That time of year thou mayst in me behold, and other rowdy tales,

Okay, possibly not rowdy. We survived another Christmas, at least the immediate bits of such, with a few more adventures and gatherings ahead. Aoife and I have been doing a Marvel Movie marathon the past week or so (in order of release), some six or seven movies in, at this point. I've not been able to convince Rose of any of this. As far as updates: Jérôme Melançon has composed the most lovely review of the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025), posted via the temz review. Did you see that the book was also part of this year's CBC Book's list of "The Best Canadian Poetry of 2025" as well? Very nice! I so rarely get on lists such as those. As part of the lead-up to this year's Ottawa Book Awards, Susan Johnson re-ran the CKCU Radio interview she and Brecken Hancock did with me on the book, which was fun. You probably already know that I didn't win the Ottawa Book Award for On Beauty (University of Alberta Press, 2024). I wrote about that here.

There's also a recent interview with me via On Creative Writing that got posted, as well. Read Alberta even recommended the book as part of "Alberta Books for the Poetry Reader"!

Public Reverie posted a few poems from my work-in-progress "Fair bodies of unseen prose," and Work and Days (Beautiful Days Press, Brooklyn) included some of the same, plus another project, in Vol. 6 of their journal, both print and online. I even have new poems in Gone Lawn. Oh, and the recording of the recent (zoom) conversation between Renée Sarojini Saklikar and myself on above/ground press is now online, as Aoife scours the shelves behind me, like the Junk Lady in Labyrinth (1986).

49th Shelf recently asked me for some reading recommendations, so I offered a list of such here, including titles by Anna Swanson, Qurat Dar, Isabella Wang, Melanie Dennis Unrau, Gillian Sze, Jumoke Verissimo, Hajer Mirwali and Sadiqa de Meijer.

What might 2026 bring? I'm pushing through these poetry manuscripts, hoping, in part, to return to short stories, return to that novel I was working on. There's also a whole swath of exciting things I'm working on via above/ground press and Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] and periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics and the "Tuesday poem," as well as curating our spring edition of VERSeFest: Ottawa's International Poetry Festival. Did you know if you donate by the end of the year, we'll even send along a nice tax receipt?