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The Geography of Desire – A review of Siren by Kateri Lanthier
If you wanted to find a daughter abducted by a powerful man, you might need to cover a lot of territory. The earth mother Demeter gave wings to young women singers willing to search, but when they failed to find the man, she left them stuck on the rocks, singing to men who would be…
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1000 Poems Per Night: TRB Live, January
Happy New Year! 2017 begins with a packed list of Toronto readings and events. Rowers Reading Series gets things moving on January 10 with a night of poetry and prose by Joan Crate, Adebe DeRango-Adem, Jacob McArthur Mooney, and Hoa Nguyen (6:30pm, Supermarket, 268 Augusta Avenue). Circle January 11 on your calendar for back-to-back readings. At 6:30pm at…
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TRB Live: November
TRB Live is a monthly roundup of literary events you might enjoy. Get in touch with me (@kathmcleod) or the TRB (@TorontoReview) on Twitter if you’d like to suggest an event to include next month. In Toronto, Pivot Reading Series presents three readings all-star casts of readers: Leesa Dean, Stevie Howell, Rob Taylor, and Erin Wunker on November 2;…
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TRB Live: October
With TRB Live I’m going to be posting monthly roundups of literary events you might enjoy. Get in touch with me (@kathmcleod) or the TRB (@TorontoReview) on Twitter if you’d like to suggest an event to include next month. Toronto The Coach House Books Fall Launch ushers in autumn with the launch of six new books: Lisa Robertson’s 3 Summers, Jordan…
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We Can Never Tell the Entire Story of Slavery: In Conversation with M. NourbeSe Philip
M. NourbeSe Philip is an Afrosporic Caribbean writer/poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist known for her dedication to social justice, as well as for her experiments with literary form, particularly her well known 1989 text, She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks. In all of her work she examines themes of gender, race, colonialism, and the…
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The Night Prayer’s Lord, a Poem
The poem “The Night Prayer’s Lord” like most of the poems in my most recent collection, Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects (Wolsak & Wynn), pays homage to the late Irish poet Dorothy Molloy who, in 2004, died ten days before her first collection was published by Faber and Faber. Though I lived…
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Two New Poems by George Elliott Clarke
The poems happened completely by chance. This “chanciness” is deliberate. I begin to write something that’s vaguely about African slavery, and then a direction or impulse or voice imposes itself on the writing. These poems – Solomon 2 and Experience 1 – are based on my interpretation of how unlettered black (ex) slaves understood The…
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A Review: Giles Benaway’s Ceremonies For The Dead
Reviewed in this essay: Ceremonies for the Dead by Giles Benaway. Published by Kegedonce Press. Poetry never ceases to amaze me. I began my writing career with pieces of poetry published here and there, but then with time, I discovered short stories and turned my attention to them. I don’t know if I will ever go back to…
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Negotiating Postmodern Nightmares: Jonathan Ball on Writing
Jonathan Ball is a poet, professor, and film director based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He was shortlisted for the John Hirsch Most Promising Writer Award at the 2012 Manitoba Book Awards. His column, Haiku Horoscopes, runs quarterly in Grain. W: Could you tell us about your earliest writing? B: My earliest works were poems that resulted…
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Coming Home through African-Canadian Literature: George Elliott Clarke’s Directions Home
Reviewed in this essay: George Elliott Clarke’s Directions Home: Approaches to African-Canadian Literature. In 2011, Toronto city councilor Doug Ford dismissed Margaret Atwood’s rally to protect some 99 library branches, adding insult to injury when he said, “I don’t even know her, if she walked by me, I wouldn’t have a clue who she is.” Assumingly…
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Stan Rogal’s Brautiganesqe
In this special feature for Chirograph, rob mclennan presents the essay he wrote as a preface for Stan Rogal’s Love’s Not The Way To (Toronto ON: Bookland Press, spring 2013). “That’s why I forgot the bottle this morning because the Japanese squid fishermen are asleep and I was thinking about them being asleep.” -Richard Brautigan, The…
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Al Purdy, cabin porn, and Dachshund UN: Bookishness, Feb. 4, 2013
“What will become of all of you? What will you do with no good movies?” Richard Kramer writes about Pauline Kael. Book to film “I find that a lot of my best character stuff and ideas come unwittingly from novels… [Y]ou get to learn how to make good backstories in your own head, without needing…