In two years, we managed to produce a hundred posts over at the Woodlot. Reviews, interviews and essays, all by Canadian poets!

We did a website redesign this week. Changed the banner and background colour, fixed the jargonish issues and WAY TOO BIG images at the start of each post, and we did a few other optimization tweaks. Anyways check out the site redesign! the-wood-lot.ca

Savannah Crab interviews Kayla Czaga for @the-wood-lot.bsky.social, about Kayla's @houseofanansi.bsky.social collection "Midway":

Interviewer Savannah Crabb talks with Canadian poet Kayla Czaga about her poetry collection Midway, a favourite here at the Woodlot! Thank you to both Savannah and Kayla for allowing The Woodlot to host your discussion. tinyurl.com/5n96mj6d

The Woodlot - Canadian Poetry Reviews & Essays now hosts over fifty reviews and forty-five essays on poetics for people to enjoy. In the New Year, we are introducing several interviews with Canadian poets!

Xavier Ibraheem interviews John Terpstra for @the-wood-lot.bsky.social, about John's new @gaspereaupress.bsky.social memoir "A Carpentry of Words & Wood":

Got my copy of the Walrus @thewalrus.ca in the mail this bright morning at the very end of 2025, that features this poem. Honoured to be alongside poems by Tom Wayman, Molly Peacock, and @katerilanthier.bsky.social 😍

tinyurl.com/2p9v52yx The first interview is up now: the Canadian poet John Terpstra talks trees, wood-working and words with undergraduate student Xavier Ibraheem. John Terpstra's latest book is called A Carpentry of Words & Wood out with Gaspereau Press ¶ Printers & Publishers.

Happy New Year! Today I have updated The Woodlot - Canadian Poetry Reviews & Essays site to include interviews with Canadian poets as my good friend Rob Taylor has sent me many, many interviews with Canadian poets conducted by his students at the University of Fraser Valley.

Hi everyone who follows this page. I wrote LOTS of reviews and essays for The Woodlot in 2025, but even I get exhausted for ideas, or just plain run out of time to sit with books long enough to review them, so I'm asking in 2026 that people might again wish to contribute to The Woodlot site:

Thanks rob @robmclennan.bsky.social for this, and for your (seemingly tireless) promotion of all things can-lit! #canlit #canadianpoetry #literaryblog #poetrycommunity @ucalgarypress.bsky.social

I’m slowing down with posts over at the Woodlot but if any Canadian poet wants to pitch me a poetry review or essay just DM me. I feel like I have capacity again after a restful long weekend.

rob mclennan writes about his latest poetry collection, the book of sentences (University of Calgary press, Fall 2025), and offers an excerpt over at the The Woodlot - Canadian Poetry Reviews & Essays. tinyurl.com/5n79evey "I don’t hold too much stock in ideas of the muse….”

Conor Mc Donnell talks his writing process when writing his 80 page long poem what we know so far is..... over at The Woodlot - Canadian Poetry Reviews & Essays. tinyurl.com/434bpyht Check it out!

I wrote about the perils and pleasures of the Canadian Long Poem. A daunting subject! the-wood-lot.ca/2025/10/03/t... "The long poem puts demands on a reader, and “the form” it chooses is one of its own design. We cannot rely on the familiar signposts of shorter lyric narrative poems….”

A Review of Anna Yin’s Breaking into Blossom by Renée m. Sgroi tinyurl.com/d9zd6h3d "Overall, Anna Yin’s poems in Breaking into Blossom offer a portraiture that blends the seemingly mundane with the sublime….”

Thank you to @chrisbanks6625.bsky.social for this thoughtful analysis of Isabella Wang's new poetry collection, November, November: "a brave, risk-taking book pushing a reader to think about poetic structure, of love and loss, of time left..."

I wrote a review of Long Exposure, a book length poem by Stephanie Bolster out this Fall with Palimpsest Press. tinyurl.com/y762dwzu I've always shied away from writing about long poems but this one felt like a long book-length ceremony of witnessing. Anyways, here it is!

Pearl Pirie looks at Mahaila Smith's Seed Beetle out now with Stelliform press! tinyurl.com/bdeckfxr "Verbal terraforming is visible in Seed Beetle. It brings to focus how everything we say in the present is also building the future…”

Anna Swanson, The Garbage Poems the-wood-lot.ca/2025/09/25/a...

New review of Isabella Wang's November, November out this Fall with Nightwood Editions. tinyurl.com/ytxzb6uc

A new essay about the popularity of the personal lyric poem and not becoming too complacent with its limitations. the-wood-lot.ca/2025/09/12/c... Check it out!

New review of Guy Elston’s The Character Actor Convention out this Fall with The Porcupine’s Quill. tinyurl.com/4j2v7v6x "Honestly, I think The Character Actor Convention by Guy Elston out now with The Porcupine’s Quill is a fine debut from a promising new voice in Canadian Poetry.”

New review of Paul Vermeersch's latest poetry collection NMLCT out now with ECW Press this Fall. tinyurl.com/mum7x9f9 "There is rigour and tension in these 16 line, formally-constrained poems, but also a sharp, restless and original consciousness that is the nucleus of this whole poetry collection

New review of Robyn Sarah's latest poetry collection We're Somewhere Else Now out from Biblioasis this Fall. the-wood-lot.ca/2025/09/07/h...

I wrote an appreciative review of Karen Solie's book WELLWATER out with Anansi press in Canada.It's a great book shortlisted for the 2025 Forward Prize! tinyurl.com/3ma7k826 Check it out!

Hey I wrote about Social Media and "Cringe Culture" and Ocean Vuong being smart over at The Woodlot - Canadian Poetry Reviews & Essays. Here is the link: tinyurl.com/73untpjf

One of my poems over at OnlyPoems.net

Another new poem by me.

Tim Bowling's collection, In the Capital City of Autumn, has been shortlisted for The Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry! Congratulations, Tim! www.wolsakandwynn.ca/news-blog/ti...

I wrote a mini-essay about a Canadian poetry collection I really love which is Kevin Connolly's Xiphoid Process from 2017. tinyurl.com/ef7v6hvv “ I love the poetry collection Xiphoid Process, for not only what it says, but what it tries to say…”

Woke up and wrote a little bit this morning about the poetry of New Brunswick poet John Thompson. tinyurl.com/3j59zf5p I looked specifically back at his debut collection At the Edge of the Chopping there are no Secrets.

Hi Canadian poets, just a heads up that EVENT magazine (where I am poetry editor) is open for poetry submissions right now until the end of the month. Send in your good stuff! www.eventmagazine.ca/submit/

the above/ground press 32nd anniversary reading/launch/party! August 7 at RedBird, robmclennan.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-...

Again, just a general call for essays by Canadian poets. They can be personal, poetic, something in-between, from established older writers or MFA students, whatever the case may be. Send queries to [email protected] and I am sure we can work something out.

Wrote a blog post about poetry, addiction and winning a national magazine award for my essay “Black Hammers Falling” wp.me/pfEyTX-kV

A reminder we are always looking for essays by Canadian poets who want to write something personal or poetic, a craft essay or an essay about family, or writing about competition or aging or or or….. just DM.

I just won in the category of Personal Journalism a National Magazine Award for my essay “Black Hammers Falling” first published in The New Quarterly.

Thank you to Kate Rogers for writing a review of Speech Dries On The Tongue: Poetry on Environmental Collapse and Mental Health out with The Porcupine's Quill for The Woodlot! What a cover too! the-wood-lot.ca/2025/06/02/s...

Christian Bök has graciously allowed The Woodlot to publish an excerpt of his new book My Works, Ye Mighty. I have published the essay both as a slideshow (so readers may see how the images and text work together in the actual book), and in essay form. tinyurl.com/4vvsze9h

Matt Rader and his graduate students in the MFA Creative Writing Program at University of British Columbia Okanagan have written a collective essay about Canadian Poetry--and what that phrase means--and have graciously allowed me to publish it!