The Heist

Transportation’s tough,
if you want to be transported:

the blockbuster museum’s hush
is uniform, like sand. 

Adjust the audio tour,
and behind the curtain

of information hiss
streams of static—

what’s art but marked
exits, the urge to … Read the whole text

The Screen, the Literary Stage, and the Boardroom  

(Scholar-Poet, Amatoritsero Ede, in conversation with Helen Walsh, Novelist and Literary Activist) 

Amatoritsero Ede: It is great to finally have this conversation with you. I would like to begin at … Read the whole text

Fiction Review

The Artist and the Assassin
by Mark Frutkin
Erin, ON: Porcupine’s Quill, 2021
213 pp. $19.95

The Wordsmith and the Half-Fallen Angel

In The Artist and the Assassin, Mark Frutkin has penned a page turner of lyrical imagination … Read the whole text

Poetry Review 

J’Accuse . . . ! (Poem Versus Silence)
by George Elliott Clarke,
Exile Editions,
198 pages, $26.95

Some poetry whispers. Some poetry shouts. This collection of poetry shouts out loud, with great creative skill. And it shouts for … Read the whole text

Poetry Review 

 Canticles II (MMXIX)
by George Elliott Clarke
Guernica Editions,
2019. 505 pp.
ISBN 978-1-77183-409-4
 
In a 2022 text, George Elliott Clarke calls his Canticles series “an expected six-volume epic…that begins with the survey of two … Read the whole text

Sorrow’s Bargain 

Mama grabbed Petra by the arm, twisting it. I heard a crack and Petra screamed. She held her forearm and sobbed and sobbed. Petra had pulled on Mama’s apron too long, crying for food.

“Byc cicho Petra! … Read the whole text

Canadian Raising

My father’s father came
with songs in seven tongues
and no-one to sing them to.

His Polish elbowed German, Dutch
and Yiddish to hear a flat vernacular
push liver pills on sidewalks,

while his children learned his … Read the whole text

Vs/&: Two Free Haiku

1/ Bird vs Wind

The bird strives to catch
The wind, but it is so strong
It traps the bird instead

2/ The Cosmos & My World

Just as our cosmos is, supposedly, where
Light … Read the whole text

Communion

Darkness weighs
about seventeen kilograms per unit.
It tastes like salt and iron.
I have held it and tasted it.
Believe me.

The feel of darkness varies.
Some days it has the consistency
of cold molasses,
other days the … Read the whole text

The Witness Tree

The moment I credit with becoming a cynic happened on the day the city came to take down our treehouse without warning. Perhaps 13, I was alone in the house fretting over the tissue paper I … Read the whole text