Vera Hadzic, Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery

 

CUBIC METRE OF INFINITY

after Michelangelo Pistoletto

This morning at the cemetery
a dead bird lay on the grass.
Half its throat, its globed rib cage,
and snappable bones exposed
to the elements. These animal corpses,
the kind you find beside the road
or on the lawn, are whistles
the wind blows into.
In the graves human bodies
do the same thing but unseen.
Turn into channels of air,
pathways for worms, infinite
things in an enclosed space.

I’d been eager to get my hands on Ottawa writer Vera Hadzic’s full-length poetry debut, Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery (Vancouver BC: Anvil Press, 2025) [see her ‘six questions’ interview here; her ’12 or 20 questions’ interview here], produced as part of Stuart Ross’ imprint, A Feed Dog Book. Following her chapbook debut, Fossils You Can Swallow (Cobourg ON: Proper Tales Press, 2023) [see my review of such here], the poems in Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery (a stellar title, by the way) are expansive, and meditative; offering interesting rhythms and line-breaks across universes of intimate moments. As the title poem writes: “The single devotion to modern life is this: / keeping things inside yourself. This applies / to emotions, credit card details, urine, the impulse / to swear in front of children. Some of us are better / at this than others.”

Hadzic writes on art, history, literature, Benedictine monks, livestock, fish, Johnny Cash, death, snow, the internet, nail clippings and dead birds, etcetera; offering less a series of direct responses than incorporating ideas into her weave of far larger, more expansive tapestries of propulsive narrative thought. “The way flat fields / turn to gold hills / in waves.” she writes, as part of “OSSO BUCO,” “There is something I should be doing. // The heat in the chest, / the rising furnace / of the horse’s corpus; the crushing / of one’s own rib / cage; the horse on the ground, knowing, / or waiting.” Her poems are just so big, so precise; exact, even through and almost because of their expansiveness, attempting to navigate, articulate and investigate elements of the entire world of experience across her attention, wherever that might send her. “The monks communicate / by finger and wrist when / eating; a moving text of metacarpels,” she writes, as part of the poem “MONASTERIO DOS JERÓNIMOS,” “the major mechanism illumi- / nating the thin working page, / the palm. Boiled egg splits / gently under the tooth and lip. / No one can speak while / eating, and it’s just as well, / because no one will mention / the dark spot consuming / the wall. No one can speak / of it but the stone / animals, and they’ve sworn / silence.” There is something intriguing about how these poems float between poems and essays, poems and short stories, all seeking out ways to best understand her thinking across such vast distances.

There is, for example, the four-part narrative piece, “FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH,” a poem that reads a bit like a short story by Stuart Ross [see my essay on his most recent collection of short stories here], writing elements of surrealism, both swirling and propulsive across a huge mass of text. Here is but the opening of the five-page third section, “The Author,” that begins:

I once met Ernest Hemingway in Toronto. I was lost in the subway
and late for a concert. Ernest Hemingway was sitting in a coffee
house and writing clean, simple prose. This prose had periods
and precise words that were well-chosen and always sufficient.
It was both summer and winter, both rainy and snowy, and the heat
of the sun made sweat melt into my back and worm
like an excretable minnow back into my bloodstream, so that my
body was like the water cycle on a singular human scale, a tiny
microcosm that pumped out fluid and reabsorbed it almost instantly.
“How do you like Toronto, Hemingway?” I said Hemingway because
this is the way almost everybody refers to him, all the time. The first name
wastes syllables, when the last name is already an efficient synopsis
of all he wrote. I refuse to write William Shakespeare in my essays.
I want to cross out William when students write his full name in their
Essays. I want to write in the margins. Everybody knows who
Shakespeare is. Everybody knows who Hemingway is.
What’s the likelihood someone mixes him up with the wrong
Shakespeare? Oh, your reader might say upon reaching the sentence
where you mention Lear, oh, this is the Shakespeare who writes plays.
I mixed him up with the Shakespeare who sells mattresses. Or, I mixed
him up with his father who sold gloves. Or, I don’t want to read an essay
about the guy who wrote plays. I want to read an essay about a
mattress salesman who has the same name as a famous
playwright.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ben von Jagow

Ben von Jagow is the author of Goalie (Guernica Editions 2025). His work has appeared in Canadian Literature, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, Queen's Quarterly, EVENT, and the Literary Review of Canada, among other publications. For more of Ben's work, visit benvj.com.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book familiarized me with a feeling that, I suspect, is integral to becoming a writer. I was living in South Africa, and I allowed someone to convince me that unless I was making money off my writing, I wasn’t a real writer. So I put together a collection of short stories, which I self-published. And though that process taught me a great deal, it also felt rushed, as though I had introduced something into the world before it was ready. They say you only get one chance at a first impression, and I sort of feel like I botched mine. I stood up, grabbed the mic, and riffed well before I deserved those privileges.

Goalie felt different. I finished that collection in 2022 and began sending it out. It was accepted for publication in 2023 but wasn’t published until 2025. During that time, I worked with a great editor – shoutout to Elana Wolff – and together, we worked through every poem, every line, every word to make sure it served its purpose. Learning that I had to wait three years until my book would hit the shelves felt like agony, but looking back now, I’m incredibly grateful for that time. Between the shotgun blast that was my first book and the glacier melt that was my second, I much prefer the latter. It turns out good things do, in fact, take time.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I dabble in all three, but I feel like my temperament is best suited to poetry. Though I love crafting sentences, I don’t quite have the patience required for long works of fiction or nonfiction. In my opinion, a poem feels more immediate and can capture a fleeting mood, a feeling, or emotion far more effectively than a drawn-out story. I do hope to write many great stories in my career – both true and fictive – but for that quick-hitting, crack-pipe release, I will always choose poetry.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

It depends. I know that’s not a sexy answer, but when it comes to poetry, some poems I nail on the first or second shot, others take weeks, months, sometimes years to complete. I have drafts saved on my computer that are five or six years old, which I still very much believe in – though maybe I don’t yet have the words or the wisdom to finish them. Yet. Always “yet.”

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

When I’m at my best, I write from all aspects of my life. Sometimes those areas coalesce and begin to form a theme, at which point I start considering a book. I find that if I write with the goal of filling a book, the poems turn out a bit too formulaic and forced.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

No, I’m too shy. I prefer a reader’s attention over the attention of a large room.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I don’t really begin with theory, but I’m aware my work will inevitably start circling a set of questions – like earth orbiting the sun. I’m interested in identity. How we figure out who we are in a world full of expectations and inherited ideas about masculinity and success.

In Goalie, a lot of that came through environment. Having lived and played abroad, I’ve seen how locker rooms, teams, cities, and countries shape what feels possible or permissible, especially for men. I’m often asking how much of who we are is chosen and how much is trained into us.

I also keep returning to questions of self-actualization and adversity – whether strength and introspection can coexist, and what it looks like embracing our true selves when deviation from the norm isn’t always rewarded.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Put this beautiful life into words. Make art. Paint.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Again, unsexy, but both. It can be disheartening to have someone discard or dismiss a line or a word you thought was literary dynamite, but there was also typically a method behind the madness. I was fortunate to work with a great editor while polishing Goalie, and many of Elana’s notes helped clarify lines I’d glossed over. I suppose there are few greater gifts to the young writer than a good editor.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

I’ll give you two, both of which have made an impact on me.

The first is trite but valid: read. A writer who isn’t also an avid reader has a difficult road ahead of them. Reading, to me, is practice. And having spent the majority of my life playing sports, I know just how critical practice is when it comes to development.

The second is to treat the creative process as a job. I’m aware many people might disagree with me – many people, in fact, have – but for me, writing is work. I don’t wait until the mood or the moment feels right to craft sentences. I force myself to sit down and clock in, much the same way I would any other job. That single act, of sitting down to write, has paid more dividends than all of my “epiphanies” combined.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I like to write first thing in the morning, though with work and sports, I can’t always afford to do so. That being said, there are very few days in the year where I go to bed not having written anything at all. I seek out moments in the day where I can block off a chunk of time in which I write. I’m not too picky as to what I write or for how long, just so long as my keys clack.  

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Exercise. Music. Travel.

Exercise is the quick fix, the daily dose. It gets the blood and the creative juices flowing. I’ll go for a run or hit the gym, and when I come back, I’m almost always in a better mental state.

Music is soul food, and writing, as you know, requires soul.

Travel is probably the most obscure point on this list, and I don’t necessarily mean I jet off to Quito when I get stuck. But for me, changing my setting has always been fruitful. New sights, new sounds, new smells – a writer could do a lot worse.

12 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?

This year, Halloween coincided with Game 6 of the World Series. I dressed up as Harry Potter – cloak, wand, scar, everything – and went to meet some buddies at a bar to watch the game. I opened the door to a sea of Blue Jays jerseys. There were about three hundred people in the bar, and no one else was wearing a costume. In the end, I saw two other people in costumes that night. A witch, and another Harry Potter. Oh, and the Jays lost.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I find inspiration in art as a concept. Goalie wasn’t necessarily influenced by a specific song or a captivating vista, but the desire to create something of my own was very much at the forefront, shaped by the music I listen to and the art I appreciate.  

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Poetry: Selina Boan, Kayla Czaga, Alden Nowlan, Lynn Crosbie, Ellie Sawatzky.

Fiction: Ocean Vuong, Mary Lawson, Min Jin Lee, Barbara Kingsolver, Junot Diaz.

Nonfiction: Bill Bryson, James Baldwin, David Sedaris, Sloane Crosley, Jon Krakauer.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I’d like to finish the novel I’m working on and find a home for my collection of essays.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I’m pretty blessed to say that I have three jobs, all of which I love a great deal. I play American football professionally overseas, I’m the Marketing Manager for a Canadian distillery in Perth, Ontario, and I write.

There’s a song by Luke Combs that starts, “Someone asked me once in an interview…what would you do if you weren’t doin’ this?” He goes on to say that he’d be “singin’ them same damn songs like I am now…I’d still be doin’ this if I wasn’t doin’ this.”

That song really resonates with me. I feel like I’m following the right path, and that I’d follow it regardless of the circumstances.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I’d love to be a country music star, but I have no stage presence or musical talent so…this.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

The last great book I read was A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – a $6.99 pickup at Value Village. The last great film I watched was Rush.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I’ve got a novel in the works, a book of poetry, and an essay collection all competing for my attention. I’ve also got a Q4 Report to run and a knee to rehab. Busy man.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Noah Ross, The Dogs

 

Have to be a pretty large wolf to snap own spine the force can you imagine

Something that out of control in your vocabulary

It’ll heal

If you lick or please especially, one question, if on the way back

The blood left a bad idea

If we know what the game is, if we promised a rite

Somebody’s promise, somebody’s bait

After moving through Noah Ross’ chapbook The Holy Grail (Wry Press, 2025) recently [see my review of such here], I’m attempting to catch up with the rest of his published work, finally moving through his collection, The Dogs (Krupskaya, 2024). As you might already know, The Dogs is Berkeley, California-based poet, editor and bookseller Noah Ross’ second full-length title, following Active Reception (New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2021) [see my review of such here]. In both The Dogs and The Holy Grail, there is something curious about how Ross works through each particular subject thoroughly, completely, and from multiple angles (this new title, providing, in its own way, an echo of Sawako Nakayasu’s classic title The Ants, a poetry collection recently afforded a new edition). As well, both projects were prompted and structured as response-echoes of other works, overlaying his own take over the bones of another. Whereas the structure of The Holy Grail follows Jack Spicer’s own classic sequence, this new project, The Dogs, follows a structure of a source material I’m not familiar with. As he writes as part of a note on the text at the back of the collection:

            The Dogs is the outgrowth of an illicit project—an affair with language that multiplied. Many affairs. A series of unofficial, say, “creative,” engagements—Hervé Guilbert’s Les chiens, dialogue from the 2010’s soap drama Teen Wolf, Marie de France’s “Bisclavret,” that, in their cohabitation, brought to the fore other texts, other pack dynamics, other images and languages of queer love, power, devotion to monsters. What began with Guilbert found itself seeded with Auden’s unauthorized poem “The Platonic Blow” (“The Gobble Poem”), Dom Orejudos’ leather dom comics, my own packs.
            An affair with a question, a question around translation. How to work with a text that will likely remain untranslated (Les chiens)? This plaquette pornographique—dirty, autofictive, bodily, juicy, disturbing, awkward, biting. Personal. Guilbert’s life, Guilbert’s sex, Guilbert’s work. What methods of engagement translate, retranslate, expand, disturb a text until it’s no longer an author’s, an author’s sex, an author’s work—could it ever be mine? Ours? Is it that my desire is heightened by the impossible, the unrequited? Or that a moment of assimilationist legacy making, where monsters are refashioned twink saints for sanitized worship, brings out my own inner wolf? The drive to bite the text, turn it, make it transform. To cut it up, to be cut up, to perform acts of violence, to reflect acts of violence.

Illicit, Ross offers, although this sly intention might underplay what he has accomplished: an ambitious and incredibly playful work, stitching together an array of propulsive language and collaged reference across the bones, presumably, of Guilbert’s original work. One would suspect this a work not purely translated but reimagined, utilizing translation but one of a handful of tools towards constructing an entirely new work.

As if the presence of the text excites me [as if behind this room another where the bodies lapping in] Defiance of this room and the contractions of my ass. [His, His, Theirs, and the letting of a fall to the ground, the barely] Perceptible sound of bellies in motion [just beneath me, somewhere behind me, above this bed] Impossible to even imagine the very thought of falling [asleep the thought of finding positions elongated in the reach across] Walls that I lick, as if to taste our texts, [the bodies heckle, the buzzing of horseplay, as if to taunt me, as if like children] Messing around in the text, throwing bricks where the bellies connect [rooms hitting where my head rests against this wall, letting the juice pour into my mouth, my] Sleep, taking it from behind

The Dogs is structured as a sequence of collage-accumulations, offering lyric prose structures, paragraphs and fragments, across six sections: “Teen Wolf / How Beautiful People Hurt Together,” “The Dogs / Every Hallway Somewhere Else Start Over,” “Swaddled In Lint The Cloth Pure In Dye / Less Swaddled In The Water He Enters,” “Swaddled In Lint The Cloth Pure In Dye / Less Swaddled In The Juices,” “A Dream Within A Dream Of Garwolf / Oh Bisclavret” and “A Liquid Sky / Some Night Again.” The collection holds as a kind of book-length suite, an accumulation of stitched reference, movement and playful enterprise, writing around elements of love and violence, human and animal capacity, werewolf/wolf man legends, and language twists. “A string being pulled,” the first section offers, “people whispering: // Remember this absolute Hair of the dog // Take a deep breath and tell me what you feel // Any riddles, are you magnetized, superstitious // Who are you, getting colder, who are we freezing [.]”