The Capilano Review issue 4.6 (spring 2026) : love bends / the mover: The Roy Miki Issue

The texts and artworks in this issue come together within and across many of Roy’s varied communities: artistic, activist, academic, and Asian Canadian among all of these, considering subjects like asiancy, archives, and, crucially, Roy’s imperative to action as a few more principles within his astonishingly imaginative praxis. The alliterative synchronicity here all the while attempts to return readers to the materiality of language that roots Roy’s work. As Michael Barnholden, editor of Miki’s Flow: Poems Collected and New, affirms: “Roy’s first language was language.” (“Editor’s Note,” Emily Fedoruk and Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross)

I’m very pleased to be able to go through the latest issue of The Capilano Review [see my review of the three fiftieth anniversary issues--3.46-3.48--here; my review of 3.41 here; my review of 3.34 here; my review of 3.33 here; my review of 3.32 here; my review of 3.31 here; my review of 3.30 here, etc], produced as “love bends / the mover: The Roy Miki Issue,” celebrating the work and influence of the late Vancouver writer, teacher, activist, archivist and editor Roy Miki (1942-2024) [launching in Vancouver, by the by, on July 17]. As editors Emily Fedoruk and Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross write as part of their introduction: “In circling the too-many possible places from which to ‘begin’ this note, we have often returned to the words of so many others who are forever moved and changed by Roy Miki.” They reference Phinder Dulai, for example, who offered this piece up at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics not long after Miki died. Literary activity, or even cultural activity generally, seems so rarely acknowledged in Canada (only occurring, if at all, once someone retires or dies), so these moments of homage, especially in memoriam, become essential for any kind of creative ecosystem.

For those unaware of Miki’s literary output, specifically his poetry, you should pick up Flow: Poems Collected and New, edited by Michael Barnholden (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2018) [see my review of such here], a book of some six hundred pages, covering all five of his published poetry collections—saving face: poems selected, 1976-1988 (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1991), random access file (Red Deer AB: Red Deer College Press, 1995), Surrender (winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry; Toronto ON: Mercury Press, 2001), There (Vancouver BC: New Star Books, 2006) and Mannequin Rising (New Star Books, 2011)[see my review of such here]. certainly well known as an editor and critic, from his years of West Coast Line to a collection of essays, a bibliography of George Bowering and editing Roy K. Kiyooka’s posthumous selected poems [see my review of such here] and bpNichol's posthumous critical writings, Miki is perhaps still best known for his years fighting for and finally achieving redress from the Canadian federal government for the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. One can best describe his decades of writing, editing, activism and teaching as a community-based focus on questions about identity, citizenship, race, and place.

dear roy,

 

this break between our years

makes the arch of a bridge you ride

into vaporous clouds (“dear roy,” shō yamagushiku)

This special issue of The Capilano Review offers work by Michael Barnholden, Carolyn Nakagawa, Yoriko Guillard, Larissa Lai, Nicole Markotić, Cindy Mochizuki, Fred Wah, Yilin Wang, Echo Quan, Tiziana La Melia, Vivek Sharma, Gloriah Amondi, Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, Sena Cleave, shō yamagushiku, Wayde Compton, Daphne Marlatt, Rita Wong and Ranbir K Banwait, whether as direct tribute or response, or as indirect continuation of Miki’s decades of attention and labour. A play of language across language; a cross-section, that suggests and even explores further depths. The issue includes direct responses, but also pieces from those who might walk one of the many paths, so to speak, that Miki worked so hard to forge. Cindy Mochizuki, for example, provides “a textual and visual response” to Miki’s poem “Flow Nation,” from his collection, There. Larissa Lai offers “Rising Mist: Five Haibun for Roy” which are quite stunning (and hopefully part of an eventually-forthcoming collection, certainly). Wah offers some further lines of thoughtful lyric, of reminiscence, as does Nicole Markotić, providing an intimate detailing of Miki and Miki’s lyric in Winnipeg, upon first meeting him there. On his part, Wayde Compton provides the first part of an extended epic-in-progress, “Epistles to Oya: An Epic,” that stretches across an incredible canvas:

In the commander’s quarters, gathering
washing, she stopped, and her shape 

formed in the ornate lead-framing looking-
glass across the mantle: her self a 

stutter, a ripple in silver, foxed, a flash
of seeing; and in her cradling 

arm, swaddled warm, the worn
leather at her hip as she worked, the two 

oblong in the moment, together ahead
of missing, of breaking. And above 

his bed a painting, a flattery, this
commander, his eyes shadows, his face 

a simmer, a smear of power, at his neck
a chain, a locket on it, a spiral 

engraving of a ram’s horn there in
gold, a circling 

back upon itself. It hung
in paint as in life
covering his heart.

Echo Quan offers an intriguing sequence of text and photography, another form Miki had been exploring himself across a number of years. Translator and poet Yilin Wang offers three poems, the first of which, “mother tongue,” begins: “what is your mother tongue after you were / hoisted away from china at the age of four, and only // recovered the brushstrokes of your grandma;s name / by chance a decade later?” Highlights are almost too numerous to mention. I was also intrigued by the multiple pages of drawings, and again and again now that we know we know we know, by Sena Cleave, introduced with this short statement by the artist:

The curved lines in and again and again now that we know we know we know take after Roy Miki’s use of parenthesis in his poetic work. in poems like “Dome’s Story” and “The Fronds on Galiano,” I noticed how Miki would open parentheses without later closing them – sometimes opening multiple in a single poem – evoking a margin that continuously grows. Reflecting on Miki’s writing and activism (the latter of which he has described as a continuous process of change and negotiation) during the current rise in anti-migrant policies, I began drawing parentheses with coloured pencils, repeating and layering them until the parentheses took on a structural role in the composition, similar to how a stitch functions in embroidery, or how a row of thread functions in weaving. and again and again now that we know we know we know continues my inquiry into textiles, agriculture, and other repetitive forms of labour, using materials such as thread, fabric, and pine needles to think through themes of precarity, sustenance, and persistence.

Literature, I’ve heard it said, is less a continuous thread than a constellation of interconnected hubs, from which so much activity emerges, and Miki was one of those very important touchstones for multiple generations of writers, academics, readers and thinkers, well beyond his years teaching at Simon Fraser University (although a number of these contributors can be counted as some of Miki’s former students). As well, this is not the first special issue on Miki and his work, as the late journal that he founded, West Coast Line, produced a special issue, titled “Miki,” as issue #57 (42.1: spring/summer 2008), guest edited by Fred Wah [see my review of such here]. As Wah beings in his introduction to that issue, a consideration that could be equally applied to this current volume:

This issue of West Coast Line is a tribute to its founder, Roy Miki. It is not intended as collection of anecdotal or hagiographical testimonials but, rather, a collection of writing from some of the writers who have cohabited Roy’s extensive cultural community over the past 40 years. Writing was solicited to reflect not only the moment of production but also to reflect to Roy a partial sense of the threads of his own creative and intellectual milieu which he has generated through a lifetime of writing, thinking, and activism.

my new poetry title, edgeless (Caitlin Press) is now available!

An acrobatic cascade of poem-letters that bring you right up close to the ordinary intimacies of life

edgeless is written as a collection of poetic sequences that illuminate the extraordinary ordinary, travelling across time and space as letters to family, friends, and contemporaries. From epistolary notes composed to his wife during her time at Banff, and a Covid-era call-and-response with Denver poet Julie Carr, to an elegy for his friend, the late Prince George poet Barry McKinnon, the poems in edgeless hop, skip, and jump through everyday intimacies and commentary. With mclennan’s usual flair and flourish for acrobatic, inventive language, edgeless writes the world from within, as his words leave you pressed right up against it.

Author of My Heresies, Alina Stefanescu, said, “The world is a vampire, according to the Smashing Pumpkins. But the world is also everything that is the case, according to Ludwig Wittgenstein, and – in this case—rob mclennan brings his own “edgeless” epistolary form to bear on one of the oldest traditions in poetics, namely, the directed address in the form of a letter. Somewhere between Edmond Jabès’ “Letter from Yukel to Sarah” in The Book of Margins and Joe Wenderoth’s Letters to Wendy’s, one encounters mclennan’s “edgeless” letters to his wife, between time-space, Facetime, and twitter, the “gust of err” that waits and imagines the other. And the estuaries “for/with Julie Carr,” peopled by the winged concerns of Carr’s poems, attached to hope for life borne of poetry and friendship. We write to each other to imagine a future outside the given of capitalist realism. We write the other and the other writes us and the world we adore calls this “poetry.” The world calls this “a book.” The poet in me implores you to read it.”

edgeless (9781773861890) is published by Caitlin Press and distributed by the University of Toronto Press. It will be available to order from bookstores across Canada.

see the essay i wrote on the collection here : cover artwork by Aoife McLennan

The author of more than fifty books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, rob mclennan has won the John Newlove Poetry Prize, been shortlisted multiple times for the Archibald Lampman Award, longlisted for the ReLit Award, longlisted for the Robin Blaser Poetry Contest via The Capilano Review, and longlisted twice for the CBC Poetry Prize. The editor/publisher of above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics and Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], he was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta for the 2007-2008 academic year, and is the current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival. Born in Ottawa, rob mclennan is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Hugo dos Santos

Hugo dos Santos is a Luso-American writer and translator. He is the author of Reduction in Force (Bauhan Publishing, forthcoming 2026), winner of the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Award, and Then, there (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), a collection of Newark stories. He is the translator of Homecoming (Arquipélago Press, 2024) and A Child in Ruins (Writ Large Press, 2016), a staff pick by The Paris Review Daily.

Born in Lisboa, Portugal, and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Hugo writes toward questions of diaspora, belonging, and memory. His poetry and fiction illuminate the beauty, complexity, and struggles of the immigrant experience and urban life, while his translations bring contemporary Portuguese literature to English-speaking audiences.

Hugo received a 2026 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has also been awarded fellowships from The Edward F. Albee Foundation, MacDowell, and the Disquiet International Literary Program. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in Barrelhouse, Cultural Daily, Electric Literature, Hobart, The Common, The Fanzine, and elsewhere.

Hugo lives in New Jersey.

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 a collection of short stories titled Then, there, about my hometown of Newark, NJ. I felt so much responsibility with that book, to capture the essence of that place. It took me about four years to write that book.

My new book, Reduction in Force, is a poetry collection that deals with very different subject matter. On the surface, it’s far from Then, there, but both books are really concerned with identity, belonging, and the systems that shape our lives.

I had an early idea for the structure of Reduction in Force, and the poems kept coming. I wrote them in almost the exact order in which they appear in the book, which is still hard to believe.

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

Poetry was my first literary language. Before I knew how to tell stories, I was trying to make meaning through images, rhythm, and compression.

In some ways, I think all my projects start out as poems. I think in verse and have some methods I have developed for capturing those early ideas when they emerge. As I keep working on them, sometimes they stay as poems. Other times, they evolve into something else.

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?

At first, I don’t really know that I’m working on something that will become a book. It’s just writing. When I find myself coming back to the same idea, I’ll make a note of that though I don’t rush in to define it right away. Longer projects kind of reveal themselves as they begin to take shape.

I am an avid note taker and those are very helpful. My first drafts tend to be explorations. They contain the DNA of the finished piece, but I revise heavily and repeatedly.

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?

Early in a project, I am usually just writing without any kind of pretense about what it will turn into. Those first steps are an opportunity to play and investigate during which I try to find the voice and the story that is inspiring me to write. As I keep working, the play transforms into something more serious. That’s when I start to think about the shape of the project, its structure and form.

Very early on, I realized this new book wanted the architecture of a Greek tragedy. In some ways, that made the writing process easier because I knew what the book was building to. I had a clear vision for where it was going and how it would end. That allowed me to focus on the execution, which was a real treat.

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

I really enjoy readings and public events because they are an opportunity to build or be in community. I particularly enjoy a number of the local reading and open mic series. I like being able to share my work with a supportive audience, and I love to hear my friends’ work.

For Reduction in Force, I definitely used the open mic series in my town, at the Flemington DIY, to read the poems in a big space. I learned about the poems that way; both about what was and wasn’t working. That was invaluable and I am so indebted to all the good people who are part of that series. I named them in the Acknowledgments section of the book.  

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?

Each of my books has been an attempt to take on a big question or idea. In Reduction in Force, I ended up writing about the systems we create and the degree to which those systems fail to function in the interest of the individuals within them.

The book started because I wanted to investigate our relationship with work, specifically with corporate work. I was interested in the degree to which those kinds of jobs inform the identity of those individuals who make their living that way.

I have seen a number of those reductions, and I was struck by how they affect both those who are laid off as well as those who keep their jobs and continue in their roles after the fact. One of the ideas at the center of the book is the lie embedded in the phrase It’s just business. Work shapes identity, family life, self-worth, and community. When that relationship is severed, the consequences are deeply personal.

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?

The writer’s first responsibility is to the craft. Beyond that, literature helps us see one another more clearly. I don’t think art needs to be didactic, but I do think it can challenge the stories a culture tells about itself.

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

I absolutely love working with a good editor. My work is always better for it. Writing can be a solitary act, while publishing is collaborative. A good editor sees both the book you wrote and the book you’re trying to write, then helps close the gap between them.

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

To not take any advice. To keep going and find my own way of doing it.

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

I love the freedom to move between genres. It allows me to work in accordance with what the project needs. I also learn valuable lessons in one genre that I can apply in others.

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?

My routine changes from project to project. When I’m deep in a manuscript, I become very goal-oriented and build systems around word counts, deadlines, and milestones. Outside of that, I am constantly taking notes, collecting ideas, and paying attention.

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

When I get stuck, I have sometimes taken a break and moved to a different project. Usually, though, and if at all possible, I will try to work on a different aspect of the same project. That allows me to subconsciously work on the problem. Later, when I return to what had me stuck, I am better able to find a solution.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

A big pot on the stove. Garlic and onions sizzling in olive oil. Family gathered around a table.

There’s a line in my book that goes, “I still love meals that stop everything.” And it’s so true.

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?

Yes, in addition to books, I am inspired by film and music. In Reduction in Force, I have an epigraph from Frank Ocean: “If it brings me to my knees, it’s a bad religion.” That line was an anchor for me while I was writing the book.

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

There are so many: Fernando Pessoa is the writer I return to most often and his work has been a companion through different stages of my life; Katherine Vaz is a writer and person I greatly admire; I love the work of Percival Everett; I adore the poetry of Jane Hirshfield and Aracelis Girmay; poets like Marwa Helal, Vincent Toro, Grisel Y. Acosta, Chiwan Choi, and Peter Murphy; and I am endlessly inspired by the work of colleagues like Marina Carreira, Dimitri Reyes, PaulA Neves, Ysabel Y. Gonzalez, and Toma Zbrizher.

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

I would love to publish a novel.

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?

I have a career in educational publishing. I care deeply about literacy and helping young people become readers. Had writing not found me, I suspect I would have gravitated toward work involving books, language, and learning.

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

I never really had a choice. Writing is how I make sense of the world. I was writing long before I ever thought of publication. It helped me understand experiences, questions, and contradictions that wouldn’t leave me alone.

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

I just finished reading all of Claire Keegan’s books. She is an incredible writer. I was particularly moved by Small Things Like These and Foster, which is a gorgeous poem of a novel. 

I recently watched The Secret Agent and was blown away by its depth and subtlety.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I have a novel in progress that I’m very excited about. Hopefully you’ll read it one day.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part two, : Jordan Davis + Ethan Rein Vilu,

[Grant Wilkins; see part one here] Be aware the next ottawa small press book fair is November 14 at Tom Brown Arena, yes? Even though I haven’t properly announced it, I’m already getting vendors. And don’t forget that myself and above/ground press will be attending the Fisher Library Small Press Fair in Toronto on September 19, yes?

Ottawa ON/Teaneck NY: Further from russell carisse’s sider0xylon press is the small chapbook SORRY, GOD by New Jersey poet and editor Jordan Davis, a poet I’d very much like to see further from [see my review of Davis’ latest full-length collection here]. SORRY, GOD is a chapbook made up of sixteen short, accumulated and untitled poem-fragments, a long poem composed via one step against another in sequence. “If you think about the future / everything gets worse but,” he writes, early on in the sequence, “if you think about other people / you have a chance / of not being the reason / everything gets worse [.]” The title suggests a kind of lyric act of contrition, yet the piece opens more into a suggestion of how to approach being an interacting with the world in a positive and constructive way, instead of simply being the problem, as it were. As the sequence opens:

How does it even happen
I was right there
paying attention, even!
and right in my blind spot — 

complete understanding
blipped out of existence —

[Christian McPherson, author]

Ottawa ON/Calgary AB: It is good to see new work from Calgary poet and editor Ethan Rein Vilu, THE LONESOME GLORY (Ottawa ON: Horsebroke Press, 2026), an assemblage of what appear as sonnet-variants, following chapbooks DRAWINGS FROM BEFORE THE RED YEAR (Anstruther Press, 2024) [see my review of such here] and A DECISION RE: ZURICH (The Blasted Tree, 2020). The seventeen poems that make up THE LONESOME GLORY speak on horseraces, offering specific lyrics on “Kentucky Derby, 2003” to “Starlet Stakes, 2022,” the Belmont Cup and “Yearling Sale, 1954,” writing in and around poems set within that particular world, but from different temporal points, which becomes curious in itself. Why so much movement across time? The poems bounce around perspectives of not a singular event but a larger, ongoing culture, which is curious to see. “For some,” the poem “Kentucky Derby, 2003,” begins, “it was an eden pierced / by world-weariness.” Vilu writes of horseracing in ways transcendent and intimate, mundane and glorified. While the moments that Vilu writes are interesting, I’m uncertain how these moments connect to each other, beyond elements of structure, and the loose content of horseracing. What is the purpose to this assemblage, what is the structure? There are moments I wish the narrative was less straight and more nuanced, more subtle, such as the poem “Starlet Stakes, 2022,” that closes:

She was denied her fairy-tale ending,
and yet her brave narrative prevails.
the race possessed the rhythm
of a legend—an arc unwinding
deep across the Orange County sky.

 

[Jay MillAr, Book*hug Press]