rob mclennan's spot light 115 features Anna Veprinska of Bonememory! Check it out: https://ow.ly/RfBP50Xm0NU

From Billy-Ray Belcourt, NDN Coping Mechanisms

A short piece in which I discuss poetry lifting language out of its housecoat. And there’s a newly published winter poem here, too. Thank you @robmclennan.bsky.social for all you do to support authors in Canada 🙏

Thank you @fiddlehd.bsky.social for this initiative. Looking forward to this issue!

“Bite into joy like you bite a radish” —Yevgeny Yevtushenko

“History will enter here, whistling like train wheels” —Dionne Brand, Ossuaries

“you will discover, as I, / that verbs are a tragedy, a bleeding cliffside, explosions” —Dionne Brand, Ossuaries

Rest in peace, Ellen Bryant Voigt. You were a force of nature and one of the sharpest people I've ever known. You will be greatly missed.

I am nowhere happier than in poetry. Woolf’s Voices, Shelf Life Books, Calgary, Sept. 2025

Rest in Peace, dear Jubi Arriola-Headley

“Earth, my love, I want that too. Believe me, no more of your springtimes are needed to win me over” —Rilke, from Ninth Duino Elegy

My third book of poems is coming out with Gordon Hill Press in spring 2026! It’s a book of minimalist experimental poetry about the emotional wounds love and illness have the capacity to inflict. And the housing of those wounds in the archive of the body. Pre-orders now available. Link in my bio 🙏❤️

Fairy. Spring 2027 @palimpsestpress.bsky.social Thank you @aimeeddunn.bsky.social #JimJohnstone #KirbyFairy

"I’m on a new medication that forces my soul out of my body like a pine forest felled to make room for glass." #TodaysPoem #poetry For body with burden by @annaveprinska.bsky.social from Bonememory (2025 @ucalgarypress.bsky.social) tinyurl.com/3mdwnhua & tinyurl.com/mtvt8hs2

“The way light keeps its shadow by swallowing it” —Ocean Vuong, “Into the Breach”

Lucia Perillo

Reading this Wednesday in Calgary at Pages Books with the wonderful @toluini.bsky.social and @josephkidney.bsky.social

Reading through old writing notes and found this question from my past self, who studied (and still studies) poetry after trauma: “why didn’t I study laughter?”

“Is routine a kind of prayer?” —Tessa McWatt, The Snag

“That old ontological riddle about forests is a trick. If we are listening, everyone can hear every tree that falls in every forest.” —Tessa McWatt, The Snag

Jim Johnstone, from The King of Terrors

"We felt an ache we realized was happiness, almost unbearable." From @jmaebarizo.bsky.social's book, Tender Machines. Published by @tupelopress.bsky.social: bookshop.org/a/862/9781946482846 #poem #books #writing

You know that PhD I defended 7 years ago? I had to defend it again last night in a dream.

“that swallowed you, inside the terrible ocean. How you made yourself at home beneath the cathedral ceiling of its ribs. How that felt” From “Letter to Geppetto, Written on the Back of a Red Lobster Menu” by Bethany Schultz Hurst in ISSUE 26!

“That just as it has always been possible to look away, it is always possible to stop looking away. None of this evil was ever necessary. Some carriages are gilded and others lacquered in blood, but the same engine pulls us all.” —Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Came home to find the latest issue of @canadianlit.bsky.social, in which my poem “Witnessing Names” (excerpted here) appears. You can also find this poem in Bonememory @ucalgarypress.bsky.social. With many thanks to both publishers 🙏

“The weather gets in my words and I want them dry.” —John Newlove, “Weather”

Toronto launch and reading next weekend alongside these fantastic poets. If you’re around, come out!

“Is there a centre to me? Is there a centre to you? Or are we just a matrix of instances?” — Ocean Vuong (The Interview, The New York Times)

"Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on." --Simone Weil

Vancouver book launch @crossandcrowsbooks.bsky.social with @josephkidney.bsky.social and Dominique Bernier-Cormier. What a memorable night!

Reading today (Monday) in Vancouver!

This book launch was so special! And so full! Thank you to everyone who attended 🙏

Tonight! Book launch with @amyjleblanc.bsky.social in Calgary @shelflifebooks.bsky.social at 7pm:

“We knew the war would come. Still, it caught us unprepared.” —Szymborska (from “The End and the Beginning”)

“Once I am no longer a woman, the narrative poem will / finally turn into a lyric one.” —@victoriachang.bsky.social kenyonreview.org/piece/fig-15/

“One need not be a chamber—to be haunted— … Ourself—behind Ourself—Concealed— Should startle—most— —Emily Dickinson

The book tour is happening! Calgary --> Vancouver --> Toronto! 📖 If you're in any of these cities on any of these dates, I would love to see you! So excited to be reading alongside a collection of authors I admire. @ucalgarypress.bsky.social

🎉 Ma, I’m on a bestseller list! Grateful to see Bonemememory on Calgary’s bestselling books last week, its first full week in the world! Thank you to all of you who’ve purchased this book and who continue to engage with it!

1 week until @amyjleblanc.bsky.social and I launch our books @shelflifebooks.bsky.social in Calgary! First public reading of them!

VANCOUVER. May 5th: reading with @annaveprinska.bsky.social for a dual launch of our poetry books Devotional Forensics (@gooselane.bsky.social) and Bonememory (u calgary press) at @crossandcrowsbooks.bsky.social. Feat. as well the great Dominique Bernier-Cormier. Happy to be coming HOME.

April is Poetry Month: “Dickinson’s Dashes” by Anna Veprinska, an excerpt from Bonememory quillandquire.com/omni/dickins... @ucalgarypress.bsky.social #CanLit #poetry #CanadianPoetry

An excerpt from my poem “Dickinson’s Dashes” from Bonememory. Thank you, @quillandquire.bsky.social , for featuring it! See the full poem here: quillandquire.com/omni/dickins... @ucalgarypress.bsky.social

Book publication day! 🎉 My vulnerability has a shape and a spine, and I offer it to you with deep gratitude. Bonememory is now available everywhere and anywhere you buy your books. Link in bio. Thank you, dear friends and readers ❤️

It’s my book’s birthday! 🎉🎉🎉

Come launch the just published Bonememory and I used to live here in a very special double book launch with Anna Veprinska and Amy Leblanc! April 30 at Shelf Life Calgary: shelflifebooks.ca/events/24798...

“That solitude is the sister of hunger. That loneliness sharpens you into a scythe.” —Shashi Bhat, “We’re All in this Alone”

So grateful to be on the CBC Books Canadian poetry collections to read in the spring list! 1 week until Bonememory is published! 🎉 @ucalgarypress.bsky.social

“And then it is another day and another and another but I will not go on about this because no doubt you too have experienced time.” —Jenny Offill, Weather

It was such a joy to be talk about the new collection with @openbookontario ✨ link below! Sidebar: a prolific AND renowned poet?? Who is she?? 💅