Yearly Archives: 2015

Words on Fire – So the Planet Won’t Die of the Human

Musicians, poets and novelists will be situating their lyrics and plots in new contexts. — Barry Lord from Art & Energy: How Culture Changes, AAM Press, 2014     Sometimes […]

Grief’s Geology – On Newfoundland’s East Coast Trail with E.J. Pratt and Gerard Manley Hopkins (so to speak!)

                            As I walked along the cliff edges of Newfoundland’s East Coast Trail a few days ago […]

Amounts to Nothing Short of Cultural Genocide – Justice Murray Sinclair

Today I am going to break an unwritten protocol: not to use my blog to showcase my own poems. The reason: my emotional reaction to the release of the Canadian […]

A Clearer Way to See – The Shared Poetic Vision of Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane

Yesterday, fleece under my sports jacket, I sat in Montreal with a few thousand others in a gargantuan white tent and listened to the convocation address at McGill University’s Spring […]

Pass It On – Another Poet Passes – Steve Kowit (1938 – 2015)

                Notice This evening, the sturdy Levis I wore every day for over a year & which seemed to the end in perfect […]

The Poem Is a Lung – National Poetry Month: Poets on Poetry #3 – Catherine Owen

The Lung Poem The poem breathes for you some days It’s okay The poem never says he isn’t, entirely, Coming back. The poem has too many lungs to accept Death completely […]

National Poetry Month – Poets on Poetry # 2 – A Poem by Stephen Dunn

                          Poet and priest were one in the beginning – only later times have separated them. The true […]

National Poetry Month – Poets On Poetry # 1 – Tomas Transtromer 1931 – 2015

  from Morning Birds Fantastic to feel how my poem grows while I myself shrink. It is growing, it takes my place. It pushes me out of its way. It throws […]

Something Not Sayable – A Post for Heidi’s Mother

                        My Mother’s Foot The main door into the nursing home slides open, an exhalation of stale air. The […]

Mercury Dangerous – The Quicksilver Wit & Click of Micheline Maylor

  What I would give to you are secrets told in textiles, pillows for your sofa made of clothing slid from my body on sultry afternoons. Are you thinking now […]