Jean Day, The Elements

I dreamed I saw Saint Augustine
alive as
apparently in error
filling up cups
with the subject of seeds 

whose earliest cells
constrict in the middle
to pull apart like donuts in coffee 

phylum above kingdom below class

Below the tree line light flies straight
Below the lake
peer up
From the primitive streak to the primitive knot
not alone in our determination (“Adamant!”)

If you haven’t experienced her work before, I would highly recommend the work of Berkeley poet and translator Jean Day, a poet I only discovered through her collection Late Human (Brooklyn NY: ugly duckling presse, 2021) [see my review of such here], having missed a slew of prior titles including Linear C. (Berkeley CA: Tuumba, 1983), Flat Birds (San Francisco CA: Gaz, 1985), A Young Recruit (New York NY: Roof Books, 1988), The I and the You (Edgemont CT: Potes & Poets, 1922), The Literal World (Berkeley CA: Atelos, 1998), Enthusiasm: Odes & Otium (New York NY: Adventures in Poetry, 2006), Early Bird (Philadelphia PA/Providence RI: O’Clock Press, 2014), Daydream (Litmus Press, 2017) and The Triumph of Life (New York NY: Insurance Editions, 2018). Not everything crosses a border into bookstores easily, after all. Her latest is The Elements (Winter Editions, 2026), a quintet of extended, meditative lyrics, collaged and accumulated into sequences composed across a careful pace of quiet wisdom, exploration and examination. “from birth to billboard / neither stepping quite outside of nature nor / phoning it entirely in.” she offers, deep within the second section. “That’s domestication!”

Composed as five extended sequence-sections—“Adamant!,” “Ex Ovo Omnia,” “Swing State,” “Intolerance” and “And Now This”—there’s an unexpected rhythm to her lines and line-breaks, prompting a curious play of cadence, one that pushes for slower, more careful reading, in case something important might be missed if one isn’t careful. As she writes close to the opening of the second poem-section: “Now we come / to the fruit of our labors / tired of economy but bound by a fog / the ballet of which / in the wallet of [.]”  Day stitches together, one might say, the biographical elements of her life, building blocks as a means through to a lyric end, allowing her narrative to be propelled by the curious bends of language and sequenced-thought, offering moments along the way to hold the shape of her examinations. “To stop / before stopping comes / anadromous,” she writes, within the final section, “in cloud form / to chant / or deposit If / crosshairs / cross hairs / flak is the frame / lost / in the up / again [.]” Attending simultaneous minutae and big moments in carved lines, Day articulates a narrative of moments, but as building blocks through a narrative and propulsion of language, and the further one reads through her work, the more one discovers. This is an incredibly rich, subtle and attentive lyric. Or, as the opening page of the poem-section “Swing State” reads:

If the state is a reason
the bud is its cause
on the way to make sense of the sun
leaving us to wonder
where to lay down our tools
and when to extract
bird from birdie
in a game we’ll never learn how to play.
The field of Amanita
on the other hand
seemed fiction to the figure (farmer) (singer) (sister) (son)
who paused by the water to consider
a break in the chain (the great one)
caused by a marriage
to whom you were not supposed.
The plan was hatched
but the rivers would go awry.
Who knew
where the facts would lead us.
God didn’t make the little green apples,
we observe,
and the Wabash is a river of unsteady habits
even now

Ongoing notes: The Fisher Small + Fine Press Fair (part two, : R. Kolewe + Erin Conway-Smith,

See part one here, of course. 

Toronto ON: Oh, how lovely to see this new title by Toronto poet R. Kolewe [see my review of his latest here], the chapbook HOLONOMY (Toronto ON: knife fork book, 2026), a cluster of fourteen delightfully-packed and short prose poems. “Porch sketch, penciled showers slant with the scent of rosemary. Postscript rather than prelude,” begins the opening poem, “Rosemary,” “moist hours mix eternity into fallen ordinary order and escape. Can you name the clouds all grey and dusky?” Kolewe’s work has long been known for expansive projects across the long poems, composing large works underneath the umbrella of a big idea or turn of phrase, and the internet provides that holonomy (a word I hadn’t known prior) refers to the change in a line or object’s orientation when returning to itself, such as running a line across the earth’s equator. The holonomy is the curve itself, as the line or object returns back to that point of origin. “Rare earth remainders scuttle,” begins the poem “Lively,” “worn scow flocks skew wings named widening full scarlet Geneva. Pause fluid lustral stochastic review.” Are there more of these pieces, somewhere? Might a larger, full-length manuscript be in the works? Kolewe works quietly, it would seem, but rarely in such small containers, so I would hope there are more of these on the horizon.

Narrative Approach

Sheer diffract predestination cover, stratocumulus portcullis memory alembic door ajar. Pale glow effect. Beginning future chiptone plastic, unbegun catenary cross canvas melancholic two-step (three four time.) Proof suspended: every edge derivative: bereft infinity knifeblade uniform field fiction patch, no torsion etc. Ambient classical approximation. Laurel ardour triage. No probability amplitude, no perpetual help, no polyhedron forever oyster idol factory isn’t about anything is. Communities stir and name themselves. The human heart alas, the neighbourhood, the pitcher broken at the fountain. Too fast.

Johannesburg, South Africa/Toronto ON: From poet Erin Conway-Smith, born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario but living in Johannesburg, comes the chapbook-debut, the extended poem VELD SENSE (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2026), a curious two-sided structure on each page, with single, chapbook-length line running mid-way between, comparable to how Darren Wershler’s The Tapeworm Foundry (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2000) held a single, book-length line along the bottom of each page, alongside the main element of the book’s text. The main thread of this particular work is assembled via a curious assemblage, almost a collage, of short lines and phrases, allowing sound to playfully bounce around through language, geography. “Cape Town with cousins,” she writes, mid-way through, “not mine.” Or a bit further down the same page: “You get / a new pair of shoes, // you experience a minor lift.” As the chapbook-length sequence opens:

Heavy hung the spiral
in early but not that early
air. This is me, after all.
Yesterday was so loud.
To my right, tray go-away birds
mobbed a sleepy owl. To the left,
a 15-foot-high water feature
after some oke crowbar’d 

the meter open for the metal.

 

A generating unit each at Tutuka and Majuba have tripped. Reminder to

 

The air cut with spirals this season,
repeating at medium distances
at regular through not predictable
blips. Perception: least of my problems.
Sprung graffiti insistently tug.
The sound is sideways-turned, shaggy to even.
The quality is tin.
A spiral doesn’t settle, it just stops. 

But it is March, and still they haven’t.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Sakiru Adebayo

Sakiru Adebayo [photo credit: Geordie Holland] is an assistant professor and the James and Eva Good Chair of African and Postcolonial Literature at Western University. Before moving to Western, Adebayo worked as an assistant professor in the English department at the University of British Columbia Okanagan from 2021 to 2025. He is the author of Continuous Pasts: Frictions of Memory in Postcolonial Africa (shortlisted for the African Literature Association First Book Award and finalist for the Memory Studies Association First Book Award). His work has been awarded the Nigerian Prize for Literary Criticism and the Amílcar Cabral Prize. Adebayo hosts "The New African Diaspora Podcast" and lives in London, Ontario.

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 was an academic book; it hasn’t changed my life much, but I suppose it will get me tenure, which, if we are being honest, is pretty much life-changing for any academic. My recent poetry collection, Wildfire Verses, is completely different from my previous book. This book is not written for tenure; it does not contain academic jargon, and it comes straight from my heart. Writing Wildfire Verses was just as onerous as writing my first (academic book), especially because both come from a deeply traumatic place and took a lot from me intellectually and emotionally. However, my poetry collection reflects more of how I feel. I think that is the beautiful thing about poetry: it allows a certain kind of freedom that academic writing does not. It is not constrained by grammar, linguistic, or formatting rules. Even though the collection is about my traumatic experience in the heat of a wildfire, it felt nonetheless freeing to write. The book is the place where my trauma and my expressive/creative freedom meet.

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

I would say my mother tongue, Yoruba, is a very poetic language. It is full of metaphors, ironies and, especially, euphemisms. I am so grateful I have proficiency in that language because, really, learning it took my brain to wild and imaginative places. I also grew up around older men and women (women especially) who understand the power of poetic language and know how to wield it. That was my first introduction to poetry. And, of course, in primary school, we had to learn/memorize all kinds of poems for all kinds of activities. I also came across fiction (through folktales) very early in life, but poetry has always been part and parcel of my life and culture. Therefore – by the time I acquired English as a second language and became proficient in it– It became a no-brainer that I started to write 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?

If it is an academic work, I certainly would have multiple drafts. Most of the time, the final draft will look completely different from the first draft. With poetry, it is slightly different. Most of my poems come to me fully done. They come in the shape of fully formed ideas. They also come as very strong feelings. Of course, I will still do multiple edits, but those are usually rewording, rephrasing and paraphrasing. The rephrasing can take years, but the spirit of the poem always remains the same.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose 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?

It is hard to tell because this is my first creative output. But I would say that even when the poems come to me as short and individual pieces, I still end up arranging them by theme and topicality to produce a book. This also means that some of my poems never see the light of day because they do not fit into a required theme or topicality.

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

This is what I am about to find out with my book tour, which is starting next month. I love me a good poetry reading. I am a huge fan of spoken words. I come from a culture that is deeply oratory. One of my guilty pleasures is listening to Maya Angelou read her poems (I saved a lot of her readings on Youtube). That said, I am not sure if I am good at doing readings. This is mostly because I am shy, or maybe it is because I am afraid of what I am capable of. I have a lot of poetry readings next month, so I will see how people receive it.

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?

I believe writers have many roles in the culture. I think writers are the conscience of society. They are part of the thinkers or, you might say, intellectual backbones of society. Like the olden days, writers are scribes; they document our civilization. Tell me one civilization or society that does not have its writers. Writers, literary or non-literary, are important to every civilization. So, to the question: what do I see the current role of the writer being in the larger culture? We need our writers now more than ever because of the onslaught of artificial intelligence. We need our writers to weave their metaphors, similes, humour, and ironies in ways that remind us of our humanity. In a time when politics has gone berserk and empathy has become a scarce commodity, we need writers to help us imagine what it feels like to be the Other. In these times when we are seeing the plotted death of the imagination, we need writers who will insist on the magic of the imagination. We need writers who will take us to the unexpected places of the imaginative plane.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

Even though it is not easy to move from poetry to critical prose (by which I mean literary criticism), I love the challenge. I often feel like I use different parts of my brain to write poetry as opposed to critical prose. However, my love of writing (and teaching) poetry also makes me want to read what scholars are saying about it, which eventually leads me to writing my own critical thoughts on it as well. I think some of the best literary critics are also creative writers (e.g. Matthew Arnold, TS Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Namwali Serpell, Viet Thanh Nguyen among many others). I also believe that some of the best prose writers that I admire say that they find inspiration in reading poetry. Although I have said that it is challenging to move from poetry to critical prose, I would contradict myself and say that, sometimes, writing in genre feels like an extension of the other. I have been in situations where, after writing a poem about a subject, I move on to write a critical essay on the same subject. I also think being a poet helps to enrich my critical prose/language. A student who read an academic essay I wrote once told me they enjoyed it precisely because I used a lot of poetic language. This is not something I do deliberately, but when you spend a lot of time thinking, reading, writing, and teaching poetry, it comes through in every other kind of writing that you do.

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

If you mean writing routine, I would say that I don’t really have one when it comes to poetry. Whenever I am inspired to write a poem (note the word “inspired”), the feeling becomes so strong that I leave everything else I am doing in that moment and focus on writing the poem. If I don’t leave everything else and focus on writing the poem, the feeling will disappear, and even when I try to invoke it later on, it just falls flat. I have once described it as an exorcism. Sometimes I dread that feeling. I think this is why it took me so long to publish my debut collection, because I kept running away from poetry. I wrote my collection, Wildfire Verses, within a week (even though it took three years of editing and re-editing). It took a traumatic experience of wildfire and evacuation from my home for me to finally put pen to paper. Within that one week, I could not do anything else. Sometimes I could not even bathe or eat.

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

Music (especially soul, jazz, and blues). Spoken Words. Listening to my favourite poets read their poems. I also turn to the Psalms (in King James or the Message versions only).

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

I am a pluvial child (I was born during the rainy season), so Mitti Attar is the fragrance that ALWAYS makes me feel at home. The smell and sound of rain hitting the baked earth and sand is the closest thing to paradise for me.

14 - 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?

Music for sure. I love all kinds of music. And, for me, it is not always the words that get me; it is the sound. So, on my playlist you will find Sufi music, songs in Arabic and Aramaic. I also love classical music, not just Western classical, but also classical music from other cultures. I am a huge fan of negro spiritual, blues, jazz, soul––––let’s just say I like slow music. I like to listen to music before writing; it sets the mood.  Any poetry person knows that the mood is very important.

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

I love reading Maya Angelou and Lucille Clifton. I love reading the Bible as well, but it must be in King James or the Message version. Even though it is obviously a spiritual document, I think it is the apotheosis of literary genius for me.

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

I want to travel the world. I think travelling is an important form of education. Well-travelled people are some of the most cultured and knowledgeable people I have met.

17 - 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?

The weird thing is that every other thing I can think of (screenwriter, teacher, secretary) involves some kind of writing, but maybe a film director? But I guess that also involves storytelling.

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

I haven't finished it, but American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee is a great read.

Sentimental Value by Joachim Trier was a great film.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I am working on another collection of poetry and a new monograph. Wish me well.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

above/ground press: 2027 subscriptions now available!

The race to the half-century continues! And with nearly FIFTEEN HUNDRED TITLES produced to date over the past thirty-three years, there’s been a ton of above/ground press activity over the past calendar year, including MORE THAN FIFTY TITLES (so far) produced in 2026 alone, including: poetry chapbooks by Ken Norris, Pete Smith, Peter Carl Anderson, Lori Anderson Moseman, Mark Tardi, Geoffrey Young, Lea Graham, Cara Goodwin, James Spyker, Grant Wilkins, Mark Goldstein, Harold Hoefle, Cary Fagan, Jason Heroux, Ken Norris, Stuart Ross and Jason Camlot, David Currie and IAN MARTIN, Jérôme Melançon, Dag T. Straumsvåg, Mrityunjay Mohan, Jon Cone, Emily Shafer, Derek Beaulieu, rob mclennan, Fred Wah, Daphne Marlatt, J.R. Carpenter, ryan fitzpatrick, Elena Zhang, Sarah Burgoyne and Clara Yeager, Susan Rudy, Shelly Harder, Misha Solomon, Stephanie Bolster, Jennifer Baker, Travis Sharp, John Levy, Christina Wells, Sarah Burgoyne, Ken Sparling, Jake Kennedy, Dawn Macdonald, Noah Sparrow, Glenn Bach, Jon Cone and K.Lipschutz, Robert van Vliet and Rose Maloukis, as well as three (quarterly) issues of Touch the Donkey and an issue of The Peter F. Yacht Club! There’s even two bilingual anthologies co-edited by Ottawa’s two poets laureate, Véronique Sylvain and David O’Meara, as part of their laureate tenures, and a further solo edited by O’Meara (all of which are still in print, at least for the moment).

SLIDING SCALE SUBSCRIPTIONS (AND RESUBSCRIPTIONS): As with last year, I am offering a sliding scale subscription rate; to simultaneously respond to ongoing postal/printing increases, as well as not automatically price everyone out. Honestly, if you are open to subscribing, whatever works within that particular range is completely fine! Not everyone has the same kinds of resources, and the main goal is to have the books available to those who want them. Subscriptions include everything above/ground press makes from the moment you subscribe through to the end of 2027, such as chapbooks, broadsheets, The Peter F. Yacht Club and G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] and quarterly poetry journal Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] (and whatever else the press can dream up, obviously):

CANADIAN SUBSCRIPTIONS : $75-$120 (CAN $)
AMERICAN SUBSCRIPTIONS : $75-$120 (US $)
INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIPTIONS : $100-$140 (CAN $)

As well, anyone who subscribes on or by November 1st will also receive the last above/ground press package of 2026, including those exciting new titles by a number of those folk listed above, plus whatever else the press happens to produce before the turn of the new year.

Why wait? You can either send a cheque (payable to rob mclennan) to 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 7M9, or send money via PayPal or e-transfer to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com (or through the PayPal/donate button, above and to your right).

Forthcoming items through the press also include individual chapbooks by Ryan Di Francesco, Paul Elter, Laura Carter, Noah Berlatsky, Michelle Lynn Dyrness, Tyler Mills, rob mclennan, Hassen Saker, Lisa Fishman, Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Katy DeCoste + David Phillips, another issue of Touch the Donkey, a further chapbook edited by David O’Meara (a couple of which have already been sent to the printer, by the by), as well as a whole slew of publications that haven't even been decided on yet. Who knows what might happen next.

And don’t forget our glorious substack! I’ve been posting author features/interviews over there for a while now; nearly forty interviews posted so far, most recently with Jennifer Baker, Jason Heroux, Lea Graham, Grant Wilkins and Lori Anderson Moseman. Lots of other cool updates that way, including clusters of new publication announcements every two months or so (because one at a time might be too much).

And don’t forget (also) that groundswell:the best of the third decade of above/ground press, 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2024) is also still available,

I’m sure you’ve also seen the posts, as well, through the (ottawa) small press almanac? lots of information on above/ground press and everyone else in town who makes chapbooks/ephemera etcetera! And the next edition (32^nd anniversary!) of the ottawa small press fair is November 14th! We will see you there, yes?

Jason Heroux, UNFINISHED WILDERNESS

SNOW

Some languages have fifty words for you. Others, none. This world is different from the cloud you left behind. Down here you’ll see pain, how easily we bruise and hurt, but not why. Very few things get along in our land. It takes years for a voice to be heard, centuries for a stone to feel at ease. Don’t worry if someone shovels you from here to there, or there to here, or not at all. You may end up packed in a ball, someone might taste you on their tongue or hold you for a moment in their hand. Don’t be surprised if you disappear. You may even grow to love your life before you go, or after you’re gone; you may even feel you belonged.

The sixth full-length poetry title from Kingston writer (and former Kingston poet laureate) Jason Heroux is UNFINISHED WILDERNESS (Vancouver BC: Anvil Press, 2026), the most recent title in Stuart Ross’ surrealist poetry imprint, “A Feed Dog Book” [see my reviews of other recent titles in the same series here and here and here and here and here]. “We are both echo / and voice, wave / and shore,” Heroux writes as part of the poem “ONE ANOTHER,” “we are // one wandering lost / along another road, and another // welcoming one / inside our home.” Composed through a cadence of short poems assembled in four numbered section-clusters, Heroux’s poems each offer their own sequence of gentle turns and twists, narratives moving in and out of concrete focus. “Everything in this life struggles to struggle,” begins the short poem “HEAVEN,” “all ages of waves love to break against the shore. / The quietest note in a word fights to be heard.” A few lines further, as the short piece concludes: “Like a shadow warming under the sun, / I have no idea how happy I am.” With poems comparable to Kingston poet Michael e. Casteels [see my review of his latest here, also edited by Stuart Ross] for their quiet rebellion, Heroux’s poems present themselves as being more straightforward than they are, turning almost invisibly towards and into the unfamiliar. Listen, to the opening of the poem “SHOPPING CART,” a piece that suggests the inanimate object as an abandoned, grieving narrator: “I waited at the edge / of a vacant glistening / lot and wept. You // weren’t there. You / didn’t hear, but are you / nearby, listening, // now?”

It is interesting that Heroux works through such purposefully-slippery narratives ,given his own belief on poetry earlier this year as part of the Spotlight series, citing his own response to a 2014 interview question, in which he suggests that poetry is, in fact, a grounding response to our external barrage of advertising and corporate-speak: “Poetry is a way for the inner self to answer back, to have a voice in the world. The tradition and craft of poetry helps create a secure and enduring space for the hushed human spirit to shout out loud and clear.” And what, one might ask of any reader, do you hear through the work of Jason Heroux? Something surreal, certainly, but always and ever deeply human. Or the poem “NOVEMBER EMAIL,” dedicated “from and for Dag,” being his friend and occasional collaborator, Norwegian poet Dag T. Straumsvag. As the poem reads, in full:

The beautiful
naked trees,
all of a sudden
letting us see
deep into forests.
An autumn door
we didn’t know
was there, opening,
I think Tom once said.