Ongoing notes: mid-April, 2026: Carlos A. Pittella + Corey Page Martin,

Poetry month! Have you been catching the daily poems posted over at the Chaudiere Books blog? Or the weekly interviews posted via the above/ground press substack? Or the weekly posts in the Canadian Poets Series via Peripety and/or Tronies? There’s a lot going on, as you most likely know. And will I see later this coming week in Victoria? I’m apparently doing two readings and hosting a podcast, live on stage! All through Planet Earth Poetry. That should be pretty cool.

Lethbridge AB/Toronto ON: The third chapbook and debut manifesto by Brazillian-born and Lethbridge-based poet Carlos A. Pittella is Dante’a Bureau: A Deformalist Manifesto (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2026), a curious lyric and layered essay that counterpoints a thread of Dante and Saramago against a commentary around the difficulties around attempting to garner a passport one can’t travel to, due to an outdated passport. “The last Holy Roman Emperor died and the First Florentine Republic legislated a new balance of power,” Pittella writes, as part of the first thread, “requiring new rules of representation for landed aristocrats, merchant magnates, lower nobles, bankers, artisans… Bureaucracy was just budding when Dante projected its ideal form. Hell is a rational dream.” Counterpoint that against the other thread on the same page, that begins:

It took me eight years to get my Northern passport
By jus soli I already had one from the South.
By jus sanguinis I could apply for other ones.
By marriage I could’ve got one more but then
would have had to swear I revoked all others.
I started the new passport application
but the agents at the consulate
didn’t really want more citizens
so it took years to reconstruct my genealogy
with birth & marriage & death certificates
all notarized & translated
from a believable ancestor to myself.

Toronto/Kingston ON: Another title from Anstruther is by Kingston poet Corey Page Martin, the sleek chapbook JIM (2026), which appears to be their debut. JIM is a suite of poems that respond to the death of the author’s father in 2010, as the first piece, “Suddenly,” offers his obituary: “MARTIN, James Edward – Passed away / suddenly on December 1, 2010 in his 43^rd / year.” Composed as a chapbook-length elegy, the poems assemble, cluster, accumulate, writing through and around this central point, sketching errant truths and pressure points, play and open space, and new spaces that have yet to be filled. “we buried him in the backyard,” begins the poem “On father’s day,” “construction-paper / coffin // garden-stone tomb // he was supposed to be a goldfish / but he was blue / then white / then dead [.]” In certain ways, this is entirely an assemblage of poems on form, as Martin works through grief and loss from a variety of angles, playing with shape and structure, from a variation on Wallace Steven’s infamous 1917 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” to poems composed through erasure, grids or found material. As the fifth poem in Martin’s sequence, a clever riff off memory, loss, their father and a particular beloved song by The Beatles, “Thirteen ways of listening to ‘Blackbird,’” Martin writes:

with a different voice every time

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Loch Baillie

Loch Baillie (he/il) [photo credit: LMJ Photography] is a queer writer based in Quebec City. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks, ice, dove parachute (Cactus Press) and Citronella (Anstruther Press), as well as the forthcoming collection River Running (icehouse poetry/Goose Lane Editions, 2026). Loch is an associate poetry editor at Plenitude Magazine, and his writing has appeared in publications such as Maclean’s, yolk, Tidewise, and Ahoy. Find Loch online @lochbaillie or by visiting www.lochbaillie.com.

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

My debut chapbook Citronella (Anstruther Press, 2024) changed everything for me. In the months surrounding its release, I got really into the Canadian micropress scene and began connecting with other poets. This mainly happened through Instagram, and that platform remains the place I most often interact with other writers. Putting out a chapbook showed me just how generous the poetry community in Canada can be. It’s an incredible community to be a part of.

My second chapbook, ice, dove, parachute (Cactus Press, 2024), came out only nine months after Citronella, but it is quite different. While Citronella introduces broader themes — sexual identity and leaving one’s home — ice, dove, parachute takes these themes further, exploring their repercussions through a more intimate, domestic, and Québec-oriented lens. It is a follow-up in both subject and tone, and a more grown-up work. My forthcoming full-length collection, River Running (icehouse poetry, 2026), will weave together the threads of my chapbooks in a much fuller way, and I look forward to it serving as many readers’ introduction to my work.

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

Funnily enough, I didn’t! I was raised by English teachers, one of whom is a novelist, and so I was primarily interested in prose from a young age. By the time I was a young teenager, I decided I wanted to write novels. This was around the time that young adult dystopian and urban fantasy books were flying off of the shelves. Think The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Mortal Instruments. I started (and abandoned) several projects, and by the time I was sixteen, I became more interested in writing about my own experiences and began taking a more diaristic approach to my writing. At that age, it turned out I could write a poem a lot faster, and more naturally, than a book chapter.

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’s a slow process. I tend to write down a bunch of words or lines and then give my poems their shape later on. This typically happens in my Notes app or in a Word Doc. I’d love to be the type of writer that fills up stacks and stacks of Moleskin notebooks, but it’s never worked for me. I far prefer a word processor, or even just scraps of paper. Some of my first poems were written on notepads at the ice cream parlour I worked at in high school. I’d carry them in my apron pockets alongside customers’ orders.

My first drafts very rarely resemble what I publish. In the case of River Running, the original manuscript became stretched in the middle partway through the editing process. I lost a family member in mid-2024 and wrote a series of poems that would eventually form the book’s third section. River Running was initially concerned with metaphorical and anticipatory grief — but it has become concerned with a very concrete sort of grief, as well. 

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? 

This might be unusual, but the titles often come first. I love titles. I love the act of naming something. It’s like a generative exercise. A perfect example of this is my poem “Antediluvian,” which is the last poem in Citronella. I was curious about the period of time in the Bible between the fall of man and the Great Flood — what I came to know as being called “antediluvian” (or “pre-flood”). I began asking myself, what happens in a moment of banishment? How does one feel looking back at a place called home while simultaneously seeing some strange land on the horizon? It was the first poem I wrote for Citronella, but in doing so, I knew I’d already written its ending. I wrote towards that closing with the other poems; led the speaker all the way to the edge of that cliff.

I don’t think I’ve yet figured out how books “happen.” But I can say this: the more I write, the more I understand how my poems interconnect. It was clear to me when I had enough poems for my chapbooks, and it was clear to me when I had enough for my full-length collection. 

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

I enjoy public readings but wouldn’t consider them part of my creative process. Being part of a community of writers and receiving feedback is essential to my creativity – but reading the work aloud to an audience, not so much. It is fun, though!

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?

It depends entirely on what I’m writing. What I’m currently working on is heavily informed by theory (see answer to question 19) — but up until this point, my writing has been more concerned with lived experience, such as notions of self, home, and interpersonal relationships. Now that I’m in graduate school, it feels only natural to work on a project that blends my academic interests and my creative interests.

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? 

This is a big question, and one that could be answered in no less than a hundred different ways. I see my own role as a writer as being a sort of truthteller. In Shakespeare’s plays, the truthtellers often operate on the margins and in the fens. Think of the Fool in King Lear or the witches in Macbeth. These are queer, weird (wyrd) characters. I feel similarly as a queer writer. I write to reveal uncomfortable truths. I write frankly, and shy from writing fiction, because there is so much happening in the real world. Fiction is an interesting genre. I read a lot of it, and I value the way it can offer escape or confront me with difficult truths. But in my experience, contemporary poetry doesn’t allow for distraction — it cuts straight to the bone.

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

For me, it is absolutely essential. I often prefer the editing process over the writing process because I feel more lucid there. Writing a poem is like throwing a pack of playing cards on the ground, and working with an editor is playing fifty-two-card pickup. I’m a better writer because of my editors. 

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

Ocean Vuong posted this great Instagram Story about cultivating one’s soil; this idea that writer’s block does not exist and that it’s only a lack of creative stimuli. I’ve taken that to mean: if I’m not reading, moving, living — I’m not writing.

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

I find it quite difficult, but I think I’m getting better at it. Poetry is my default setting, and so when I write prose, it tends to be lyrical. I’d like to develop a prose style that feels complimentary to my poetry — but at the same time, if I ever wrote a novel, I wouldn’t want it to read like a seventy-thousand word poem. I love novels by poets; every word and punctuation mark is chosen so carefully. But for me, I’d rather be known as a poet who occasionally writes prose. 

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? 

I don’t have a specific routine. I’d like to write more regularly, but I find it difficult without external pressure (a workshop or a deadline, for example). I can’t force a poem. Some weeks I write a great deal. Some weeks I don’t write at all. 

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

A long walk. A hot shower. Rereading favourite poems.

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?

It’s music for sure. I couldn’t live without it, never mind create. I’m often more interested in how a song sounds than what it’s saying. How I hear music is how it feels to write (or read) a good poem.

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

Louise Glück, Richard Siken, Maggie Smith, Ada Limón, and Ocean Vuong have all had a significant impact on my poetry. For specific writings, I’ve turned time and time again to Audre Lorde’s essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury” and the final paragraphs of Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things. 

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

I’d like to give songwriting a try. Writing for someone else, that is.  

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 trying to get better at plants, so maybe a horticulturist? I was never very good at science, but I’ve become obsessed with orchids thanks to Susan Orlean. I just replanted one for the first time and it bloomed!

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

I’m not sure what that “something else” would have been. When I began writing, I couldn’t stop. I still can’t.

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

White Oleander by Janet Fitch. It’s brilliant. I enjoyed the film adaptation by Peter Kosminsky, too!

19 - What are you currently working on? 

My Master’s thesis! It’s a research-creation project that combines poetry, essays, and interviews with artists about bilingual art in French-speaking Canada. It's called Head Split in Half  and is technically my second full-length book. It is theoretically concerned with notions of confession, belonging, and language. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Christina Shah

Christina Shah lives in New Westminster and works in heavy industry. Her work was shortlisted for 2021’s Ralph Gustafson Prize and selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2023. rig veda was her first videopoem and chapbook (Anstruther, 2023). if: prey, then: huntress (Nightwood, Fall 2025) is her first full-length collection.

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

My first chapbook was an illuminating process. Plus, I made some new friends! I’m very grateful for the support I received from Robert Colman (my editor), and Jim Johnstone at Anstruther Press, my poetry collective, Harbour Centre 5, as well as from my colleagues, customers and suppliers in the industrial world. It was also an opportunity to connect with some of the poets whose work I’d admired for many years. I felt like a real writer once I had something tangible to hold in my hands– I’d realized my dream.

My most recent work, if: prey, then: huntress is a full-length collection. Compared to rig veda (my chapbook), there is some overlap in terms of content, but IPTH is an eclectic collection (work and play poetry!). During one of our conversations, Rob said ‘a chapbook is like a room in a house’. The light went on for me (and yes, someone was home!).

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

I came through the work of Dennis Lee, as a child. The irreverence is what did it for me. Poetry seemed supercharged in terms of its humour, its whimsicality (and certainly its musicality) and the naughtiness of its child characters.

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?

In my case it’s how many fits and starts? It’s a very slow process. I frequently use the word ‘woolgathering’ to describe it. ‘Hairy tumbleweeds’ might be a more apt metaphor— pricklier and more random, and over rougher terrain. I do a lot of research while writing, but mainly for technical reasons (which invariably ends up down internet rabbit holes). First drafts usually need to ‘have legs’, as I like to say—in the form of a spark of sound or an explosive image or even unusual subject matter, used as a prompt. Then there’s a moderate amount of editing (longhand) on the printed first draft.

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?

For me, a poem begins with a sensory snippet, or an image (could even be a mundane scene or a utilitarian object), or a far-out sound combination that begets an unusual image (see #3). That’s the flashpoint. I’m definitely in the former camp.

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

I’d say they’re part of my creative process. I do enjoy doing readings and connecting with the audience. The in-between banter and the backstory adds some connective tissue and colour that is unique to an in-person reading, much like a live music event.

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’m seeking meaning within and beyond the world of work. How can we carve out some time and energy for ourselves to be present but not enmeshed, especially in this age of technological acceleration? What do we show of ourselves beyond our roles or our scripts in commercial or institutional environments and interactions? How do we as individuals maintain our humanity and agency in dehumanizing environments or situations? Why are there still places and networks in which women’s participation and access to opportunity is limited? How do we maintain our connection with the tactile world? How do we keep craftsmanship and repair knowledge alive in the age of enshittification? Most of my questions are questions of agency.

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 holds up a mirror, shows us our humanity, and helps us hang on. They demand courage and honesty and are willing to put themselves on the line for all of us. I think we need writers more than ever these days, especially when books are being banned and we’re living in a sea of propaganda and AI slop. I’m reminded of the Greek cynic philosopher Diogenes, who was purported to have wandered around in public spaces in broad daylight with a lit lantern, claiming he was ‘searching for an honest man’.

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

Essential. I’ve been so fortunate in this regard. I’ve had the privilege of working with both Rob, and Peter Norman (who edited if: prey, then: huntress). Nightwood also treated IPTH gently but with great attention to detail. Their perspectives were very helpful in ordering the manuscript and also in determining which poems to keep and which to leave out.

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

“Well-behaved women rarely make history.” More of a pithy quote, which I took as advice!

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 do three pages of free-writing most mornings before work (and on the weekend), but I don’t have a set routine. A typical day begins with very strong coffee and plant care. When I have time after freewriting, I do like to read the LCP’s Poetry Pause poem or watch a videopoem.

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

There’s always reading other poets’ work, as well as knitting/crochet or baking. Making things usually sets off another writing streak. Taking a walk helps. I’m a fan of using prompts in group settings as well.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

My husband’s cooking, specifically his spaghetti bolognese sauce. It’s out of this world. I’m very spoiled.

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?

So many influences. Food, music (specifically 70s rock), and visual art, the urban environment, geology, astronomy, and mechanical engineering concepts/terms.

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

I try to read as much industrial work poetry as I can, so Kate Braid, Tom Wayman, Lindsay Bird, Garth Martens, and Joe Denham, to name a few. I’m interested in discovering more Spanish language poetry by women writers. I also enjoy the literary journals— it’s always interesting to leaf through and to discover a new writer, or a new piece by someone whose work you enjoy.

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

I’d like to visit Spain and walk everywhere, especially on the Galician coast. Art, architecture, great cuisine and natural beauty!

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’d try being a cardiac surgeon, although that does not really qualify as something you dabble in— and you can’t really wing it. My guess is I’d probably still be in sales or a small business owner importing Nice European Things (either edible or wearable).

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

It was the one thing I could do well, and I loved words and books from an early age. I could take them with me wherever I went. Reading and writing became a lifeline as a child and as an adult.

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

Book: Lauren Peat’s chapbook Future Tense (Baseline 2024). It’s stunning. ‘Aubade at Olympic Station’ begins with the line ‘I wake to split the blue milk of morning with the cat who haunts my building’. Musically-rich (Peat is a composer as well– and draws some inspiration from the work of Glenn Gould), this work is a kaleidoscopic meditation which reflects on many facets of vulnerability: intimacy and distance in relationships, homelessness–‘the man curled into a comma by the TD Bank’, even a newborn baby after a difficult birth.

Film: a beautiful, five-minute videopoem about the aftermath of the end of a relationship ‘El fin de la existencia de las cosas/The end of the existence of things’ by Dalia Huerta Cano. Just watch it.

19 – What are you currently working on?

More hairy tumbleweeds for the next book. The work world offers plenty of material!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Guy Elston

Guy Elston is a UK-born, Toronto-based poet. His debut collection is The Character Actor Convention (The Porcupine's Quill, 2025). His poems have appeared in The Literary Review of Canada, The Malahat Review, The Ex-Puritan, Grain, Geist and elsewhere. He is a member of the Meet the Presses collective.

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

Publishing my chapbook Automatic Sleep Mode gave the confidence and direction to focus more on what I’m better at, moving away from more directly ‘confessional’ stuff to the kind of persona, character and dialogue work that makes up a lot of The Character Actor Convention. 

They encourage you to ‘find your voice’ as a poet. Finding that ‘my voice’ could be many voices – or that I could push my voice into many different personas – was very exciting for me.

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

As a kid I wanted to write fiction, not poetry. I wrote some bad short stories. A turning point was picking up Raymond Carver’s collected poems and realising I preferred his poetry to his short stories. Then the bug bit me.

I like the idea of poetry as literary popcorn, literary snacks, literary hors d’oeuvres. You can eat something mind-bending and delicious. Then another, but sadder. Then another, but funnier... and you never really get full. Just tired.

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?

Poems tend to either come together fairly quickly, or not at all. (Apart from the ones that take years. Or never get finished. Or started.)

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?

Poems start in my notes app, graduate to the notebook, and then to the laptop. I like the move between the different mediums to test, break and refine. 

For The Character Actor Convention, it’s very much a book of individual poems. I’d like to work on something with more of a full-length concept in future.

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

My poetry tends towards the page, and I’d usually rather read a poet’s work myself than hear them do it. But I’m getting into the performance side of poetry more, which I think is necessary given the theatricality of a lot of my poems. I like doing readings, particularly when they’re full of hundreds of adoring fans.

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?

My girlfriend teases me by describing my poetry as - ‘What if a chair was sad?’ - and really, can you think of any greater theoretical concern than that?

I don’t see my poetry as truth-telling, proclamation, or a call to action. I see it more as storytelling, and I like being comfortable with ambivalence and uncertainty.

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 only role of a writer is to exist. While writing, I suppose.

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

Essential, and something I’ve really enjoyed. Shane Neilson helped me to push my poems into new forms and places. Thanks, Shane!

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

I thought that Kathryn Maris wrote something like ‘If you want a life in poetry, you can have one’. But now I can’t find this quote anywhere. Perhaps I dreamt it?

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?

Not much of a routine – writing poems happens in and around everything else. The notebook stage of writing a poem, which is the biggest chunk of the creative part, typically happens in parks, at the lake, or late at night.

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

Books, news articles, random magazines, Wikipedia. Non-fiction is usually what gives me a jumping off point – if I read enough interesting stuff, something will get me going.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Horses.

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?

Any other type of artform – definitely.

Science – very much so, I love getting ideas from science articles and headlines. Part of the fun comes from my inability to think scientifically.

Nature – not at all. I can’t write about nature. I think it's already speaking for itself.

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

My most influential poets would be people like Simic, Tate, Strand, Szymborska, Milosz, Selima Hill, Michael Bazzett, Matthew Sweeney. Robert Browning. People with an inclination towards storytelling and/or a pinch of surrealism.

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

Write some kind of Pale Fire-like metatextual piece with fictional footnotes from unreliable historians and such.  I know I have to try.

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?

When I was a child, adults would tell me that I should become a lawyer when I grew up. At least that didn’t happen.

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

I can’t remember wanting to do anything else. I loved reading from when I was very young. I remember being about 8, and saying something like ‘when I’m reading a book, I feel like I’m in another world’, and my sister rolling her eyes.

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

Book – The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington. A wild and empowering ride.

Film – I finally saw Metropolis the other day. Kick ass!

19 - What are you currently working on?

More, more of the same! But better...

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: TIFA Small Press Market/Meet the Presses’ Indie Lit Market (part three, : Sadiqa de Meijer + Ben Berman Ghan,

[MLA Chernoff at the Meet the Presses Indie Lit Market, receiving copies of their brand-new above/ground press title]

Again, this blended sequence. [see my first post on such here; see my second post here]. Will we see you at the ottawa small press book fair on November 22? Will we see you at the pre-fair reading on Nov 21 at Anina’s Café?

Kington/Toronto ON: Presented as Kingston poet and non-fiction writer Sadiqa de Meijer’s Joanne Page lecture at Queen’s University, October 29, 2024, is the chapbook-length Fieldwork (Toronto ON: knife│fork│book, 2025), which becomes a curiosity, given how recently her collection of essays, In The Field (Windsor ON: Palimpsest Press, 2025) [see my review of such here] appeared. “I remember only one conversation with Joanne Page,” the piece begins, “although we saw each other before and after. This encounter happened at the edge of City Park in Kingston. She looked at me, squinting against the sun, and said, We read your essay, we all read it and thought it was really good, we were surprised at how good it was. She was on the organizing committee of Common Magic, a conference celebrating the life and work of Bronwen Wallace. I had submitted a piece about reading Wallace’s work during my early years of living in Kingston and had called it ‘Arguments With The White World.’”

This lecture feels, in many ways, an extension of that collection, offering her thoughts on writing, Page’s work and Kingston thoughts, and thoughts through and around writing and thinking, all prompted by the Page Lectures, and the work of the late Kingston poet Joanne Page (d. 2015). In case you were unaware, the Lecture series was originally founded by Phil Hall during his tenure as writer-in-residence at Queen’s University in 2012, with lecture chapbooks, the “Fieldnotes,” originally produced by Maureen Scott Harris (with lectures in the series by Don McKay, Phil Hall, Daphne Marlatt, Elizabeth Hay, Stan Dragland, etc.), a series since moved onto Kirby’s knife│fork│book. It is rather striking how far de Meijer has come as a writer of non-fiction prose over the past few years, able to weave such musical thinking across such a stunning prose lyric, one heartfelt and grounded in curiosity. As she writes:

This lecture was written. I wrote it in a series of rooms that have left their quiet tracks. The kitchen was sunlit and my mind accelerated. The chair was uncomfortable and I disputed myself. I answered the door and a phrase was lost to me. I used the fast pen, my fingers pushed buttons. Knowing the text would be read out loud, I wrote differently than I would for an essay, because you as the listening cannot insert your own pauses, or read the same line two or thee times over. I didn’t make them, describing occurrences from another millennium and country—writing is miraculous in its dissembling of space and time. I couldn’t tell you what I intended without it, because my mind is unpracticed in what an oral culture would require. We live where settlers attempted for hundreds of years to eliminate orally transmitted languages like Ojibwe and Kanien’kehá:ka, and this was also a violence against the profound linguistic capacities of their speakers. Writing is rigid.

 

Guy Elston (with Jeremy Luke Hill to the left) announcing Hill's 'Microchimaera' (Baseline Press), as the winner of the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award

Calgary AB/Toronto ON: The latest from Calgary writer Ben Berman Ghan, author of a novel, two collections of stories and a novella, is the chapbook of poems Behold the Dead (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2025), providing an interesting stretch of literary genre. Might a full-length poetry collection be far behind? Ghan’s poems stretch across narratives, allowing line breaks and silence between lines, attempting few words but across distances. With meditative elements of breath, staccato pulse and hesitation, composing open space as carefully as he places words. There aren’t many examples off the top of my head of prose writers that move into poetry—the late Alberta writer Robert Kroetsch, certainly, and Kemptville, Ontario writer Michael Blouin come to mind—and there are elements of Ghan’s lyric still firmly held in a foundation of prose narrative, although one he works to punctuate with open space, as the two-part poem “Annihilation” begins:

My body is a river

annihilated

in the hungry eyes of men.

 

Black waves hide a word, a body:

            Dissolve. 

                      Drown.

 

Becoming is the cruellest sensation. 

 

Bloody mouths

drinking in.

 

Ongoing notes: TIFA Small Press Market/Meet the Presses’ Indie Lit Market (part two, : Jacob Alvarado + Drew Lavigne,

[a corner of my table at the TIFA fair, including the shortbread cookies I made] 

Again, this blended sequence, as the weekend of back-to-back small press fairs was a bit of a blur. [see my first post on such here] 

Toronto/Mississauga ON: The debut poetry chapbook by Mississauga poet Jacob Alvarado is I Can Make It All Up To You (Toronto ON: Knife│Fork│Book, 2024), a collection of poems that write around their subjects, their initial prompts; less a sense of being evasive than simply working a different kind of clarity. “Bowie made his deathbed with Kendrick in his headphones,” begins the poem “How Many Times Does An Angel Fall?,” “a shipwreck saluting its reflection. // 3:16 AM: my head hits a wall. / Confetti bursts from my ears like ripped toilet paper.” There’s almost an element of the English-language ghazal (John Thompson, et al) in some of Albarado’s lines, allowing a leap between lines, between couplets, allowing the space between as much narrative space as the space itself. There are times that I do want the author to push further, just to see what else is out there, but there remains a clarity through Alvarado’s lyrics, one that finds itself the occasional wisdom, sharp lines that poke through, such as the final line of “Me and You and Awkward Silence,” that reads: “Depression is a room full of cereal bowls.” I am intrigued by this debut; intrigued by where this particular author might venture next.

Branches

His hands: dew leaves, iced tea, a waterfall.
Dares and truths are both dreams. Two choices; one flesh. 

My shoes were faded by the soaked suede
of summer strolls through sweet grass. 

A clearing. Of throat and brush. 

My legs were oaks. My knees; a forest-fire.

The sun was my heartbeat. Its rays my veins;
its heat my pulse. 

His eyes: acorns, aloe, alcoves.
Needles rained from pine-trees: self-clouding. 

The breeze flew around me but not through me:
    grease in a dewdrop.
Palm sweat: a waterfall, an avalanche, inevitable. 

His back: smooth, steady, slicked. A rockface. 

His mouth: The Devil dawned into God,
The stab of Eden’s gatekeeper, the sun. 

A hickey is a mark of belief.

TIFA fair: Jay MillAr of Book*hug Press, Leigh Nash of Assembly Press + Michael e. Casteels of Puddles of Sky Press

Moncton NB/Toronto ON: From the current poet laureate of Moncton, New Brunswick, Drew Lavigne, comes the chapbook EveningDress (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2025), a title that appears to be his debut, chapbook or otherwise. Lavigne offers poems of narrative richness and gestures that suggest performance, offering descriptive thickness across long lines and evocative meaning. “There is a dress by Paul Poiret,” he writes, to open the title poem, “which I first saw / in James Laver’s Costume and Fashion: A Concise History. / It was called ‘Evening dress: Il a-été primé.’ A fashion plate / from the Gazette du Bon Ton, 1914. / I was ten, and had never seen anything like this / turquoise pleated tunic, over a wrapped hobble skirt, / fastened with a gilded oval gem, bands of the same / fabric twisting down the arms, clasped at each crossing / by round jade jewels.” There is such careful narrative unfolding, unfurling, through his lyrics, one that might provide as much comfort on the stage as on the page.  

Round Mirror

It was easy then to walk into the sky
with my mother’s gilded mirror,
stolen from her dark room, held in my hands outside.
Startling then to find in the disc
that everything was upside down.
With little effort I could fly,
or walk among the branches of trees;
then jump from cloud to cloud: going higher,
seeing everything in a way that was strange and new.
Not understanding the danger of falling.
I tripped on the root tangled ground.
I saw the rolling sky, the black trees, the hard earth,
my face like a desperate man, seeing blood.
I fell into the mirror, shattered on the ground.

Ongoing notes: TIFA Small Press Market/Meet the Presses’ Indie Lit Market (part one, : Liam Burke + Gary Barwin,

Okay, so this has to be a blended sequence of fair-posts, as multiple vendors (such as myself and the delightfully-productive above/ground press) attended both fairs across two days in Toronto [see my post on the most recent prior TIFA Small Press Market I attended; see my post on the most recent prior Meet the Presses Indie Lit Market I attended]. I mean, two fairs in two days? It was a bit ridiculous, but somehow, it worked. Most of the vendors I spoke to, myself included, were naturally exhausted after two days of fairs and carrying and standing. There was a nice tribute that Gary Barwin spoke at the Indie Lit Market to honour the late Toronto poet (and Meet the Presses Collective member) Paul Dutton, who died earlier this year. And congratulations to Jeremy Luke Hill, who won this year’s bpNichol Chapbook Award! Announced the very day he saw his new above/ground press title for the first time. And you know our Ottawa fair is coming up soon, yes?

Toronto/Ottawa ON: From Ottawa poet Liam Burke, co-author of the collaborative Orbital Cultivation (with Manahil Bandukwala; Collusion, 2021) and machine dreams (with natalie hanna; Collusion, 2021), comes the solo chapbook status ailment (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2025), an assemblage of ten short, curious lyrics. Burke’s poems offer lyric narratives, lyric inquiries, set in ether, presenting or suggesting a kind of action, such as the reference to the Marvel flick, Doctor Strange (2016), by titling a poem “dormammu ive come 2 bargain,” a poem that writes a held kind of abstract, purposefully, it would seem, inert. As the opening stanza reads: “i could just stay here / gather green trichomes / let inertia have its way / collate colonies of moss / mash every button / to escape the command- / grab of coming of age [.]” There are narrative threads that exist in Burke’s poems, but less straightforward than from all sides, slant; offering swirls instead of straight lines, and a sequence of entreaties without clear closure. These poems are intriguing, thoughtful and exploratory, offering unexpected paths and trails and truths. Or, as the first section of the sequence “five litanies” ends: “how am i       to show / to love my body       when it fails me so [.]”

status ailment

panic overwhelming

No you may not heal heat uplifted.
No you may not jitterbug your body.
No you may not catapult your
heart your throat your diaphragm.
No you may not finish that joint.
You might be dying. Panic
’s roar in the dark, low, hot. No you
May not. No you may not.

Gary Barwin + serif of nottingham at TIFA's Indie Lit Market

Hamilton ON: “I weep for the world and so UNESCO declares my tears a site of significant cultural heritage. They don’t include my snot and jagged sobs though I would argue that they are integral to the process.” And so begins the title and opening piece of Hamilton writer, musician, collaborator and performer Gary Barwin’s latest chapbook, MY SEXY MOTHER TERESA COSTUME (serif of nottingham editions, 2025). Barwin’s short prose bursts exist as postcard stories, twenty-two in total, all existing as blends of dense, narrative expansiveness, offering short sketches across a wide canvas of history, literature and experience. “During World War II,” the first half of the piece “In my Pants” reads, “Dervis Korkut, the librarian at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, at great risk to his life, hid the beautiful medieval Sarajevo Haggadah from the Nazis by concealing it in his pants, I remembered, so I went to the bookstore.” His short missives have progressed, it would seem, blending a thread of surrealism with a far larger worldview, offering pieces that read somehow both surreal and straightforward, able to only see the story properly from coming to it from unusual sides. Or, as the piece “The Ventriloquist and 1942” begins: “The European explorer stood on the bow of the ship, holding a ventriloquist dummy dressed as a sea captain. Together, explorer and dummy looked across the vast ocean at the distant horizon.” Truly, these pieces are quite amazing, and hard to shake, once you’ve read. They keep one returning.

Cake

I’m phoning your cake because of course you don’t have a birthday anymore, at least, not really. Your cake is really far away—somewhere “out there” or “here.” Same as you, in this day where I woke up and made coffee and got in my car and drove to where I’m writing this and where I picked up this old-fashioned phone. Ring. Ring. Are you thinking of cake in your own cloudtown, thinking of us, candles and blowing them out, the breath from inside us, hhh hhh hhh. Happy birthday. Happy birthday, we say. And you’re thinking, happy birthday, happy birthday to me too.