A Poetry Journal, POST-, Pif Magazine, Synaeresis: Arts + Poetry, and The Martian Magazine. His first full length book of poetry “The Long Train of Chaos” was published by Kung Fu Treachery Press and his fiction collection “God Damned Avalon” is available from Mosaic Press. He’s curated/ hosted several poetry series and has won the Mississauga Arts Council’s 2019 MARTY Award for Emerging Literary Arts. Veronica Eley was born 1950 in
Manchester (Middleton), England, the youngest of four children to Gordon and Mary (Carroll) Eley. The family moved to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1952, afterward settling in Antigonish. In 1974, the poet moved to Toronto. She was employed by the Toronto District School Board as an adult literacy instructor from 1994-2011. In 2002, she obtained her Master of Education degree from OISE-UT, an experience that was crucial alongside therapy - to her “creative remembering” and recovery from trauma. Síle Englert is a poet, fiction writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of The Lost Time Accidents (icehouse poetry/ Goose Lane Editions 2021) and two chapbooks - The Phobic’s Handbook (Anstruther Press 2020) and Threadbare (Baseline Press 2019). Síle’s writing has placed Second in CV2’s 2-Day Poem Contest and Freefall Magazine’s Fiction contest, and was shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine’s Poem of the Year in 2020. Her poetry, fiction and art have appeared in The Fiddlehead, Room, Contemporary Verse 2, Arc, Canthius, The Dalhousie Review, Freefall, The / temz/ Review, Long Con Magazine, The Minola Review and Carousel. Tyler Engström is a writer based in Calgary. In 2017 he was a finalist for the Writer’s Trust RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. His poems have previously been collected in Drifting Like a Metaphor: Calgary Poets of Promise and have been featured individually elsewhere. Think of How Old We Could Get is his first
book. Atma Frans originally from Belgium, lives in Gibsons, BC. She teaches classes that connect people with creativity, imagination and play. Her poems and stories have have been long-listed for contests as well as published internationally in literary journals. b.1983, Devon Gallant is a writer, editor, copyeditor, publisher, book designer, typesetter, and food historian. He is the founder of Cactus Press, a Canadian micropress specializing in limited edition poetry chapbooks, as well as the author of 4 full length poetry collections: The Day After, the flower dress and other lines, His Inner Season, and S(tars) & M(agnets), which bill bissett called “a mirakul uv a book”. His work has been featured in Carousel Magazine, Misunderstandings Magazine, Vallum, Graphite
Publications, and elsewhere. He is the co-host of the Montreal based literary series Accent and editor of the online literary magazine Lantern. In 2006, he made a cameo appearance in his mentor Rudyard Fearon’s episode of Bravo’s documentary series Heart of a Poet. He currently works full time as a copyeditor in the video game industry doing English language localization. In his spare time, Gallant works as a freelance editor, copyeditor, cultural journalist, and food blogger. His food blog, Gourmet Relics, traces the emergence of global cuisine through mid century American cookbooks. His fifth full length collection of poems Bootleg Sake will be released Spring 2022 by Mosaic Press. Lise Gaston Carole Giangrande was born and raised in the New York City area, but has lived in Toronto for many
years. She loves birding and nature in general, and is the author of ten prose works and one children’s book. She began her career as a broadcast journalist for CBC Radio, and then moved from interviews to nonfiction writing, awardwinning novels and poetry. Her poems have been published in a variety of journals (see below). Her first chapbook (The Frailty of Living Things) is due out in December 2021 and her first full-length poetry collection (This May Be The Year), will be published by Inanna in 2023. Angela Hibbs Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Geoff Inverarity studied Law and then English Literature at the University of Aberdeen before coming to Canada as a Commonwealth Scholar. He received his PhD in English Literature from Queen’s University, Kingston, and settled permanently on the West Coast in 1984. He taught at the University of British Columbia and received an MFA in creative writing in 2000. He ran the Gulf Islands Poetry festival on Galiano Island from 1990-1994 and was one of the founders of the Gulf Islands Film and Television School in 1994. Father of three, grandfather of three, Geoff lives with his partner on Galiano Island. where he sits on two Affordable Housing Boards and is the President of the Galiano Island Literary Festival. Kelly Kaur Catherine Lewis (she/her/hers) is a bisexual Chinese Canadian writer and poet. She is the
author of the poetry chapbook ZIPLESS, published by 845 Press in November 2021 and now entering its second printing. In 2021, she was a finalist in The Fiddlehead’s and The Humber Literary Review’s/ Creative Nonfiction Collective Society’s creative nonfiction contests. A graduate of the Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University and of the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, she attended the Banff Centre Literary Arts residency “Poetry, Politics and Embodiment” in October 2021. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada, she lives in Vancouver on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. In her spare time, she enjoys sushi, sauvignon blanc, and buying way too many shoes. Thandiwe McCarthy Frankie McGee Pamela Medland Sally Ogis Barbara Parker Shauna Paull Jacqueline Pearce Jason Purcell is a writer and musician from Edmonton, Alberta. They are the author of SWOLLENING (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022) and A PLACE MORE HOSPITABLE (Anstruther Press, 2019). Alongside Matthew Stepanic, they run Edmonton’s Glass Bookshop. Dale Martin Smith Jason Dean Spence
Tanya Standish McIntyre Megan Stobbe Steffi Tad-y Bronwen Tate is the author of the poetry collection The Silk the Moths Ignore (Inlandia Institute 2021), National Winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Prize. Midwinter Constellation, a poetry collaboration, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. A citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, Bronwen earned an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University. Her poems and essays have appeared in publications including CV2, Bennington Review, The Rumpus, and Contemporary Literature. After completing a Postdoc as a Thinking Matters Fellow at Stanford, Bronwen taught creative writing and literature at Marlboro College in Vermont before joining the faculty of the School of Creative Writing at UBC. Her work has been supported by Stanford’s DARE (Diversifying Academia Recruiting Excellence) Dissertation Fellowship, as well as by fellowships from the Stanford Humanities Center and Vermont Studio Center. www.bronwentate.com Newsletter: bronwentate.substack. com/welcome Twitter: twitter.com/bronwentate Instagram: instagram.com/ bronwentate Diana Hope Tegenkamp is a Métis writer who lives and creates on Treaty 6 Territory, Homeland
of the Métis. Diana’s writing has appeared in CV2, Grain, Matrix, Queen Street Quarterly Review, Moosehead Anthology, Slingshot and Tessera. Diana’s first poetry book, Girl running, completed with Canada Council for the Arts and Saskatchewan Arts Board grants, will be published in Fall 2021 by Thistledown Press. “Birthmark” and “Motherfield,” two poems from Girl running, were longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize. Diana’s poem, “My father as rhythm in lake water,” received second prize in the Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Prize, and is out in the current, summer issue of Prairie Fire magazine. Many Good Places: Rediscovering the Métis and Settler Place-Worlds of My Parents, Diana’s second, in-process poetry manuscript, is supported by a Marian Hebb Research Grant. UNMUTE: Warmups for Body Vocality, a video performance piece, showed as part of SLANT’s 2021 Writing Bodies event. all the words I couldn’t say, a film poem, based on a poem by Nicole Brossard, was an Official Selection in the New York International Women’s Festival, the Berlin International Art Film Festival and the Toronto International Women’s Festival monthly editions and the Montreal Independent Film Festival seasonal edition. Instead of pronouns, use my name: Diana/Diana’s. The LCP would like to extend a big welcome back to our members who have returned to the League this quarter: Francine Fallara, Rosemary Griebel, Sheniz Janmohamed, Talya Rubin & Russell Thornton
Member News Rebecca Anne Banks “Happy Holidays from Subterranean Blue Poetry! www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com Coming Soon! “The Garden” for January 2022 “Girl in Traffic” for St. Valentine’s 2022 Upcoming Books of Poetry: An Art House relaunch of Lover is Sunshine Coffee/I am Moonshine Girl. “A coffee with Blue at the local café spins New Age Romance on the blue island. Winter and streetsville, winter is giving way to Spring.” In full colour pomegranate font with black background, both a French and English version, pocketbook size. Hardcopy Codagriffes of Subterranean Blue Poetry are Available @ Amazon Stations! Subterranean Blue Poetry Chapbooks and Imprints! Editing/Formatting, POD (poet keeps all Royalties), Book Cover, Book Review (featured at Subterranean Blue Poetry), Social Media campaign, Interview, Archiving. Great rates. Great books. “No great poet should die without a book of their own poetry in their hands.” - The Oracle Submissions are Open! L@@king for New Age Art Nouveau: Symbolist, Surrealist, Imagist,
Haiku (any form), Beat progressions and The New Goth. We pay Poets and Artists $10 per poem, $20 per Article of Poetic Interest, and $20 per Masthead Art/ Photo. “all the poetry, everywhere” “for those subterranean blues” Rhonda Batchelor’s fourth poetry collection Allow Me: Poems 20002020 has just been published by Ekstasis Editions of Victoria. Terry Ann Carter It’s official! Terry Ann Carter is launching a new book with Black Moss Press titled “First I Fold the Mountain: A Love Letter to Books” available on April 6, 2022. “First I Fold the Mountain” is Terry Ann Carter’s eighth collection of poetry and a love letter to books: handmade books, Borges’ notion of the unwritten book (inspired by his short story “The Library of Babel”), a husband and wife dos a dos book, the hanging books of German dada artist Kurt Schwitters, and a scroll book featuring tanka composed in the voice of Ono-no Komachi. For more information, visit blackmosspress.com! Also make sure to follow our other social media to get the inside scoop as we approach the launch! Facebook: https://www.facebook.
com/firstifoldthemountain (@firstifoldthemountain) Instagram: @foldthemountain Twitter: @foldthemountain George Elliott Clarke Since Xmas MMXX, George Elliott Clarke has commissioned composer James Rolfe to compose songs (voice and piano) for poems by Astrid Brunner, GEC, Luciano Iacobelli, Giovanna Riccio, Lisa Richter, Andrea Thompson, Banoo Zan, and Paul Zemokhol; and he has also commissioned music from dd Jackson for poems by GEC and Giovanna Riccio; and also music from composer Emily Hiemstra for a poem by Lisa Richter. More poems-become-songs are in the works, and there’ll be presentations of songs by Ayesha Chatterjee (composer: David Jaeger), Riccio, Richter, Anna Yin (composer: Gao Yuan), and Zan, on November 5, 2021, either in-person or by Zoom, thanks to the East and West Learning Connections. The EAWLC will also partner with GEC to co-present a December 10, 2021, Zoom programme, featuring songs by GEC, Iacobelli, Zemokhol, and a surprise troubadour.... Stay tuned! “Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir (Knopf Canada) now published. Nov 5th: Five Hearts Broken Into Song (#2) with poets Ayesha Chatterjee, Luciano Iacobelli, Giovanna Riccio, Lisa Richter, Banoo Zan; composers Emily Hiemstra, David Jaeger, James Rolfe; singers Karen Gray, Emily Hiemstra, James Rolfe, unfurls at the Tranzac Club. Sponsors: GEC, East and West Learning Connections, League of Canadian Poets. 5th “colour-
ing book” (general poetry), White (Gaspereau), released. J’Accuse...! (Poem Versus Silence) (Exile Editions) is birthing imminently. See also GEC (refreshing) collabo with Shad: “Storm”: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=bE7F8O_9BMw “George Elliott Clarke & East and West Learning Connections Present 5 Poets Breaking Into Song (#3) December 10, 2021 (By Zoom): Featuring James Rolfe song compositions for poems by five authors: George Elliott Clarke, Leonard Cohen, Amatoritsero Ede, Luciano Iacobelli, and Paul Zemokhol. The poets read (one--Mr. Cohen--is read), Rolfe sings, Juliet Palmer accompanies on the piano, and co-hosts are Giovanna Riccio and Jovial Si (representing the East and West Learning Connections). GEC has also published--in Autumn 2021, Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir (Knopf Canada), White (Gaspereau Press), and J’Accuse...! (Poem Versus Silence) (Exile Editions). Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni was one of three Featured readers on the Brownstone Poets Zoom presentation, Saturday, October 30, 2021, 2 PM to 4:30 EST. The format offers Open Mic for the first 10 guests at 3 minutes each, followed by the Featured readers for 15 minutes each. There is a short break, then the remaining open mic readers. The editor is Patricia Carragon and the tech assistant is Roxanne Hoffman. I used my time to read 2 of my published poems and three new, unpublished ones. There was a lively online chat which I appreciated very much. There were 45 guests taking part.
Amanda Earl I am pleased to announce that fellow League member Richard-Yves Sitoski has won the Bywords.ca 2021 John Newlove Poetry Award for his poem “”Air Kiss”” published on Bywords.ca in November, 2021. This year’s judge was Elee Kraljii Gardiner. “I feel the kindred recognition of the ridiculousness of being human. Richard-Yves Sitoski has lifted a regular moment into something both glittering and poignant that for a moment made me forget about routine, expectation, order. This poem cleaned my smeared glasses and straightened my collar. Here I am, buoyed and mentally reorganized to face another pandemic day.” The annual John Newlove Poetry award, launched in the fall of 2004, commemorates the honest, poi-
gnant and well-written poetry of John Newlove, an Ottawa resident for almost twenty years and poet who died in 2003. The 3 poems receiving honourable mention in 2021 are as follows: Kintsugi Song - Kathleen Klassen Duvet - Kathleen Klassen Gatineau Trails - Cara Goodwin Each year the winner will receive a certificate, A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove, Edited by Robert McTavish (Chaudiere Books, 2007) and the opportunity to publish a chapbook through Bywords. Poems published on Bywords.ca from September 2021 to August 2022 will be eligible for consideration for next year’s Newlove award. The judge for the 2022 award will be Jacqueline Valencia. Further information: Amanda@by-
words.ca. The latest issue of Experiment-O is now online and features poetry, visual poetry, audio and video poems, prose and art. Experiment-O is an annual online pdf magazine, published by AngelHousePress that celebrates the art of risk: experiment-o.com Lesley-Anne Evans The St. Thomas Poetry Series (Toronto) has published Lesley-Anne Evans’s debut poetry collection, Mute Swan: Poems for Maria Queen of the World. Ormsby Review’s Cole Klassen calls Mute Swan a striking feminist book of beauty and grit. “Fiercely present…committed to justice-making as well as the mysteries of being…” says poet Susan McCaslin, who has also published with St. Thomas. Evans will be celebrating the launch of her book with a live-streamed gathering on December 11, 2021, and in a series of upcoming readings. Purchase Mute Swan at stthomaspoetryseries.com . To attend the virtual book launch, email evanslesleyanne@gmail.com Sharon Goodier WOMEN OF WORDS Calling all members and associate members for an online women’s poetry workshop, “Change Artists”. Contact Sharon Goodier at vincent4don@gmail.com Supportive and nurturing feedback to get started in the new year. Diana Hayes Rainbow Publishers announces Diana Hayes’s new collection of poetry: ”Gold in the Shadow: Twen-
ty-Two Ghazals and a Cento for Phyllis Webb”. In the book’s introduction, Hayes tells us these poems were incubating while she worked for several years with Phyllis Webb on a catalogue of her paintings. These carefully crafted ghazals combine textures and themes from Webb’s canvases and poems. The book is a fitting tribute for the occasion of Webb’s ninety-fourth birthday and includes twenty-two ghazals and a cento, constructed with lines from Webb’s book, Water and Light. Entries appear on lefthand pages alongside the ghazals and provide references and a kind of topographic guide, revealing the poet’s journey and creative process. $24.95 ISBN 978-0-9734408-7-4 Books can be purchased at Salt Spring Books— saltspringbooks.ca or order directly from the publisher at RainbowPublishers@shaw.ca Direct purchase also available at dianahayes.ca RAVEN CHAPBOOKS announces the 2022 Poetry Chapbook Contest. All poets residing on Vancouver Island and the islands in the Salish Sea are eligible. This year’s judges are Jane Munro and Kevin Spenst. Deadline for submissions: November 30, 2021. Find all the information online: dianahayes.ca/chapbook-contest or email us at RainbowPublishers@shaw.ca Steven Heighton In tandem with his Selected Poems 1983-2020 (House of Anansi), Steven Heighton’s debut album, The Devil’s Share, has been released by Wolfe Island records/CRS Europe.
Crystal Hurdle is thrilled to be included in the current issue of PLATH PROFILES, published Oct. 27, 2021, on Sylvia’s Plath’s birthday. Her poem “Staying in with COVID Sivvy” opens the issue, and her essay “Inject, Infect” explores the writing of the pandemic poetry series. She’s most proud of the long sequence that closes the issue, “Inspire’ so close to ‘Expire’,” illustrated by her friend Natascha Taft. The poem imagines Plath and Hughes ‘riding out’ the Covid-19 pandemic. Learn more. Susan Ioannou From August through October 2021, Alexandro Botelho selected 12 poems from my website and requested permission to read each on his YouTube program Writings on the Wall, DiverseTV. Kate Marshall Flaherty Kate was honoured and thrilled to be shortlisted for the Mitchell Poetry Prize for her poem, “Quinn Abby, Ireland Susan McCaslin “Talking a blue streak,” a review by Susan McCaslin of Russell Thornton’s Answer to Blue was published in The Ormsby Review, Nov. 13, 2021 ormsbyreview.com
event hosted by the local library, on the topic of ‘Ushering in Fall’ on Oct. 17th. I am also a featured reader doing a book launch for my new poetry book,””What does the wind say?”” in a SPOKEN INK reading series organized by the Burnaby Writers’ Society on Oct. 24th. I am a feature reader for the ZOOM event hosted by Wordstorm Society of the Arts in Nanaimo. B.C.on Dec. 9th . I will read poems from my new book--’What does the wind say?” Jacqueline Pearce In 2021 I edited and published Last Train Home, an anthology of haiku, tanka, and haiku sequences on the theme of trains and train travel, featuring poets from 22 different countries. Published under my own imprint, Pondhawk Press and available through Amazon. Pearl Pirie New chapbooks: rain’s small gestures (Apt 9 Press, October 2021) apt9press.wordpress.com and Mudflaps for short dogs, (Trainwreck Press, July 2021) www.trainwreckpress.com Watch for a new set of Studio Nouveau Workshops coming soon. pearlpirie.com
Honey Novick Winner Toronto Star Metro Medialand 2021 Urban Hero Award in the Arts People’s Choice
Stephen Kent Roney My poem “On the Night We Held the Moon for Ransom” has been unanimously selected as the winner of the 2021 World Mensa Poetry Prize.
Kamal Parmar As Poet Laureate of Nanaimo, I have organized a ZOOM Poetry reading
Greg Santos My poem “Amnesiac” from my collection, Ghost Face (DC Books,
2020) is featured online and in the print issue (118) of GEIST Magazine Eleonore Schönmaier On Sunday December 12th at 1:30 pm (EST) Eleonore Schönmaier will read new work plus selections from her four collections (McGill-Queen’s University Press). The event will include live music from the home of pianist Panos Gklistis. You can register for the event here. On Sunday January 23th at 1:30 pm (EST) she’ll launch Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete (MQUP) along with a conversation with the Greek composer Michalis Paraskakis. You’ll find the link to join the event here. JC Sulzenko writing as A. Garnett Weiss has a new collection. Aeolus House launched my poetry collection, Bricolage, A Gathering of Centos, on September 23 before an audience nearly 100 guests on Zoom. My thanks to publisher Allan Briesmaster for his enthusiasm and expertise and to Blaine Marchand, whose new book Becoming History launched at the same time, for sharing the platform with aplomb. Written under the pseudonym A. Garnett Weiss, which I use for centos to distinguish them from my lyric and narrative work, these 62 poems consist of lines or partial lines drawn from anthologies or individual collections featuring the work of poets living or passed, Canadian or International. I use the lines or partial lines, unaltered apart from adjustments for reasons of punctuation or syntax, to create a new and original poem, independent in meaning and form from
the source material. The book acknowledges fully the source of each line. Comments on the collection from the back cover of Bricolage include these quotes: “Bricolage resounds with the echo of greatness, finely chiseled into a composition, a recomposition, a deposition on the value of recurrence. They signal a new way to read the world and find rich golden veins in borrowed words.” – Gregory Betts, author of Psychic Geographies and Other Topics “Just when we need to refashion and repurpose comes Bricolage, leading us back to the origins of the poem as a ‘thing made’. From bits and pieces, A. Garnett Weiss has carefully stitched together poems that present themselves as entirely fresh and hauntingly new, while paying homage to the originals. A tour de force.” – Olive Senior, author of Pandemic Poems “This meticulously assembled collection radiates wit and sensitivity, its poems entering the heart through the mind, with the best ones shimmering like the aurora borealis while dealing with inscrutability, impermanence, and the vagaries of the psyche.” – Keith Garebian, author of Against Forgetting Bricolage can be ordered at $18 CDN plus shipping and handling from bricolage.weiss@gmail.com or through www.jcsulzenko.com”
Writing Opportunities Please note: This is a curated list of opportunities. For a full list of all writing opportunities updated on a monthly basis, please subscribe to Between the Lines newsletter from the LCP.
Calls for Submissions Submit YOUR Call to be included in Between The Lines and Stanza Newsletter. Let us know about a call for submission via this form Parliamentary Poet Laureate Poem of the Month Program In her role as Parliamentary Poet Laureate, Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer is highlighting the work of Indigenous Poets from Canada through the Poem of the Month Program. Each month, one poem from a published Indigenous poet will be posted to the Parliamentary Poet Laureate website. To apply, please send one original poem of any length and a short biography about yourself, along with your contact information to LOPPoet/PoetBDP@parl.gc.ca. 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 Bywords.ca Current and former Ottawa residents, students and workers are invited to send their unpublished poetry to Bywords.ca for our monthly poetry magazine. We pay an honorarium. Published poems are considered for the John Newlove Poetry Award. No set 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 Collusion Books always welcomes submissions of chapbook manuscripts of collaborative poetry for
print publication. Conceptual, formal, & speculative works are particularly welcome. Each manuscript (24 to 40 pages) must be a unified collaborative project. While individual poems or components of the project may be created solo, the manuscript as a whole should be conceived and composed by 2 or more actively & equally contributing authors. Publication is 75 perfect-bound print copies. Compensation is 20 copies (divided evenly among collaborators) and unlimited access to more copies at cost. No listed deadline. Find out more. Sandcrab Books along with the Cuban Canadian Literary Association and its affiliate Federation of Photographers are looking for poems that explore and navigate the theme of portraits to be included in an upcoming book of photographs and poetry, edited by Richard Grove and Antony Di Nardo, entitled 101 Portraits for publication in Spring 2022. Feel free to interpret the theme as broadly as possible—the selfie as distortion, a family portrait framed in couplets, a profile sketched in single syllables, a lyrical snap, or even a sweeping epic-pic. Portraits capture our human essence, our longings and desires, both our comic and tragic sensibilities. Portraits can project our innermost and outermost dimensions. Portraits put a stamp on identity as well as mark a “Wanted” poster. A portrait can be either biographical or unreal, domestic or surreal. Think Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror. Think Picasso. Think Lucian Freud. Think Yousuf Karsh or Annie Leibowitz. Think all
that words can do when a picture is only worth a thousand! Send up to 3 poems and a brief 50word bio to poetsonaplane@gmail. com. There is no entry fee. Poets whose work appears in the book will receive a complimentary copy. Deadline is February 28, 2022. Hungry Zine Hungry is now accepting submissions for Issue 02: “It’s Complicated”. We came to this theme thinking about the complexities of our relationships to food. Sometimes we hate our home cooking, recipes don’t always go as planned, and our relationship to food can be difficult. We want to hear about the complicated parts of your food relationships – the messy, the fraught, the hilarious, the unexpected, the problematic. Deadline is December 19, 2021. Find out more. Counterflow is a new annual West Coast magazine for new, emerging and established poets. Submit up to three poems. No submission fee. The theme of our first issue is “Beginnings”. Wordstorm’s new publication, Counterflow, is an annual anthology showcasing work by emerging, early career, and established writers, poets, and visual artists from across all of Vancouver Island and the surrounding Salish Sea Basin. 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 kick-start a national conversation is on offer. No listed deadline. Find out more
Awards and Contests Poem in Your Pocket Day Contest The League is excited to announce that we are officially accepting submissions for inclusion in the Poem in Your Pocket Day Postcards and Booklet. There will be 10 selections made from contest submissions for the Poem In Your Pocket Postcards and Booklet. Selected poets will receive $300, the full Poem Postcard Pack, and will be invited to provide an audio recording of their selected poem. LCP Members are invited to enter the contest free of charge and
non-members are asked to include a $10 entry fee. Deadline to enter is December 15, 2021. Learn more. Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize The Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize for Canadian Youth was 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: Winner: $400, Second Place: $350, Third Place: $300. Selected winning poems and runners-up will be published in a special edition of the League of
Canadian Poets chapbook series! Learn more. Don Gutteridge Poetry Award from Wet Ink Books. $2,500 First Prize for the best unpublished poetry Manuscript by a Canadian. The winner will receive $2,500.00 (CND$) and 50 copies of the finished published book and will be featured in the magazine Devour: Art & Lit Canada with 7 poems, bio and bio pic. The 3 runner ups will be offered a publishing contract and will be featured in the magazine Devour: Art and Lit Canada with 5 poems, bio and bio pic. Manuscript must be new, previously unpublished poems only. (25% of the ms content can be previously published in journals, magazines, anthologies, blogs, etc. 0% of the ms content can be previously published in previous books by the
author.). Length – MS must be a minimum of 60 poetry pages. The Judge – Don Gutteridge will be the sole judge. Mail – The finished manuscript will be mailed to: Mr. Don Gutteridge, 230 Victoria Street,, London ON N6A 2C2 (ms will not be returned - do not send submission fee to this address, see below) Include – With your mailed ms include a cover letter that includes: your full name, your mailing address, phone numbers, your email address and proposed title of book. In your letter indicate how you paid your $25 entry fee. Indicate your cheque number or eTransfer confirmation number. Announcing Winners – The winner and three runner ups will be announced on: February 15, 2022. Entry Fee – $25.00 CAD. Entry fee will be mailed to: Wet Ink Books, 408 – 5 Greystone Walk Drive, To-
ronto, Ontario, M1K 5J5 or eTransfer to: 7WetInkBooks@gmail.com Deadline is December 15, 2021. Find out more. Frog Hollow 2021 Chapbook Contest 2021 winner will be announced by March 31, 2022. This contest is free to enter. We are interested in receiving materials from all Canadian nationals, including racialized / Indigenous/ genderqueer / seniors / disabled/ financially challenged... Submitters cannot have a chapbook previously published by Frog Hollow Press. We look forward to reading your work. Last year’s contest was a great success, with a handful of books published in addition to our winner. We hope to have the same success this year! The winner of the contest will be offered our standard contract to publish with Frog Hollow Press. Send Submissions to carylpeters@telus. net. Deadline is December 31, 2021. Find out more.
Job & Volunteer Opportunities Shab-e She’r, Toronto’s most diverse and brave poetry and open mic series, is looking for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) volunteers to join our team. Among the desired qualifications are: • Experience organizing and/or volunteering for literary events • Some poetry writing experience and/or publication • Familiarity with literary scene in Toronto and/or Canada
• Familiarity with Shab-e She’r core values and format • Commitment to long-term consistent volunteering • Social AND Online skills • Professionalism Please send your cover letter and résumé to Bänoo Zan. In your application, please detail how many of the above-mentioned qualifications you meet. Please remember that you will be interviewed before being admitted to the group. And, depending on the case, you may need to present a VSS (Vulnerable Sector Screening) or police check. Don’t forget to spread the word. Thank you, Bänoo Zan, Founder of the Series
Residency, Fellowship, Mentorship & Grant Opportunities Univeristy of Calgary Writers-In-Residence For 25 years, the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program (CDWP) has fostered promising Canadian writers. Our Canadian Writers-in-Residence have gone on to great success, including alumni such as Eden Robinson, Larissa Lai, Suzette Mayr, Sina Queyras, Deborah Willis, and Governor-General’s Literary Award winners Oana Avasilichioaei and Richard Harrison. We encourage applications from writers of all genres who have one to four published and/or professionally performed works to their credit. The Canadian Writer-in-Residence is expected to spend 50% of their time working on their own
writing, and 50% of their time on community outreach, including one-on-one consultations with the public and public lectures or readings. We encourage candidates to propose their own initiatives for community engagement. A background or demonstrated interest in community engagement — such as experience teaching or mentoring writers — is an asset. While the Canadian Writer-in-Residence will be invited to speak to university classes and to the general public, this is not a teaching position. This high-profile position has continued interaction with the external community and impact on the reputation of the CDWP and university. This residency is a full-time term position, dates non-negotiable. Deadline to apply is January 14, 2022. Learn more. WOMEN OF WORDS Calling all members and associate members for an online women’s poetry workshop, “Change Artists”. Contact Sharon Goodier at vincent4don@gmail.com Supportive and nurturing feedback to get started in the new year. We will be on Zoom and the program is open to women from across the country. Amadeus Choir Choral Creation Program A residency for poets and composers to co-create original choral works led by composer Andrew Balfour and poet Luke Hathaway/Amanda Jernigan. We know that one of the greatest
challenges facing emerging choral composers today is finding quality text and the permission to set it. Over the course of a full season, three composers and three poets will have the opportunity to collaborate on totally original choral work and forge lasting artistic partnerships with new colleagues while creating collaborative choral compositions. Participants will receive close mentorship from program faculty and the artistic team of the Amadeus Choir, guest presentations by high-profile artists, and access to the singers of the Amadeus Choir to workshop and record their work. There’s no fee. It’s a mentorship opportunity, but/and also, beyond that, a way into the world of choral music for a poet looking to make the leap. Open now to poets from coast to coast! Learn more. Ontario Arts Council Career Catalyst: Project Grants for New Generation Artists a $1 million grant program for professional artists aged 18 to 30. The program supports activities that will help build career momentum as individual artists recover from pandemic-related challenges. The grants for this one-time program are set at $2,000 each. The deadline to apply is December 16, 2021. Learn more.
Very Small Verse and Broadsheet Contests are now open! Enter by January 21, 2022
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 in poetry. If there is a poet who has recently passed that you would like to pay tribute to, please visit our In Memoriam page on poets.ca.
–Phyllis Webb–
We’d like to take this chance to remember and honour: Douglas Barbour Ethel Harris Lee Maracle Gavin Stairs Peter Van Toorn Phyllis Webb
–Peter Van Toorn–
–Gavin Stairs–
Remembering Douglas Barbour (1940–2021) From NeWest Press It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of NeWest Press’s president, editor, and founding member Douglas Barbour. It was Doug’s original donation of $500 in 1978 that made it possible to get NeWest Press off the ground. His generosity toward the press took different forms over the years, from keeping our non-profit organization afloat through lean times to translating his passion for the written word and Canadian literature into inspiring editing of dozens of NeWest books.
–Lee Maracle–
The author of many poetry titles, Doug was known for minimalism and precision, for creating an equivalence between a poet’s words and what his eyes see, but also for his love of the rhythms of jazz music. Praised for his performances as a member of the sound poetry ensemble Re: Sounding, he read his poetry and presented his critical work across Canada and internationally. A passionate art and book collector, he was a faithful and generous friend, and a supportive and motivating mentor to many of the students he taught as a member of the Department of English at the University of Alberta. As a scholar, his numerous reviews and essays on Canadian literature, especially poetry, appeared in a large
–Ethel Harris–
–Douglas Barbour–
range of journals and anthologies, both in Canada and overseas. Doug was one of the first Canadian critics to work on science fiction and fantasy, and his many contributions to this field over the years were recently recognized by the Book Publishers’ Association of Alberta which announced that the Speculative Fiction Award will be henceforth renamed as the Douglas Barbour Award for Speculative Fiction, a fitting tribute to a man who did so much for the writing community here in Alberta, as well as the rest of the country.
Remembering Ethel Harris (1929–2021) Ethel Sarah Harris (Brody) passed away in Toronto, in her 92nd year. Dearly beloved wife of the late Milton E. Harris (2005). Predeceased by her parents, Mary and Joseph Brody; her sister, Deborah Klotz (Brody); and her daughter, Miriam. Devoted mother of Judith and Tony, Naomi and Boulaye, and David and Rebecca. A passionate music-lover, life-long scholar, poet, artist and writer who lived life with love and intensity. As it says in Proverbs: A woman of valour, her worth is far beyond rubies.
Remembering Lee Maracle (1950–2021) from CBC Poet, author and teacher Lee Maracle has died in Surrey, B.C., at the age of 71. The award-winning writer and esteemed mentor garnered worldwide attention for her powerful writing and life-long efforts to fight Indigenous oppression in Canada. Sid Bobb says his mother was many things: “a wondrous warrior and a loving love” who dedicated her life to helping others rise from poverty and inequality. Award-winning Ontario author Waubgeshig Rice said it was an immense, heart-breaking loss that Maracle, a supportive but critical “auntie” who helped guide him as a young writer, is now gone. Rice said he read Maracle’s work as a teenager and young writer, then met her at a reading in his 30s and said she never missed one of his book launches. “She has been there every step of my literary journey,” said Rice. “I don’t think she got the credit she deserved in the wider area of Canadian literature. I think that was because she was an Indigenous woman. “Hopefully everybody will be able to look back on her legacy and see just how revolutionary she was.” Maracle won numerous literary awards for her works and her novel Celia’s Song was short-listed for the 2020 Neustadt International Prize
for Literature, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards. Previous Canadian nominees include Nobel Prize for Literature winner Alice Munro and Rohinton Mistry, who won the Neustadt in 2012. Before her academic rise Maracle grew up on the North Shore of Vancouver, where Bobb said there were “hard times” for his mother — a member of the Stó:lō Nation and daughter of a Métis mother and Coast Salish father. Maracle, a former University of Toronto professor and elder in residence — had recently returned to B.C., where she had accepted a position at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey and began teaching in September, according to her family. Maracle, a mother of four, was also a loving grandmother and an ardent gardener, according to Bobb. “She was a tremendous person full of integrity and demanded integrity everywhere she went,” he said.
Remembering Gavin Stairs (1946-2021) Gavin Stairs was the publisher of Pendas Productions, a series of poetry chapbooks combined with CDs, based in London ON, from 2000-2014. Poets include Henry Beissel, Katerina Fretwell, Patricia Keeney, Penn Kemp, Daniel Kolos, Susan McMaster, Charles Mountford, and Gloria Alvernaz Mulcahy.
He collected and fastidiously published Poem for Peace in Many Voices, chapbooks and CDs, in 136 translations and two volumes. Collaborative works included Sound Operas with musicians like Bill Gilliam and Brenda McMorrow. Gavin designed and produced these gorgeous books, CDs and DVDs from his den in his basement. How his generous, expansive presence will be missed.
Remembering Peter Van Toorn (1944–2021) Peter Van Toorn was one of Canada’s most inventive and irreverent poets. His 1984 collection Mountain Tea was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English-language poetry in 1984. Born in the Netherlands, Van Toorn moved to Canada with his family as a child. He attended McGill University, and taught for almost 30 years at John Abbott College. He published the collections Leeway Grass (1970) and In Guildenstern County (1973) and edited the anthologies Cross/cut: Contemporary English Quebec Poetry (1982) and The Insecurity of Art: Essays on Poetics (1982), prior to the publication of Mountain Tea. Mountain Tea was reissued in 2003 by Véhicule Press.
Remembering Phyllis Webb (1927-2021) From NeWest Press Phyllis Webb was an Officer of the Order of Canada Recipient, Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, and a CBC Broadcaster. “‘I am happy, so happy,’” she said a few days before her death, echoing the last words Gerald Manley Hopkins, one of her favourite poets, spoke as he was dying. Phyllis was a celebrated and influential writer, admired for her carefully crafted poems, her innovation with form and line, and the unflinching honesty and sharpness of vision through which she wrote about the human condition. Peacock Blue: The Collected Poems of Phyllis Webb (2014), edited by John F. Hulcoop, is a dazzling testament to her masterful use of language and the range of her poetic voice. The main influences on her poetry in her early years may have been male, but she “dispatched” those literary “fathers to the river Lethe,” and began writing, as fellow poet Sharon Thesen put it, in a “female-embodied poetic voice.” The youngest child of Mary and Alfred Webb, Phyllis was born and raised in Victoria, B.C. She worked as a secretary in the 1950s and as a freelancer for CBC. Between 1967 and 1969 she was the executive producer of Ideas, the CBC pro-
gram she co-founded with William A. Young. Following her freelance work for CBC, she taught poetry in the creative writing programs at the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and the Banff Centre, and was writer- in-residence at the University of Alberta. When, circa 1990, “words abandoned” her, she put her typewriter aside, henceforth only used for the letters she wrote to friends, and picked up a camera. She created collages out of the photographs she took, the first step toward becoming a self-taught painter. She continued to paint and write letters until her arthritic fingers dictated otherwise. A voracious yet discriminating reader, one of the last things she read was the most recent issue of Brick, a literary magazine that she hadn’t read for a long while but which she specifically asked for. “Still zany,” she told the friend who sent it to her. Though Phyllis was intensely private she cherished old and new friends and was a most loyal and caring friend herself. She will be deeply missed by many.