Ongoing notes: late September, 2026 : Geordie Miller + Sherry Coffey,

You already know I’m reading tonight at Perfect Books in Ottawa, yes? As part of the shortlist reading for this year’s Archibald Lampman Award, reading from my shortlisted title, the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025). Oh, and this weekend I’m in Toronto with my new poetry title, edgeless (Caitlin Press) and a whole slew of above/ground press stuff participating in the Fisher Fine and Small Press Fair at the University of Toronto. Might we see you?

Sackville NB: From Gaspereau Press comes Geordie Miller’s Love Poems for Landlords (Devil’s Whim No. 54, 2026), the latest from former Halifax-based poet who once had a poetry title with Snare Books (a title still available through Invisible Publishing) [see his 2014 ’12 or 20 questions’ interview here]. There’s an element to the condensed first-person lyric narrative and tone writing on grounded subject matter across a singular, dense poem-shape is reminiscent of what I’ve seen from Halifax poet matt robinson, from what I recall, or Kitchener poet Chris Banks. Online searches do show that he has done a collaboration or two, but not a single full-length since that long-ago debut. Here’s hoping there might be a collection before too long.

Love Poems for Landlords

spring in green deceit leases renewal
hermit thrushes borrow their choruses
from god. oh holy holy the u-haul
amends their hymn, bearing disharmonious
remainders: lime dresser, twin bed, four drawers
the ragged ballad of the second hand
each note just sags like a heavy load, lord
on the windshield of life why must we land
splattered like bugs misguided by moonlight
simulations, scattered in our desire
to be released? The afterlife of flight
arrival—dull roots stirred by our provider
batter our hearts, tender your unit too
month by month we shall remain evernew.

Sackville NB: Produced by Geordie Miller’s (remember that guy?) own project, The High Marsh Press, comes Fredericton poet Sherry Coffey’s chapbook FORAGING (2026). Floating around the internet, Coffey has been publishing, here and there, for some time, but this is her debut as a solo author, winner of the 2025 Deborah Wills Chapbook Contest, and produced in a numbered edition of fifty. The poems that form the chapbook FORAGING are accumulated moments, a dozen untitled poems across a sequence, numbered only through the amount of characters set as each page’s offset. There is something quite delicate about Coffey’s precisions, composing small moments, small intimacies, across a larger tapestry of ongoing attention. “As a child / we grazed at the Fraser pass,” the Whitehorse, Yukon-born poet offers, amid the fifth poem in sequence, “that high saddle / between Yukon and Alaska, / with the bears: // sage, a twitch of twigs / on blue-stained fingertips, / Mother, brother and sister. / Alone, and in clumps.” While her lyrics haven’t the density of a Cameron Anstee or, say, Nelson Ball, there is something of a similar moment she works through each of these pieces; poems that speak for, and around, a depth of attention. One might wonder if a larger collection is forthcoming? One can only hope. As the eighth poem in sequence reads:

Wasps curl in
the diseased cavities
of fermented pears.
Last night they moved with purpose. 

This morning though
just one or two crawl slowly
over bodies,
bypass their history.