microseason: a phoebe calling and calling outside my morning window as if the groundhog had been utterly mistaken.

Here’s my advice on how to use 10 fiendish & deeply “assorted” words to craft a decent poem in just 48 hours. (To students & former students reading this post: don’t make a habit of writing poems this fast. But @cv2magazine.bsky.social’s 2-Day Poem Contest is too fun to pass up.)

Sarah Wolfson, 1st place winner of the 2025 2-Day Poem Contest, is here to share her perspective on writing a poem in 48 hours! Follow the link to sign up for the 2026 contest! contemporaryverse2.ca/2-day-poem-c... Read @sarahwolfson.bsky.social 's advice below!

Introducing: The 2026 QWF Mentorship Pairs! From February to May, seven emerging writers and one emerging translator will work with their mentors to make the transition to the next stage of their careers, culminating in a public reading in June. See the pairs 👉️ qwf.org/announcing-t...

🚨 Scholarship opportunity for #BIPOCwriters! 🚨 We still have Fresh Pages Scholarships to award for the Spring 2026 Workshop season. Each scholarship covers the full cost of registering for one of our workshops and a free one-year membership in QWF. Open to BIPOC applicants. qwf.org/activities/p...

If your study is framed as asking whether "AI" does X as well as humans do, it's fundamentally misguided and I'd argue not scientifically sound. A short 🧵>>

“On the common, there were swans // Pretending to be boats that carried people // Who imagined they felt joy.” — Lucie Brock-Broido

Host Abbey Berger-Knorr, aka Abbey B.K., takes her music-and-arts podcast to the next level after the closure of its former home at Burlington’s Big Heavy World. www.sevendaysvt.com/music/musicf...

“The crazy river of your mind, / Framed by endless strings of small whortleberry lights, ablaze,…” — Lucie Brock-Broido, from “Moon River” in Stay, Illusion

“I stopped loving a boy one day, which day, exactly / I wouldn’t know, much the same as the never-knowing // When or how the trout I caught regrew the wound // His inner cheek took on….” — Lucie Brock-Broido, from “Just-So Story” in Stay, Illusion

“Curious in the wild sun and wondering.” — Lucie Brock-Broido, from “Just-So Story” in Stay, Illusion

Just realized that I must have leant a volume of Francis Ponge’s poetry to some suitor in grad school & that the book hasn’t been with me for over two decades & this is causing me some panic & existential perplexity because I had been picturing it on my shelves all those years.

Submissions are open for Montreal-based literary journal *chouette*. Deadline March 1. This is a wonderful, visionary little journal that features work interested in the quotidian. chouetteliterary.ca

Submissions are open for Montreal-based literary journal *chouette*. Deadline March 1. This is a wonderful, visionary little journal that features work interested in the quotidian. chouetteliterary.ca

“Most of my life, / I had consorted with the unspeakable, longing to put my mouth / on it.” — Lucie Brock-Broido from “Meditation on the Sources of the Catastrophic Imagination” in Stay, Illusion (Knopf, 2013)

Happy Groundhog Day! Here’s a poem inspired in a small way by the groundhogs who live on Mount Royal in Montreal. (It was also inspired by general pandemic ennui.) Thanks to @geistmag.bsky.social for giving it a great home: www.geist.com/poetry/the-g...

My kind of pop of colour! 🥰

Missive from the here and now.

Just noticed that my @cv2magazine.bsky.social 2-Day Poem Contest poem is now available online. Thanks to the dynamic instability of Montreal’s weather and a tenacious runaway Dachshund in Australia for the inspiration: contemporaryverse2.ca/poetry/catal...

Hear me out: Key & Peele-style Obama anger translator but the translator is a poet and the Obama is science. And also, if that ever becomes a job, can I have it?

From The English Journal, Vol. 65, No. 5 (May, 1976)

Happy to be reading from my poetry at this event tomorrow (Saturday, January 24th) in Old Montreal.

Old Montreal before the promised polar vortex.

Spring 2026 #WritingWorkshops—now open for registration 🤩 Explore everything from children's picture books and long-form fiction to podcasting and creative play for writers. Spots fill up fast—so sign up ASAP 👉https://qwf.org/activities/programs/workshops/

The QWF community has lost a much-valued member, adviser, and friend: Thaioronióhte Dan David, who died on Monday, January 12 after a years-long battle with cancer. QWF's Lori Schubert shares her remembrances of Dan in a tribute to him: https://qwf.org/thaioroniohte-dan-david-1952-2026-a-tribute/

We're #hiring! Quist—QWF's literary journal featuring the poetry and prose of Quebecers aged 14–21— is seeking an Indigenous editor to help build meaningful connections with young writers from Indigenous communities across Quebec: https://ow.ly/heZT50Y0Peu#hiring

VERSeFest: Ottawa's International Poetry Festival 2026 : March 24-29, Misha Solomon! Karen Solie! Isabella Wang! Sheri-D Wilson! Jérôme Melançon! Kacper Bartczak! Paul Vermeersch! Alexandre Yergeau! Jumoke Verissimo! full schedule to be announced soon www.verseottawa.ca/en/versefest

I doubt I will ever see a more inspired bit of upcycling.

Ah we see your Blue Monday and raise you a Moo Blunday

Speaking of which, the French word for dragonfly is libellule, which I find to be an entire lesson on poetry.

Poem by Alec Finlay.

Nap position: the comma

Denise Levertov, from This Great Unknowing: Last Poems (1999)

Oh, the power of the list poem. I lived in MN for ~5 years. Had 3 different weights of long-underwear. Froze. Was warmed by the kindness, humility, and neighborliness of its people — both in the Twin Cities & in rural areas. That this is happening anywhere: unspeakable. In MN? Almost unimaginable.

Rae Armantrout, from Ron Silliman's In the American Tree (1986)

“the nonsense factor like sunshine in the face” — James Tate (from Shroud of the Gnome)

weather report

From ‘Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved’ (2005) —Gregory Orr #poetry #poems #booksky

I grew up right near where Otter Creek and the Lemon Fair River meet. Sometimes the latter flooded into a nearby cornfield then froze, and we’d get great ice skating. Once my father and I came in 2nd in a canoe race on Otter Creek while paddling our canoe backwards. (Re-skeet your home river.)

“Day dogs down its lengthened paws / stopping at every memory. / But I forget. I need not write / my name on each obstruction, sniff / all those excessive boundaries— / this lawn’s enough, the universe / wells out at each expansion of my breath.” — M. Travis Lane from “Whine” (in The Crisp Day…)

“Can you see it, whatever I’m looking at?” — M. Travis Lane from “Skindeep” in The Crisp Day Closing on my Hand

“Can you see it, whatever I’m looking at?” — M. Travis Lane from “Skindeep” in The Crisp Day Closing on my Hand

“Day dogs down its lengthened paws / stopping at every memory. / But I forget. I need not write / my name on each obstruction, sniff / all those excessive boundaries— / this lawn’s enough, the universe / wells out at each expansion of my breath.” — M. Travis Lane from “Whine” (in The Crisp Day…)

🦇 Do you love bats and enjoy writing? Join us in celebrating bats in creative writing through our Bat's Laureate Competition! A lovely activity for a cosy winter weekend. More information here: www.bats.org.uk/our-work/con... , and deadline is 28 February

"These lines capture the book’s tension: mastery of grammar and syntax cannot guarantee belonging." Paisley Conrad reviews 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 Read the rest at the link: mtlreviewofbooks.ca/reviews/prop... @pslycnrd.bsky.social

Lot of wisdom here from @biblioracle.bsky.social . I think many of us, myself included, felt like our undergraduate experience was one of searching and failure. Education is finding yourself and we shouldn’t give up that in the name of efficiency www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

“One of the pleasures of teaching writing was having the chance to see students overcome challenges that they may have previously viewed as intractable in an atmosphere where stakes were low enough to incentivize struggle and risk.”

Had hoped to finish this book before the new year, but am now enjoying the fact that I get to savour it in two calendar years. What a smart, searing, delightful poet Vera Pavlova is.

She was a poet. We could all be poets. “maybe there in-between my pancreas & / large intestine is the piddly brook of / my soul.” from Renee Nicole Good’s (then Macklin’s) Academy of American Poets College and University Prize-winning poem.