12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jessica Popeski

Jessica Popeski is a queer, dis/abled opera singer, professor, and internationally published, intersectional ecofeminist poet. Her work can be found in carte blanche, Room, Riddle Fence, The Woven Tale Press, Grain, Best Canadian Poetry 2027, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, filling Station, The Antigonish Review, PRISM International, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of multiple scholarships and awards, and was named one of Tkaronto’s “exceptional up and coming writers” by Open Book. She authored Oratorio and The Wrong Place with Anstruther Press, and the problem with having a body and grenoside with Gordon Hill Press. She was raised in Moscow and Sheffield by her mother and grandmother, and lives with her rescue pit bull on land which is covered by Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaties, the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.

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?

I don’t know if it changed my life much! The best part is seeing the unexpected places where my writing lands. I often get messages via social media from folks who somehow came by my book. They always have such wonderful things to say! I feel honoured, and surprised sometimes by how far it’s travelled.

All my books are connected, whether I meant for them to be or not. I seem to be preoccupied by similar ideas. Even though the subject matter varies, poems from both my collections with Gordon Hill Press (and even my chapbooks with Anstruther Press) excavate themes of ecofeminism, epigenetics, physical dis/ability, madness, grandmaternal ancestral trauma, the matrilineal inheritance of song and oral identity, historically suppressed voices, conflict, womanness, ptocd, disordered eating, accent, classism, and care. I think of the problem with having a body and grenoside as sister books.

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

I took an Introduction to Creative Writing class with Professor Dale Lakevold at Brandon University. I wanted to be a fiction writer, a novelist. I thought I hated poetry, so I looked ahead at the weekly schedule on the syllabus, noted that in Week 6, or whatever, we would be reviewing poetry, and vowed not to attend. Turns out I forgot to miss it, and fell immediately in love with poems. I was studying opera at the time, and had just been diagnosed with Muscle Tension Dysphonia. I was put on complete vocal rest, meaning I couldn’t speak for many weeks. Poetry found me right at a time when I needed a new creative outlet to communicate.

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 varies. In the problem with having a body, for example, some of those poems were a decade old, taken from my graduate thesis; however, some were written a month before publication. I must be preoccupied and ruminating on the same themes all these years later. Often, I jot down notes in a “dump document” on Google Docs or in the draft of an email, and gradually add more lines and eventually shape it into a poem. Sometimes I feel like a vessel for the words, like they’re just zooming through me onto the page and I have to work super quickly to capture them. Sometimes the process is slow. A poem could take a morning, a month, or a year.

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?

I’m usually working on a cycle to make up part of a book without knowing it. Stand-alone poems are not typically my forte. I find that I have more to say that can’t be contained in one poem, so I write mini cycles of six, seven, or eight plus poems. I can’t always be sure when the cycle is done. I have to feel my way through it

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

I love readings. I put my opera singer hat on and immerse myself. Many of my poems are written phonetically in Yorkshire dialect, so they’re fun to perform and speak/sing out loud. I don’t think readings are part of, or counter to, my creative process. They’re more like a rip-roaring exclamation mark or semicolon to my poetic process.

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 poems ask loud questions about epigenetics, ancestral trauma, and the genetic inheritance of madness and disordered eating. They consider gender-based, intimate partner violence and coercive control, and tap into dis/ability justice by countering institutionalized ableism. I think a lot about womanness, PTOCD, classism, marginalization, and voicelessness. Yet, I’m always wondering what is my story to tell, and I think there are more pertinent, current questions that poetics can excavate and illuminate, and my job is to know when it’s my turn to speak, and when it’s my time to sit down and pass the mic to others.

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 subscribe to Nina Simone’s theory that “an artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.” This is true for me, at least. I feel compelled to tell the stories that are mine to tell, and it often happens that those stories intersect with larger cultural phenomena– intersectional feminism, madness, dis/ability, classism, intergenerational trauma, geographical rupture, ablemism, et al. I’m have the bandwidth to “reflect the times” in my work, and I belive it is also my job to uplift the voices of those who have been marginalized by society, although it is not their duty to educate us about their experiences of subjugation. Nor are dis/abled writers, or readers, for example, a monolith. I don’t seek to represent every dis/abled person on the planet in my poems, but if what I share can touch a heart, or a hundred, I’m happy.

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

Both! While I don’t always love how an editor might morph my poetics, I trust deeply in their talent to improve them. I do think it’s important to push back, though, if the edit obfuscates what you originally hoped to communicate. I’ve found that leaning into the wisdom of experienced editors and writers ultimately strengthens the work.

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

That multiple versions of one poem can coexist. This advice was granted to me by Roo Borson. I’m a perfectionist, which can halt my creativity. If it isn’t going to be perfect, I don’t want to write it at all. But Roo had me take a poem, and splash the words across the page, then make it into a spindly, skinny little poem with short line breaks, then elongate the lines to allow longer line breaks, then chunk it into couplets, or triplets, or quatrains. If many versions of the poem can exist at the same time, I don’t need to worry about creating the singular, perfect iteration of 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?

I used to have a dedicated writing practice. Up and at a coffee shop by 6:00 a.m., writing until noon or later, drinking tea constantly. Brioche Dorée is where I wrote almost all of my graduate thesis a decade ago. They let me pour my own hot water for tea refills. I could never write at home. But since the pandemic, I’ve gotten better at writing in my own apartment. So my day usually begins between 4:30 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., first by walking my dog and doing yoga, by reading poetry or prose (for my latest collection, I leaned into Damian Rogers, Jeanette Winterson, and Ocean Vuong), and then by jotting ideas in either my notes app or an email draft, before transitioning it to Google Docs. I’m typically useless in the afternoon, so all writing occurs in the morning; never the evening; however, sometimes, I’ll be out and about, throwing the ball at the park for Maggie, or taking a yoga class, and I’ll have to stop and write an idea down. Poems often write themselves in my brain, and I have to capture them before they flit away.

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

I listen to audiobooks by authors I admire, or pick up a novel. I return to books of poetry I’ve enjoyed, or head to my favourite local bookstore, Queen Books, to stock up. I might listen to a podcast, like On Being, as it typically has really thoughtful, inspirational guests. Often, I’ll take my dog for a walk into nature, Cherry Beach, perhaps, to see if that sparks any ideas.

12 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?

Not my last, but my most memorable was Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs a decade ago.

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?

Certainly nature; annex, king west, to york, cannon hall farm, and essentially the entirety of grenoside have nods towards nature. Roo Borson said that my book is “full of monologues and stories, the common names of birds and trees that mark out particular neighbourhoods,” which is true! I try to use the precise bird breeds and tree species typical to each area. I'd say almost every poem has a pastoral element. Music is also an enormous influence. I’m a classical/opera singer, so I imbue my poetics with musical vernacular and metaphor, and I’m often told there’s a musicality or singabiity to my writing. Visual art also plays a role as, for my graduate thesis, I documented my grandmother’s paintings, and used them ekphrastically to inspire poems.

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

I will always have a soft spot for all of Di Brandt’s poetry, especially Questions I Asked My Mother. She was my undergraduate thesis advisor, and she taught me everything I know about ecofeminist poetics. Roo Borson, too, who was my graduate thesis mentor. I will always return to Rain; Road; an Open Boat. Michael Ondaatje’s Handwriting is another collection I keep close at hand, along with Ian Williams’ Personals. I shamelessly fangirled Katherena Vermette (I’m in love with The Break) and Zoe Whittall (Bottle Rocket Hearts changed my life) at literary events.

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

Start work on a new collection! I’ve been so caught up in editing, I haven’t written much new material recently. I have four or five new poems floating around, but not much more. I’d also like to work more with video or installation poetry. I did a lot of that during my undergraduate degree, but that feels like a lifetime ago.

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?

In another life, I would have been a costume designer. Before moving to Canada to pursue opera and poetry, I had a place at the Central School of Speech and Drama to study costume construction, but fell back in love with voice after (somewhat) healing my muscle tension dysphonia. I still love to sew, making baby clothes, dresses for myself, and masks during the pandemic. I think if it weren’t for art, I’d be a midwife, or work with children in some other way. I also dream of opening a dog sanctuary, which I suppose is still possible alongside being a poet!

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

I’m only any good at art. I scraped a pass in maths and science in high school. I love to paint, draw, and sew. I almost became a costume designer, but fell too deeply in love with music. While pursuing an opera degree, I lost my voice to muscle tension dysphonia. I was put on complete vocal rest. My only way to communicate was through writing, and, luckily, I found poetry. I thought about being a teacher, or a therapist, but I feel so fortunate that, instead, I’m able to write.

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

I love A Little Life, which I know is controversial, and I absolutely hear those on the other side of the controversy, but I connect so deeply with the lead who, like me, moves through the world with dis/ability and sings Mahler, one of my favourite composers. The Lied he sings when asked to perform something emblematic of him is one I sang during the final jury of my undergraduate degree. Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo and Shuggie Bain stay with me always. Nadine Sander-Green’s Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit completely shook me. I love everything Billy-RayBelcourt, Katherena Vermette, and Souvankham Thammavongsa.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I’m still sitting with book two, grenoside, out with Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2026. A flush of new poems hurried in, and my editor and I are spending time deciding if they belong in this book, or in a future book. Good problems to have: too many poems.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Roxanna Bennett, We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us

 

II

& forgetting what you’re after &

      The pliers were used to open her mouth,
      was refusing to speak

    its keeper kept it supplied

in a ‘mental’ hospital. More radically than anywhere else in the outside is invalidated
as a human being. Must remain until the label is 

untainted by hate a necklace of 54 skulls
on my screen

 

 

myriad strange specimens

 

& the space he occupies is no longer of his own choosing. After being subjected to degrading
ceremonial known as psychiatric examination 

 

      the government indulges (“The Oxford Dodo vs. The Anatomical Venus”)

The fifth full-length poetry title by Roxanna Bennett, following The Uncertainty Principle (Toronto ON: Tightrope Books, 2014), unmeaningable (Guelph ON: Gordon Hill Press, 2019), The Untranslatable I (Gordon Hill Press, 2021) [see my review of such here] and uncomfortability (Gordon Hill Pres, 2023), is We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us (Gordon Hill Press, 2026). Moving beyond the sonnet-shapes of prior work into more of an expansive collage structure, We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us furthers Bennett’s work across “disability poetics,” a conversation I would be curious to see the author extend, also, into the form of the essay. I know Toronto poet Therese Estacion [see my review of her debut here] has a new collection, Jelly, Baby: Essays on Disability and Vulnerability (Toronto ON: Bookhug Press, 2026), but I have yet to go through such. The poems are gestural, composed with great flourish and a sly and subtle wit. “Sound n,” Bennett provides, within the second section, “an impression of somebody / something formed from / but significant / especially /// thigh. The subtle body / wrote / GOOD BYE /// accommodate, make / would ever curse us / word, you can find out if /// can’t be both.”

What is interesting about Bennett’s book, beyond being produced sideways—which I always find irritating, admittedly, as a reader; why not just make a wider book? I think back to Méira Cook’s Slovenly Love (London ON: Brick Books, 2003) [see my review of such here] or Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott’s collaborative Decomp (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2013) [see my review of such here]—opens with a page of “acknowledgements & process notes” and a three-page list of “influences, references, & sources,” material usually held for the back of any collection. As Bennett’s “acknowledgments & process notes” includes:

Many of these are ‘found’ poems using text from various sources. We had originally set out to write about the divine shadow feminine but She will not be intellectualized, only embodied. As various illnesses took away my ability to use electronic devices & think & speak & write with coherency, She invited me to turn inward, dance deeper into Madness, & to use unconscious analog art-making methods such as cut-up, collage, & chance operations. &—although I don’t love this term, it smacks of the hospital, preferring instead to be divinely guided rather than operated upon—as adaptation.

The result is this rough beast before you.

Thank you for reading.

Assembled across three sections, each of which are constructed as extended lyric sequences that interconnect—“The Oxford Dodo vs. The Anatomical Venus,” “The New Bodily Ethos” and “Excavation of the Colossal Mother”—there is something interesting in how one might see Bennett’s prior engagement with the sonnet as attempting to find order within a particular kind of chaos. Through the use of found material set in collage, a different kind of order, Bennett works a lyric structure more overtly chaotic, or, more likely, one that allows for a coherence through the chaos itself. Working with, and not against, what Bennett’s own possibilities provide. And in which Bennett’s compositional approach evolves from composing a poem with one’s own material, to being able to discern where the poem might already exist, within that same material. The pastiche provides Bennett a way to think through their improvisations to achieve something entirely fresh. Or, as Bennett themlseves write, towards the end of the second section:

      I rise & become one
in new shapes

 

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Steffi Tad-y

Steffi Tad-y is a disabled artist + writer from the Philippines. She is the author of From the Shoreline, Notes from the Ward, and Merienda. She is based in Manila and Toronto. 

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?
Even though the books were published three years apart, From the Shoreline and Notes from the Ward share similar themes — mental illness, family, kinship with earth and its creatures. Both are also driven by a roving eye. Lots of looking around and writing down what I found.

Notes from the Ward differs in the sense that many of the scenes there are set in a psychiatric hospital. I was also told by my editor, Shane Neilson, that my new book contains more sketches of people in community. 

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
When I was young, I was certain about my attraction towards children’s novels and essays. I remember being blown away by Charlie in the Chocolate Factory and The Giver. Every Patricia Evangelista essay in the Philippine Inquirer held a force I felt in my body. 

Poetry came when I was at a Canadian Lit class (ENGL 474 with Dr. Deena Rhyms) in my mid-20’s and we read Marilyn Dumont’s “Memories of a Really Good Brown Girl.” It cracked me open then I hurried to the library scouring for more. 

I grew an appreciation for poetry last but it changed my life, and sometimes, even became almost all of my life. Oh the follies of youth. But I’m learning to actively resist this because my health matters more now. In a very gentle and forgiving way, poetry showed me that what was happening inside me mattered just as much as all the exterior markers of life. 

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?
Fast in marking the images or phrases that come to me. Slow in making it somewhere close to a poem. 

I can think of only two poems out of many years of crumpled drafts that came out really fast. 

Jonina Kirton calls them “given poems.” 

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?
Something I see, both outside and inside. 

Really short! Notes, lists, images, series of questions… 

But when I applied for a grant for the first time, I had to imagine a full-length book project. I had to state its overarching themes, possible significance, sources and inspiration etc. The book which received a grant (Notes from The Ward) ended up way different from what I said it would be but applying for funding taught me to look at book-making as another skill in and of itself. Before that process, it was very much poem to poem. 

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don’t always enjoy it because I feel so much and so deeply to begin with but I know it’s really important, humbling, and beautiful. While I’m reading, I get to see how my poems work out there, hear what lands, and what doesn’t. Aside from this editorial function, I also get to be in a circle of people telling stories to one another. That’s very moving to me. 

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?
Hmm.. right this moment, I think I am asking what a poem as a small piece of technology can offer its reader. 

In both my books, there’s a page that lays out a series of questions. I housed it there in case the reader would like to reflect on the images, lines, or themes they found in the poems. To constellate and draw connections. To pause and have them “reply” to the text. 

Two questions I remember are “What if we wrote about the violets if we can’t yet about the violence?” in From the Shoreline and “Do you have money?” from Notes from the Ward. 

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
For now, I think it has something to do with witnessing and listening. Something to do with memory and imagination and being human. 

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential! They widen my purview, warn me of my cliches. They encourage me to work on being a thoughtful and rigorous writer. I’m a recipient of their generous work. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Listen with a giant ear. Don’t scrimp on sleep. 

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?
Something I observed is I always find something to write about when I’m in transit. Car, bus, train, plane, I have my moments there. One of my wild dreams is to be a poet for TTC or be granted an artist residency by Amtrak.

Other than that, no routine unfortunately. 

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I go for a walk! Last week, I saw people huddled around a food cart at a busy intersection. They each had a small orange bowl to the their chest, slurping noodles, shoulders touching. I was struck by the glow of the bowls against the violet sky. Their hands. Separate but also together. Another night, I saw two kids sharing a pair of rollerblades. One wore it on their right foot. The other wore it on their left. The wheels rushed in opposite directions. 

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Sampaguita. Rain on warm soil. Onions and garlic in a scalding hot pan or gisa in Tagalog. 

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?
Yes, totally. For me, it’s music, movies, sports, memes. Notes from the Ward mentions The Bee Gees. From the Shoreline, Muhammad Ali. 

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Aracelis Girmay, her work is like the sea to me. Rick Barot, his poems that span a world, his faith in the particular. For making a book that ends with “I was wrong.” Raoul Fernandes, for who and what his poems see. Oliver de la Paz, for The Boy in the Labyrinth and Diaspora Sonnets. 

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
A poem that makes you cry and laugh at the same time. Something for my brothers. 

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 dreamed of being a doctor or stand-up comedian. I still do!   

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I feel embarrassed to say this but I suppose I really love it. It’s like a life partner. 

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The Private Life of Trees by Alejandro Zambra translated by Megan McDowell is a short, mesmerizing read. Makes you giggle. Stays in your bones. Sinners by Ryan Coogler is a movie of immense and affectionate imagination. Deeply relational. 

19 - What are you currently working on?
Poems on childhood. My manuscript’s working title is Uyayi. It means "lullaby" in Tagalog.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Steffi Tad-y, Notes from the Ward

 

You Who The Earth Was For
After Jean Valentine 

You fleeing war, carrying a rooster with your shaky hand.
You trained to pummel, never the first to wince or flinch. 

You who plant their sadness into dirt.
You whose questions have no gentle answers. 

You who cook too close to the stove.
You at the table, missing the one. 

You whose loss comes with wordlessness.
You beside the rubble, out to build again. 

You in the backseat being loved.
You running towards water.

The second full-length collection by Manila, Phillipines-born Vancouver-based poet Steffi Tad-y, following From the Shoreline (Guelph ON: Gordon Hill Press, 2022) [see my review of such here] is Notes from the Ward (Gordon Hill Press, 2025), a book composed, the back cover offers, as a “collection of poetry exploring bipolar disorder and psychotic break through lived experience and a poet’s eye.” Through sharp, first-person lyrics, Tad-y offers a variation on the declarative point-form, providing a precision across difficult subject matter, writing phrases that accumulate across her lyric stretches. The foundation of Tad-y’s lyric clarity holds each line in place, even through descriptions of untethering; a lyric one might hold on to, for dear life. In the poem “Mangroves,” as she writes: “Back in the truck with Dad & Uncle. I tell them how the trees are / skin & sanctuary to the coast, protection against the onslaught / of storms. // My father places his hand on the headrest of my uncle in the / driver seat and says, Families can be mangroves too.”

What holds the collection together as a coherent unit are the dozen numbered title poems throughout, gathering her thoughts in a space that blends both attempting to heal and the challenges of existing in such a physical and mental space. As “Notes from the Ward #3,” a poem subtitled “After Ocean Vuong’s ‘Reasons for Staying’,” begins: “Think of the next thirty years, mother asked. // The magnolia tree at Oben Street still a pleasant memory. // Of the book, black with deep blue letters, music despite my lack / of understanding.” Tad-y offers lyric declarations underneath titles set as umbrellas, suggesting and directing and hinting at the context of lines that blend direct with the indirect; her poems provide a tone of attempting clarity through these poems, these ward-notes, seeking both as documentary and process. While working through Tad-y’s poems, I’m reminded how, in his novel Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex? (translated by David Homel; Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1994), Dany Laferrière wrote that he composed his first novel—referencing his debut, How to Make Love to a Negro (Without Getting Tired) (translated by David Homel; Coach House Press, 1987)—“to save his life.” Or, as the poem “Hold on,” set near the end of this new collection, begins:

Everyone has something.

This is yours.

Amy LeBlanc, I used to live here

 

When a bird crouched
on Anne Boleyn’s neck
 

The sweating sickness
descends like a swallow
to rest in the throat—
if only she had kept rabbits
and held tears that could fill
a thimble or a room,
she may have climbed down
from the tower and opened
an apiary or a bird sanctuary—
she could have been a hatter
like her great-grandfather
and named herself Alice.
When a bird crouched on Anne
Boleyn’s neck, no one stopped it
from pecking, pecking, pecking.

The second full-length collection by Calgary poet Amy LeBlanc, following I know something you don’t know (Guelph ON: Gordon Hill Press, 2020), is I used to live here (Guelph ON: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2025), “an examination of chronic illness, disability, and autoimmunity.” On the surface, I used to live here might seem to hold echoes of ” Guelph poet Jessica Popeski’s The Problem with Having a Body (Guelph ON: Gordon Hill Press, 2025) [see my review of such here], but both are, instead, part of an expanding wealth of titles that connect through a conversation around “disability poetics,” a conversation that Gordon Hill/The Porcupine’s Quill has been deliberately working to expand for some time, and also moves through titles such as Montreal poet Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch’s knot body (Montreal QC: Metatron Press, 2020) [see my review of such here], Toronto poet Roxanna Bennett’s The Untranslatable I (Gordon Hill Press, 2021) [see my review of such here], Toronto poet Therese Estacion’s Phantompains (Toronto ON: Book*hug, 2021) [see my review of such here], Concetta Principe’s DISORDER (Gordon Hill Press, 2024) [see my review of such here], Regina, Saskatchewan poet Tea Gerbeza’s How I Bend Into More (Windsor ON: Palimpsest Press, 2024) [see my review of such here], Kingston, Ontario poet Ashley-Elizabeth Best’s Bad Weather Mammals (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2024) [see my review of such here], Christine McNair’s hybrid/memoir Toxemia (Book*hug, 2024) [see my essay on such here] and Philadelphia poet and publisher Brian Teare’s reissued and expanded The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven (Boise ID: Ahsahta Press, 2015; New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2022) [see my review of the original edition here], among many other titles.

Across a quartet of first-person lyrics—section titles set as “The Leech House,” “Sympathetic Magic,” “Something in the Water” and “Copse, Corpse, Catastrophe”—LeBlanc’s poems sit amid tightness and looseness, providing carved lines the space through which they might properly breathe. “The doorbell chimes and you / want to drill a hole through wires,” the title sequence begins, “pull them out of the wall and make / a bouquet. The babies cries and you hear / marbles clatter to the floor. You / wish for your grandmother’s knocker— / vibration clipping against wood, / tremor in your kidneys when someone / arrives. Your baby cries. Thirteen / months old.” She writes on connection and disconnection, shades of illness and disability, outreach and cultural touchstones, which allow her to speak on and around what otherwise might seem more difficult. “Webspaces tug. Above her head,” she writes, as part of “Undead Juliet at the Museum,” “a nest rests in the rafters. A mother / magpie dives at museum guests, / just not at Juliet. Her father once said, / Things belong in museums when dead.”

The gestures of LeBlanc’s second full-length collection write through witches, Shakespeare’s Juliet, Hecate’s daughter, Anne Boleyn, and even Gwen Stacy (Spider-Man’s girlfriend, infamously killed by Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin in the 2014 flick Spider-Man 2, but in the original books way back in 1973) in the poem “Gwen Stacy,” that begins: “The night Gwen died, / the Bow River                flooded / knocked / over / signs,      taxi cabs,          dog leashes turned loose / along the tide.” She writes of historical and fictional women not allowed their own agency, beyond their associations to others. Or on illness metaphors, as through the poem “Counterpoints to / illness metaphors,” seeking an updated language to reframe or reshape a sequence of experiences too long misunderstood, dismissed or outright ignored. “Not an alarm clock,” she writes, “a car with two doors / strip mall / inverted heart [.]” That does seem to be the crux of this collection: seeking a new language to reshape and reframe perception around this particular lived experience; finding a new way to speak on illness and disability, for the sake of a far better understanding of what has so often been compartmentalized as either imaginary or invisible. LeBlanc wishes you, the reader, to better understand from the inside what you’ve only seen so far from the outside. Further to that reframing, LeBlanc also references infamous accused (but not convicted) American axe murderer Lizzie Borden (1860-1927) [to whom I am distantly related, I will remind], as the sequence “Lizzie Borden takes an axiom” provides:

They tell you that my father
twisted heads off
my pigeons. 

It’s a myth
but the hatchet
is fact. 

My laughter is fictitious
but my father made
coffins and I used
to climb inside
to avoid
small
talk.