Issue 19 Vol. 2
Summer 2022
News f rom the League 19.2 | Summer 2022
In this issue: 2–5
News f rom the League
6–7
Bill Arnott’s Beat: NPM ‘22 and the Haiku Hedge
8–10
Book Review: White by George Elliott Clarke
11–16
Poetry Parlour
17–22
New Members
23–26
Member News
27-31
Writing Opportunities
32-35
In Memoriam
LCP Community Committees The League of Canadian Poets is introducing new Community Committees to bring together poets based on their region, identity, writing style, interest in investigating solutions or opportunities, or the simple desire to connect with other poets. The League’s membership is growing larger every day and with poets being dispersed nationally, these committees will provide the opportunity for more intimate and meaningful connections for poets. A committee may form to: • Research an issue relating to poets • Research an opportunity related to poets • Bring together poets to read, write, work and share together • Build community between poets who have common goals, interests or identities Deadline to form a community committee for 2022-2023: August 22, 2022. Learn more about community committees Call for submissions: Visual Poetry Chapbook Edited by Kyle Flemmer We invite the submission of visual poetry, a diverse category characterized by the graphical interplay of text and image. This includes, but is not limited to: concrete
poetry, blackout and erasure poetry, typewriter art, intermedia poetry, asemic writing, and other forms of non-representational language. Images should be 300 DPI or higher and will be printed in greyscale on half a letter-size page (portrait orientation). Deadline: August 14, 2022. Submit your poetry today! NEW! LCP Membership Drive Invite your fellow poets to join the LCP and they will receive a year of complimentary membership (2022–2023). Between 2022 and 2023, the League of Canadian Poets invites poets to apply for a free year of membership in the organization. We invite LCP members and members of the poetry community to self-nominate, or to nominate others for this offer. If you know of a talented poet who should be a member of the League, fill out one of the forms below so we can reach out with key information and application instructions to receive free LCP membership. This opportunity is open to candidates who are not current or former LCP members. Nominate a talented poet you know for free LCP Membership today!
Now open! The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto Foundation Annual Poetry Award A $500 prize, sponsored by the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto Foundation, to the best single poem by a poet in the early stages of their career. The judges for this award are Concetta Principe and Stuart Ian McKay. Submission fee: $5 Deadline is August 7, 2022. Enter the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto Foundation Annual Poetry Award today! Now open! The Lesley Strutt Poetry Contest is an award that provides a prize for the single best poem submitted to our judges. This contest is open to all poets (professional, emerging, and first-time) in Canada, and is run each summer in memory of poet and friend Lesley Strutt. The selected winner will receive $500! The Juror for the 2022 Lesley Strutt Poetry contest is Richard-Yves Sitoski. Submission fee: $5 Deadline is August 7, 2022. Enter the Lesley Strutt Poetry Contest today! LCP Funding: applications are now open Poets in the Schools visits & In-person and digital events anywhere in Canada, for Full members only, taking place between September 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023. Deadline: August 4, 2022. Applications will be processed the week of August 8, and applicants will be notified by August 12 as to the
result of their application(s).Learn more about LCP Funding programs Now open! P.K. Page Mentorship Program The P.K. Page Mentorship Program was established to support the League’s Associate membership in honing their skill, craft, and professional understanding of poetry in Canada. We are looking for mentor and mentee applicants for the upcoming Fall session (SeptDec 2022). Established poets with two or more trade publications of poetry can apply to be a mentor for the P.K. Page Mentorship Program. At this time, mentors must be Full or Life members of the League of Canadian Poets. Associate and Student members of the League of Canadian Poets may apply to receive mentorship through the PK Page Mentorship Program. Applications are open! Learn more and apply today. Member Readings Bringing the spirit of the Joseph Sherman New Member Reading into the League’s new digital landscape, we are excited to now be hosting regular virtual events where members can read poetry and see each other’s lovely faces! Upcoming readings: • Atlantic region poets (PEI, NS, NL, NB): Thursday July 28, 7:30-8:30pm Atlantic time • Prairie region poets (AB, SK, MB): Thursday, September 29, 6:30 – 7:30pm Central time • GTA poets: Thursday, November 24, 7-8pm EST Learn more and sign up to read
Announcing the Winners of the Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize Senior Jury: Michael Lithgow, Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon, and Winston Le Senior Prize Winners • First place, senior: birdbrained by Briana Lu • Second place, senior: 99% by Grace Hu • Third place, senior: Colors in a new world by Maggie Yang Junior Jury: Mikko Harvey and Amy LeBlanc Junior Prize Winners• First place, junior: Asian Girl by Kyo Lee • Second place, junior: The Land Bridge Theory by Angel Zhao • Third place, junior : Liquid Gold by Sofia Varma-Vitug Read the winning poems Staff Changes Executive Director, Lesley Fletcher will soon take maternity leave –
Congratulations Lesley! Current Administrative Director Nic Brewer will step into the role of Interim Executive Director in Lesley’s absence, and Ashley-Elizabeth Best has joined the team as Administrative Manager, welcome Ashley-Elizabeth! Annual General Meeting The 2022 League of Canadian Poets Annual General Meeting took place on Monday, June 27, 2022. Learn about the event and review documents discussed Call for Nominations and Volunteers If you are interested in becoming more involved with the League, now’s your chance to let us know! We are 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. 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. Now available for order: On the storm: poets on survival 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. 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
Bill Arnott’s Beat NPM ‘22 & the Haiku Hedge
After what felt like a very long while I reached the end of the road, a bubble enclosing tennis courts by a swath of amber-hued sand, where driftwood logs form a breakwater and innocent children fly kites while idiot adults kitesurf. It was here I noticed a hedge of green holly. Well, patches of holly with alder and cedar, but stressing the holly results in a much nicer meter. And tucked and pinned in the branches of greenery were dozens and dozens of poems. Haiku to be precise. And it wasn’t even yet poetry month!
In Memoriam When 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
It was the cusp of NPM. Spring was in full bloom, literally. National Poetry Month coincided with Vancouver’s Cherry Blossom Festival and the city’s trees were putting on a show. Explosions of pastel pink dotted bike lanes and dusted the alleys. Park fringes were tucked into softly diluted blankets of red carpet fanfare. At least that’s how it looked to me. It was Kyoto on the opposite side of the ocean. I was huffing and puffing my way, jogging a seawall like a fairy tale wolf, pissing off pigs and sending them into the streets. Not their fault, mind you. Construction was never a porcine forte.
An extended haiku event coincides with the blossom fest, the whole thing feeling terribly literary, and wonderfully Japanese. It speaks, in a way, to the area’s Pacific Rim heritage, same as the region’s dragon boats, a blending of culture that blurs with the tides and loses itself in sea mist horizons. I chose not to break my stride, fearing I’d never get going again, so I slowed only marginally and glanced at a few, the unmistakable, abridged looking lines in 5-7-5 on the page. There was even a Biennale installation peeking from the lightly trimmed hedge, part of a Greater Vancouver open air art exhibit, ongoing displays showcasing international talent, some of the best
known being Yue Minjun’s A-mazeing Laughter, what people know as The Laughing Men, and Dennis Oppenheim’s Engagement, two outsized engagement rings precariously balanced on a slope facing the union of ocean inlet with urban creek. Poetry happenings were centering on the theme of intimacy. And I thought no better representations spoke to this concept. In the case of Minjun’s men, fourteen giants in bronze sharing a laugh, welcoming all to join in their merriment. While Oppenheim’s enormous rings, heavy with tremulous symbolism, speak not only to flaws in the industry, the institution, but to the unending optimism and promise inherent in continuous circles of metal. Not necessarily shared sincerity, but invariably intimacy.
Carrying on past the hedge of haiku I was acutely aware of the intimate nature of the place itself. Over the water, high hills in vibrant blue and green actually gleamed, cuts of primary palette under sea-coloured sky. Atop the whole thing was a frosting of white, late season snow, the outline a lumpy wedding cake, waiting to be cut and awkwardly eaten with interlocked arms. As I ran, white gulls bisected a cloudless sky while a wide-winged bald eagle drifted over the trees. To my delight I spotted a hummingbird from a long way away. It hovered over a street, then a park, and alit in a scraggly hemlock. I wanted to laugh like the big men in copper and tin, a sensation of bliss on a nondescript morning, unseen bands of silver and gold connecting it all. All of us. In what I can only describe as intimacy.
Bill Arnott is the bestselling author of Gone Viking: A Travel Saga, Gone Viking II: Beyond Boundaries, and winner of The Miramichi Reader’s Very Best Book Award for nonfiction. When not trekking the globe with a small pack and journal, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast, making music and friends. @billarnott_aps.
Review of White by George Elliott Clarke Reviewed by Elana Wolff
White by George Elliott Clarke Gaspereau Press, 2021; 252 pages ISBN: 9781554472307 Reviewed by Elana Wolff In his new collection of poems, White, George Elliott Clarke expands his quartet of ‘colouring books’—Blue, Black, Red, and Gold (yellow) to a quintet, or, as he biblically submits: “a Pentateuch!” White, which Clarke deems a “necessary colour,” is not the end of his rainbow; he aims to extend his series to seven, as in the visible colour spectrum, which comprises the three primaries, the three secondaries, and indigo. Clarke waives orange, indigo and violet, in deference to brown—the earthy tertiary, and black and white: not technically considered colours. But hey—a poet can claim license to say whatever he needs to say and Clarke is a poet with
much to say, in his inimitable way, on a broad band of talking points.
poems—Canticles—” (from “Living History”)
White comprises a one-page introduction, politically titled “White Paper,” a Contents page prismatically titled “White Light”: twelve sections in all, with black and white images interspersed. The opening section, “White Lies,” features eight poems on Poetics; “White Noise,” seven poems on Praxis, or what Clarke calls “Trancelations” (translations); “White Trash,” five Satires; “White North,” seven Georgics; two sections on Politics; “White Coat”: Anatomies; twelve Elegies; and two Sapphics sections. “White Flag” contains Notes on the poems, and “White Sugar,” Acknowledgements. Clarke riffs on culture, identity / politics, literature (tributes), history (“The Truth must suffice: / History’s blood-rife”), and ‘personals’ with bold, bristling, rambunctious brilliance. A public poet who doesn’t shy from delivering “squawkin, squeaky, manglin English…. harangue[s]; “scat-sing / catatonic, atavistic, primitive…. googoo”; “insolent snarls, squalid as diarrhea.” Clarke whips, thunders, spouts and sings from ground and mountain. Every injustice, every infringement, every outrage, and any love is fair game for his vernacular passion, lush tongue, sizzling wit, and sweeping erudition.
“K = Ku Klux Klan (of course), them white sheets / swishin neath the judge’s Gestapo-black robes, / them white dunce-caps of the S. S.-hissin jurors, / them white, newsreel lights of the circus / Big Top struck invisible / in the risible, kangaroo courtroom.” (from “Emmett Till (1941-1955): A Beginner’s ABC)
“Listen! Look!”: “True: Guilty people are born with every breath…. Politics is a sinkhole of Amorality.... My full response can only be numberless
“Now, you and me and he and she and they / Are pronouns defining Humanity, / But they are not—really not—definitive: / For how we lean determines how we live. / Note that he is within she or that she / Includes he: Fluid is Identity.” (from “Pronouncement on Pronouns”) “Equality terrorizes the elite…. white doll heads / got snapped off because males enjoy / smashing things rather than talking. (Anyhow, what victories do the weak / win? They’re better off being subtle, / seditious, secretive—just as poison / works best as tasteless, odorless, colourless.)” (from “Landing: A Love Story”) “White is off-white, half-white, non-white, i.e., the vast majority of homo sapiens…. White is unsteady as a flame, wavering before shadows…. White is unbelievable cornucopia or conspicuous absence…. White is moonlight tonguing a window…. sanctified—if spectral— illumination / O! Let my true colours(s) beam!” (from “Whitewash”)
Declarations, tirades, indictments, insights and rousing calls to see, hear, listen and think.
White by George Elliott Clarke (Gaspereau Press, 2021).
Clarke can also be tender, unabashedly old-fashioned amorous, biblically romantic. In lines like: “How beautiful the song of her breathing”; “Your slim, trim figure transfigures the night”; “Dawn binges on birdsong trill, / and I kiss you Giovanna”; “Your carnation lips, carnal with lyrics…. played twixt piano-ivory teeth”; “Her hair flows down—/ a gold dispensation / o’er the Galilee of her body—/ the white empire of her body.” Page 88 displays a young, handsome, bespectacled George sporting an afro, white tux, bow-tie and black-frilled white shirt, wide-smiling for the camera in a street shot. He looks to be not much older than he was when he first read Pound’s free verse translation of Li Po’s luminous “River-Merchant’s Wife,” which struck him, in the formally gorgeous self-portrait poem, “16 / 61,” as “lustrous.” Indeed, it is. And in “Weathering,” another formal piece, Clarke has penned a poem for the ages: “That Beauty and Peril come twinned…. Uncompromising is Beauty—/ And Love—while frost to blossoms melts—/ To breathe is to love. Our duty? / To spy—past clouds—how light results.” One might also say, ‘how white results’. Provocative, touching, eminently germane, Clarke’s White, potently on the pulse, makes reading an immersion experience, an education. Take it up.
Elana Wolff lives and works in Thornhill, Ontario—the traditional land of the Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat First Nations. Elana’s poems have recently appeared in Arc online (Awards of Awesomeness), Best Canadian Poetry 2021, Bear Review, Canadian Literature, Grain, MONO, Montréal Serai, and Taddle Creek. Her collection, Swoon (Guernica Editions), won the 2020 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry; her newest collection is Shape Taking (Ekstasis Editions, 2021).
Poetry Parlour See what Leaguers have to say about what they are reading, the artisitic process and pen names!
Thank you to everyone who responded to the most recent Poetry Pause questions! Check out our new batch of questions.
What are some books you read while you were writing your most recent collection? Kamal Parmar: A wild goose chase in looking for good poetry books, resulted in my getting hold of books with a mosaic of poetic themes that impact the mind and the soul within. The poems are an insight into something deep, and subtle. Here are the books that I have recently read: A thousand mornings by Mary Oliver Healing is a gift by Alexandra Vasiliuand lastly-- Call us what we carry by Amanda Gorman Adrienne Drobnies: I would call my most recent collection the one I am writing now. Some of the books that have influenced me the most lately have not necessarily been poetry. I am reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, which is great at upsetting the standard narrative of human history and progress, and don’t we all need that now. How to be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci
is also good. In Canadian poetry, Pineapple Express by Evelyn Lau, Glass Float by Jane Munro, How She Read by Chantal Gibson, Edge Effects by Jan Conn are a few along with the poetry of Liz Howard and Fiona Lam — also US scientist-poets Lisa Rosenberg (A Different Physics) and Zubair Ahmed (City of Rivers). A book I could probably read endlessly is Nine Gates by Jane Hirschfield. Amanda Earl: The Iron Goddess of Mercy by Larissa Lai; Natalie Zina Walschots’ Doom: Love Poems for Super Villains; Cephalopography 2.0 - Rasiqra Revulva; Joshua Whitehead’s Full-Metal Indigiqueer; Canisa Lubrin’s the Dyzgraphyst. Robert Tattersall, The Pissing Evil: A Comprehensive History of Diabetes Mellitus; Adam Brown: Brightspots and Landmines, The Diabetes Guide I Wish Someone Had Handed Me; Shelby Kinnaird, The Pocket Carbohydrate Counter Guide for Diabetes: Simple Nutritional Strategies to Lower Your Blood Sugar Anne Burke: King James Edition of the Bible remains a constant source of lyricism. I am compiling my archives, a personal collection, and correspondence has contributed to self assessment.
Bernadette Wagner: Hiroshima by John Hersey, Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, Canada`s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System by Jim Harding Bob MacKenzie: My newest collection “unbroken” left little time to read books. The subject matter is dark and before and during writing required varied but quite specific research that was time consuming. My focus is intense when writing, This is usually the case. My reading of books is done not while I am writing but before or after. While writing, my reading is limited to research. Daniela Elza: I read everything I could find by Leonard Cohen that summer on my rooftop patio. One night there was a sunset involved and some wine. The next day I couldn’t tell who wrote the poems in my journal. Those poems didn’t make it into the broken boat (2020), but many I wrote that summer on the patio did. I never know from where inspiration will sneak up on me. Poetry books that make me want to write poetry are cherished and rare. More often it is non-fiction that inspires. What also made it into the book were gallery images. Numerous fragments from the eros/ ions sequence were inspired by the photography exhibit Story/Lines by Larry Wolfson (Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, Dec. 2013). A conceptual art exhibit at the Rennie Art Museum on a very hot summer day inspired the last poem in the book: life as conceptual art. The self-portraits structure in general came from visual art.
Marion Lougheed: Poetry: All Forgotten Now by Jennifer Mariani and Late in the Day by Ursula K. LeGuin Fiction: Constant Nobody by Michelle Butler Hallett Pamela Medland: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) The Essential P.K. Page, selected by A. Lampert and T. Gray (2008) Gwendolyn MacEwan, ed. by M. Atwood and B. Callaghan (1993-4) Pearl Pirie: I read all the time. I have a tremendous appetite for the written word. I don’t tend to reread nor relisten to books and music while I write. For a current project I am reading 60 years of my mom’s diaries. Stephen Kent Roney: A good journalist doesn’t reveal sources. But some selected titles from my Kindle that probably influenced me at the time: The Odyssey, Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Brothers Grimm, Old French Fairy Tales, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose, Milne, Winnie the Pooh, Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales.
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? Bob MacKenzie: I am always very aware of everything that happens around me: every sight, sound, action. The slightest movement, sound, or even change of light does not go unnoticed. This does enhance my intake of information and my writing process in general. However, it’s also the most difficult part of my process while writing, where I must struggle to ignore ev-
ery distraction. Marion Lougheed: Knowing when to stop tweaking and fidgeting with the poem. Amanda Earl trying to remember to submit work. i find it takes away from the flow of getting stuff done. Kamal parmar: The most difficult part of my artistic process lies in ‘polishing’ my piece so that its ‘rough edges’ are smoothened out and the words flow like a gentle stream. The polishing process seems an endless one, as there is no ‘perfect poem.’ The sky is the limit! Pamela Medland: Putting aside the rest of my life to find quality writing time. Adrienne Drobnies: I imagine most would say “all of it” and I am tempted to do so also; however, there is a certain amount of revision that comes naturally and for which I don’t have to summon a lot of effort. I am able to make myself work even when I don’t much feel like it; however, the most difficult part is probably listening carefully to the inner voice that tells me what is right and also believes in me. Stephen Kent Roney: Achieving the trance state. Anne Burke: The loss of control over personal pain, impaled by childhood memories. Bernadette Wagner: Knowing when I’m finished with a work.
Daniela Elza: Carving time to write in a noisy and busy world. And the first stages of a poem or an essay where I know what needs to go in, but I cannot yet see how it will come together. I love it when I get to the tipping point. Pearl Pirie: Finding time among all the random lob balls of health is the hardest and making money enough to live.
Have you ever considered writing under a pseudonym, why or why not? Pearl Pirie: Yes, I considered a fiction pen name because there are many names I’d like to use but haven’t published under another name. Daniela Elza: I prefer not to put barriers between myself, the work, or the reader. I do write a lot of collaborated poem, which mess with the idea of ownership. Who’s poem is this? I am hopeful the collection finds a publisher soon. If I write about things that require me to protect myself, I will likely be writing under a pseudonym. A long time ago I did write some stuff that way. Kamal Parmar: I feel that a pseudonym is not the ‘real’ me. Poetry is a reflection of who I am and an insight into my ‘self.’ My name is my insignia and a pseudonym will be a distorted image of myself. Marion Lougheed: I’ve thought about pseudonyms, mostly because my last name is a bit difficult for people outside of certain re-
gions. But it doesn’t really appeal. I would like to be connected with my work. Adrienne Drobnies: All I can think of is “why”? I know of some writers that do it and can imagine it is a way of separating what is a very different professional persona from their creative writing. Or maybe they like a pseudonym for another different genre. I can understand all that but particularly as a woman I want to claim authorship of my work, for better and worse. Amanda Earl: i’ve written under numerous pseudonyms, both in-
dividual & group. i find it rejigs the brain into freshness. i write under several pseudonyms; this frees me from myself. Stephen Kent Roney: Yes. Why? To avoid my slave name,. Because I did not create my birth name, and so it does not express me. Because it is hard to hex someone if you do not know their name. Because it works for Lady Gaga. Why not? I was too established before I thought of it. And because I still hope to impress certain women who may feel a twinge of regret to see I turned out to be some fine
romantic poet and all. And maybe they will conclude that I really did love them, and then they threw it all away for some guy just because he drove a red Corvette. Bernadette Wagner: Yes, because I didn’t want my parents to read it. Bob MacKenzie: Sometimes, of course, there are reasons, to use a pseudonym. The best reason is personal safety, for instance when exposing the activities of criminals or bent politicians in the government. Other than such reasons, I believe an author should not hide behind a nom de plume. However, there are exceptions. Sometimes a writer may publish in two or more quite different genres and need to distinguish between them. Or perhaps the writer’s name may seem a poor fit for what is being written. For example: Dr. Theodor Seuss Geisel might seem an odd name for the author of Children’s books. When I was younger, I wrote under R. D. MacKenzie, more an affectation than a pseudonym and I also wrote a very few poems under a woman’s name as they had been written in a female’s voice and from her perspective. I havs since re-credited them as written by Bob MacKenzie Anne Burke: I have written under my own name but was published under a pseudonym. Using my initials, I was publishable as an assumed male, while my hyphened last names outed me as female. I have used more than one pseudonym, after I challenged myself to imagine the characters writing from different perspectives and in different voices, as well as to conceal how much I have actually contributed to a project.
Pamela Medland: Never--I think it’s important to stand behind what you publish. I’m glad to be living in a country where I can do that without fear for my safety.
JUST FOR FUN: If your poetry was an animal, which would be and why? Adrienne Drobnies: Obviously a cat - not just mine but any poetry sometimes inscrutable, affectionate but fickle, soft but with sharp claws and teeth, comes to us in solitude, beautiful and angry, can both hiss and purr and has a range of meows and other sounds that cover every possible situation, has many lives and often seems to be contemplating both life and death, graceful bodies and haunting eyes, and you’ll never get fully to the depth of their being. No wonder so many poems have been written about cats. They are really Ars Poetica. Amanda Earl: black cicada: underground for many years, flying up to a tree top to mate & sing. tasty to humans. shapeshifter: salamander, raven, wolf - my work must slither, fly and howl. Anne Burke A jackrabbit brown tipped fur in summer and a ghostly silver white in the winter moonlight. What could be more pleasing than that! Bernadette Wagner: Is a dragon an animal? Bob MacKenzie: I’m not sure which living creature (bird, animal, fish) would best be my poetry. It would
be a stealth creature, born of the night but inhabiting the day, a shape-shifter and so taking various forms. It would be a bird of prey or a silent watcher in the shadows observing everything and remembering. Daniela Elza: My poems are bees. Bees in the bonnet. It takes many lines and poems to get to the one that get’s closest to a pure thought or feeling. My poems are bees, dancing and buzzing around. They remind me how the world needs poetry, because without poetry things will become too certain, says Tim Lilburn, and that is dangerous. If they are not bees, they are crows. Kamal parmar: My poetry would be like a doe-- frisky, light , visually breathtaking, insightful with words that leap to give one everlasting joy.
Marion Lougheed: Some kind of sparkly beetle that you don’t notice until it catches your eye, and then you might take the time to look at it for a few minutes to parse out some of the details. Pamela Medland: A pileated woodpecker because I like the sound of its name and the colour of its cap. Pearl Pirie: A nematode. It is microscopically small in the universe but can navigate as well as megafauna. Stephen Kent Roney: A muskox, Like muskoxen, they explain nothing. They just are. They hold their ground, against all threats and dangers, and just are.
New Poetry Parlour questions are now available! Click here to share your thoughts
of Toronto. Her first book, Little Miracles, was published with Black Moss Press in September 2021. Butler lives with her cat, Zelda, and too many candles.
New Members Brian Baker (he, him) is a London, Ontario poet who began his writing career back in the late eighties. At the time, he had work published in a variety of both Canadian and American print journals. He then started following other creative pursuits and, at the same time, helped raise two young families. For the past forty-five years he worked in the social services field and, in 2022, he is relishing retirement. With more time on his hands, he re-imagined himself, and once again became involved in the poetry world, with several poems published in online and in-print journals. mary barnes David Blaikie won the 2021 Don Gutteridge Poetry Award for A Season in Lowertown, his fourth collection of poetry, published by Wet Ink Books in 2022. The competition (and $2,500 first prize) was open to new and established Canadian poets. The poems tell the story of a young man’s odyssey through the bars, clubs, taverns and all-night diners of one of the oldest districts of Ottawa in the 1970s after his marriage to a young school teacher ended. His earlier poems include two chapbooks, Her Final Days (1990), an account of his mother’s death from AIDS following a blood transfusion in the 1980s; Farewell to Coney Island (2011), winner of the inaugural chapbook award of
the Tree Reading Series in Ottawa, and a full-length collection, In That Old City by the Sea (2017). A journalist who grew up in rural Nova Scotia, he was a reporter for the Truro, N.S., Daily News, The Canadian Press, The Toronto Star and Reuters. He spent 18 yeas in the Parliamentary Press Gallery, and had a second career in communications in the Canadian labour movement. He lives with his partner, Susan Rosidi, an artist, keeps a daily diary that dates back to 1978, walks and writes in the Ottawa community of Kanata. (He has also written a sports history book, Boston: The Canadian Story (1984), a collection of biographies of Canadian athletes who have won the Boston Marathon.) Elisabeth Blair Denise (DH) Blinn Susan Braley Victoria Butler is a writer from Barrie, ON. She is the Poet Laureate of said hometown from 2018 until 2022 and is the first woman to carry the title. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of “The Northern Appeal,” a biannual, not-for-profit, literary journal that publishes work by creatives in Simcoe County and Muskoka. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing at the University
New League Members
Jody Chan is a writer, drummer, organizer, and therapist based in Toronto/Tkaronto. They are the author of haunt (Damaged Goods Press), all our futures (PANK), and sick (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the 2018 St. Lawrence Book Award and 2021 Trillium Award for Poetry. They are also a performing member with Raging Asian Womxn Taiko Drummers. They can be found online at www.jodychan.com Pat Connors first chapbook, Scarborough Songs, was published by Lyricalmyrical Press in 2013, and charted on the Toronto Poetry Map. Part-Time Contemplative, his second chapbook with Lyricalmyrical, was published in 2016. He contributed
18 poems to Bottom of the Wine Jar, published by SandCrab Books in 2017. He has been published in The Toronto Quarterly, Canadian Stories magazine, and Sharing Spaces, a joint project of York University and Antares Publications. He has recently been accepted for publication by the Blue Collar Review, Harbinger Asylum, and Tamaracks, the first anthology of Canadian poets published in the USA in over 30 years. He was Lead Artist in the pilot of Making a Living; Making Art, a project of Cultural Pluralism in the Arts at the University of Toronto. He was literary juror of Big Art Book 2013, a digital project of Scarborough Arts. His first full collection, The Other Life, will be released by Mosaic Press this summer. He is a manager for the Toronto chapter of 100,000 Poets for Change.
Jason E. Coombs is a poet and podcaster who, when not reading, studying and writing poetry, helps run and build a chocolate business in Toronto, ON. He is the host and operator of an emerging podcast focusing on reading and promoting poetry created in Canada titled Eh Poetry Podcast. Among other digital publications, his work may also be found in the print anthologies Worth More Standing - Caitlin Press, Mother Tongue - Patito Press, The Covid Verses - Paddler Press and Sledgehammer Literary Magazine. Sophie Crocker is an artist based on stolen Songhees, Esquimalt and WSANEC land. They hold a BFA from University of Victoria. Their publications include The Fiddlehead, Room, The Malahat Review and Best Canadian Poetry 2022. For writing, social links, and contact information, please go to sophiecrocker.com. Tom Cull Qurat Dar (she/they) is the City of Mississauga’s third Youth Poet Laureate and the 2020 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam National Champion. Her work has appeared in Canthius, Augur Magazine, and the Art Gallery of Mississauga, among other places. Find them on Twitter and Instagram @ itsnotquart.
Tea Gerbeza (she/her) is a disabled and neurodivergent queer poet, writer, editor, and multimedia artist creating in Treaty 4 territory (Regina, SK) and on the Homeland of the Métis. She primarily works with paper in her visual art, but also creates digital works on her scanner (scanography). Tea’s visual art sometimes finds a place in her poetry, often making her work multimodal. In 2019, Tea’s poetry won an Honourable Mention in the 2019 Short Grain Contest. Her scanograph, “My Father Catches Me Confronting Memory,” won an Honourable Mention in Room magazine’s 2020 Cover Art Contest, and she was a finalist for Palette Poetry’s 2021 Emerging Poet Prize. Tea is a 2022 Zoeglossia Fellow. Tea holds a BA (Hons.) in English (2017) and an MA in Creative Writing and English from the University of Regina (2019). Tea’s thesis work for her MA was SSHRC funded. She also holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Saskatchewan (2021). Tea is on the Board of Directors for JackPine Press and The Saskatchewan Playwrights’ Centre. She is also an acquisitions reader for Renaissance Press. Beth Gobeil Twoey Gray Rebecca Holand
Amy Dennis
Matthew Hollett
Andrew DuBois
Nancy Huggett
Silvia Falsaperla
Chris Johnson
Natalie Tin Yin Gan
Yejide Kilanko
Jamie Kitts Lawrence Kosowan Aaron Kreuter is the author of the poetry collection Arguments for Lawn Chairs, and the short story collection You and Me, Belonging, which won the Miramichi Reader’s 2019 ‘The Very Best!’ Short Fiction Award and was shortlisted for a Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University. His second collection of poems, Shifting Baseline Syndrome, came out this spring. He lives in Toronto, Canada. Rahat Kurd Nanci Lee YS (Ying) Lee Prathan Lor Jennifer Mariani Brendan McLeod is a poet, theatre creator, and musician. He’s the author of the poetry collection Friends Without Bodies (Write Bloody North, 2022) and the novel The Convictions of Leonard McKinley (Arsenal Pulp, 2007). He’s the founder of The Fugitives, a Junonominated folk group that has also been nominated for multiple Canadian Folk Music and Western Canadian Music Awards, including Best Songwriter, Best Roots Group, and Best Vocal Group. A former Canadian SLAM poetry champ, he was the Poet of Honour at the 2012 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. He’s an active arts educator, currently touring his shows “Brain”
to secondary schools and “Holy Guacamole, It’s a Poetry Show!” to primary schools. Heather Nolan Alexandra Oliver was born in Vancouver, BC. Her 2013 collection Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway was the recipient of the 2014 Pat Lowther Memorial Award; Let the Empire Down (Biblioasis 2016), was shortlisted for the same in 2017. A third collection, Hail, the Invisible Watchman (Biblioasis 2022), was released in April 2022. Her libretto for From the Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, conceived in conjunction with composer Scott Wilson at the University of Birmingham, was performed by Continuum Music in Toronto in December 2017. Oliver is a past co-editor of Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters (Everyman’s Library/Random House, 2015) as well as the formalist journal The Rotary Dial. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Program and a Ph.D. in English and Cultural Studies from McMaster University. Jessica Outram Stedmond Pardy is a self educated, left handed poet of Caribbean Canadian Descent (St.Kitts/Nevis & Newfound Land) from Toronto, He has performed his work on stages & radio in Toronto, Alberta, Montreal, & the Seattle/Washington state areas. HIs first full length book of poetry “the Pleasures of this Planet aren’t enough” was Published By Mosaic press in 2021. He has Released an Audio book to Accompany it, & Is
currently working on His 2nd Book “Beached whales” Taylor Peebles A soul of a Poet, the clothes of a Beatnik, the attitude of a Philosopher. Hello all, I am Taylor Peebles/ Dorian Grey/ Memoirs of a Moustache. I am a international selling, self published poet who has written 3 full length books of poetry out to wander the world. I have been a host of “Poetry Takes the Nite” held at ‘The Black Sheep Lounge’ in Welland. I have also been a performer at many other poetry/music events through out the last decade, Including “Niagara Falls - Night of Art”, “writers festival” and more to come. Co- host of the online poetry annual poetry meeting “The Niagara Poetry Guild” found on meetup. I enjoy both hosting and reading in-front of people. I have a YouTube Channel “Memoirs of a moustache” full of videos of live performances and home studio sessions where I bring in my love of “Abstract music” and let both my poetry and music swirl around each-other to form a trippy Psychedelic experience. Brandon Pitts (also publishes as Simon Occulis) brandy ryan Christina Shah was born in Ottawa, and lives in Vancouver, where she works in heavy industry. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, including Grain, The Fiddlehead, Vallum, Arc, EVENT, PRISM international, the Malahat Review, and the Antigonish Review. Her work was shortlisted for the Fiddlehead’s 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Award, and was selected
for 2023’s Best Canadian Poetry anthology. She is one-fifth of the Harbour Centre 5 (HC5) Poetry Collective. HC5’s chapbook , ‘Brine’, was released in Spring of 2022. Mimi Silver Marjorie Silverman is an emerging writer from Ottawa-Gatineau, whose poems have been featured in The Maynard, Bywords, and Montréal Writes. Her first poetry collection, (Un)spoken, is forthcoming in 2023 with Now or Never Publishing. Marjorie’s writing attempts to place into dialogue her various identities, including her Jewish cultural heritage and her lifelong struggle with mental health issues. A former psychotherapist, Marjorie is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Ottawa. Her academic research, which focuses on aging, caregiving, cognitive disability, and gender identity, has been published widely in a variety of scientific journals such as Sexualities, Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, Journal of Aging Studies, International Journal of Care and Caring, and the Canadian Journal of Law & Society, among others. A contributer to the Ottawa literary community, Marjorie is a member of the Bywords magazine selection committee. Also a nature lover, she hikes each year in remote locations and spends winters on the ski trails. She lives in the countryside in a bigenerational home with her partner. Mazzy Sleep I started writing in July 2020 when I was eight years old. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury sparked something in
me, and since then I have been writing dark fantasy/horror poems and short stories every day. I’ve also completed two feature screenplays and a novella. Some of my other favorite writers are Louise Glück, Daphne du Maurier, Sara Teasdale, Leonora Carrington, and Kelly Link. Solo Blending lyricism with magick, Solo seeks liberation. Her esoteric practice is dedicated to understanding and integrating the Jungian shadow. This means coming to terms with her authentic self in all its glory: the repressed traumas, hidden instincts and unacceptable desires. Identifying herself as neither victim nor survivor, Solo uses her work to offer an uncensored glimpse into the multifaceted experiences of those affected by abuse and corrupted systems of power. Through exposing her own traumatic experiences, Solo calls into question social structures that profit at the expense of those experiencing abuse. Her poetry opens the door for conversations about issues often left “at home”. She is an avid supporter of community care, and strives to keep her work a safe space for others. She provides trigger warnings for each of her pieces, and continues to share information on local resources within her community. She can be found across the internet @ scryingsolo, or at her website www. scryingsolo.com. Catherine St. Denis Cathy Thorne I love poetry, people and old-school typewriters - and I’ve found the perfect way to combine all three! I write onthe-spot personalized poems
at in-person and virtual events, creating wonderful keepsakes for participants. I also host engaging poetry-writing workshops, passing along my best tips and tricks so that everyone leaves with a poem they’ve created themselves. As a cartoonist with a background in improvisational theatre, creative writing and visual arts, I’m able to quickly connect with guests at any event to write heartfelt, spiritboosting (and sometimes cheeky) poems for them. Believe it or not, the whole process takes only about five minutes! In my one-hour workshops, attendees learn how to organize their thoughts quickly and creatively through a series of short, fun exercises, ultimately resulting in each person creating a poem that has special meaning to them. Anne Marie Todkill Barbara Tran Uchechukwu Umezurike Thomas Wood The LCP would like to extend a big welcome back to our members who have returned to the League this quarter: Maleea Acker, Blanca Nanette Baquero, Charlotte Blair, Henrik Brand, Rocco De Giacomo, Rudyard Fearon, Carla Hartsfield, Elizabeth Johnston, Christine Lowther, Kirsteen MacLeod, Laurie Muirhead, Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Allan Peterkin, Paul Savoie and Magpie Ulysses.
Member News Note: Many LCP members’ most recent member news can be found in the Annual Report, presented ahead of this year’s AGM. Check out the Annual Report Louise Carson was published recently in Subterranean Blue Poetry, The Nashwaak Review, Haiku Anthology 2022, The Daily Haiku, and Poemeleon. She read virtually with other Aeolus House authors for National Poetry Month and live at Viva Vida Art Gallery and the Pincourt Library. Rebecca Anne Banks @ Subterranean Blue Poetry . .Coming Soon! The June 2022 Issue (Volume X Issue V) @ www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com. Title: By the Sea A Poetry Chapbook Launch! A Psalm of Blue by Rebecca Anne Banks, is New Age poetics at its best, neo-classical, symbolist, surrealist written inside the Holy Spirit Way. This oeuvre is in the form of both a cento and an erasure poem, a protest of broken bed rite, a lament for an unknown love affair. The long poem features the lines of Psalms of David: Psalm 23, Psalm 24, Psalm 25 juxtaposed with original writing. First published at Subterranean Blue Poetry (Volume IX
Issue IX). Features an art illustration by the Poet and end note photos of “The Eye” angel statue (David Altmejd) by Victor Tangermann. Written in French and English. Coming to all Ingramsparks media. Hardcopy Codagriffes of Subterranean Blue Poetry are Available @ Amazon Stations. Submission Call! We are l@@king for New Age poetics for: The Christmas 2022 Issue: The Rolling Stones for Christmas. We are on vacances for July and August 2022. “All the poetry, everywhere” “For those subterranean blues” Michelle Poirier Brown released her debut book of poems You Might Be Sorry You Read This in March 2022 from the University of Alberta Press in the Robert Kroetsch Series. A poetic memoir that looks unflinchingly at childhood trauma, the book also tells the story of coming to terms with a hidden Indigenous identity when the poet discovered her Métis heritage at age 38. This collection is a journey of pain, belonging, hope, and resilience that reveals how breaking silences and reconciling identity can refine anger into something both useful and beautiful. Available on Amazon, Indigo, and for order at your local book store.
David Brydges Poets for Ukraine Anthology Fundraiser Fifty-one poets from eight countries contributed poems to the Poets for Ukraine anthology. A live book launch was held in Edmonton on April 24 at Yianni’s Taverna Kasbar as part of the Edmonton Poetry Festival. Members who submitted poems for the Poets for Ukraine anthology Volumes 1&2. A fundraising project in support of the Second Front Ukraine Foundation in Toronto. David C. Brydges David C. Brydges, Blaine Marchand, Marsha Barber, Richard -Yves Sitoski, Katerina Fretwell, Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews, Archna Sahni, Eva Tihanyi, Donna Allard, Penn Kemp and Susan McCaslin.” Heather Cadsby will be giving a poetry reading at The Art Bar Poetry Series in Toronto on Tuesday 16 August 2022 Neall Calvert My poems “River Love” and “You Mountains There!” appear in the Summer edition (Vol. 5) of Strathcona Collective, a full-colour magazine out of Campbell River, Vancouver Island, BC and in its online edition. Both first appeared in Vistas of the West: Poems and Visuals of Nature (Calgary: Durvile, 2019). See: strathconacollective.ca/ featured-words-neall-calvert/ Fern G. Z. Carr In addition to her poetry publications, FERN G. Z. CARR had two of her articles, “Writing Poetry – How to Get Started” and “Poetic Intersections”, published by the Federation of BC Writ-
ers. The latter was in conjunction with National Poetry Month 2022. She was pleased to find her Wikipedia page has since been published in several languages including Azerbaijani and Mandarin. Fern was pleased to present her series of four livestreamed themed poetry readings during the month of May thanks to the support of the League of Canadian Poets and the Canada Council for the Arts. Fern continues to actively curate her poetry YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCUWnUyBQysPMNTFW23BCwdw. She has expanded her channel to include an “Articles” section which includes her poetry and literature-related essays. This channel also features her illustrated narrated poems and live poetry performances (in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin), along with highlights, interviews, free practical poetry lesson plans, plus guides and resources.” George Elliott Clarke GEC’s J’Accuse...! (Poem Versus Silence)--from Guernica Editions--desipite his being maliciously “”cancelled”” 2 years ago (which is the subject of the poem)-- won a ReLit nomination, for which he is grateful, not boastful. GEC’s chapbook, War Canticles, was launched by Vallum (of Montreal) in early May 2022. The title was chosen long before Russia’s attack on Ukraine. But Clarke believes that the Russo-Ukraine War is a preface to a looming Western attack on China. GEC recited poetry by Ho Chi Minh on May 17, 2022, to celebrate Cana-
da-Vietnam friendship. The 5th “5 Poets Breaking Into Song,” featuring songs commissioned by GEC and “musicalized” by James Rolfe, unfurled on May 27, 2022, with co-host East and West Learning Connections. Songs featured were by poets Ayesha Chatterjee, Luciano Iacobelli, Giovanna Riccio, Paul Zemokhol, and Yin Xiaoyuan (of Beijing).
Press, 2022), and one forthcoming in Canadian Literature. She is also a contributor to (M)othering: an Anthology (Inanna, 2022). Over two dozen of her students have poems forthcoming in the youth anthology dedicated to trees: Worth More Growing (Caitlin Press, 2022), and one of her students placed third in the Jessamy Strursberg Poetry Prize.
highlighting poetry collections released during the COVID-19 pandemic that could not be celebrated due to public health-related regulations. “Intimacy and Interconnectedness” Kate Marshall Flaherty read for NPM, with musicians Anne Hurley and Jim Videto Saturday on April 9th for the Great Escapes Bookstore.
Daniela Elza Daniela Elza’s poem Shortcuttings was the second place winner in the Ken Belford Poetry Contest (Thimbleberry, Issue 6, 2022). Her essay on fighting for affordable housing, Market Argument Do Not Work for Those Who Cannot Take Part in the Market, is now in the Summer issue of the Queen’s Quarterly. Eight of her poems written-between-two have appeared in Riddle Fence #41, Community anthology (Gertrudes Writing Room, 2022), Worth More Standing (Caitlin
Katherine Lawrence “New book! Black Umbrella, a poetic memoir published by Turnstone Press, 2022.
Susan McCaslin Poets in Response to Peril, a video-recording of Susan McCaslin reading two poems on Ukraine, March 25, 2022: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNZoI-XJ6eU&list=PLDARA01MjoyW7WccH9j6yGtI3XZhcE0BD&index=33 Poets in Response to Peril,” Zoom readings for Ukraine, April 2, 2022, hosted by Penn Kemp, Richard-Yves Sitkoski, and Susan McCaslin; video-recording of readings posted on Inanna Publications’ website, April 18, as well as information on how to order the anthology of poems proceeding from these readings, also titled Poems in Response to Peril: https://www.inanna. ca/2022/04/18/gathering-voices-inresponse-to-peril-penn-kemp-andsusan-mccaslin/ “Dark Madonna” & “Poets in Response to Peril” in Poets for Ukraine, Vol. 2. Ed. David. C. Brydges (Cobalt, ON, Brydge Builder Press), March 2022, 7-8. “Dark Madonna” & “Poetry in Times of Peril,” in Poems in Response to Peril: An Anthology in Support of Ukraine. Ed. Penn Kemp & Richard-Yves Sitoski, Pendas Productions / Laughing Raven Press,
Annick MacAskill’s third poetry collection, Shadow Blight, has just been published by Gaspereau Press. The book is now available at bookstores across the country and on the Gaspereau Press website (gaspereau.com). Kate Marshall Flaherty hosted the inaugural “Lost Launches” series
London & Owen Sound, ON, 2022), 60-61. “Polyphony” & “O Black Cottonwood,” in Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees. Ed. Christine Lowther (Qualicum Beach, BC: Caitlin Press, 2022), 83 & 158. Reading from selected poems at A Creature Chronicle, Exhibition & Symposium, with artist Betty Spackman, Swallowfield Farm, 7296 Telegraph Trail, Langley, BC, Artists Response Concert, May 21, 2022, 7 pm. https://www.bettyspackman.com/ uploads/1/4/0/9/140927854/a_creature_chronicle_-_2022_swallowfield_program.pdf Naomi Beth Wakan “Time Together Elias and Naomi Beth Wakan Shanti Arts 2022 978-1-956056-41-9 In Time Together, Elias Wakan, perhaps better known as a constructivist artist, chose photos from his slide bank in celebration. For Time Together, a book where Naomi Beth Wakan matches Eli’s photos with her tanka, not only celebrates the 45 years these two artists have worked together, but also the very act of creation itself and, perhaps primarily, the book is a celebration of Gabriola, the Isle of the Arts, so well-known for its steady support of the creative people who live there. As Elizabeth Wood, the installation artists says, “ It is a pleasure to gaze on the images in this book, to observe the distinctly different characteristics of their work and the complementary forces that hold them seamlessly together.”
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 From the LCP Chapbook Series: Visual Poetry Chapbook Edited by Kyle Flemmer. We invite the submission of visual poetry, a diverse category characterized by the graphical interplay of text and image. This includes, but is not limited to: concrete poetry, blackout and erasure poetry, typewriter art, intermedia poetry, asemic writing, and other forms of non-representational language. Images should be 300 DPI or higher and will be printed in greyscale on half a letter-size page (portrait orientation). Deadline is Sunday, August 14, 2022. Find out more. Subterranean Blue Poetry Theme: 1962 The London Times The Rolling Stones, blues and the new rock n’ roll spirits onto the world stage. Of the troubadours, the carousel,
the evolving ‘60s peace and love consciousness the counterculture, psychedelics and the mods. The World’s Greatest Rock n’ Roll Band. Celebrating 60 years of the New Music. L@@king for Poetry and Art/ Photos in the Spirit of The New Age poetics. Poetry/Art/Photos inspired by the music/lyrics, lives and lovers of The Rolling Stones. (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Mick Taylor) Deadline: October 31st, 2022 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
Arc accepts unso licited sub mis sions of previously unpublished poetry in English, or translations of poetry into English, on any subject and in any form. submissions received from April 1 to July 31 will be read for the Winter issue. Deadline is July 31, 2022. Find out more.
Parentheses Journal - Fall Issue We welcome all genres of poetry, in form, length, and content. We specifically like poems that move us in an organic way and work in new and interesting ways with form and content. Set the rules aside. Deadline is September 10, 2022. Find out more.
The /t£mz/ Review - Issue 20 We accept submissions of 1-8 poems, depending on the length of the poems. We prefer poetry submissions to be 10 pages or fewer. You can certainly send us longer submissions, particularly if you are submitting a long poem, but longer submissions need to earn their length. We pay $20 per batch of poems we publish. Our preference is for innovative verse that pushes the boundaries of poetry, but we are open to a wide range of styles and voices. Please submit only once per reading period. The deadline is July 31, 2022. Find out more.
FreeFall Magazine Submit 2-5 poems, any style. Length of any individual poem cannot exceed 6 pages. Payment is $25.00 per poem and one copy of issue that your piece is published in. Payment is made upon publication. Deadline is September 30, 2022. Find out more.
Awards and Contests Now open! The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto Foundation Annual Poetry Award A $500 prize, sponsored by the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto Foundation, to the best single poem by a poet in the early stages of their career. The judges for this award are Concetta Principe and Stuart Ian McKay. Submission fee: $5 Deadline is August 7, 2022. Enter the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto Foundation Annual Poetry Award today! Now open! The Lesley Strutt Poetry Contest is an award that provides a prize for the single best poem submitted to our judges. This contest is open to all poets (professional, emerging, and first-time) in Canada, and is run each
summer in memory of poet and friend Lesley Strutt. The selected winner will receive $500! The Juror for the 2022 Lesley Strutt Poetry contest is Richard-Yves Sitoski. Submission fee: $5 Deadline is August 7, 2022. Enter the Lesley Strutt Poetry Contest today! Ironbridge Open Poetry Competition First prize in our competition will win £300, with a second prize of £125, and three third prizes of £25 each. The competition opens on May 16th, and entries need to be in before the deadline of midnight on July 31st. Entry fee: £4 for one poem, £10 for three. Poems will be read, and winners chosen, by our judge Simon Fletcher. Deadline is July 31, 2022. Find out more.
Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest (Canada’s oldest non-governmental poetry contest) Entry fee: $10 per poem Cash Prizes: $1650: $300 first place, $200 second place, $100 third place, 8 honourable mentions of $75, 9 judge’s choices of $50 Complimentary anthology to all winners. Deadline is Spetember 2, 2022. Find out more. Exile: Gwendolyn McEwen Poetry Competition All forms and styles of poetry considered. Open only to Canadian writers. $1,500 for Best Suite by an Emerging Writer. $1,500 for Best Suite by a Writer at Any Career Point. The total page length of the suite submission is not to exceed 16 pages. It is urged that your suite be complete work, not simply a gathering of unrelated poems. All forms of poetic expression will be considered. Poetry must not have been previously published, and must not have been submitted elsewhere for journal/magazine publication consideration (although it may be from a collection by an author that is forthcoming – but please check with us for eligibility). The prizes are sponsored by David Lampe, in memory of his wife, Ruth Lampe. Deadline is September 15, 2022. Find out more. Prairie Fire McNally Robinson Booksellers Poetry Award Although our deadline is November 30 (postmarked, if mailed), you may submit anytime. By entering our contests you have a chance to win: Cash prize, An invitation to THIN AIR either in-person or virtually (produced by the Winnipeg In-
ternational Writers Festival, subject to festival funding), Publication in Prairie Fire‘s summer issue, With your contest submission you’ll receive a one-year subscription to Prairie Fire, so if would like to start reading Prairie Fire as soon as possible, you can send in your entry today! Entries by email are accepted. Please email submission to prfire@ prairiefire.ca and pay via PayPal or by phoning in a credit card immediately before or after submitting your entry. Info on payment below. Entry Fee: $32 Entries by email are accepted. Prizes are awarded in each of the three categories and winning entries are published in Prairie Fire: 1st prize $750, 2nd prize $350, 3rd prize $150. Deadline is November 30, 2022. Find out more.
Job & Volunteer Opportunities Parliamentary Poet Laureate Call for Nominations - NEW - Extended Deadline for Canada’s Next Parliamentary Poet Laureate. The 10th Parliamentary Poet Laureate will work primarily in French. The Parliament of Canada recognizes the diversity of Canada’s literary scene and encourages the participation of poets from all communities. Nominations for the position can be submitted by a member of a literary or writing organization, a parliamentarian, or directly by interested candidates. Nominations will be reviewed by a selection committee chaired by the Parliamentary Librarian, who will submit a short list of three candidates to the Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the
House of Commons for final selection. For more information on the Parliamentary Poet Laureate, the nomination process, and to learn more about the works of our current and previous Poets, please visit the Parliament of Canada website at www. parl.gc.ca/poet. The deadline for nominations is September 4, 2022.
Residency, Fellowship, Mentorship & Grant Opportunities Now open! P.K. Page Mentorship Program The P.K. Page Mentorship Program was established to support the League’s Associate membership in honing their skill, craft, and professional understanding of poetry in Canada. We are looking for mentor and mentee applicants for the upcoming Fall session (SeptDec 2022). Established poets with two or more trade publications of poetry can apply to be a mentor for the P.K. Page Mentorship Program. At this time, mentors must be Full or Life members of the League of Canadian Poets. Associate and Student members of the League of Canadian Poets may apply to receive mentorship through the PK Page Mentorship Program. Applications are open! Learn more and apply today. Canadian Women Artists’ Award New York Foundation for the Arts The Canadian Women Artists’
Award is a $5,000 cash grant open to Canadian women artists ages 2540 in New York State. The Canadian Women Artists’ Award (CWAA) is supported by funding granted to NYFA by the Canadian Women’s Club (CWC) of New York as a way to continue its philanthropic work when it disbanded. In 2022, CWC and NYFA will be awarding three (3) $5,000 awards. The Canadian Women Artists’ Award is open to Canadian women artists living in New York State eceipt of the award. Deadline is August 30, 2022. Find out more. Banff Centre Winter Writers Retreat 2023 The Winter Writers Retreat is a self-directed program that offers time and space for writers to retreat, reconnect, and re-energize their writing practice. In addition to a single room, and a small private studio, you will be surrounded by a community of artistic peers with the opportunity to attend inspiring talks, performances, and meet with guest faculty to consult on your work. Apply by September 21, 2022. 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 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. We’d like to take this chance to remember and honour Ellen S Jaffe, Walter Hildebrandt & Steven Heighton.
Remembering Ellen S Jaffe 1945 – 2022 From the Globe and Mail Ellen Sue Jaffe was born in New York on March 15, 1945, and grew up in a liberal Jewish household, with parents
she identified politically as “Adlai Stevenson Democrats.” Ms. Jaffe arrived at college knowing that she wanted to write, but not yet thinking of herself as a writer, she told Wellesley Magazine’s Bibliofiles column. For 20 years, from the early 1980s through 2000, she lived in Woodstock. She became a Canadian citizen in 1993, and published poems in several anthologies as well as three books of her own poetry in the 1990s. She lived the next 20 years in Hamilton, where she published seven more books, from 2001 to 2019, winning three Hamilton Arts Council (now Arts Hamilton) Awards. During Ms. Jaffe’s final days, the Ontario Poetry Society announced it will create a biannual award in her honour, the Ellen S. Jaffe Humanist Award for Poetry, with $500 for the first prize win-
ner and five runners-up receiving $100 each. Ms. Jaffe shared her March 15 birthday with the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, poet Heidi Greco notes. “I think of the two of them together now,” she wrote, “two short-of-stature women joined by their Jewishness, their intelligence and their compassion. Ms. Greco is one of many other poets Ms. Jaffe found who were eager to read her poems, and share theirs with her, through organizations such as the League of Poets, The Writers’ Union of Canada, Voices (Israel Group of Poets in English) and CANSCAIP, for authors of children’s books. And every poem of Ms. Jaffe’s, every class or workshop she taught, came with a gentle psychotherapist’s touch. “For me,” Ms. Jaffe told Wellesley Magazine, “part of a writer’s job is to experience uncertainties and difficulties – personal and in the wider world – and then find words and images to write about them with empathy and precision.” Ms. Jaffe treated her final illness the same way, sharing her hopes and concerns on a public blog as she slogged her way through treatments for rapidly metastasizing tumours on her liver and elsewhere. On Feb. 10, she wrote that her heart had already chosen against more chemotherapy. “I want to live peacefully,” she wrote, “enjoy time with the people I love, being in nature (especially in spring and summer), and use palliative care to help manage symptoms like fatigue.” Her son, Joe, said he thinks she will be remembered “as a person who was not only passionate about and successful in her own writing, but who took pure joy in helping others explore and express their own creativity.” He continued his hope that posterity will recognize her as someone who “embraced her writing and those around her with such a depth of love
that it made a woman five feet tall feel like an absolute giant.” Ms. Jaffe leaves her partner, Roger Gilbert; her son, Mr. Bitz; three stepchildren, Vance Gilbert, Teri Gilbert, Simon Gilbert-Johnson; two grandchildren and three step-grandchildren. To the end, Ms. Jaffe lived by a belief she articulated at Wellesley, in a Chapel Talk she gave in 1968: “Art can never be merely technique, but must somehow embody and translate a sense of life, of what it means to be alive.”
Remembering Walter Hildebrandt 1951 – 2021 Beloved husband, father, brother, uncle, brother-in-law, friend, poet, historian, publisher, and Saskatchewan Roughrider fan, Walter passed away at St. Paul’s hospital in Vancouver following a heart attack. No one loved life more than Walter; he lived life to the full and enjoyed every minute. His motto and main advice was “no fussing.” Born in Brooks, AB, to Gerhard and Ilse (Goetze) Hildebrandt, who immigrated from war torn Russia and Germany. The family moved to Saskatoon where Walter attended Brunskill, Evan Hardy and the U of Saskatchewan, graduating with an M.A. in history. He met his life-long partner and best friend Sarah Carter at U of S and they moved in 1979 to Winnipeg where he worked as historian for Parks Canada. In his writing and public history work he shook up conventional narratives and drew attention to marginalized voices and experiences. He sought more just visions of the past and future. Walter’s treasured daughter Mary was born in Winnipeg, and together the family moved to Calgary (1992) and Edmonton (2006). He was director of the U of Calgary Press and then Athabasca University Press. His many books include collaborative work with Indigenous Elders: The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7,
and Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan, co-authored with the late Harold Cardinal. Walter wrote long poems and his 14th book Rupture: North West 1885 is now at press. Where the Land Gets Broken won the Stephan G. Stephansson prize in 2005. He worked with artists and photographers to create beautiful books. Walter is pre-deceased by his parents and brother Juergen Doerr. He is survived and dearly missed by Sarah, daughter Mary (Paul Royer), brother Ralph (Bobby), sister Margrit McCreath (Scott) and sister-in-law Uta Doerr. He was a cherished brotherin-law and uncle to many nieces and nephews. Sociable, and with a wry and irreverent sense of humour, Walter made friends everywhere, including in his neighbourhood, and at the Glenora Club where he went daily. He lived a rich and full life and there is so much more to say. Walter wrote a poem “15th Street” in memory of his brother Juerg about their and Ralph’s long summer evenings playing football and street hockey that ended: “... those times will be with us forever, timeless, immemorial; I see you still in your long sleep and mine, zigging and zagging across the lawns of 15th St.; Figures racing across green fields and it seems always playing well into the dark.”
Remembering Steven Heighton 1961 – 2022 From the Toronto Star The poet Karen Solie has a vivid memory of Steven Heighton, from a trip she took to a writing festival in Cork, Ireland. Heighton had expressed interest in a pub he’d seen and suggested Solie meet him there once she was done for the day. When she arrived, she found Heighton surrounded by a group of locals, a guitar in his hands, playing and singing songs and beaming with happiness.
“That was the kind of person he was,” Solie said. “He would go in there, someone’s playing a guitar, and he would join right in. He would gravitate toward that group of happy people playing music.” Heighton, who died of cancer on April 19 at the age of 60, was well known for this kind of affability, and for the care and compassion he took in dealing with other people. Whether it was giving a pep talk to a fellow author at a less-than-well-attended book signing, or kicking a soccer ball around with a group of children while dressed in black Oxfords and his trademark black leather jacket, Heighton had an egalitarian and joyful attitude toward everyone he encountered. “Steven was one of the most sincere people I think I’ve ever known,” said friend and Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Michael Redhill. “Some people might call that earnest, but it wasn’t in Steven. It was authentic.” That sincerity should not be confused with sentimentality: over four novels, seven poetry collections, three books of short fiction, as well as essays, a children’s book and an album of original music, Heighton proved clear-eyed and resolute in the face of the world’s cruelties and inequities. “(C)easeless growth is a fantasy unless you’re talking about cancer,” he wrote in a 2020 essay for the Star, a comment that in retrospect carries the force of a gut punch. “And there’s no equation that amounts to happiness.” Steven Heighton was born in Toronto and grew up in Red Lake, Ont. He earned an MA from Queen’s University in Kingston, the city where he would make his home for the bulk of his writing career. Situating himself intentionally away from the publishing centre of Toronto gave Heighton an outsider’s perspective that Metcalf feels informed his writing, as did a youthful Romanticism that stayed with him for his whole life. “He was almost overflowing with
language,” Metcalf said. “He was the last capital ‘R’ Romantic,” said novelist Andrew Pyper, whose early stories Heighton published as fiction editor for the literary journal Quarry before passing them along to Metcalf at Porcupine’s Quill. “He was a true believer in the calling.” It’s a sentiment Metcalf echoes. “He had a kind of priestly attitude toward literature. He felt like we were its servants and that was the right place to be,” Metcalf said. “There was a kind of reverence in his writing.” While proving highly attuned to the vicissitudes of a literary life, Heighton’s comment also highlights his almost fanatical devotion to language, syntax and the sonic play of a well-formed sentence. These were elements that adhered to all his written work, but most especially his short fiction and poetry. “Glare off the salt / had long since seared his peripheral vision,” Heighton writes in “Untaken Turns,” from his 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award-winning collection “The Waking Comes Late.” “(H)e saw only ahead, he went only there / as on some grim, involuntary mission, / though his own poems, frantic, begged him Stop.” “He wrote a very restless kind of poetry,” said Redhill. “He could go places in his poetry that would have been hard for other poets to handle unironically.” For a writer so adept at crossing genres, Heighton was also highly attuned to the more difficult aspects of the writing life, which perhaps contributed to the empathy and compassion with which he treated his peers. “He was a very good friend when the chips were down or when you hit the inevitable moments of disappointment,” said Pyper. “Not because he would provide cheerleading, but he would be someone to say, ‘This is really the genuine part of the writer’s life, these bleak moments.’ The other flashing seconds are the exception to the rule.” This is the Steven Heighton that most
people are remembering in social media tributes: the generous, humble, compassionate individual who could just happen to construct a pitch-perfect sentence to fit almost any occasion. Daniel Wells, publisher of Biblioasis — the Windsor, Ont., press that brought out “Reaching Mithymna” and will publish Heighton’s forthcoming short story collection, “Instructions for the Drowning,” later this year — put it like this: “He challenged and encouraged in equal measure, almost always getting the balance right. In this age of ironic detachment he risked being earnest, vulnerable, showing care and concern.” Reading the title story from the upcoming collection, which was first published in the summer 2021 issue of The Threepenny Review, former House of Anansi Press publisher Martha Sharpe was once again floored by Heighton’s ability. “I read it and I was just blown away,” said Sharpe, who worked on the poetry collections “The Ecstasy of Skeptics” and “The Address Book,” as well as the essay collection “The Admen Move on Lhasa.” “The things included and the things not included: he was really, really good at that.” “He was so versatile and so endlessly curious about humanity and human experience,” said Nicole Winstanley who, as publisher of Penguin Canada, signed Heighton’s most recent novel, 2017’s “The Nightingale Won’t Let You Sleep.” “There is such a universal quality to his work. It belongs alongside the greats from around the world.” Perhaps the cruellest irony of all is that such a remarkable talent could be taken at such a young and robust point in his professional and personal life. “You look at Steven Heighton and think if someone like that can be cut down at the age of 60, we should all be hiding in our basements,” Redhill said. Steven W. Beattie is a writer in Stratford, Ont.