bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/the... Writers who are wondering how to contribute to their literary culture and keep it vibrant by running performance series, translating, touring and so forth, this is a book for you. It isn't ever just about the writing and the publishing :)

Now book reviewing for CNQ, along with SubTerrain, Freefall, Alberta Views, Riverstreet, The Malahat Review, and my own blog Brilliant Women Inc. If any other periodical wants me to review, let me know. It's vital work but I am still scraping the survival bits together :)

Early promo copy material and the cover art by Jenny Keith for the Wolsak & Wynn fall release for my next book: Sixteen Homes, a hybrid-memoir.

Early promo copy material and the cover art by Jenny Keith for the Wolsak & Wynn fall release for my next book: Sixteen Homes, a hybrid-memoir.

Edmonton spring means you plant blooms in a fever of yes, finally and then watch the weather forecast say minuses, wind, possible snow and see all the beauty crushed once more. A cruel land, undoubtedly.

An inspiring collaboration on a year-end project with design student Kaelyn Andrews, who also interviewed and photographed dancers, visual artists, musicians and designers! She calls this work, "Without Art, Life is Boring." Yes, real human making always.

This is the tree I grew up with. She is actually three trees melded into one. We called them the cedar sisters. And now the world tree. She remains. May she always.

Maman of the 70s.

Only my garden feels truly sane.

When you are a contest judge, you realize again the general subjectivity of the whole shebang and wish winning competitions was not held up as the be-all-end-all shortcut to even the briefest of door openings for artists. We are much subtler than athletes, say. The same systems cannot apply.

I wrote a villanelle today for a woman I took care of at Hospice who died at 46 from ALS about 29 years ago. The hauntings never cease, and mostly of memories of her incredible courage.

I miss performing. It shouldn't only be connected to touring a book. And yet these days seem done. Who feels the world has changed irrevocably in this way. Or is it just aging.

Ahhhh have I reached that age when a rejection from a student board at a poetry mag arrives describing my poems as "earnest" ;) Hey, these days rejections make me cheer as at least enough respect was given to offer a response. Sad state of things no?

Looking at screens while your kid is trying to interpret the world or giving them devices so they can't feel as connected to their surroundings will only blunt their ability to be fully alive. Thanks Dad for holding my hand, gazing in my eyes and singing to me.

Spent part of today just watching sparrows construct their nests under the eaves of my house and there was nothing more thrilling.

brilliantwomeninc.blogspot.com I review books of poetry that are beyond the first one for Canadian women. Ask me if you want to know where to send them and consider supporting this work on my Brilliant Women Inc patreon if you can. Critical reviews need more room.

edmontoncatfest.com/enter-the-20... yes these are more volunteer jobs for a great cause: rescue cats! submit and participate :)

www.patreon.com/c/u36394348?... If anyone feels inclined to send a monthly or one-time donation to the work I do for Canadian poets, it would mean an immense amount to me.

A few last lines from Tonya Lailey's poem "Under a Cherry" to end your poetry month (mine never ends ;) : "steep/in the earthy/sweet/let slip my mind/into a bloom/translucence."

"After solstice, chickadees/cast their two-note calls/into morning...to know the ancient spell/of spring returning" [Angela Waldie from "Song for Winter Solstice" in A Single Syllable of Wild]

freefallmagazine.ca/contest/ and there are a few more days to submit to this source where you can be assured I will read your poems and bequeath blessings on a few ;)

www.wolsakandwynn.ca/blog/three-n... Canadian poetry books. A take from my impassioned (and sometimes infuriated) self.

Mood. Late-April. Edmonton.

Three lines from "Evan Said" by Madhur Anand: "In the near future, we will grow food vertically./The condo bubble in Toronto must first explode...And I will still want this: strangers to read these poems."

www.exileeditions.com/shop/somatic/ My first book of poetry emerged in 1998 when I was a mere bairn and 28 years later I am still looking forward to my next book. Despite all financial and personal challenges, that yearning has never ceased: to carry words into the world.

"I saw the author, her left cheek, her left shoulder agape,/a photo of her washed in emergency, a quieting freight..." {from Dionne Brand's The Blue Clerk}. Poetry month is every month for me and that is why I am both tangibly poor and invisibly rich ;)

This is another thing to do for poetry month (and earth day): slit open bags of leaves that imbeciles have blown into plastic and release their hibernating butterflies and bees and eventual compost into your own garden. Leave the leaves people!

Lines from Sylvia Legris' "Prelude" for Earth Day: "The history of botany is the history of pharmacy. Plants for easing pain, plants for easing sleep... Plants that purify the earth.... Plants of antiquity and plants impending. Plants that balm the living and plants that preserve the dead."

The art for my upcoming Fall title, 16 Homes: a hybrid-memoir, from Wolsak & Wynn, was envisioned by myself and brought to life by Jenny Keith :)

Today's first lines by a Canadian poet: "Boulevards with planted medians/hotels like perfume boxes/strewn around the landscape,/a pink mall looming by a lagoon..." [from Ruin by Elise Partridge]

First lines from a Canadian poet: "Immense turn in the deep black,/small points of light, faint gleam or slash/ along some buried axis, white reticulated wink...." [Jan Zwicky, Wittgenstein Elegies]

First lines from a Canadian poem today: "We hoped the disease would ignore us./All men think they will avoid/ the rocks, the boil of the waterfall...." [from Message by Gil Adamson]

For the rest of poetry month, I am giving you first lines of poems, starting with one of mine, from my yet-to-be-published No, Robot chapbook sonnet sequence: "The day they took the elegies for my dead love/ to train the robots with them is when I first said no, no way."

open.spotify.com/episode/37OF... I chat with Chris in my front yard about renegade sonnets, reckless Can lit behaviour, the past in Vancouver and Canada's poetry scene, selling art on the streets and the ache for crowds again. From 2021!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEyG... Thought I would take a break from reposting interviews and homages on Ms Lyric's today and put up one of the 12 readings of John Ashbery poems I did 8 years ago for my cats Nox and Solstice, who are 15 years old April 15th! Cats love Ashbery ;)

open.spotify.com/episode/25p2... In which I begin with his tin whistle, then natter on about conversations in the hood, and then give you some bits of how I met Tim, his bio and end with a little satirical lyric on Professors of Poetry. Enjoy!

freefallmagazine.ca/contest/ two or so weeks before this contest deadline closes! send me your most amazing poems :)

open.spotify.com/episode/4cdN... With bio, memories, bits n pieces, personal encounters, prose and two poems, one recited by him and one by me. Enjoy! And rest in fierceness Brian!!

Today I did a recitation of one poem at an event called Poetry and Stillness and it was for this man, Chris Matzigkeit (1981-2010) who died at just 29 years 16 years ago after we had been in a relationship for 8.5 years. Time is so strange. I was glad for the circle's silences and chimes today.

open.spotify.com/episode/59dv... Weekend Ms Lyrics repost! I converse with Travis Lane from Fredericton NB about everything from Elizabeth Bishop to the war, from the importance of being able to learn to howl like wolves to how Canada radically lacks saints...(she is 90 now!)

The only brief reading I am doing at the Edmonton Poetry Festival this year is one piece from Riven (ECW Press 2020) at the Poetry and Stillness circle, as April 11th is the day I lost my partner Chris 16 years ago, thus, a quiet commemoration.

open.spotify.com/episode/7LVr... where I am in Winnipeg having a wild conversation with poet Katherine Bitney about all things crow, poem, grief, witness, wildness and spells that make you go whoopsie!

open.spotify.com/episode/2R8c... My usual aural collage of bits of her reading Penelope from the Six Toronto Poets album in 1955, bio stuff, excerpts from a 1984 CBC tribute featuring letters from Alan Crawley, a snippet of her prose and me reading Still Life....

open.spotify.com/episode/2uX0... here we have a live recitation by Alice Major at my former performance series plus: a recitation from Roan Stallion for my Inhuman drummer Aren (RIP March 13, 2023) and a chat about my absence and various audience reflections! Enjoy.

www.youtube.com/channel/UC1L... check these documentaries on older women artists out and if interested in working with me to make one for yourself or someone you love let me know at [email protected] :)

I have been editing manuscripts in all genres for over 20 years and this is the slowest it has ever been in my "bits and piecing" existence. Please hire humans to do your book- perfecting work. The robot thieves just cheat all of us. Contact me at [email protected] :)

open.spotify.com/episode/5vsg... A ghazal-like chat with the Ontario poet about grief (and with an emotional reading of his pantoumn), forms, the importance of translation, reviews and reading series, poets like Steve Heighton and M Travis Lane and process. ;)

brilliantwomeninc.blogspot.com My newish reviews site is all for Canadian women poets who have published more than one book ("firstbookers" often get more than enough attention in this country!). Ask at [email protected] if I want you or your publisher to send me a copy :)