This is one of the most euphonious headlines I’ve ever read.

“I prefer the absurdity of writing poems / to the absurdity of not writing poems” - Wislawa Szymborska

Tempted by the desperate depths of “revenge procrastination” mid-day as I work from home in preparation for fall classes and various tasks, I am rewarding 25-minute periods of “productivity” (whatever that may be) with a Beyoncé dance break. “Love On Top” has brought my mood to its peak.

Featured this week in The New Quarterly is Misha Solomon's "Yesterday Down at the Canal", from Issue 175! Click here to read the full poem: tnq.ca/story/yester...

Always read Bob

Every single sexual assault court case I see in the news makes me feel relieved I never reported mine.

Happy to have a new poem in the summer reading issue of @thewalrus.ca . Thanks to @cstarnino.bsky.social for the editorial stewardship. thewalrus.ca/and-then-cam...

Why am I rooting for her though. www.thecut.com/article/food...

New work from our 2022 finalist Jessie Jones. Enjoy!

Aversion to private property, seduction by the actual spoils of wealth: this dialectic, so suggestive of the literary writer who knows better than to hope for real financial success but does anyway, surges throughout these novels. www.nplusonemag.com/issue-50/rev...

Received my copies of the lit mag P-QUEUE today, featuring nine new poems by me. Happy to be alongside the likes of Michael Boughn & Patrick O’Reilly in this issue. See their archive for work by luminaries Eunsong Kim, Stephanie Young, Divya Victor & more: pqueue.wordpress.com/pdf-archive/

Hi all, please check out this brand new Model Press chapbook, a poetry and photography collaboration from Kristen Smith and Dorothy Jeffries that reflects on landscape. Available now at the link below! ryanfitzpatrick.ca/wp-content/u...

Finally, a retirement plan I can afford

Having a hard time processing this same old story, but I feel reassured that @julieslalonde.bsky.social is (as always) putting in the work to continue unpacking the pervasiveness of violence against women.

In the Times, Jessica Grose finds that many of the claims about boys’ supposed backslide in education in Richard Reeves’ blockbuster masculinity-crisis book “Of Boys and Men” are empirically unfounded:

Very good @jwherrman.bsky.social piece on the rise of Reddit (which I find myself using more and more) and whether the platform can retain its humanity in the age of AI nymag.com/intelligence...

Save the date! On Saturday, July 26, all are invited to attend a free online reading by four Canadian authors, followed by questions and audience discussion. We hope to see you there! Join me, Drew McEwan, Léa Taranto, and Madelaine Caritas Longman for an evening of writing on #OCD. #CanLit 1/2

Just terrified my partner with the guttural scream I let out in response to seeing Jeff Hiller receive an Emmy nomination for Somebody Somewhere.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Every British person on the internet is complaining about you

Loved this comics piece by Jem Woolidge in carte blanche no. 51: carteblanchemagazine.com/issue-51/woo... #montreal #comics #carteblanche

Rain continues; reading continues. Stevie Manning’s JOAN WOULD SAY from @knifeforkbook.bsky.social. Tonight I swear / on Leaves of Grass, I am your girl. / I have learned the sex of your wrist with my mouth, I know / your tallest knuckle is always going to be fussy #poetry #queer #beauty

Reading @itsakirby.bsky.social’s SOFTIE from @knifeforkbook.bsky.social during a summer thundershower. is it really so strange to think you have a right to sit in the light of day without violence? #poetry #queer #beauty

I just backed Bird Watching by Eileen Myles: An Archival Collection on @kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com/projects/bir...

My new standup special Positive Reinforcement premieres TONIGHT at 8pm eastern time on Blonde Medicine’s YouTube channel. I’m really proud of this hour and grateful to all the people who helped make the special happen. Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAvN...

In the afterword to her study of women and the New York School, Nelson quotes the Bernadette Mayer insult poem “To a Politician”: Your penis is homeless / You are covered with as many warts as the lies you've told / Your syphilitic mouth sucks the slugs from the irradiated cocks of your cohorts

On the eve of announcing KFB's stellar 2026-27 Tenth Anniversary Season #KFB10, & 4th Fertile Festival of New & Innovative Works #4ERTILE, fundraising is of the essence. Our goal is doable. To raise our Patreon from 34 current paid members to 100 at $10/month. www.patreon.com/posts/theres...

Reading little snatches of Barbara Guest today. This is from "A Reason."

Finally acquired two new bookcases with which to manage our overflowing book collection & suddenly there is not enough time in the day for the amount of shelving, organizing, rearranging I wish to accomplish. Regrettably attending summer social functions when all I want to be doing is alphabetizing.

Contorting the body and/or book to read Adam Haiun’s I AM LOOKING FOR YOU IN THE NO-PLACE GRID.

We have no chance, as a species, until people learn to stay seated until their zone number is called.

If possible, experience this astonishingly brilliant play- written by Cole Escola who also plays Mary. Idk when I’ve laughed this hard. And i left that theatre feeling so PROUD to be gay that i forgot I wasn’t gay

Cole Escola is a first-time Tony Award winner for ‘OH, MARY!’

I love The Cranberries, of course, but I do wish something other than “So ugly, so ugly…” was being sung while I shimmy out of a too-tight dress in the changing room of a vintage store.

Reading Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ THE COMPLETE DRAFTS (Vol. 1).

Diane di Prima on adding #bureaucracy to Medicare/Medicaid —i.e., on preventing people from getting what they need while pretending it's their own fault & for their own good. #PoetryExplains

In today's #writersblock interview, Teri Vlassopoulos tells us about how writing never leaves you, how she celebrates when a book is done, and how the difficult-yet-common experience of infertility factors into her new novel, LIVING EXPENSES (@invisibooks.bsky.social). alllitup.ca/writers-bloc...

Get Future Howl: gaspereau.com/bookInfo.php... and Cut Side Down here: invisiblepublishing.com/product/cut-... MacEachern's book reviewed by @robmclennan.bsky.social: bsky.app/profile/robm... #DSPBposts #books #SmallPress #BookSky 💙📚

While I mention it, @suegoyette.bsky.social's Future Howl is pretty amazing. I got it at @tridenthalifax.bsky.social a couple weeks ago when she read there with @jessisays.bsky.social (whose publisher @invisibooks.bsky.social was featured in the Mefi #3 post). Photo of their books from that evening:

I continue to find that many college and university students cannot think of the poem as an authored text or a made thing. When asked to write an essay including a thesis statement about multiple works by one poet, they regularly include misattributed poems by a wide range of poets.

Next Tuesday! the Montreal Launch for my poetry collection UNMET (Biblioasis), with opening readers Sarah Burgoyne and Ottawa's Leslie Roach author of Finish this Sentence (Mawenzi House) #CanLit www.biblioasis.com/shop/new-rel...

newly posted: rob mclennan @robmclennan.bsky.social : Cut Side Down, by Jessi MacEachern / @jessisays.bsky.social @invisibooks.bsky.social ; periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2025/05/rob-...

Reading this wonderful book in transit across the maritimes this past week, and it has been extraordinary company!

Tonight! @jessisays.bsky.social with special guest @suegoyette.bsky.social at @tridenthalifax.bsky.social. #books #BookSky

Erín Moure continues her interview series with four questions to “an Elizabethan drunk on MacProse” — that’s me, answering impertinent questions about CUT SIDE DOWN! Watch the video here: youtu.be/39_q5-lDtb4?...

I am reading poetry at The Printed Word in Dundas today on Easter Sunday! “I could not help but rise. / My companions became notorious / sculptors being slowly opened / by the teeth.”

As a lapsed Catholic, it does feel wonderfully blasphemous to have planned a trio of poetry readings over Easter weekend. Join us in Toronto tonight (Sat Apr 19) to take in the voices of drunk bishops and family gossips.

Come see my reptilian fall tonight in Toronto! 6:30 PM at Type Books (Junction) on Saturday, April 19. Zane Koss and I are reading from our new @invisibooks.bsky.social.

In THE UNSIGNIFICANT, Srikanth Reddy compares the after feeling of a poetry reading to Satan’s bitter end: anticipating a “universal shout,” receiving “public scorn,” and falling “A monstrous serpent on his belly prone.”

Jay Miller reviews Jessi MacEachern's Television Poems (above/ground press, 2021) / @jessisays.bsky.social ; abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2025/04/jay-...