Issue 20 Vol. 1
Spring 2023
Quarterly News from the League of Canadian Poets
20.1 |
Spring 2023
Updates on the 2023 AGM
National Poetry Month: JOY Poster
Bill Arnott’s Beat
Book Review: ineffable, The Mystical Poems of Edwin Varney
LCP Annual General Meeting 2023
Save the date! The 2023 Annual General Meeting for the League of Canadian Poets is Tuesday, June 20, 2023 at 2pm EST. This meeting will be held online, via ZOOM.
Winners Announcement of the Very Small Verse and Broadsheet Contest: coming soon! Look out for the next Between The Lines newsletter on March 21 for the winners of our Cold Moon Contests
Book Awards Announcements
Coming soon
Save the date! Longlists for the 2022 Book Awards will be announced on April 6.
National Poetry Month 2023: JOY NPM is just around the corner! Visit LCP’s NPM base for ways to celebrate, downloadable Joy graphics, NPM fun and more! Visit NPM 2023
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! Deadline is April 30, 2023. Find out more.
P.K. Page Mentorship Program
- Applications are open! - PK Page mentorship sessions run twice annually, from September to December, and from January to March. Applications for mentors and mentees are accepted yearround, and will be processed prior to the next closest session. Mentees and mentors will meet every other week (likely digitally) for two hours to discuss a poetry work-in-progress as agreed upon prior to the mentorship start date. Learn more
Funding: Now open! Poetry Consultation and Workshops Fund: Receive up to $1,500 in funding and build new poetry connections! LCP This fund will offer financial support
for professional poets who are offering workshops or consultation sessions. Learn more today and apply.
The Ontario Arts Council (OAC) is fully relaunching its support to touring activity with a new component to support tour capacity. In preparation for this, OAC commissioned a market development report from Nordicity, examining the current and future state for touring artists. The modified program, Touring and Circulation Projects supports tour building activity with two categories – one for small to mid-scale tours and another for
large-scale tours – each with two deadlines a year. The program funds performing arts tours as well as literary presentations and visual and media arts exhibitions. It is focused on building relationships with presenters and offers opportunities to develop the tour when it is at the “idea” stage. The tours must have a minimum of three engagements planned and at least one confirmed. Market development, artistpresenter networking and audience-building activities are eligible as long as they are connected to a confirmed presentation or exhibition outside the applicant’s home base. This same principle applies to an artistic residency, eligible only if at least one public presentation is part
of the residency. Consideration will be given to environmentally sustainable tours. Learn more.
New titles are now available! Pick up your copy today.
-Adventitious Sounds: A chapbook for medical practitioners, learners and poets, edited by Zamina Mithani
-Spectral Lines: a visual poetry anthology, edited by Kyle Flemmer
-The Next Generation: Volume III selected poems from the 2022 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize for Canadian Youth
-The Compassionate Poet: an Exploration – 2022 Feminist Caucus Living Archives chapbook, edited by Renee
Sarojini SaklikarOrder a chapbook!
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.
Join a Community Committee of the League!The League of Canadian Poets is excited to invite active members of the League to sign up for committees that align with their interests and passions. Learn more and join a community committee.
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 March.
Do you have a great poetryrelated 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
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 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!
We hope you are staying well and warm as winter marches on – the little bits of sun here and there have been a lifeline, lately!
Our 2023 Annual General Meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 20 at 2pm EST. Formal notice of the AGM, including all necessary documents, will be sent on or before May 20, 2023. In the meantime, we want to provide you with ample opportunity to learn more and engage with our upcoming AGM, and connect with the LCP team as necessary.
Registration for the AGM is now open - RSVP today
At the AGM, the following business takes place:
◆ Minutes of the past year’s AGM are reviewed
◆ Treasurer presents financials from past year and budget for upcoming year
◆ Treasurer recommends an auditor appointment for upcoming year
◆ President presents slate of nominees for Board of Directors
◆ President presents an annual report on programs, membership, engagement, and community impact
This business meeting is an opportunity for members to review the ongoing operations and budget of the League, and your presence is vital to the meeting’s success. We understand that our in-person AGMs used to offer a wonderful opportunity for connecting with your fellow poets, and we regret that this is no longer the case; however, we have also seen record turnout year after year for our virtual AGMs, for which we are so grateful! We are also now thrilled to be running regular virtual events open to all members in order to facilitate that irreplaceable poet-to-poet connection throughout the year. Additionally, the Member Information Session on the Friday preceding the AGM (this year, June 16) is much more casual, if you’re looking for an opportunity to connect more personally with staff and LCP members.
If there is a matter of business you would like to see added to our AGM agenda, voting members of the League (like you!) may submit a
proposal for a motion at any time throughout the year; the deadline to submit a motion or notice of special business for the 2023 LCP AGM is Thursday, April 20, 2023. You can find all of the Ontario Notfor-Profit Corporations Act information about submitting motions in Section 56.
It is important to note that any changes to our By-Laws cannot be voted on until our 2024 AGM. Please note as well that questions or concerns about programming, committees, policies, and procedures are likely best addressed with the staff and Board directly, or at the Member Information Session on Friday, June 16 (links and more information to come in May) rather than at the AGM.
If you have a question and you’re not sure if it’s a motion, special business, or just a question, you can submit those here for Board and staff to review.
We are so grateful to you, our incredible membership, for your support and encouragement last year when we updated our By-Laws, and we have appreciated your patience, innovation, and understanding as our small organization has seen that restructuring through to fruition this year. We kindly ask for your continued patience in responding to your inquiries over the next few months as our very small staff make it through our busy season. And speaking of busy season… we hope you’re reading for National Poetry Month in April! You can keep an eye on all things NPM on our website.
I was preparing for National Poetry Month 2023, this particular year a celebration of Joy, when, to my delight, I was asked by London’s Royal Geographical Society to prepare a multimedia presentation of my travels, a summary of people and places with geographical significance, all of it centered on poems, and joy. “Outstanding!” I thought. This venerable group had no idea how perfect this was. I’ve always felt travel, irrespective of where we go, from a stroll outside to an overseas expedition, is all very much a poem. Joy tends to surface throughout the experience. Which in turn offers us, as poets, a choice: to simply savour it all, or perhaps, to capture those feelings on paper.
The Geographical Society’s mandate is seemingly simple, yet entails boundless interpretation, not unlike poetic composition. On paper (no pun intended) it might seem straight forward, in this case to advance geographic knowledge and education around the world. Society members are a unique group: scien-
tists such as Darwin and Shackleton, along with modern day adventurers including Microsoft’s Kate Edwards and globetrotting Python Michael Palin.
The first time I visited the Society’s London base, across the street from Hyde Park, I was well into my Gone Viking excursions, trekking the globe in the wake of explorers, crossing Europe, Scandinavia and the Arctic at the time. Now, fittingly enough, as part of my own NPM celebration, I’d completed another enormous undertaking, returning to historic locales to complete the final installment of my travelogue trilogy, Gone Viking III: The Holy Grail (RMBooks 2023), the book incorporating new poems along with my memoir. Aptly enough, my late literary companion for much of the trek was fellow Royal Geographical Society member Knud Rasmussen. While this adventurous Greenlandic-Dane may be best known for dogsledding the Arctic and educating the world on northern Indigenous culture, he was first and foremost a poet.
In preparation for my latest adventure, I joined a lecture with Kate Edwards, pivotal innovator in modern geography, what’s resulted in us viewing the world via Google. “Maps,” she explained, “are the original art form.” Which of course I categorize
with poetry and song. Her words resonated. When our hairy ancestors first reimagined the world through artistic expression on cave walls by way of red handprints or sketching a mammoth, the next artistic rendering in human history was landscape imagery. A map. The physical world we know and that bit just beyond, blurs on the cusp of comprehension, where myth and lore collide and the only means of grasping it all is through poetry, song, or fantastical visual art. Expressions of joy and raw creativity. All fuelled by a desire to explore, experience, to learn and to share.
Since that first handprint pressed on a wall, in its way a nonverbal poem and map (I was here), these art forms have been imperative, interpreting our world: topography, flora, fauna, where we scavenge or hunt to feed, clothe, and shelter our tribe. We require the effort, at times speculative and imagined, of writers and poets and makers of maps, explorers and geographers like those of a cartographic society. This discipline, however, entails much more than plotting coordinates. Akin to creating a poem, making a map is an art and a science, open to interpretation, incorporating endless ingredients, from socioeconomic to political content, demographic to environmental. As I see it, all of us are mapmakers and poets, geographic explorers, sourcing new ways to interpret the world: location, emotion, sentiment captured and shared through innovative, provocative means. The very things that motivate me to throw books in a pack and to wander, writing it all as I go. Same as each of us. Our means and our output may vary
but objectives are invariably mutual. Bringing joy, knowing joy, sharing joy, plotting paths through the words of our poems, mapping unending terrain, imagined cave walls, finding and leaving our mark.
Bill Arnott is the bestselling author of Gone Viking: A Travel Saga, Gone Viking II: Beyond Boundaries, Gone Viking III: The Holy Grail (2023), and A Season on Vancouver Island. He’s been awarded by The Miramichi Reader’s Very Best Book Awards, Firebird Book Awards, ABF International Book Awards, Whistler Independent Book Awards, and for his expeditions been granted a Fellowship at London’s Royal Geographical Society. When not trekking the globe with a small pack and journal or showing off cooking skills as a culinary school dropout, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast, making music and friends.
@billarnott_aps
The Mystical Poems (2022). Edwin has published over twenty books and chapbooks of poetry, and he is well known for his activity in the arts community, in Canada and internationally, as a poet, visual artist, publisher, and mail art artist.
Back in 1977, I reviewed Edwin Varney’s Human Nature (1974), published in CV II (Vol. 3, no. 2); it was my first published book review. And here I am, so many years later, reviewing Edwin Varney’s new chapbook, i neffable,
In these poems Edwin writes of having mystical experiences and although these experiences are ineffable this is exactly what he does, he writes of “that which cannot be spoken about aloud . . .” Many people have been interested in mysticism, including myself; it is defined by W. T. Stace as an experience of the “undifferentiated unity of the universe.” Stace’s book, The Teachings of the Mystics (1960), which I read in the early 1970s, is mentioned in the bibliography of ineffable, The Mystical Poems . But read Edwin’s poems for a less intellectual and more immediate description of this experience. Mysticism is a spiritual experience common to all religions; but, ironically, it is also without the need for the accoutrements of organized religion.
Edwin uses a format in this chapbook that is similar to several other chapbooks he published with The Poem Factory, a press that he founded with my wife Carolyn Zonailo. The format is a running prose statement, or a single sentence, in the header of the page or several pages, and the poems are placed beneath this header. This format gives a unity to the book as well as, in this case, a description of the mystical experience in both prose and poetry; however, in describing a profound experience, poetry often trumps prose; poetry is the experience, prose describes the experience. He writes, “Poetry, because of its use of metaphor, simile, paradox, and generative use of language, is the most evocative, precise, and highly charged form of communicating these experiences.” (7)
While this chapbook offers only eight of Edwin’s poems, he has notebooks full of unpublished poems; I have seen his notebooks and diaries lined up on library shelves in his former Vancouver home, and Carolyn Zonailo edited Solar Eclipse , (The Poem Factory, 1994), a chapbook of some of these notebook poems. The simple, direct, style in ineffable, The Mystical Poems is the product of a lifetime of writing and also of a particular type of personality, one who values truth and authenticity over obscurity, one who values the human dimension. He writes, “I was there,
completely there./ A door opened to somewhere else/ and I entered into the world.”
In “The Field” Edwin remembers a summer day when he saw a snake shedding its skin, “leaving behind a dry husk”, and this image becomes a metaphor for his own life; “I too will shed my skin/ and flesh, too soon.” Life is short, it is an experience of chronological time in the timeless cosmic zone. This poem is about the transience of life and our life in this world, in which every phase of life—childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age— is an incarnation and a gateway to the next incarnation, we shed lives as the snake sheds his old skin; “There is only the present”, he writes, so don’t worry about the future.
Edwin’s poem, “Angel”, describes our common spiritual/psychological journey in life. It is the archetypal fall from innocence into experience, as described by William Blake, and perfectly expressed, succinctly expressed, in Edwin’s poem. “A man fell from eternity into time.// In another age,/ he might have been called an angel/ but that was when people/ knew more about these things.” And then life unfolds and one “wandered thru work,/ relationships, money, love/ politics, health, and all the things/ we share as occupiers of this planet.” The final two lines of the poem illuminate the experience for us; he writes,
“When I hit the ground,// I was broken but I remembered.” And what did the narrator remember? He remembered the eternal, his metaphorical angelic origin, the divine inspiration of nature, and that while we are in the world we are not necessarily of this world. It is where “. . . all contradictions vanish,/ a point where love is the only motive.” (“Point of No Return”, p. 12)
The authenticity of Edwin Varney’s poems bridges definition and the thing defined; his work is an achievement of expression, his work is authentic. He writes,
Notes: One : All poets should know something of mysticism in poetry, whether in Rumi, Rimbaud, Whitman, William Blake, or other poets who have been “inspired”, which means they have had spirit breathed into them, by God or nature or serendipity. Poetry can be an expression of a mystical, cosmic, experience; prose rarely is.
Two : It benefits poets if they publish chapbooks; with desk top publishing it is very easy to self-publish, or publish others, at low cost, in editions of any number you want, and distribute these chapbooks free of charge, or at any price you want, to other poets in order to keep in touch with our small community of poets, to build relationships, and share current work. The message is: keep a dialogue going. It is also more important now than ever to publish in print, poetry is a print medium, print on paper. Reading on a screen is not the same as reading something printed on paper.
The Poem Factory, 4426 Island Highway South, Courtenay, BC
V9N 9T1
Three : Two other books I would add to Edwin’s bibliography on mysticism are Colin Wilson’s Poetry and Mysticism (1969) and R.M. Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousnmess (1901). Colin Wilson writes about individual poets, for instance Wordsworth, and discusses examples of mystical experience in specific poems. R.M. Bucke describes cosmic consciousness as a
So look around and listen, be present, If you look deep enough inside yourself, you see the world. You will be at home wherever you are
“Lighthouse Park”, (5-6)
ineffable, The Mystical Poems may be ordered by writing to:
mystical experience that he claims all great poets and artists experience, including his personal friend Walt Whitman; Bucke’s book is a compendium of poets and artists whose work has been an expression of cosmic consciousness and how it finds its expression in their creative work. For Bucke this is part of the evolution of consciousness, moving away from an isolated consciousness to unity with life, nature, other people, and even the universe. Anyone interested in this subject might read all of the books Edwin lists in his bibliography.
Four : Another book, of less importance but still interesting, and not for inclusion in Edwin’s “Selected
Bibliography About Mysticism”, is Timothy Leary’s The Politics of Ecstasy (1998); Leary’s book is about the LSD experience and I mention it because psychedelic drugs seem to offer some promise for healing psychological problems; psychedelic pharmaceuticals offer a analogous mystical perception of life, but it is not a mystical experience.
Stephen Morrissey is a Montreal-born poet who also writes criticism and book reviews. His most recent book is The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry (Ekstasis Editions, 2022). Visit the poet at www.stephenmorrissey.ca.
See what Leaguers have to say about what they’ve been reading, naming collections and more!
Thank you to everyone who responded to the most recent Poetry Pause questions! Check out our new batch of questions.
Tell us about your favourite book of poetry that you read 2022:
Dagne Forrest: I absolutely adored Honorifics by Cynthia Miller. A debut collection, it’s very assured, exploring cultural identity, immigration, and family through a delightfully eclectic range of images and forms. It’s the kind of collection I find myself returning to regularly.
Daniel G Scott: Exculpatory Lilies by Susan Musgrave - astonishing journey through death and loss with uncanny insight and courage. The craft embodied is stunning.
Amanda Earl: Bluest Nude by Ama Codjoe. Many of the poems center around Black women as seen in art. These are very strong poems with excellent imagery. I have re -
turned to several of the poems and read them again. Also Magnolia, 木蘭 by Nina Mingya Powles. A gift to a synaesthete. Full of colour and sensory detail. Culture, food, language, China. I loved this collection of poems so much, I’ll have to reread again. Slowly.
Andrea Martineau: Little House Wolf by Medrie Purdham. It is delightful, thoughtful, and wise, while still channeling the perplexing and creative way a child views the world.
Anne Burke: That would be playing favourites among my poet friends, so an unfairness arises. In general, I read poetry for pleasure (mine and others).
Honey Novick: Mother, the Verb Swan Sisters Treasure Book by Linda Rogers van Krugel.
Paul Edward Costa: My favourite book of poetry that I read this past year Me, You, Then Snow by Khashayar Mohammadi (Gordon Hill Press). I really enjoyed how
smoothly they weave together conversational tones, poetic symbolism, pop-culture, and personal exploration. It doesn’t feel forced or like various different approaches clashing. To make these aspects mesh takes tremendous skill and creativity.
Jennifer Cox: Shadow Blight.
Cheryl Antao-Xavier: World Poetry--an anthology of poetry from antiquity to our time; Eds. Katherine Washburn and John S. Major; 1998. One of several prized possessions. Is to be buried or cremated with me, so I can continue picking through it for inspiration in style and form.
Stephen Kent Roney: True Confessions, I.B. Iskov.
nan williamson: the curator of silence by Jude Nutter. beautiful, intimate, musical
D.A. Lockhart: Jim Harrison’s Complete Poems. It’s a bit of a cheat, yes. Because it is an entire career’s worth of the work. And work from a literary master. One that covers much of the physical spaces I inhabited in both Michigan and Montana. These are touchstones to a shared world with a man I never met. Yet on that blazed a literary and lyric trail that I follow to this day.
lished a few years back. So , I have a few, but Mary Oliver’s book House of Light is one that’s still in a place I can reach without thinking.
Kamal Parmar: I have recently read a poetry book titled, Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur. The poems are poignant and thought provoking.
Cheryl Antao-Xavier: I grew up in a country where the bulbul was an incessant chirper, invasive nester, and generally regarded as an ubiquitous disturber of the peace. They became targets of slingshots to disperse them. My next collection of poems reflects the unwitting irritant that alien species of humans, birds, environmental degradating factors etc. have on normal, regular, ‘the usual’. So excited about this.
Stephen Kent Roney: I named it after a doomed love affair.
Dianne Joyce: I have been reading books new to me that were pub -
Kamal Parmar: My latest poetry collection is titled, ‘Just passing by.’ As a nature lover, I often walk or hike on trails leading among the forests, going uphill and downhill to find a beautiful hidden brook beside wild bulrushes. It is in these moments that a few lines come to mind that fill me with a sacred stillness. So, I thought that the ti-
tle resonated very well with the source of inspiration that connects me with the Muse.
Andrea Martineau: Kirby pins is another name for bobby pins. These tiny hair pieces act as messages between two starcrossed lovers.
Dianne Joyce: The title of my most recent collection, is a name that came after reading a book on Feng Shui. It’s a special energy that comes with the placement of things. Perfect for my purposes, but I’ll keep the name to myself. That said, the title of my recent chapbook is ORBIT. For years I seem to be orbiting around the same ideas, but failing to write about them. These poems arrived first as part of the larger collection
and revolve around the poem Orbit, and are connected to an art piece of mine.
Anne Burke: Most poetry collections choose me to be better understood than most.
D.A. Lockhart: The title is a folksy take on claiming the south shore of Waawiiyaatanong (Windsor, ON) for it’s original and generally unrecognized land keepers the Odawa people. It plays with the musicality of the pieces and a homage to the rich musical heritage of both shores of Waawiiyaatanong.
Paul Edward Costa: The most recent manuscript I put together is titled “Vigils of the Night Office” I always loved the phrase “The Night Office” when studying Medieval
History at York University (from the book “The Rule of St. Benedict”). These vigils are nighttime prayers for Benedictine monks. The poems are separated by category and each section is considered one of the “Vigils” of the book. I like the idea of poems as a kind of prayers for the night.
Honey Novick: I sought out my heart’s feelings and then prayed for the courage to share that
nan williamson: “leave the door open for the moon” is my chapbook title. Many of my poems had a moon image and I also meant be open to beauty, wonder…
Daniel G Scott: By editing a longer title and worrying the whole time that it needed something else. Travels with Athóma says enough.
Amanda Earl: My forthcoming poetry book is entitled Beast Body Epic. I knew the title almost as soon as I began drafting the manuscript in 2012/2013. It concerns the journey that began with my neardeath health crisis in 2009 and engages with the monstrousness of the feminine body, and is a feminist anti-epic. I thought of Dante’s Divine Comedy, especially Inferno, the monstrous feminine and the body undergoing pain, trauma, surgeries.
ed my way through several different titles as the shape and nature of the collection have changed over the last year. This sounds like a question I should revisit in the future! Just for fun: If your poetry was a means of travel, which would it be and why?
Honey Novick: Poetry is my means of travel by flight. When I need sustenance, I call forth the wings of poetry and when they appear, I fly to worlds transformed by imagination and remembrance.
Andrea Martineau: It would be a subway -- sometimes messy and rough around the edges, but quickly takes you from point A to point B.
Dagne Forrest: I tend to think I would choose a means of conveyance that is slow and deliberate, as much of my poetry is very grounded in a form of enquiry that requires a bit of patience, and yet my love of exploring a large range of topics, including physics and the cosmos, makes flight also seem essential. I wonder if a glider might make sense!
Dagne Forrest: I’m still working on a first collection and have navigat-
Anne Burke: When the caterpillar is full grown it becomes a pupa called a chrysalis, either suspended, hidden or buried; inside a cocoon of silk. The monarch migrates
long distances evanescent and splendorous. For all the body is shed and the new body appears with beautiful nearly transparent wings. Then that metamorphosis means flight for a butterfly, however briefly, until the cycle of life begins again.
Jennifer Cox: Bicycle or train.
Dianne Joyce: It would be a spaceship, of course. So I could get a look at the big picture and gain some clarity. Besides, I was up there once in the great beyond travelling at the speed of light in a hypnagogic spacescape. It was amazing!
Amanda Earl: My poetry is a long, slow thoughtful lifelong walk. I find my poems by walking. Travel is a late 14th C. word that meant to toil, to labour. My mind is my means of travel but a long walk will always get my synapses going. If I could run, I’d run lines by foot and breaks with my breath.
Stephen Kent Roney: It is a means of travel. It is a magic carpet.
Paul Edward Costa: If my poetry was a means of travel, it would be an extremely durable and sturdy pair of boots whose wear and tear has given it a tone that is, in other places, artificially crafted and sold for high prices in such a state. These boots don’t give you superhuman speed or flight but they will
let you keep walking steadily when the heroes have fallen and the speedsters have tripped on their own runaway momentum.
Cheryl Antao-Xavier: Plane first. Car (after my catarract operation in March).
Daniel G Scott: Flight but not in a vehicle, just flying. I think the spirit can soar and sink in poetry but it is language that gives wings to felts and thoughts.
Kamal Parmar: If poetry was a means of travel, it would be the poetic Muse in the form of dreams that are seamless and beyond imagination.
D.A. Lockhart: Car, most likely a 2000 Ford Ranger Flare Side. Rear wheel drive so as to reach optimal continental drift speeds cutting across I-80 through Nebraska, Iowa, and into the Rockies. Perhaps floating through the hills of southern Indiana, on the look out for wildcats and paw paws. Thelonius Monk tapping out the distance on his piano the entire time.
nan williamson: in the cradle of the crescent moon
New Poetry Parlour questions are now available! Click here to share your thoughts
Rose Adams
Anabelle Aguilar Brealey
Ashleigh Anne Allen was born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario. After graduating with honours from Queen’s University, she earned an MFA in poetry at The New School and an MA in English education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has taught literature and various creative writing courses in classroom and community settings since 2008, first in New York City and, more recently, in Toronto. In both cities, she has sought alternative ways of being together with others that centre the lives, desires, and futures of the people, communities, and land. Her poetry has recently appeared in the minnesota review, The Malahat Review, Fourteen Hills, and PRISM international.
Kathy Ashby
Lauren Best
Joe Bishop
Virginia Boudreau
Angela Bowden
James Byrne
Helen Chang
Janice Colman
Bret Crowle
Jen Currin
Candace de Taeye writes poetry occasionally. Her work has been previously published in Arc, BAD NUDES, Carousel, CNQ, CV2, Grain, Vallum and others. She recently completed her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. She has published two chapbooks ‘Roe’ and ‘The Ambulance Act’. The poetry collection “Pronounced/ Workable’ will be published by Mansfield Press fall 2022. During the day, and more often at night she works as a paramedic in Toronto’s downtown core. She lives in Guelph with her partner, kids, some geriatric treefrogs and a 25 lb tortoise.
Dr. Patrick James Errington is a poet, translator, critic, editor, and academic from the prairies of Alberta, Canada. He is the author of two chapbooks of poems, Glean (ignitionpress, 2018) and Field Studies (Clutag Press, 2019), and his collection, the swailing is forthcoming from McGill-Queens University Press in April 2023. Patrick’s poems feature in magazines, journals,
and anthologies around the world – including Poetry Review, Poetry International, The Cincinnati Review, Boston Review, The Iowa Review, Harvard Review, Best New Poets, Poets.org, Oxford Poetry, Copper Nickel, West Branch, CV2, Passages North, Diagram, Cider Press Review, and Horsethief – and have received numerous international prizes, including The National Poetry Competition, the Wigtown Poetry Competition, The London Magazine Poetry Competition, the Flambard International Prize, the McLellan Poetry Prize, the Plough Prize, the 2020 Callan Gordon/Scottish New Writers Award, and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award from the Writer’s Trust of Canada. Meanwhile, his French translation (with Laure Gall) of PJ Harvey and Seamus Murphey’s The Hollow of the Hand, entitled Au creux de la main, was released by Éditions l’Âge d’Homme in 2017.
Patrick is currently translating the French-Romanian philosopher E.M. Cioran’s Notebooks: 1957–1975 for New York Review Books, carrying on the work of the late poet and translator Richard Howard, as well as the work of French-Algerian poet and painter Hamid Tibouchi. A graduate of the University of Alberta (Bachelor of Arts, 2011), where he studied under the late Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, Patrick holds an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in writing and literary translation from Columbia University (2015) and a PhD for his research in poetic theory and enactive hermeneutics from the University of St Andrews (2018). Having taught at numerous institutions, including the Universities of St Andrews, Dundee, Edinburgh Napier, and Columbia, Patrick is now a Lecturer in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh, where he teaches
literature and creative writing and is also the primary and co-investigator on several interdisciplinary research projects.
Sareh Farmand
Tracy Francis
Dharmpal Mahendra Jain Born (1952) and raised in tribal reserve of Jhabua, India, Dharm is a Toronto based Author. He also writes in Hindi.
Kay Kassirer (they/them) is a spoken word poet currently residing on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations - colonially known as Vancouver. Their autobiographical poetry focuses on gender & sexuality, grief, disability, and sex work. Kay has toured internationally performing at venues like Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, the Bowery Poetry Club, Busboys and Poets, Write About Now, and Hillside Festival. They have competed at over a dozen national and international poetry slam festivals, earning their place on several competitive final stages. Notably, Kay placed 2nd at Capturing Fire International Queer Slam (2016) while representing Hot Damn! It’s A Queer Slam, and 3rd at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (2018) and the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam (2019) while representing Vancouver Poetry Slam. Kay Co-Founded and Directed Voices of Today, a poetry festival run by youth for youth (20172020), and sat on the SpeakNorth Board of Directors (2016-2020). They curated and edited ‘A Whore’s Manifesto: An Anthology of Writing and Artwork by Sex Workers’
published by Thorntree Press. Their work has been featured on Button Poetry, Slamfind, Voicemail Poems, and The Rusty Toque.
Erin Kirsh
Miodrag Kojadinovic
Eimear Laffan
Debbie YJ Lin
Genie MacLeod (she/her) is a writer and editor originally from Vancouver. Her poetry has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine and Funicular and is forthcoming in The New Quarterly and Prairie Fire. During business hours she is a production editor for a children’s book publisher, and at morning, noon, and night she scribbles in notebooks. She lives in Toronto with her husband and toddler. Find her on Twitter at @ geniemak.
Glenn Marais is a creative writer/ singer/songwriter and character educator who uses his writing for healing and hope. He is also a motivational speaker, performer and recording artist, with a passion for social justice advocation. Glenn’s personal and professional mantra, “Give to Live”, encompasses that ideology in his wide-ranging work in the nonprofit sector as Remote Programs Lead with DAREarts, working for over 18 years in fly-in Indigenous communities, formerly with ArtsCan Circle as their Programs Manager, working in seven northern Indigenous Communities, recently completed a contract as the Artistic Outreach Coordinator for the Aurora
Cultural Centre focusing on diversity and inclusion, and with his own company Music in Mind, specializing in music-based education, wellness and healing, self-esteem building, equity and anti-bullying. Glenn is also a facilitator and contract educator for The University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, teaching Intro to Community Music and Music, Health and Wellness. Selfimprovement is a constant in Glenn’s life, having recently completed a Master of Arts Degree at Wilfrid Laurier, Mindfulness and Meditation Certificate at McMaster, Reiki Level II Certification and current enrollment at Trent in the PHD program for Indigenous Studies. Glenn is a published author with a book of poetry, “Dance with Fear, Live in the Light, several children’s stories in development and the recent completion of a musical play, “Jook”. He has been nominated for a Juno award, received the Donald Cousens Community Impact Award for 2021 and numerous other accolades in his work empowering and educating our young people to become the voice of change that we need to see in our world. www.glennmarais.ca
Karen Massey
Lori-Anne Noyahr
KP Parker/Thuyuntamable1 is a personal development leader, selfpublished author, and poet. Born on November 11, 1992, in Toronto Ontario. The author, better known as KP Parker, began writing poetry in 2007. In 2010, Thyuntamable1 turned the craft of writing into a career, developing their style and
brand name. In 2015, the author debuted with a poetry book, NAKEDINTHEDARK: Trilogy Book I. Since then, Thyuntamable1 has selfpublished two other books. Leaves Fall In May: Trilogy Book II, released in 2019. Along with their very first literary fiction novel, titled, And So It Begins. One Four Three. Released in 2021. www.Thyuntamable1.com Instagram: Thyuntamable1
Kerrie Penney Nolan Pike
Julia Polyck-O’Neill (she/they) is an artist, curator, critic, poet, and writer. She is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Visual Art and Art History and the Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology at York University (Toronto) where she studies digital, feminist approaches to interdisciplinary artists’ archives and is a postdoctoral affiliate of the Archive/Counterarchive project. Her writing has been published in Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft (The Journal for Aesthetics and General Art History), English Studies in Canada, DeGruyter Open Cultural Studies, BC Studies, Canadian Literature, and other places. Her chapbooks include Material (Model Press), and Everything will be taken away (above/ground press).
kerry rawlinson is a mental nomad. She left Zambia decades ago to explore and landed in Canada. Fast forward: she’s still barefoot, tiptoeing through dislocation & belonging. Awards: Glittery Literary
and Edinburgh International flash contest winner; notable poem Best Canadian Poetry; Pushcart nomination; Honorable mention Proverse Press & Fish Poetry contests; finalist for others, e.g. Canterbury Festival; Room; Poetry Society and Palette. Recent work in Rochford Street Review; Drunk Monkeys; Freefall; Prism Review; Duality; Pedestal; O:JA&L; Grain; Epoch; Event Poetry; Prairie Fire, and more. When not challenging established norms, kerry kayaks and drinks too much (tea). kerryrawlinson.com
@kerryrawli
Abiola Regan
Kit Roffey
Leah Schnurr
Paul Serralheiro
Lisa Shen is a writer and spoken word artist based in the Toronto area. Her work centers on feminism and gender-based violence, with secondary focuses on ChineseCanadianism, disability, and queer identity. Lisa was the winner of the 2021 Mississauga Poetry Slam, the 2022 Ink Movement Slam, and the May 2020 Open Drawer Poetry Contest. She was also a Speaker at TEDx McMasterU 2022. She has featured at arts festivals and events across North America, including Word Humboldt, Hamilton Youth Poets, and the JAYU Human Rights Film Festival. Her work has been published by Brickyard Spoken Word and Voicemail Poems, and is forthcoming in Rattle. Lisa is the Director of Sauga Poetry,
Mississauga’s hub for spoken word events. She has led spoken word courses with Workman Arts, and is working with high schools to bring poetry into the classroom. She was awarded the 2022 Buddies Queer Emerging Artists Award for contribution to community, and is dedicated to uplifting spoken word across the Greater Toronto Area. You can learn more about her work at / lisashen.ca and follow her at @itslisashen.
Leanne Shirtliffe Born and raised in rural Manitoba, Leanne Shirtliffe (she/her) is an educator now based in Calgary. Her work has appeared in CV2, Stanchion, One Art, Stoneboat, The FOLD Festival of Diversity program. She is currently at work on her first full-length collection interweaving farming, feminism, and family. See more at LeanneShirtliffe. com, or read her overheard haiku on Instagram: @leanne_shirtliffe.
Mahaila Smith (any pronouns) is a young, enby femme writer, living and working on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg in Ottawa, Ontario. They are one of the co-editors for The Sprawl Mag (thesprawlmag.ca). They like learning theory and writing speculative poetry. Their debut chapbook, Claw Machine, was published by Anstruther Press in 2020.
Allana Stuart (she/her) is an awardwinning poet and a former CBC Radio journalist. She was the first prize winner in Prairie Fire Magazine’s 2021 Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award Contest and was longlisted for the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize.
Her poetry has appeared a variety of Canadian and international literary journals. A child of the boreal forest, Allana grew up in Northwestern Ontario and spent many years in Northern BC before settling in Ottawa, where she currently lives with her family.
Brent Talbot
Carol Thornton
Dale Tracy is a faculty member of the English Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. She is the author of the poetry collection Derelict Bicycles (Anvil, 2022) and the monograph With the Witnesses: Poetry, Compassion, and Claimed Experience (McGill-Queen’s, 2017).
Paula Turcotte
Angela Waldie
jeremiah wall
Jade Wallace is a poet and fiction writer whose work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Windsor, and the Windsor Endowment for the Arts, and collected in dozen of journals internationally, including PRISM International, This Magazine, and Hermine. Their solo and collaborative chapbooks have been published Anstruther Press, Jack Pine Press, Collusion Books, Grey Borders Books, ZED Press, and Puddles of Sky Press, and their debut full-length poetry collection, Love Is a Place but You Cannot Live There, is forthcoming with Guernica Editions in 2023. They
are the inaugural Reviews Editor for CAROUSEL and co-founder of the collaborative writing entity MA|DE, whose chapbook A Trip to the ZZOO was shortlisted for the bpNichol Award, and has been adapted into a full-length collaborative collection, ZZOO, forthcoming with Palimpsest Press in 2025. Keep in touch: jadewallace.ca
Patrick Woodcock
Chuqiao Yang was born in Beijing, raised in Saskatoon, and has lived in Windsor, Ottawa, and Toronto. Her writing has appeared in several journals and broadcasts, including The New Quartertly, CV2, Arc, PRISM and on CBC. In 2011, Chuqiao was the recipient of two Western Magazine Awards. In 2015, she was a finalist for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Her debut chapbook, Reunions in the Year of the Sheep, released with Baseline Press, won the bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2018.
The LCP would like to extend a big welcome back to our members who have returned to the League this quarter: Mark Battenberg, Jeri Brown, Sarah Burgess, Sarah Burgoyne, Fabienne Calvert Filteau, Paola Ferrante, Kerry Gilbert, Sarah Hilton, T Liem, J. Nichole Noel, Sasenarine Persaud, Pearl Pirie, and carolyn zonailo.
Want to see your poetry news in St@nza? Fill out this quick form. The next issue of St@nza will be out in March.
Padmaja Battani
Happy to report that my poems ‘A Saga of Silence’, ‘Dreams know no dying’ and ‘Shades of Resilience’ got published in Tarot Poetry Review December issue. My review of ‘How Beautiful People are (Ayaz Pirani) has been published in The Temz Review Issue 21.
Louise Carson
Louise Carson has had poems published recently in Carousel, Haiku Canada Review, The Nashwaak Review, and The Quilliad; and book reviews at Montreal Serai and at poets.ca. She participated in two events in February: a Valentine’s Day poetry reading at a local patisserie (it was sweet!); and a book launch for her latest novel The Last Unsuitable Man at The Lawnchair Soirée (where she usually reads poetry).
Margaret Code
I am compiling a collection of multicultural festivals poems to be published this summer by Aeolus Press. The title is DiVERSity.
Meg Freer
Meg Freer was honoured in September 2022 to receive the Ted Plantos Memorial Award from The Ontario Poetry Society (TOPS). Recent poems have appeared in Consilience, Calla Press, One Art Poetry Journal, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Verse Afire, Plum Tree Tavern, Rat’s Ass Review, and the TOPS travel anthology, Provoked by Places.
Tea Gerbeza
My poem, “Backyard Fence,” won The Puritan’s Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence for poetry. Read the poem
Catherine Graham
Catherine Graham’s forthcoming book, Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead: New and Selected Poems, will appear this spring. Pre-orders are available through Wolsak and Wynn. Advance praise from Lorna Crozier: “This is a book to keep by your bedside, to read when you dream and when you awaken. The poems will disturb, they will shatter, they will mend.” www.catherinegraham.com @catgrahampoet
Raymond Helkio
Poetry Open Mic at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre
Join host Raymond Helkio for some of Toronto’s most dazzling, brazen, saucy, shameless, flashy and flamboyant poets!
Please keep your reading to five minutes in length. There’s a small collection of money that will be distributed among the performers immediately following the event. This month’s feature poet is Paul Edward Costa!
POETRY OPEN MIC
Sunday March 19, 2023
Buddies In Bad Times Theatre
Doors Open 4:15PM Open Mic 5PM (pwyc)
Dianne Joyce
Personal publication of my chapbook ORBIT in January. Upcoming poetry workshop in the Hanover Public Library March 23rd as a precursor to reading and Open Mic Night April 26th.
R. Kolewe’s fourth book of poetry, A Net of Momentary Sapphire, will be published by Talonbooks in spring 2023.
D.A. Lockhart’s newest poetry collection, North of Middle Island, will be published by Kegedonce Press this fall. The poetry collection explores Canada’s most southern island from a Lenape perspective. The collection is highlighted by an Anglo Saxon style epic poem about a mythic battle between professional wrestlers for the future of the island. Be sure to check out samples from this new book coming out in the Malahat Review later this year.
Yannis Lobaina
This year so far, I have published Creative Non-Fiction stories and poetry: SIGNS IN MY PATH, In Anthology Finding The Way by Immigrant Writers. «Flashback» and «Cazando Cronopios». Portals. Issue 9 – Multilingual Art Lab Issue. You can read other publications here in my website
The Inevitable, haibun by Dorothy Mahoney (Red Moon Press, 2022) is an experimental novel comprised of 50 haibun in response to news articles and a random conversation with an illusionist. His card trick is the title of the book.
Diana Manole, Chair, Feminist Caucus, League of Canadian Poets
The Feminist Caucus has updated its mission statement. Please check it out. If you consider joining us, contact me at dianamanole2013@ gmail.com.
Micheline Maylor-Kovitz was awarded a Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal for contributions to the Alberta literary community.
Fonds: Susan McCaslin’s literary fonds are currently being prepared for inclusion in the Rare Books & Special Collections at The University of British Columbia.
First-place Contest winner: Her poem “Consider the Western Red Cedar” was first place winner of the Federation of BC Writers Literary Contest in the Poetry category, Nov. 30, 2022 to be published in their anthology in 2023. Poet-
ry Readings: Susan gave a poetry reading from her volumes Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine (Wood Lake Publishing) and Heart Work (Ekstasis Editions) for The Thomas Merton Society of Canada, St. Andrew’s United Church, North Vancouver, BC, Jan. 31, 2023, host Judith Hardcastle. Susan was one of fifteen poets who read Feminist Poetry on International Women’s Day, 2023, organized by the Feminist Caucus of the League of Canadian Poets, March 8, 2023. Review: “Where Heart and Spirit Emerge from Pandemic: a review of Heart Work by Susan McCaslin,” by Sean Arthur Joyce (online).
Rhonda Melanson
Rhonda Melanson released her second chapbook “My Name Is Mary” with Alien Buddha Press.
Carmelo Militano
Militano’s most recent poetry publication is ‘Archeologia Eros,’ an erotic themed collection illustrated by Quebec artist Francois DuBeau. Militano recently also gave a reading at Studio Luse in Venice, Italy with Italian poets Silvia Favaretto and Lucia Guidorizzi; at the University of Turin (New Italian Canadian Writing Conference) Militano read from his previous work ‘Catching Desire’ a hybrid book on the life and art of the Expressionist painter Amedeo Modigliani.
Colin Morton
Colin’s poetry is appearing in Grain, Event, Train Poetry, and Best Canadian Poetry 2023.
Karen Mulhallen
Just out on Amazon is my 25th book, In Memory, a new gathering of my poems, elegies and travel memoirs celebrating family and
friends. Very excited to be publishing with Axiom Available from Amazon now. Book launch will be sometime in Spring 2023.
Katherine Munro
Katherine Munro (kjmunro) will present the workshop ‘Short Form Poetry - Haiku 101’ on 17 April 2023 at the Canada Games Centre boardroom in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory - registration opens 02 March.
Honey Novick
Honey Novick was awarded from Member of Parliament Carolyn Bennet an Outstanding Neighbour Award for her work editing and contributing to POEMDEMIC! an anthology of lived-experience during COVID-19. Copies of which are now in the National Archives of Canada, the Ontario Archives and Archives of the City of Toronto (pandemic collection)
Ruth Panofsky
I’m thrilled to announce the arrival of my new book of poems, Bring Them Forth, newly published by Ekstasis Editions. Thanks to editor Antonio D’Alfonso and to publisher Richard Olafson.
Cynthia Sharp
My newest nature and ecopoetry collection, Ordinary Light, is available to order from any bookstore worldwide through the Ingram catalogue. We’ll be celebrating with an Earth Day launch, Saturday, April 22, at the New Westminster Public Library. Thanks everyone for your support!
Richard-Yves Sitoski
Owen Sound Poet Laureate Richard-Yves Sitoski is bringing Butterfly Tongue, a 90-minute poetic/musical monologue show, to the Grey Roots Museum and Archives auditorium in Owen Sound for two performances: Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 19:00 and Saturday, June 10, at 14:00. Tickets will be available from the Ticketpro website in April. The show is a compassionate portrayal of a down-on-his luck protagonist’s life-changing encounter with a troubled woman who gives him metaphorical (and perhaps literal) wings.
Lindsay Soberano Wilson’s first full-length poetry collection, Hoods of Motherhood, is forthcoming this May, published by Prolific Pulse Press LLC. Hoods of Motherhood celebrates the good, the bad, and the ugly, making it a book for anyone who ever gave too much and had to learn how to give to themselves. Lindsay is also excited to announce that her poem, Keep Theology Out of Our Biology was included in the 2.0 Roe Virtual Exhibition at Woman Made Gallery. Her poems have also been recently accepted for upcoming publication in Fine Lines Literary Journal.
Richard Stevenson
Have two new books forthcoming: a book for middle grade kids and adults about Cryptid, ET, and Fortean lore called Eye to Eye with My Octopi (from Cyberwit, India. In my possession!) and Bature! West African Haikai, an utaniki (travel journal consisting of haiku, senryu, tanka, kyoka, zappai and various
Japanese style imagist sequences of a trip I took with my wife, parents, and son from Maiduguri to Lagos and up the coast of West Africa from Benin to Togo in the early 80’s. (At the printers! from Mawenzi House.) Seven more books accepted, also forthcoming: a trilogy: Cryptid Shindig: A Big Book of Creeps and Critters (Hidden Brook Press), two single-volume sequels, An Abominable Swamp Slob Named Bob (Altered Reality) and Hairy Hullabaloo (Starship Sloane) and an imagist collection for younger kids: Action Dachshund! (Ekstasis Editions). The Covid Staycation has been good to me. :-) Can send you book cover images if you want ‘em. Seasoned Greenthings to one and all!
Jennifer Wenn
My first full-size(+) poetry collection, Hear Through the Silence (Cyberwit), is now up on Amazon worldwide. Or see my website “Jennifer Wenn’s range is dazzling: herein you will find intimate lyrics about the self, observational verse parsing common experiences, and extended series on historical events. “ (Richard-Yves Sitoski, Owen Sound Poet Laureate 2019-2023) “The stories of Wenn’s journey are poignant and inspiring...” (Penn Kemp)
Erin Wilson
Gratitude to Luke Whisnant of Tar River Poetry for nominating my poem “The Bow and the Quill Pig” for a Pushcart! Excited to be a part of the latest Valparaiso Review, The Shore, The North and Poetry South. And completely thrilled to have a
poem, “A Walking Prayer,” accepted by Prairie Fire today!
Anna Yin
To Celebrate 2023 new year, Anna Yin’s special English-Chinese Edition featured eight Chinese poets and eight Canadian poets was launched on Live Encounters Poetry & Writing website. So far, Anna has translated more than 80 poets’ work including 60 poets’ work in Mirrors and Windows (Guernica Editions, 2021).
Bänoo Zan
Writing Circle: Tuesdays, 1-3 PM in the Humanities Centre Room 4-59 (Creative Writing Room), at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Free, in-person, weekly event open to writers from the U of A as well as the Edmonton/Canadian/ international writing community. Bring your writing instruments, stationary, pen and paper, laptop, and/ or other electronic devices. Please check social media for last-minute updates before attending. Hosted by Bänoo Zan Writer-in-Residence University of Alberta Department of English and Film Studies. Also, Shab-e She’r Poetry Open Mic @ UofA, Confirmed dates: January 31st, February 28, March 21, April 25, Student Lounge, Old Arts/Convocation Hall, University of Alberta Campus, Edmonton, Open to U of A + Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, AND international writing community, Free and Open to poetry in any language or accent, Open Mic duration: 5 minutes. Sign-up: 6:45 PM at the venue, Show: 7-9 PM. Please check social media for last-minute updates before attending.
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.
Submit YOUR Call to be included in Between The Lines and Stanza Newsletter. Let us know about a call for submission via this form
Arc Poetry Magazine We invite artists who live with disability/chronic illness/mental illness and other forms of existence that are impacted by ableism to send us poems, prose, essays, and reviews exploring what it means to be in the world, or your topic of choice. We hope that your art challenges the able-bodied gaze and doctrine by changing the narrative of the dominant body and extending the meaning of wholeness. These poems will be part of ARC’s Fall 2023 issue. Deadline is May 15, 2023. Find out more.
The Ex-Puritan seeks submissions all year round, from anywhere in the world. All submissions received by March 25 will be considered for the spring issue, published in May. Deadline is March 25, 2023. Find out more
Hungry Zine Issue 06: Hot & Spicy is an homage to the sensual, erotic, tantalizing side of food. This issue is about heat and spice, romance, love, sex, and pleasure. Send us your art and writing. Submission deadline is April 3, 2023. Find out more.
Grain Individual poems, sequences, or suites up to a maximum of 6 pages. If submitting multiple poems, please upload them all in one file. Do not submit them as separate submissions. Submissions period is now open until June 15, 2023. Find out more.
WordWorks - Federation of BC Writers
The theme for our summer 2023 issue is Learn, Grow, and Play. Writing is often a lifelong endeavour, and the learning process can vary tremendously from writer to writer. For this issue, we’re looking for articles about the many ways we can expand our knowledge, hone our craft, experiment with new forms, and stay curious. We’re looking for practical tips, informative articles, and new perspectives related to the theme. Topics could include mentorship, research, exercises, critiques, formal and informal education, writing beyond your comfort zone, applying new skills, and more. Surprise us! We look forward to your ideas. We prioritize submissions
from FBCW members but welcome submissions from all writers with a connection to BC or Yukon.Deadline is April 3, 2023. Find out more.
Carmen Ziolkowski Poetry PrizeLawrence House Press In the spirit of beloved Sarnia poet Carmen Ziolkowski, The Lawrence House Literary Arts Committee is seeking well-crafted poetry that is heartfelt, nature-based, and hopeful for the second annual Carmen Ziolkowski Poetry Prize. Deadline is April 15, 2023. Find out more
Write On! Contest - Royal City Arts and Literary Society. 1st prize - $150, 2nd prize - $100, 3rd prize - $75 & three honourable mentions. Previously published work is accepted. Deadline is April 15, 2023. Find out more.
Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest from Spring Pulse Poetry Festival (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. Henceforth we are ONLY accepting online submissions with E-TRANSFER payment to mybrydges@yahoo.ca. Visit www.springpulsepoetryfestival.com for further info and rules. Send email to David Brydges if unable to email or use e-transfer for alternative instructions (mybrydges@yahoo.ca). Final
received submissions deadline is Friday, April 28, 2023. Find out more.
Vallum Chapbook Award winner wins $300 and publication as a part of the Vallum Chapbook Series. Selections from the chapbook will also appear in the print and digital magazine. Manuscripts must be between 12 and 30 pages, on any subject and in any style. We have published sonnets and experiments, fragments and images, but the best way to know what our editors are looking for is to read the work of past winners. Visit our online store to purchase print and digital copies of winning chapbooks from previous years. Submissions are accepted through Submittable only. Entry fee is $25 for Canadian entrants, $30 for U.S. and international entrants. Payments are processed through our Submittable account. Each entry fee includes a free oneyear print subscription to Vallum! If this amount presents a barrier to your ability to submit, please contact submission@vallummag.com. We do not accept mailed submissions. Deadline to submit your work is April 30th, 2023. Find out more.
The K. Valerie Connor Memorial Poetry Celebration Contest is an annual Ontario-wide literary contest run by The Leacock Museum. Currently open to all residents across Ontario, aspiring writers can submit up to three original poems to compete for this year’s contest prizes. Three categories open to child, youth and adult writers. There is an entry fee for the Adult category of $10 for one submission or $25 for three. There is no entry fee
for the Intermediate or Elementary category. A maximum of three poems is permitted to submit per entrant. Submissions are open now, the deadline for final entries is May 8, 2023. Winners will be announced on June 1, 2023. Find out more.
Arc Poetry Editor
Express your interest by sending a short biographical statement and a literary CV to Arc’s Managing Editor! Deadline for expressions of interest: March 31, 2023. Find out more.
Arc’s Poet-in-Residence (PIR) program offers our country-wide community of writers the chance to participate in virtual mentorships with an influential Canadian poet. Between 30 and 60 poets participate yearly, in roughly one-month-long mentorships. The Poet-in-Residence is also commissioned to create new work for publication in an issue of Arc Poetry Magazine. The 2022/2023
program year goes from November 1, 2022 to July 31, 2023. Deadline to apply: May 31, 2023. Find out more
Call for Applications: Access Copyright Foundation Professional Development Grants.
Seeking financial support to sharpen your skills or expand your expertise? Access Copyright Foundation’s Professional Development Grants program may be able to help.
The Foundation offers grant funding to facilitate professional-development opportunities for Canadian writers, visual artists and publishers as well as staff members at organizations that represent them.
If you’re considering undertaking education and skills training through workshops, internships, courses, and distance education, we hope you’ll consider applying for a Professional Development Grant. The deadline for applications is April 1 at 11:59 p.m. CST. Learn more.
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 Rebecca Anne Banks and Arlene Lampert.
Anne Banks (Poet, Singer, Songwriter,
Writer, Artist, Philosopher, Counselor, Activist) lived in The New Age Renaissance Republic of Poetry, within the Spirit of Romance, writings of the Muse and the hidden love stories of the blue island. Amongst the blue and warm of the velvet underground caverns that conjure still and love. She was the Poetry Editor at Subteranean Blue Poetry and artist of many mediums and forms. In the dream of a quiet afternoon in Summer her memory can be found playing concerts in the velvet underground stonework Metro . . .
In memory of Rebecca, from Melanie Flores:
“Sadly, Rebecca passed away suddenly on October 29, 2022 at the Verdun Hospital in Montreal. My time working with her was a pleasure. Rebecca’s passion for poetry, writing, music, and art was always palpable and profound. Rest well, dear lady, in Subterranean Blue.”
Rebecca Anne Banks 1960 – 2022
Rebecca
Musician,
Arlene passed away in her own home on February 22, 2023 It was peaceful and in her control. Arlene was a force of nature. Along with Gerald Lampert, Arlene was one of the founding members of the League of Canadian Poets.
As Executive Director of the League, she was integrally involved in some of their most important activities including touring poetry in schools. The Lamperts were well known for nurturing poetry, hosting large poetry events (and wild poetry focused parties), and were central to the new and vibrant poetry scene of the 1970’s and 1980’s in particular. She edited many books of poetry and was well beloved in the writing community. Also known for her famous Toronto ‘doll car,’ Arlene was fierce, generous, brilliant and beloved by so many. She will be sorely missed by her children Jay, Jo and daughter-in-law Jennifer and by her adoring grandchildren, Hector, Jaslyn and Gabriel.
The League of Canadian Poets is seeking memories, photos and sentiments from the poetry community to pay homage to Arlene’s incredible life, career, and impact on poetry in
Canada. A true pillar of Canada’s poetry community, she was amongst the founding group of the League of Canadian Poets and initiated many of the League’s most important activities - including the Poets in The Schools program, Canada Poetry Tours and her work editing many important books of poetry, amongst other things.
In memory and love for Arlene Lampert, please add your memorial statement here.
