Kathryn Mockler's Blog, page 29

March 28, 2024

Last Night I Had A Dream

Last Night I Had A Dream

Last night I had a dream I was sitting at a long table with a group of people.

There were four men sitting in a row across from me. Two of them were named Paul. One of the Pauls was very loud and dominating the conversation and wouldn’t let anyone have an opinion or speak.

As Paul continued to blather on holding everyone hostage, the other men looked at each other annoyed, rolled their eyes, and eventually gave up trying to participate in the conversation.

I turned to the three men and said: “This is what it’s like to be a woman in a conversation.”

They looked like they hadn’t heard me, so I said it again and again and again until I woke up.

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Kathryn Mockler is the author of the story collection Anecdotes (Book*hug Press, 2023), five books of poetry, and several short films and experimental videos. She co-edited the print anthology  Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis  (Coach House Books, 2020) and she runs  Send My Love to Anyone , a literary newsletter, which was a Substack featured publication in 2023. She is an associate professor in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria where she teaches screenwriting and fiction.

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Published on March 28, 2024 12:05

Dream #2

Last night I had a dream I was sitting at a long table with a group of people.

There were four men sitting in a row across from me. Two of them were named Paul. One of the Pauls was very loud and dominating the conversation and wouldn’t let anyone have an opinion or speak.

As Paul continued to blather on holding everyone hostage, the other men looked at each other annoyed, rolled their eyes, and eventually gave up trying to participate in the conversation.

I turned to the three men and said: “This is what it’s like to be a woman in a conversation.”

They looked like they hadn’t heard me, so I said it again and again and again until I woke up.

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Kathryn Mockler is the author of the story collection Anecdotes (Book*hug Press, 2023), five books of poetry, and several short films and experimental videos. She co-edited the print anthology  Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis  (Coach House Books, 2020) and she runs  Send My Love to Anyone , a literary newsletter, which was a Substack featured publication in 2023. She is an associate professor in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria where she teaches screenwriting and fiction.

Send My Love to Anyone is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Published on March 28, 2024 12:05

World

This is a poem from my collection, The Purpose Pitch.

World 1Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWorld, I’m worried about you. Everything is so sad. I hada dream I died and being dead was like being behind aglass wall where you could see and hear everything butno one could see or hear you like a fly in a jar. Whenyou’re a ghost you are constantly spying, constantlyeavesdropping, but you don’t have anyone to tell yoursecrets to—even if you witness a murder or an elaborateplot by the government against the people. When youare dead there is no CIA. Ghosts can’t gossip with otherghosts. It’s not part of the plan.From The Purpose Pitch (Mansfield Press, 2015)

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Kathryn Mockler is the author of the story collection Anecdotes (Book*hug Press, 2023), five books of poetry, and several short films and experimental videos. She co-edited the print anthology  Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis  (Coach House Books, 2020) and she runs  Send My Love to Anyone , a literary newsletter, which was a Substack featured publication in 2023. She is an associate professor in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria where she teaches screenwriting and fiction.

Send My Love to Anyone is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this project, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Published on March 28, 2024 01:26

March 23, 2024

the nebulous issue of the 'about'

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Beware the heart is lean red meat.

Read On Friendship by Henri Cole from Blizzard (Farrar, 2020) in The New Yorker

I have deep affection for Henri Cole, their mastery of the sonnet, is always felt, lived in. “I curl up in my fleece and drink.” Cole also has a disarmingly delightful social media presence, not exactly posts, but framed gems.

In one, there’s a portrait of poets James Schuyler alongside John Ashbery painted by Fairfield Porter. “Best friends,” comments Cole, "You need a best friend in poetry to survive.”

Marking four years since the lock down, this feels even more so. Even when our learned response is to continue to isolate, rely on texts, not feel up to it. Turning 65 this April (an age I never imagined), I find difficulty distinguishing between what’s possibly Covid-related, my mother’s recent isolated death, or simply aging.

During one of the tenuous public “windows” of the pandemic, Dale Smith and I met up to see the show of our friend Brian Dedora, finding an open patio to share a bourbon and beer after.

Dale Smith and Kirby sitting on a piano bench. Dale & Kirby reading at Poetry London, 2019

“Dale you know things about poetry I would like to learn, would you work with me?”

“Of course, Kirby, I would love that.”

Which led to regular Saturday afternoons on the balcony reading poetry to each other, warmed by mezcal and the love held between us.

My funniest takeaway, “Kirby, you’ve got the drama down. You never have to worry about that! [as I piss myself laughing in recognition] Keep focusing on the language.”

Years later, my new collection is she, and Dale’s The Size of Paradise. Distinctly different, full of heart and wonder. Both out this spring via Knife Fork Book.

Dale Martin Smith: The Size of Paradise Dale Martin Smith, The Size of Paradise (KFB)

Poet Peter Gizzi writes of Dale’s book:

“The momentum of this capacious book-length sequence keeps turning outward as it investigates an inward subjectivity, not all together Dale Smith per se, but maybe a collective interiority where we find, ‘Dead things collect in words.’ And more importantly we discover ‘There will be love as memory.’”

I’ve invited Dale here to share a bit more about his writing practice over this decade-long work. Such good fortune.

Dale Martin Smith “Notes On Paradise”

An April 7, 2020, obituary for John Prine who died of Covid-19, reported that the songwriter loved telling stories about his work, but often with some reservation: “When I wrote this,” he said, “I stayed in my room for three days. I was afraid someone was going to ask me what the song was about.” 

Writing these notes for The Size of Paradise draws me into the open, prodding me to confront the nebulous issue of the about. I spent a year beginning in fall 2015 writing daily after work, usually in taverns, parks, or quiet nooks of my house, always in prose, listening to the environments around me. Slowly certain figures, characters, voices, images, moods, visionary states, places and devotional energies emerged. There is a Balinese Angel, for one, a small wooden figure that hangs in a corner of my room. I discovered tensions in domestic and public spaces that entered the poems through the characters of Emily Dickinson and that crowing bard, Walt Whitman. Crows, sparrows, cuckoos, and other figures of orientation returned throughout the writing to both ground and move perception. These familiar images established modes of insight and transformation, shifting as I wrote. They suggest place as variant, animated by migratory creatures, from the Carolinian Woodlands of the United States and Canada to the European song and lore of trans-Atlantic, balladic crossings—Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (1952) is always present. Although most of the writing here generated from locations in Ontario, Texas, and Maryland, I drew on converging sources of memory, imagination, and daily news streams, devoting attention to conditions revealed in an assemblage of words. Shiloh occurred as an ongoing violence I derived from global report and commentary (the Battle of Shiloh [April 6-7, 1862] left more than 3,000 soldiers dead and many more wounded in rural Tennessee). Time seemed to stack up with images, moods, visions, and spiritual entities, recalling for me Walter Benjamin’s well-known description of Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus. In this angelic figure, Benjamin “sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.”

There was a story. There was a time. There was a distinct sense of measure. There was a heat. But never calm. Messiness. Wide oak. How plastic lids exhale carbon. Consume the gaze. Each arm smooth and dispatched. Skull heart stands in lonely fiddler corner. One might crave honey sweetness or dare uncommon sanctimony. Oppose the dark corner dryly. Across a runway distance, leaves of the city spangle, surprise. Sip warm cups of berry tea and lime. See tangled stems adhere to her eyes. Lean absently against the pear. Then weep in ancient doorways as people come and go. An excerpt from DALE MARTIN SMITH’s The Size of Paradise (p.9) An excerpt from Dale Martin Smith The Size of Paradise (KFB, 2024) Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThere was a story. There was a time.There was a distinct sense of measure.There was a heat. But never calm. Messiness.Wide oak. How plastic lids exhale carbon.Consume the gaze. Each arm smooth and dispatched.Skull heart stands in lonely fiddler corner.One might crave honey sweetness or dareuncommon sanctimony. Oppose the darkcorner dryly. Across a runway distance,leaves of the city spangle, surprise.Sip warm cups of berry tea and lime.See tangled stems adhere to her eyes.Lean absently against the pear. Then weepin ancient doorways as people come and go.An excerpt from DALE MARTIN SMITH’s The Size of Paradise (p.9)

The sonnet’s traditionally acknowledged origin in Western culture via the polyglot Sicilian court of Frederick II (1194-1250) may have been preceded in Arabic-speaking Spain by the muwashshah, a form of poetry and a musical genre. The Italian sonetto, a diminuitive of sono, a sound, tune (Latin sonum), carries over the lyric sounding (sonata) often retained in English sonnets, even those like Ted Berrigan’s or Bernadette Mayer’s that are decidedly, formally, experimental and non-standard. I restricted my sonnets to roughly ten syllables per line. I listened for what sounded out of my prose notes, and oriented my attention to the sonnet’s gravitational pull while searching for what had been latent in my writing. What does imposed form require? How does rhythm manifest meaning? I sought to establish a relationship between the raw data of perception (and reception) and the formal obligation to the song, those sounds bodying through time, across continents. I also began working with the sonnet as a way to acknowledge the teaching of Tom Clark, who showed me long ago how to listen to poetry rather than only to what I thought I might want to say. 

Dale Smith, West Texas, 2023

Finally, John Milton in Book 9 of Paradise Lost illustrates a first wounding. The size of paradise might only be known by all the dead. Or we make what we can of the world by each sounding or breath. The uprising of certain order, certain careful devotions, makes possible the realities we most desire. “And the blackness says we begin a new cosmos,” writes Alice Notley. My devotional sonnets assemble little pieces moving through time and non-time, to configure what’s going on. With Notley,


I want POWer to fill this MY VOID of no size in no space 


Where there is ALL of NO space I am a BROken WINDow  


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Poet and literary scholar, DALE MARTIN SMITH was born in Dallas, Texas. He earned a BA and PhD in English from the University of Texas, and an MA in Poetics from New College of California. He is the author of the full-length poetry collections Flying Red Horse (2021), Slow Poetry in America (2014), Black Stone (2007), American Rambler (2000), as well as the KFB chapbooks, Sons (2017), and Blur (2022). Smith’s scholarly contributions include Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960 (2012) and two edited editions, An Open Map: The Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson and Imagining Persons: Robert Duncan’s Lectures on Charles Olson (both 2017), for which he received Simon Fraser University’s Charles Olson Award. His essays and poetry have appeared in Poetry, The Walrus, LA Review of Books, Boston Review, and Lambda Literary. With Hoa Nguyen, he edited Skanky Possum, a literary zine and book imprint, 1998-2004. Smith joined the faculty of English at Toronto Metropolitan University, in 2011. He is currently at work on an essay collection, That Tongue Be Time on the poetry and prosody of Norma Cole (2024).

Kirby’s work includes Last Licks (Anstruther Press, 2024) Behold (2023), a stage adaption of Poetry is Queer (Palimpsest Press, 2021), What Do You Want to Be Called? (Anstruther Press, 2020), and This Is Where I Get Off (Permanent Sleep Press, 2019). Their column, The First Time is a regular feature at Send My Love To Anyone. They are the publisher at knife|fork|book. kirbyshe.com

 DALE MARTIN SMITH & KIRBY read May 1st 7pm at The Printed Word Bookshop 16 McMurray St. Dundas, ON DALE MARTIN SMITH & KIRBY read May 1st 7pm at The Printed Word Bookshop 16 McMurray St. Dundas, ON

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Published on March 23, 2024 15:44

March 21, 2024

Gatherings | Issue 35

Gatherings

Gatherings is a recommendation list of what I’m reading, listening to, and watching.

Visit the About Section to learn more about Send My Love To Anyone!

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My News

Thanks to Catherine Graham for writing about Anecdotes for the Ampersand Review:

 I highly recommend Anecdotes by Kathryn Mockler, a hybrid collection arranged in four parts. Particularly gripping is Mockler’s deep dive into autofiction, stories that span childhood to adulthood and those emotionally charged moments—first love, first crush, first period and more—that inform our growing identity and show us what it means to belong. In powerful, distilled prose, Mockler seamlessly blends dark humour with pain. Add in absurdist flash fiction, climate anxiety, micro-conversations—this is a book with existential bite.

So thrilled to be included to celebrate the Real Vancouver 14th Anniversary Showcase with these wonderful writers Adrienne Yeung, Jes Battis, and Joseph Kakwinokansum.

If you missed the event, you can watch here on Vimeo:

Kirby News

From the author of Poetry is Queer and This is Where I Get Off, their highly-anticipated new full-length collection.

Preorder, She by


Register for On the occasion of their 65th


reads from their new collection she w/Special Guest Travis Sharp (Monoculture, I Am A Corpse Flower) streamed online before a live audience.


Ticket includes a signed copy of she (shipped)* and access link to the live online event 22 April 2024 7pm EDT.


NOTE: Preorders of she will also receive a link to the event.


*Be sure to include shipping address and use the code SHIPFREE (in Canada only).


Gatherings

Looking back, the shock and grief of observing this physical dehumanization of children had taken me to an unfamiliar psychic place. I was bargaining, mentally, with the perpetrator, the state of Israel itself. I visualized the pitch I could make. I am well-educated, articulate, have a Western-level income, and, critically, am a Palestinian. Would they take me instead? How many children could I save if I sacrificed myself? A dozen? That seemed far too ambitious. What about just three or four? One?


In some of my mental negotiations, I felt ready to surrender myself in exchange for no children. Take me. Please, just take me.


Read You Will Not Kill Our Imagination by Saeed Teebi in The New Quarterly

The birds don’t know about self-immolation

jinxpress A post shared by @jinxpress

It is the task of humanity to bolster, develop, and encourage others to operate according to a different standard. “The single most important part of the mind that operates in higher functioning is the conscience,” says Bollas.

Read “The Making of the Genocidal Mind” by Sophie Monks Kaufman in Hazlitt

wizard_bisan1 A post shared by @wizard_bisan1

Short Stories by 10 Palestinian Women, in English Translation, Arab Lit

If Jonathan Glazer’s brave Oscar acceptance speech made you uncomfortable, that was the point

Read The Zone of Interest is about the danger of ignoring atrocities – including in Gaza by Naomi Klein in the Guardian

In the months leading up to the April 2022 hardcover release of my book, Some of My Best Friends, I tended dutifully to the rituals of prepublication. I sent a gamely cheerful email blast to my contacts asking them to please preorder copies. I plastered my website and social feeds with graphics of the cover art. I retweeted, with genuine glee, every photo of a galley copy spotted in the wild. I was going to be a model citizen of self-promotion, giving my debut a fighting shot at selling well.

Read “Do I Really Need to Op-Ed to Sell Books?” by Tajja Isen, Vulture

Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing, The Marginalian


The term cli-fi purposely evokes this lineage. In a 2013 Guardian article that proclaimed its rise, cli-fi is defined as “novels setting out to warn readers of possible environmental nightmares to come,” which reminds me of a sentence from Donna Orange’s Climate Crisis, Psychoanalysis, and Radical Ethics: “When we cannot panic appropriately, we cannot take fittingly radical action.” But if warning readers to panic appropriately was a legitimate strategy in 2013, it didn’t work.


Part of our failure to panic may have to do with what scholar Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects,” or objects so huge and massively distributed across time and space that they are impossible to point at directly. Elisa Gabbert explains further: “[The massiveness of climate change] paradoxically makes it harder to see, compared to something with defined edges. This is part of the reason we have failed to stop it or even slow it down. How do you fight something you can’t comprehend?”


Read Matthew Salesses on the Possibilities of Climate Fiction, Lit Hub

#MeToo Arrives At French César Awards As Actress Judith Godrèche Makes Impassioned Speech For New Era Of Truth In French Film Biz: “The World Is Watching Us”

Gender Equity in Film Will Only Be Reached in 2215 in Canada, 2085 in U.K., 2041 in Germany at Current Pace: Study, The Hollywood Reporter

Between the Covers Podcast - Canisia Lubrin : Code Noir

I was thirteen, beginning to read stories by and histories of artists and writers, memoirs and essays. Oh the Americans in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, how wild they seemed, bohemians they were called. After college, in a middle-class tradition, I was offered a trip to Europe and grabbed it. Once there I would transform into the writer I was destined to become since the age of eight. Whoever I was, I was riven with images from books, delectable visions, say, of Parisians, their antics, streets and cafes.

Read Generation Gap by Lynne Tillman on Granta

Calls

Canthius is seeking submissions on the theme of TRASH for its 14th issue.

Ampersand Review has a new Book Lovers Bulletin Board where you can share books you love!

Book Lovers Bulletin Board We want to hear from you! If you loved a Canadian book published in the last 24 months, tell us about it! Submit your 50-100 word recommendation, along with your name and hometown to ampersandreview@sheridancollege.ca. If your recommendation is selected for the Bulletin Board, you'll be entered for a prize draw. Recommended SubstacksOut of ItStunned by What I See“…the worst of war is the fear and suspicion and the awful expression in all the eyes you meet…as if they had pulled down the shutters over their minds and hearts and were peering out at you, ready to leap if you make one gesture or say one word they do not understand instantly. It frightens me…it’s the skulking about, and the lying. It’s what war doe…Read more3 months ago · 312 likes · 52 comments · Mary GaitskillHmm That's Interestingon the reaction to jonathan glazer's oscars speechEarlier this year, I took myself to the movies to watch Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest. It took my breath away. The film's depiction of Germans' everyday silence and quiet compliance as complicity in the face of the Holocaust’s horrors and atrocities stayed with me for weeks. To this day, I’m thinking about the film's shiver-inducing use of soun…Read more2 days ago · 348 likes · 34 comments · ClaraCRAFT TALKThe Shortest Path to CreativityIf you’re in Charlottesville next Friday, come join me at this lovely event as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book…Read more5 days ago · 47 likes · 4 comments · Jami AttenbergThe Art of Flash Fiction February Newsletter - all subscribersSorry to double up on your in-box today! I am sending this out again because it may not have been clear this is my monthly newsletter for ALL subscribers. Note that comments are also open to all toda…Read morea month ago · 20 likes · 12 comments · Kathy FishThe Shit No One Tells You About Writing✨Johnny Compton on balancing tension with curiosity seeds✨Hello lovely TSNOTYAWers! How are your manuscripts coming along? If the answer is anything other than “great,” today’s excellent content can help with motivation and, maybe, procrastination, for those moments when you need to tell your WIP, “It’s not me. It’s you.” 😉…Read more7 days ago · 20 likes · 3 comments · The Shit About Writing TeamSitting in Silence #9 - The Life of an Author on Book TourEnjoy the podcast. :) If you like the show, say “hi.” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735684/the-american-daughters-by-maurice-carlos-ruffin… Listen now3 days ago · 4 likes · 5 comments · Sitting in SilenceMemoir LandSo Many Personal Essays...Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by Sari Botton, now featuring four verticals: Memoir Monday, a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine…Read more4 days ago · 28 likes · 6 commentsWhere Do I Start? | Writing Prompts by Kathryn MocklerCreating Characters“When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.” —Kurt Vonnegut…Read more28 minutes ago · Kathryn MocklerFrom the ArchiveSupport Send My Love to Anyone

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Published on March 21, 2024 23:10

March 17, 2024

Mosab Abu Toha | Issue 35

Mouth Still Open  Someone’s mouth is still open. He hadn’t finished yawning when shrapnel pierced through his chest, stung his heart. No wind could stop the flying pieces of shrapnel. Even the sparrow on the lemon tree nearby wondered how they could move with no wings

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet from Gaza. His début poetry book, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won an American Book Award. His essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The NYT, and others.

Copyright © 2022 by Mosab Abu Toha. “Mouth Still Open” originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 15, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

“Mouth Still Open” is published in Send My Love to Anyone with permission of the author.

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Published on March 17, 2024 10:57

March 16, 2024

Stephen Collis | Issue 35

The Country of PoetsText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe country of poets isbeing bombed againI can see the clouds of word-dustbillowing into the televised aircries come out of burnt nightsmetered but tending towardsa fractured syntaxand the unexpected imagenot a dovebut a singing mechanical birdperched on a tank’s gunits new rhythmsthe staccato of RPGsthe phosphorous of idiot wind

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Stephen Collis is the author of over a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Commons (2008), the BC Book Prize winning On the Material (2010), and Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten (2018)—all published by Talonbooks. A History of the Theories of Rain (2021) was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for poetry, and in 2019, Collis was the recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Latner Poetry Prize. The Middle, the second volume of a trilogy begun with A History of the Theories of Rain, will be published in 2024. He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University. 

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Published on March 16, 2024 13:42

Emily Austin | Issue 35

Excerpt from Gay Girl Prayers Strange women, darkness remains dark until there is light— so, smoke a cigarette and listen to the beast roar. Shall we resurrect, strange women? Rise like steam, like birds from a subway station? Defy the convention of the proverbs? Write with our fingers? I am. Resurrect the spirit, fly into the ember, caw a song in the air like a crow. I am who I am, she is who she is, you are who you are. Can you hear me? Are you listening? I am sweltering. Rainbows arched in the sky, ink in our skin. I am. Naked under gold and pearls a volcano erupts. Take the pew, she is at the pulpit. She is. Take the white clouds into white rooms. She is at the front now, fire in Her belly, fruit on Her chin. There are words in Her mouth, in Her gut with the apple. We listen to the crack of fire, burning bushes crack listen. There are virgins in the white clouds waiting for dead men crack if heaven is hell for girls crack then heaven is hell. Keep your soul insurance in the fountain crack there is a shadow poisoning the well. Wet your hair with drops of the night crack, crack praise the monsters, meet me where the fire never goes out. CRACK, CRACK Lot’s unnamed daughters had an unnamed mother. She was turned to salt for looking backwards. At nighttime, before the girls slept, they must have talked about her. “Should we keep her salty body?” “How will we remember her without pictures?” “Cameras don’t exist yet.” Maybe they hummed songs she sang, or made recipes she taught them. Maybe they saw her in their dreams, or wrote poems about her face and wonders. Could girls write back then? How did they remember her? How do we remember them? Spit on the ground, put the mud in your eyes. JOHN 9:1–12 Ruth said to Naomi, “Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following after you; for wherever you go, I will u-Haul; your people shall be my chosen family, your clothes, my clothes, your God, my God; where you die, I will die, there will I be buried, and theologians will write that we were friends, travelling companions, but I will have loved you with the purest desires of my heart.” ROMANS 1:26–27 & RUTH 1:16

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© 2024 Excerpt from Gay Girl Prayers: Poems by Emily Austin published with permission of Brick Books.

Emily Austin is the author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Interesting Facts About Space, and the poetry collection Gay Girl Prayers. She was born in Ontario, Canada, and received two writing grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts. She studied English literature and library science at Western University. She currently lives in Ottawa, in the territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.  

Emily Austin Gay Girl Prayers Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Gay Girl Prayers: Poems by Emily AustinBrick Books, 2024

Publisher’s Description

A collection of poetry reclaiming Catholic prayers and biblical passages to empower girls, women, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

The extreme level of sass in Emily Austin’s Gay Girl Prayers does not mean that this collection is irreverent. On the contrary, in rewriting Bible verses to affirm and uplift queer, feminist, and trans realities, Austin invites readers into a giddy celebration of difference and a tender appreciation for the lives and perspectives of “strange women.”

Packed with zingy one liners, sexual innuendo, self-respect, U-Hauling, and painfully earnest declarations of love, this is gayness at its best, harnessed to a higher purpose and ready to fight the powers that be.

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Published on March 16, 2024 11:54

Chelene Knight | Issue 35

Why you should bring back the practice of sending hand-written letters 

by Chelene Knight

In an era consumed by digital communication and the relentless pressure to multitask, it's easy to miss out on authentic moments of connection and reconnection.

I have seen in real-time how writing a letter can transform not only relationships that have been in the works for a lifetime but also when you reach out or recognize someone through the act of a handwritten letter, even just to say, "I see you," you can change the way someone sees themselves for the rest of their lives. And the effects of this (what I call "ripples") can be seen for years. Sometimes you are lucky enough to witness these powerful ripples, but for the most part, they are unspoken.

In today's hustle-and-bustle society, there's this constant pressure to keep our thoughts short and sweet, like squeezing a novel into a tweet. Imagine a world where we prioritize depth over brevity, where we let our thoughts unfurl like vines instead of trying to cram them into 140-character boxes.

Pushing back against the "short and snappy" narrative means embracing the beauty of elaboration and exploration. It's about allowing ourselves the luxury of fully expressing our ideas, without the constraints of a character count looming over us. Instead of rushing to spit out a quick soundbite, we take our time.

In this world, conversations aren't rushed whispers in passing; they're rich, meaningful exchanges that leave us feeling fulfilled and understood. We need to give ourselves permission to explore nuances and complexities and to truly connect with one another on a profound level.

Letter writing is time-consuming. In a world that moves with this quickness, how can we even justify the time it takes to pull out a real-life piece of paper and pen and sit down to write? But letter writing can rejuvenate, replenish, and help us refill our cups.

Writing, for me, has always started in the form of letters. I used to use letter writing as a way to say all the things I had trouble saying out loud. All the things I did not have an oral language for. Writing can be a tool. Writing can unearth clarity.

Writing can be a bridge to a new version of yourself:

The written word helped me expose the many threads of love and hope in my mind.

The written word helped me create a language for my joy so much so that I ended up writing an entire book on the topic!

The written word gave me a second chance to meet a different version of myself.

The written word helped me climb through and then out of residual shame connected to this journey.

The written word helped me lean into my own definition of failure so that I could alter the language and redefine it for myself.

The written word helped me build relationships with the important women in my life.

When you slow down long enough to look at writing in this way, you can see how valuable an act it really is.

Let me tell you a brief story about a friend and how writing letters has not only strengthened our bond but also helped us appreciate the micro-moments in life.

I first met this friend during a really pivotal time in my life. A time where I was just starting to think about my writing career, where I wanted to fit in the writing and publishing industry, and what I had to give. I was definitely doing a lot of the wrong things and taking on projects that just didn’t align with who I was becoming.

This friend is someone who loves brainstorming ideas for projects, events, and other various ways to call people into a room together. I admired this.

Living in Vancouver at the time, a melting pot for diversity, I was exploring my mixed identity and really struggling to fit in, to belong. I struggled to build sustainable relationships with other women because I had grown up feeling less than, like I wasn’t enough. I’m not exactly sure where this feeling came from, but it’s definitely not how I feel today. One thing I can confirm is that I was trying to squeeze into a template that didn’t make sense for who I was. I spent a lot of time inside of this rigid and unforgiving narrative.

My friend never once questioned my desire to belong. She also never asked me empty questions about my identity, which I think she could tell at the time would have made me uncomfortable. She knew I was still trying to find my place. She didn’t rush me. She didn’t try to fix anything. Instead, she chose to write me a letter.

And let me tell you, when she writes a letter, it becomes an event! She brings out the wax seal stamps, carefully selects the stationery, and slips in something she thinks I might enjoy like a new tea she just discovered. She envisions the recipient's experience.

She taught me how to transform letter-writing into a form of self-care.

She revolutionized it.

We still exchange letters to this day. We talk about what projects we are working on, what ideas are popping into our heads, and what our goals are for the future! Our letters are upbeat, they are personal, but they are also just … moments.

Back then my friend and I didn’t live far away from each other; in fact, I could take a bus and be in her neighborhood in less than 20 minutes. So the act of writing letters was not because we couldn’t see each other, but instead because we could.

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Chelene Knight is the author of the novel Junie, which was longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction; the memoir Dear Current Occupant, winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award and longlisted for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature; and Braided Skin. Her essays have appeared in multiple Canadian and American publications. Previously the managing editor at Room magazine and the director of the Growing Room Festival in Vancouver, Knight has also worked as a poetry professor at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia and as a literary agent at the Transatlantic Agency. Knight has now founded her own literary studio, Breathing Space Creative, through which she’s launched the Forever Writers Club, a membership for writers focused on creative sustainability; the Thrive coaching program; and the Rise author care program. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Let It Go: Free Yourself from Old Beliefs and Find a New Path to Joy by Chelene KnightHarper Collins, 2024

Publisher’s Description

For readers of Ross Gay and listeners of Therapy for Black Girls , a reflective examination of Black self-love and joy that guides the reader to ditch old beliefs, achieve difficult un learnings and redefine language, relationships and love to find their own unique path to joy. 

A warm, candid and essential book that will guide the reader to carve a new path to joy as unique as each individual. Created by the founder of Breathing Space Creative Literary Studio, acclaimed writer and editor Chelene Knight, Let It Go draws on personal experience and the advice of leaders from various Black communities to share hard-won tools for joy-discovery—tools such as how to say no with love; how to call back activities that feel good; how to reshape communication with those closest to you; how to revise language; and most of all, how to learn to let go in order to redefine what we think joy is.

Organized around the seasons and the natural cycle of reflection and renewal, Let It Go showcases, through conversation and solitary reflection, the broad spectrum of Black realities and reveals the colourful kaleidoscope of joy and your own ways to find it.

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Published on March 16, 2024 11:49

March 3, 2024

Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 34

I’m reading today (Sunday March 3, 2024) at Real Vancouver’s 14th Anniversary Showcase with Joseph Kakwinokanasum, Jes Battis, Steffi Tad-Y, Alicia Elliott, and Adrienne Yeung. Hosted by Dina Del Bucchia and Sean Cranbury. March 3, 2024 4:00pm (PST) /7:00 pm EST — Virtual Event Register: https://vimeo.com/event/4074415

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Hey friends,

In Issue 34, you find “Four Fiction Manuscripts” by Malcolm Sutton, an excerpt from Ben Robinson’s latest poetry collection, The Book of Benjamin, and Gatherings a recommendation list of what I’m reading, watching, and listening to.

Hope you enjoy!

Kathryn


Four Fiction Manuscripts

1.
Occasionally something comes up that is so beyond my everyday, leaving me at my desk still and without words. Even though such a thing might have happened before, I am left disbelieving what is happening n…","size":"lg","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Malcolm Sutton | Issue 34","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2024-02-22T05:39:20.450Z","cover_image":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazon... My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f...

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Published on March 03, 2024 02:11