Kathryn Mockler's Blog, page 2
September 10, 2025
I’d like to see us recognize each other’s humanity beyond national borders...
Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of existing?Su Chang: This appears to be my earliest memory: I was about 5 years old, sitting on my mother’s lap on a Shanghai public bus, on our way to visit my mother’s best friend whom I called auntie. We were skirting the edge of People’s Square and clusters of people were gathering there, doing what I could not recall. This seems to be a random scene, but I likely have remembered it for a few reasons. For one, I felt entirely safe and content in my mom’s arms, and in my own skin, which is a state I struggled to return to in my adulthood. Moreover, it was a moment when I suddenly recognized the huge world out there, separate from me and the intimate circle I knew, that was both exciting and potentially dangerous. I seemed to sense for the first time the dichotomy between secure detachment and risky/exciting engagement. The memory has a distinctive feel of “awakening” to it.
KM: What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?SC: I must have doodled before I wrote, but somehow I can’t remember a single concrete scene of me drawing or painting at an early age (and I was never particularly good at it). My first memory of being creative was indeed storytelling. My grade 1 teacher decided that I was a storyteller and recommended me to the headmaster for a city-wide competition. There were lunch-time practice sessions. There were a lot of gesticulations, head-swaying, voice-projecting, and increasingly longer stories to tell. I wasn’t good enough to write original stories yet, but soon after winning my first storytelling competition in Shanghai, I started trying to write my own tales. I got the first one published in a national youth newspaper in Grade 3, about a ruthless king who stopped all the clocks in his country so he could exploit the workers. Looking back, it was a miracle that it got published!
KM: Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why? Or is there an emotion that you detest having and why?SC: Personally, I don’t like to experience anger. I very well understand the function of anger (and it can indeed be highly useful). I dislike it because, unfortunately, as far as negative emotions go, anger is my go-to, and it’s almost always masking my true emotion: sadness. I think it ties to my sense of pride, to put on a brave face when it’s likely much healthier to let myself fall apart and be vulnerable. When I re-read my earlier drafts of The Immortal Woman, I see a frequent display of rage masking sorrow in both the mother (Lemei) and daughter (Lin) characters. They are both proud, headstrong women, but the way they express their negative emotions is not often productive, which causes further conflict, miscommunication, and vicious cycles.
KM: What do you cherish most about this world?SC: People’s ability to love each other despite profound differences. I grew up in a highly homogenous (and conformist) culture in China. After I became an adult immigrant, I was amazed by the diversity of humans I came to call friends over time. Despite all the trial and tribulations of immigration, to finally be able to embrace humanity’s diversity has been a profound gift the journey offered. Both my mind and heart have benefited from understanding different perspectives and learning to love amid differences. Prejudice against “unknown” people, internalized racism/inferiority complex, urban vs. rural divide – all of which characters in my book suffer greatly from - are manifestations of a bad mythology. The only way to eliminate them is through living side by side with people of various backgrounds and to see their humanity shine in the day-to-day. We are all capable of learning/relearning/rewiring.
KM: What would you like to change about this world?SC: Following the answer to the previous question, what we are urgently lacking is for people on different ends of the political spectrum to talk to each other, calmly, with an open mind and a willingness to change. At a higher level, our obsession on nation states and border, our Cold War mentality, have paralyzed us in the face of big questions requiring global solutions – climate change, AI, pandemics, etc. I’d like to see us recognize each other’s humanity beyond national borders, and tackle the big issues of our times as trench buddies instead of competitors, even enemies.
KM: What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.SC: Love yourself fiercely. Turn off the critics’ voices. Look in the direction you want to go and keep putting one foot in front of the other. You will find your people and your place in the world.
KM: If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?SC: I would like to send my love to anyone, as long as they also have the capacity to love and to receive love. If I absolutely had to pick a group, I’d send my love to the quiet ones—people who feel unseen or unheard, who carry their burdens alone, who make space for others but rarely take up space themselves. Those swept into the undertow of colonialism and capitalism, struggling to keep their heads - and voices - above water. I hope this doesn’t sound too cliché. I suppose most writers feel the protective instinct toward the “voiceless.”
KM: Tell me about your latest book.SC: My debut novel, The Immortal Woman (House of Anansi, 2025), is about a Chinese mother and daughter wrestling with the demons of their past. The mother, once a student Red Guard leader in 1960s Shanghai and a journalist at a state newspaper, was involved in a brutal act of violence during the Tiananmen Square protests and lost all hope for her country. The daughter is a student at an American university on a mission to become a true Westerner. She tirelessly erases her birth identity, abandons her Chinese suitor, and pursues a white love interest, all the while haunted by the scars of her upbringing.
Following China’s meteoric rise, the mother is slowly dragged into a nationalistic perspective that stuns the daughter. Their conflicts and final confrontation result in tragic consequences, exposing the constant tension Chinese immigrants face – the push and pull between the pressure of assimilation and the allure of Chinese nationalism. How does unresolved political trauma lead to internalized racism and eroded identities? What’s the path to genuine belonging in a hostile geopolitical climate?
The Immortal Woman is a generational story of heartbreak, resilience, yearning, and ultimately, hope, offering a rarely seen insider’s view of the fractured lives of the new Chinese immigrants and those they leave behind. You can find more information about the novel on my website.
Su Chang is a Chinese-Canadian writer. Her debut novel The Immortal Woman has been nominated for the 2025 Toronto Book Award, won an Independent Publisher Book Award, and featured as a must-read by CBC Books, among other accolades. She has been named a 2025 “Writer-to-Watch” by CBC. Her short fiction has been recognized in Prairie Fire’s Short Fiction Contest, Canadian Authors' Association (Toronto) National Writing Contest, ILS/Fence Fiction Contest, among others. Visit Su Chang’s website or follow her on Instagram.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
The Immortal Woman
by Su ChangeHouse of Anansi Press, 2025A sweeping generational story of heartbreak, resilience, and yearning, revealing an insider’s view of the fractured lives of Chinese immigrants and those they leave behind.
Lemei, once a student Red Guard leader in 1960s Shanghai and a journalist at a state newspaper, was involved in a brutal act of violence during the Tiananmen Square protests and lost all hope for her country. Her daughter, Lin, is a student at an American university on a mission to become a true Westerner. She tirelessly erases her birth identity, abandons her Chinese suitor, and pursues a white lover, all the while haunted by the scars of her upbringing. Following China’s meteoric rise, Lemei is slowly dragged into a nationalistic perspective that stuns Lin. Their final confrontation results in tragic consequences, but ultimately, offers hope for a better future. By turns wry and lyrical, The Immortal Woman reminds us to hold tight to our humanity at any cost.
Send your love to Send My Love to Anyone! ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
September 4, 2025
Statement of Solidarity
September 3, 2025
How Some Children Played at Slaughtering
How Some Children Played at SlaughteringMy mother, who has Alzheimer’s, has been in the hospital for nearly five months waiting for a spot in long term care.
To help her pass the time, I’ve been reading her stories from the complete first edition of The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm over the phone.
I like these versions because often they are rough and a little violent and sometimes very absurd. My mother loves the absurd and enjoys reading them together.
As I read “How Some Children Played at Slaughtering,” both of us were shocked by the graphic violence.
Here’s the complete tale:
How Some Children Played at Slaughtering1In a city named Franecker, located in West Friesland, some young boys and girls between the ages of five and six happened to be playing with one another. They chose one boy to play a butcher, another boy was to be a cook, and a third boy was to be a pig. Then they selected one girl to be a cook and another girl to be her assistant. The assistant was to catch the blood of the pig in a little bowl so they could make sausages. As agreed, the butcher now fell upon the little boy playing the pig, threw him to the ground, and slit his throat open with a knife, while the assistant cook caught the blood in her little bowl.A councilman was walking nearby and saw this wretched act. He immediately took the butcher boy with him and led him into the house of the mayor, who instantly summoned the entire council. They deliberated about this incident and didn’t know what to do with the boy, for they realized it had all been part of a children’s game. One of the councilmen, a wise old man, advised the chief judge to take a beautiful red apple in one hand and a Rhenish gold coin in the other. Then he was to call the boy and stretch out his hands to him. If the boy took the apple, he was to be set free. If he took the gold coin, he was to be killed. The judge took the wise man’s advice, and the boy grabbed the apple with a laugh. Thus he was set free without any punishment.IIThere once was a father who slaughtered a pig, and his children saw that. In the afternoon, when they began playing, one child said to the other, “You be the little pig, and I’ll be the butcher.” He then took a shiny knife and slit his little brother’s throat.Their mother was upstairs in a room bathing another child, and when she heard the cries of her son, she immediately ran downstairs. Upon seeing what had happened, she took the knife out of her son’s throat and was so enraged that she stabbed the heart of the other boy, who had been playing the butcher. Then she quickly ran back to the room to tend to her child in the bathtub, but while she had been gone, he had drowned in the tub.Now the woman became so frightened and desperate that she wouldn’t allow the neighbors to comfort her and finally hung herself. When her husband came back from the fields and saw everything, he became so despondent that he died soon thereafter.*
After we read stories or poems, I often will ask her what she thinks they mean, and she usually has fascinating insights. My mother was an English major in university and has always loved to read. The cruelty of this disease is that it has taken reading away from her. She stopped being able to pay attention to books several years ago.
So when we’re reading together, I recap the story after each paragraph and at the end. I also make sure that each story or poem is short because she can only retain about 30 to 60 seconds of short term memory.
With this tale though, the senseless violence of the story had her baffled. It did me too.
This was one of the tales that never made it into the later editions because it was not seen as suitable for children.
When I asked my mother what she thought the story was trying to say, she said, “I don’t know what means. What do you think it means?”
I said a few things off the cuff about how the story seems to be saying that human violence is innate and that violence breeds more violence. In the first story, the child gets away with murder without any consequences simply because he grabs an apple instead of a coin, a flawed and unfair system of justice.
Then I yammered on about the second anecdote and how the father slaughtering the pig results in a domino effect of violence as one-by-one members of his family are slaughtered or die. The story comes full circle when the father has to face the consequences of his own actions and then he too dies from despair. Everyone is destroyed. Bleak.
For some reason, my very simple, rushed, and mediocre interpretations blew my mother’s mind. Like blew her mind. It was as if I had discovered gold, she was so excited. “Oh my god, Kathryn,” she said. “Oh my god!!! How on earth did you come up with that?” “Humans are violent,” she said. “I agree.”
We talked at length about the story—the religious symbolism of the apple and the fact that the first child murderer appears unrepentant with his little laugh. We were both convinced that he would probably murder again.
And the more we talked, the more my mother was in utter disbelief about my interpretations.
At first I thought she was so awestruck because we were having a stimulating conversation, but then it occurred to me that my mother might have thought she was talking to a younger version of me. At this point in her disease, she has no sense of time. She thinks her parents are still alive and that she is in her 30s or 40s.
As a child I had undiagnosed ADHD and likely a learning disability, which made school hell and I got terrible grades. It was so bad, I was told by my elementary school guidance counsellor not bother with university.
Growing up I always felt like the unintelligent one in my family of very book-smart people.
My mother used to say, “You’re smart too, you just don’t apply yourself.” And it was her belief in me that made her defy the school’s recommendations.
So it is very likely that my mother’s shock and awe about our discussion of the fairy tale was the result of her thinking she was talking to the child version of me who hated to read, did terrible in school, and was suddenly able to interpret a fairy tale out of the blue—a prodigy. No wonder she was flipping out!
I’ll never know, but her enthusiasm was very amusing.
What do you think “How Some Children Played at Slaughtering” means?
As we continue to witness the senseless and brutal violence of Israel’s (backed by the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Western allies) genocide of the Palestinian people, please consider donating to The Refaat Alareer Camp - by The Sameer Project.
Send your love to Send My Love to Anyone! ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
1The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: the complete first edition, Translated and Edited by Jack Zipes, 2014
September 1, 2025
"Ah, but Bunnie I loved you"
Kirby’s button drawers
Missy. Missy. Missy.Wait. You cancelled her because she wore… a button?
O, darlin’s Missy, Madonna, and Me are the same age.
Rock stars, punks, His Purpleness.
It’s called banging for a reason.
You expect us to be on the same page at the same time because you just decided what belongs on that page?
How many times have you heard “America First,” this month? week? day? I wish to fucking god the actual fucking war criminals, white [christian national] smiley supremacists, the really really bad ones (Stephen Miller, her buttboys) who have others dig their mass graves, fail to alert rescue those swept away in a Christian girl’s camp, culture assassins, wanna-be housewives of mar-a-lago
We all bring what we do to the current dailies thrust upon us of our own makin’s
We don’t always say it in the same way from where we stand meeting this day
Does this person want me/us dead. Or not.
Will they come to my rescue? Slay [for] me? The sword of no shit.
I’ve always welcomed a learning curve, a tossed line, sweet cream.
Morrissey. I’ve never expected him to be other than. An idol.
Crooner. Rock god.
And wrong. Fuck, please allow me the space to get it wrong.David Suzuki tells us, “It’s too late [baby, now, it’s too late though we really did try to make it]
“For me, what we’ve got to do now is hunker down.”
David fucking Suzuki.
I haven’t heard a death knoll as certain since Jane Jacobs Dark Age Ahead.
(Jacobs 2004. Suzuki 2025… minus equals 21/3, maybe 7 years. Remain.)
Read it then. Saw it then.
Know it now.
Knew it hearing James Baldwin, “the world is held together by the love and the passion of a very few people.”
Jimmy, smiling, chuckling with a draft and a smoke at a pub in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Baldwin, not a lived day not knowing. You? Same. Still, they wrote. Why?
Why (I mean thank you, but) Why? Why do anything?
“Hunker down kids!”
Because this fairy is a Fucking Taurus Romantic Moo-Cow Bitch.
I want that say in how and when I’m making this grand fucking exit.
If I were George Clooney, I would’ve deep kissed Mark Walhberg at
the end of that perfect storm.
Roseanne Barr did the funniest stand up I’ve ever seen in my life. Cowboy boots, hat and sparklers grinding to the Star Spangled Banner.
So she went batshit crazy. She’s gotta right. I hope she drone explodes into a fucking zillion fireworks in the sky.
Who doesn’t want to go out with a bang?!
And that’s what really really pisses me off about our current Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse…
They see no one. Not even themselves.
No attention. Not a care.
Rock Hard Criminals.
“You don’t think we do the same thing? They do to us…we do to them?”
Only with a bigger stick. God on our side.
Blood to the knees drill baby drill alligator alcatraz gulf of america clubbing real estate branding wanna-bes with a smattering of rapture-hungry true believers.
How many lives to be enrapt?
How many snuffed out in an instant this minute?
Darlin’s we all know the answer to that too.
This revolution will not be televised.
Free Palestine. Protect Trans Kids. Black Lives Matter. Climate Change Is Real.
Last dance. Last chance for love.
Hands Off My Body. Equal pay. Housing is a Right. Give peace a
Last chance for romance, tonight
world without us. Glory be.
Dance me to the end of love
May I have this dance?
La la, la lala la la, la la lala
Kirby’s newest, FAIRY, out Spring 2027 from Palimpsest Press kirbyfairy.ca
Next appearance: STEVIE MANNING Shampoo Boy Launch w/Derek McCormack & Eileen Myles 28 September at Standard Time (165 Geary Ave) Toronto TICKETS
Current read: Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs (FSG, 2025)
Send your love to Send My Love to Anyone! ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
August 23, 2025
Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 48
Hello SMLTA Readers,
Welcome to Issue 48 of Send My Love to Anyone.
If you are new to Send My Love to Anyone please check out the About Page.
In Issue 48, I’m excited to share work by Eva H.D., Jane Shi, Anna Swanson, and April White, and the latest I’ve Been Meaning to Ask You interviews with Sarah Galea-Davis, Laura Davis, Kate Gies, Aamir Hussain, Dina Del Bucchia, Madhur Anand, Paul Vermeersch, and Patrick Tarr.
For Issue 48, I have two new chapters from my flash memoir, One of these days we’ll both be fine, “Did I love you like I was supposed to” and “Helen the cat,” and I share some images from Everyone’s a blob, an exhibition by me and David Poolman at 13 Cedars, a project space run by Jay Isaac and Caitlin Lapeña in Rowley, N.B. We’re donating proceeds from sales to Human Concern International.
I’m happy to announce that the winner of the I’ve Been Meaning to Ask You Fundraiser is (author most recently of Terminally Ill). Look for Melissa’s interview in Issue 49, and in the meantime, please subscribe to her newsletter. Thanks to everyone who entered the draw!
Also check out Gatherings where I recommend books, essays, films, places to donate, and more.
Hope you enjoy!
xo
Kathryn
If you like this issue, please share it!
I’ve Been Meaning to ask youPoetryOne of These Day’s We’ll Both Be FineGatheringsSend your love to Send My Love to Anyone! ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
August 15, 2025
I do believe we are all haunted in our own way ...
Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?Patrick Tarr: When I was about six, I went to a friend’s birthday party. Every kid who went was given a paperback book to take home. My book was The Call of the Wild, by Jack London. Reading it was when I fell in love with reading, and finishing it was the moment I decided I wanted to become a writer. I think I read it five times in a row. It just took me away to a different place, one that was somehow thrilling, infuriating, beautiful, and frightening all at once. I sat down with a blank sheet of paper, determined to write something. I sat there for an hour without a single word, so my first experience of being creative was realizing it’s sometimes not as easy as it looks.
KM: What is your favourite or significant coincidence story to tell?PT: I once wrote an episode of a crime drama in which an adulterous judge was found strangled to death with a piece of lingerie in a hotel room. When we turned in the first draft, we were informed that the character name we’d chosen was the exact same full name as our network executive’s father, who was in fact a judge in real life. Like, what are the odds? I was pretty sure I was going to get fired off the show, but the exec thought it was hilarious. We did change the name though.
KM: Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why? Or is there an emotion that you detest having and why?PT: Peace. I spend a lot of time chasing that one, which is probably why it’s so elusive. I could definitely live without jealousy, and am glad to say it really doesn’t come up for me anymore, personally or professionally.
KM: What do you cherish most about this world?PT: Nature. I love our little spot in the city but I’m counting down the days until we can move somewhere closer to it.
KM: What would you like to change about this world?PT: If we could somehow put an end to greed, that would be nice. There are far too few people who look at their lives and think, “This is good. I have enough.”
KM: What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.PT: I waited too long for permission, or some sign that I was worthy of making a living as a writer. I assumed that people who wrote books and screenplays as a job were part of some secret society I’d never belong to. So I’d just tell younger me to quit screwing around and get on with creating things and putting them out there.
KM: Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?PT: I believe in ghost stories. I love hearing them and telling them, and I think about them a lot. They've existed around the world for thousands of years. So there is something very deep going on there around the mystery of our existence and what lies beyond it. My novel is a ghost story, but I’ve never had a spectral experience myself. I do believe we are all haunted in our own way - not just by those we’ve lost, but by choices we’ve made, by things we’ve done or didn’t do. But there is certainly more to this world than we understand, so why not ghosts?
Patrick Tarr’s novel, The Guest Children, comes after a long career in film and television. He won a Writers Guild of Canada award for his first produced script before gathering over a decade of experience as a staff writer, creative producer, and showrunner. For his work as head writer and executive producer on the international hit series Cardinal, Patrick was awarded 2021 Canadian Screen Awards for Best Writing in a Dramatic Series and Best Dramatic Series. A graduate of the Canadian Film Centre, he returned as Executive Producer in Residence for the 2022 Prime Time TV program. He lives in Toronto with his family.Check out Patrick’s new book, The Guest Children.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
The Guest Children
by Patrick TarrPenguin Random House CanadaThe search for two missing children goes terribly wrong in this haunting and insidiously creepy ghost story debut by acclaimed showrunner Patrick Tarr.
With terror mounting in 1940 London, thousands of “Guest Children” were evacuated out of England to escape the bombings. Two of those children, Michael and Frances Hawksby, were never seen again.
Randall Sturgess wanted to do his part in the war–but stayed home instead to look after his troubled younger brother. Impoverished, shamed as a coward, and running out of work options as veterans come home, when he’s asked to investigate the disappearance of the Hawksby children, he agrees.
Reluctantly leaving his brother behind, Randall follows the children’s trail to a remote corner of northern Ontario, where he finds an isolated resort. There, he discovers the secretive couple who initially took in the young Hawksbys, along with their collection of strange, seemingly permanent guests. But there’s still no sign of the children.
Plagued by vivid nightmares and a persistent feeling that he’s being watched, Randall searches the imposing woods and lake for any trace of Michael and Frances. Randall’s certain something terrible has happened to them, linked to a spectral presence he senses around the lodge and glimpses out of the corner of his eye. Appearing first in his dreams and then in waking life, strange visions call to Randall, even as his every instinct tells him to stay away–and he’s increasingly convinced that if he ever wants to find the children, he must succumb to the call.
Vividly atmospheric, layered, and twisty, The Guest Children is sure to appeal to fans of Shutter Island and The Others.
Bluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
If a poltergeist is a mischievous spirit, then what is a memory ghost?
Photo credit: Bianca SpenceKathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of existing?Paul Vermeersch: When I dig down very deep, I believe I can get all the way back to my first birthday. November 1974. In this memory, I am sitting in a highchair in the kitchen of my family’s house on Archer Crescent in London, Ontario. The memory is hazy and broken. Brick. Vinyl. Formica. Linoleum. Vague impressions somewhat aided by a photograph I saw many years ago.
In my memory, the wallpaper in the kitchen is patterned with yellow and brown flowers; I write about this in my poem “Suburban Hauntology: Kitchen Wallpaper” from my book Shared Universe. Last year at the Toronto Artist Project, I bought a small painting of that very wallpaper pattern from the Montreal artist Jacinthe Rivard. The painting is called “The Goonies” which was my favourite movie when I was eleven years old.
But ten years before that I was sitting in that highchair surrounded by a haze of brown and yellow flowers. I was clenching a wedge of chocolate cake in my left hand. My first birthday present was a plastic Fisher-Price Two-Tune TV that played “London Bridge Is Falling Down” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Its screen was a paper scroll with drawings and lyrics synchronized to a music-box concealed inside.
It occurs to me now that those two songs are engaged in a fateful struggle: one of them is about catastrophic decay and the other is about being happy and carefree. Perhaps that contradiction might explain something about my mindset, or more to the point, something about my poetics and thematic preoccupations. And perhaps that wallpaper is at the root of my aesthetics, or at least the root of my nostalgia. Perhaps none of this happened exactly as I remember it, but this is how I remember it. Perhaps life is but a dream.
KM: What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?PV: There was never a time when I didn’t love being creative. Drawing. Painting. Playing with Lego. Gluing popsicle sticks together. As soon as I could hold a crayon, I was ready to make something. One time, when I was living in Brights Grove, Ontario—and again, maybe this was when I was around eleven years old, the summer The Goonies came out, and I was inspired by Ke Huy Quan’s character Data who was always creating outrageous gadgets—I took some scrap lumber and a black rubber bungee cable, and I built a kind of makeshift crossbow that fired little metal dinky cars.
When I was ready to test it out, I shot a red Matchbox Formula One race car at a tree, and the car actually lodged into the trunk about an inch. I didn’t expect it to be so powerful! To be honest, I was a little afraid that such a dangerous weapon might fall into the wrong hands. I must have felt a little like J. Robert Oppenheimer when they tested the first nuke: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
So, I took the crossbow home and dismantled it immediately. I never showed it to anyone else. No one ever knew about it but me. That was my first and only foray into weapons manufacturing, and I guess after that I thought it was just safer to stick to writing and drawing.
KM: What is the best or worst dream you ever had?PV: I had a lot of terrible nightmares as a kid. Sometimes they were full-blown night terrors. Those really stick in your memory, especially the early ones when you have no frame of reference, no idea that what you are experiencing isn’t real. I remember waking up one night when I was very little—or thinking that I had woken up, but I must have still been dreaming—and my bedroom walls were riddled with eyes that opened and closed, all different sizes, all different colours, with fleshly lids and willowy eyelashes, all blinking and looking at me, lurching around in their sockets. Somehow, they were all single eyes—that is, they weren’t arranged in pairs, left and right. Just these myriad, menacing cyclops eyes, all scowling.
A few years later I remember having a nightmare where Sweetums, the hulking brown monster from The Muppet Show, was chasing me over the edge of a bottomless cliff, and no matter how hard I tried to escape, I could never outrun him because he was wearing big red roller skates. As nightmares go, it was utterly ridiculous and cartoonish, but within the internal logic of the dream, it was physical and real and entirely terrifying.
As for the other half of your question, I can’t tell you the best dream I ever had. Whenever I wake up, I almost never remember having had a pleasant dream, or even a merely bland one. I only remember the nightmares. Daydreams are another matter, though. I daydream a lot. Pleasantly, even. Do daydreams even count as dreams? If they do, then perhaps they are the best dreams. Merrily, merrily, merrily….
KM: Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?PV: If by “ghosts” you mean the disembodied, numinous spirits of the dead lingering on the material plane to haunt the living, then no. Absolutely not. But what else might the word ghost refer to? Many of these questions concern memory, and I think the word ghost might be a useful term for a specific phenomenon of memory.
If a poltergeist is a mischievous spirit, then what is a memory ghost? An erinnerungsgeist? The lingering metaphysical impression of a person can “haunt” us without it being some spectral, undead presence. I think a memory ghost must be unexpected somehow. You can’t see it coming. A framed picture on a shelf has been placed there for the specific purpose of remembrance. It is a kind of shrine, but it is not a ghost; it has no connection to the ghostly aspect of memory. You know it is there, and it will never startle you.
But what about that scarcer feeling, when you are rummaging around in an old box or drawer or closet, and you come across some unexpected item, something innocuous—and old key or a coin purse or one of those tiny screwdrivers for fixing eyeglasses—that had once belonged to a departed loved one? Suddenly that innocuous item brings back a flood of vivid, unexpected memories: the way a door creaked, a car arriving home, paying for cigarettes in a particular store, or the crepelike texture of skin around someone’s eyes.
These precipitous memories, triggered by a simple connection to some stumbled-upon artefact, are unmoored from any purposeful or organized act of remembrance. One could say these memories are visitations, as they are visited upon us. They practically say boo! This is what I mean by an erinnerungsgeist, a memory ghost. I think they may be the closest thing to a momentary experience of haunting that we can truly have. Memories are metaphysical, and when they catch us unaware, unprepared, then perhaps there is something ghostly, something haunting, in that.
KM: If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?PV: Creativity is radical by definition. What we call the status quo is the product of societal inertia, and it wants to remain inert, so it resists creativity which inevitably produces newness and change. There are endless forces acting against creativity in service of the status quo. Poverty acts against creativity: hunger and desperation and toil will stop genius in its tracks. War and violence and genocide act against creativity by destroying the very possibility of creation. Bigotry and racism and bullying exist to stop certain groups of people, or even certain individuals, from achieving their full creative potential. Conservatism and dogma and doctrine and tradition—powerful systems all designed to keep things the way they are—act ruthlessly against creativity. Within the cultural suffocation these systems impose, we are reminded that the words “deviation” and “deviant” share a common root.
I would send my love to those who strive to be creative and progressive and human in spite of these forces. Those who struggle in poverty, who endure war and genocide, who are harassed and assaulted by bigots and bullies, who throw off the bonds of dogma and nationalism. I send my love to all the deviants and creative weirdos out there who imagine a better world.
KM: Author's choice – come up with a question you've always wanted to answer but no one ever asked.PV: In December 2022, novelist Emily St. John Mandel orchestrated an entire interview with journalist Dan Kois in Slate just to establish the fact that she was divorced. Turns out editors for Wikipedia refused to update her marital status without a verifiable secondary source. I’m going to use my “author’s choice” question for something similar.
I’ve always wanted someone to ask me where I was born, because the website for the Canadian Encyclopedia has it wrong—HINT! It’s not Brights Grove—and no one there seems to be able to fix it. And now that single mistake is replicating itself on Wikipedia because the Canadian Encyclopedia is the only source they have for my place of birth, and again, the editors for Wikipedia won’t change it without a verifiable secondary source. So, Kathryn, here’s the scoop! I was born in Mississauga, Ontario, in 1973. Not in Brights Grove.
There, hopefully that matter is settled.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
NMLCT
by Paul VermeerschECW Press, 2025Imagine The Matrix retold by the reanimated cyborg bodies of the Brothers Grimm.
Fables and fairytales collide with virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and monstrous myths in a world where no one knows what to believe. In his eighth book of poems, Paul Vermeersch responds to the increasing difficulty of knowing what is real and what isn’t, what is our genuine experience and what is constructed for us by The Algorithm. In a “post-truth” society rife with simulations, misinformation, and computer-generated hallucinations, these poems explore the relationship between the synthetic and the authentic as they raise hope for the possibility of escape from MCHNCT (Machine City) to NMLCT (Animal City), where the promise of “real life” still exists.
These poems — all precisely 16 lines long, identically formed as though mass-produced — are themselves artificial creations, products of the imagination, sometimes disorienting but always vivid. They hold up a mirror not only to nature, but also to its unnatural distortions and facsimiles. In NMLCT, Vermeersch gives us his answer to an existence in thrall to the artificial. But it also foretells a different future, one where the air and the grass and the trees, and all the life they engender, might always be genuine and sensed and safe.
Launch detailsJoin Paul and ECW Press for the launch of NMLCT at The Piston, 937 Bloor Street West, on Wednesday, September 24 at 7pm.
Please visit paulvermeersch.ca for news and information about this book and other upcoming events.
Send your love to Send My Love to Anyone! ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
August 12, 2025
Praise what steeps open the slow seed / or washes away with wild currents
Illustration by April WhiteMikveh: Blessing for Immersion in Living WatersText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedPraise what steeps open the slow seedor washes away with wild currents or wears through rock. Praise fresh & salt.We come—holes in socks & our sincerely bad hair—to your seas, springs, daylighting streams. We stand salt-skinned & on our last larynx, dry as sponges before your many, your still, your crash, your whole & wonderful wet.Close again over our skin—please!praise! help!—you life-waters youfat fountains you cold tumble. Hold uswhile we attend to transformationswet & small. Rinse these secretsin our hands like sweet pears.Note: All words, except title, transcribed from garbage collected at a swimming hole in Flatrock, NL.
Illustration by April WhiteApril and I Take the Underwater Camera Swimming On the Last Weekend of SummerText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedIn this dim underworld, liquid embers free-form on our frames, dressing us as if we could, this easily, be loved. Fibres of afterlight—are we recording?—taste us like snacks. I am delicious, we are delicious. Bare confectionary. We breathe & our air is uncanny, mirrored beans that pull, swell, silver the water around us. Here, in the messy bed of these light lines, in this far-flung signature of the sun, we unwind on record, slower, slower—are you getting this?—like a change coming due. Note: All words, except title, transcribed from garbage collected at Beachy Cove, NL.
Illustration by April WhitePoems and illustration excerpted from The Garbage Poems by Anna Swanson with illustrations by April White © 2025. Printed with permission of Brick Books.Anna Swanson (she/her) is a queer writer and librarian. The Garbage Poems (Brick Books, 2025) is her second collection of poetry. Her first book, The Nights Also (Tightrope Books, 2010), won the Gerald Lampert Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Her writing has been widely published in journals and appears in anthologies including Best Canadian Poetry, Impact: Women Writing After Concussion, In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis, and Torah: A Women’s Commentary. She recently completed an MFA at the University of Guelph and lives in St. John’s on the island of Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), where she works as a poetry editor for Riddle Fence Magazine. Her special interests include collective liberation and wild swimming in all seasons.April White makes art for tired people who struggle to exist in neoliberal capitalist society. April typically works with print media, watercolour, drawing, textiles, and performance. They hold a BFA from Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador (2012) and an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal (2023). April is an award-winning artist whose work has exhibited extensively in the east coast of Canada. April loves tacos, cats, and wild swimming.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
The Garbage Poems
(Brick Books, Sept 29 2025)By Anna SwansonIllustrations by April WhiteCreated entirely out of words found on trash collected at local swimming holes, Anna Swanson’s garbage poems reclaim hyperbolic corporate marketing-speak for the expression of physical pleasure, queerness, and vulnerability. Written in the years following a head injury, this book traces the connections experienced in the fiercely embodied act of swimming with a chronically ill body. Paired with tender watercolour illustrations of the source garbage by award-winning artist April White, these poems refuse to conform to an illness-and-cure narrative and instead become a vibrant archive of the process of piecing together a voice back together from fragments, an urgent study of the deeply political nature of joy.
Send your love to Send My Love to Anyone! ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
August 10, 2025
Helen the Cat
Helen the Cat, 2025Helen the CatA couple of weeks ago we found out the hospital recreation coordinator (who is amazing—she organizes karaoke, trivia, and other activities for patients awaiting long term care) ordered my mother a therapy cat.
At first my sister and I thought it was going to be a real cat, but then we discovered it was a robotic cat that purrs and meows.
We were initially apprehensive because we worried that the cat might be infantilizing, but we were willing to give it a try and get them to take it away if it caused her distress. Apparently robotic pets are supposed to help calm anxiety and loneliness in people with dementia.
My mother definitely did not want one of the robotic babies. That we knew for certain. I’m also certain she clearly communicated that to the recreation coordinator, which is likely why she ended up with the cat.
So far my mother seems pretty neutral about the cat. She often regards it with curiosity and sometimes confusion.
Every once in a while when I’m talking to her on FaceTime, she’ll say, “There’s a black and white cat staring at me.” Or “I think I just heard something meow.”
I ask her if she knows the cat is not real, and she says that she does. I explain to her that it’s a therapy cat, and it’s supposed to make her feel better.
The other day I suggested we name the cat. I threw out some random names like Simon or Bob, and then my mother blurted “Helen” which was her mother’s name.
I said, “Okay, let’s call the cat Helen.”
When we talk about the cat, I remind her that she’s named the cat Helen, and she’s always happy about that name. “Helen is my mother’s name,” she says.
Today talking about Helen the cat triggers questions about her parents. “Are my parents around?” she asks me.
At this stage in her illness, my mother likes to be told the truth that her parents have both passed on. Oddly she’s always relieved, if not glad, to hear they are no longer alive. The weight of being responsible for them (she was an only child) agitates her, and once she’s told they are in heaven (I say heaven becasue that’s where my grandmother believed she was going) the burden leaves her.
Perhaps it’s the combination of the cat being named Helen along with the discussion about her deceased parents that causes my mother to look at the window sill where the cat is stretched out and say, “There’s a dead cat staring at me.”
Send your love to Send My Love to Anyone! ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
Everyone's a blob
Photo from 13 CedarsAfter a pretty hard summer, which you can read about in my flash memoir series One of These Days We’ll Both Be Fine, David Poolman and I were invited to 13 Cedars, a project space run by Jay Isaac and Caitlin Lapeña in Rowley, New Brunswick located on Mi’kma’ki, the unceded and ancestral territory of the Mi’kmaq People, within the wider Wabanaki Confederacy.
Our show titled Everyone’s a blob, included new drawings and sculpture by David and three text pieces excepted from my ongoing text and video series This Isn’t a Conversation. Theses texts are also included in my story collection, Anecdotes, which I read from at the opening.
David and I will be donating all proceeds from book and art sales to Human Concern International. So far we’ve raised $440.
Drawings, sculptures, and text pieces are still for sale. Contact 13 Cedars for more details and price lists.
You can buy signed copies of Anecdotes directly from me for $23 + $7 for shipping (Canada only). Contact me by email.
View all the exhibition stills here
David Poolman, A Boy
David Poolman, This is not a conversation
David Poolan, Tears
Kathryn Mockler, I’d like us all to get togetherThanks to Jay and Caitlin for putting on this exhibition and reading. Thanks to everyone who attended.
Send your love to Send My Love to Anyone! ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
