Kathryn Mockler's Blog, page 31
January 31, 2024
She is Kirby. The book is She.
I had the great pleasure of writing this blurb for ’s forthcoming book, She.
It is a poem-blurb or a blurb-poem or a poem or a blurb! Whatever you fancy!
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January 28, 2024
Nyla Matuk | Issue 33
Photo by Nyla Matuk
Nyla Matuk is the author of Sumptuary Laws and Stranger.
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January 27, 2024
David Poolman | Issue 33
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Drawings by David Poolman
Bed, David Poolman, 2021
Boy, David Poolman, 2021
Foundation, David Poolman, 2021
Hole, David Poolman, 2021
Pile, David Poolman, 2021
Tears, David Poolman, 2021Thank you for reading Send My Love to Anyone. This post is public so feel free to share it.
David Poolman is a professor of Drawing and Sound at Sheridan College in Oakville ON. Poolman runs Never Met a Stranger with Jeremy Drummond and recently released the collaborative self-titled album, Any-Angled Light.
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January 24, 2024
Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 32
Hi friends,
In issue 32 of Send My Love to Anyone, you’ll find a poem and illustration from Hana Shafi’s new collection People You Know Places You’ve Been: poems and illustrations, an excerpt from Niloufar-Lily Soltani’s novel Zulaikha, and an essay from Jennifer Bowering Delisle’s book, Micrographia.
In Gatherings, I share three upcoming events, the blurb I wrote for Kirby’s new book of poetry, and I recommend Mosab Abu Toha, Fady Joudah, Canisia Lubrin, Lilian Nattel, a Hal Hartley film, and more!
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.
Her cellmates told her she should not expect to leave the prison on her own on the release day. “No car is allowed on the premises and no one can know what this place looks like from the outside. “They will take you to Luna Park and leave you there.”","size":"lg","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Niloufar-Lily Soltani | Issue 32","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2024-01-16T04:58:03.735Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... Dance
When I was very young, I told my mother I wanted to be the next Shakespeare. I don’t think I knew that he was a poet. I don’t think I even knew his stories were plays. But …","size":"lg","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Jennifer Bowering Delisle | Issue 32","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2024-01-16T07:02:06.929Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... Send My Love to Anyone
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January 15, 2024
Jennifer Bowering Delisle | Issue 32
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Excerpt from MicrographiaThe DanceWhen I was very young, I told my mother I wanted to be the next Shakespeare. I don’t think I knew that he was a poet. I don’t think I even knew his stories were plays. But I loved when she read to me at bedtime from Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. I had heard phrases like “the greatest writer to have ever lived” and it seemed a worthwhile ambition.
I don’t recall the feeling now, only the conversation. Did I want fame? I don’t think so. I wanted to make art as compelling as those stories of murderous kings and doomed lovers. I think I wanted greatness, but a greatness formed out of beauty and connection. A love for my words big enough to endure 400 years.
“Well, maybe not Shakespeare…” she said.
I didn’t understand yet anything of historical context, let alone of the man or the work itself. I didn’t know my goal was ludicrous, even obnoxious. What I heard, in her response, was my limitations. It was the beginning of the rite of passage from a child’s arrogance to an artist’s self-doubt.
*
Mom has decided to remount a play she wrote for the Fringe a few years ago, as a fundraiser for multiple system atrophy, or MSA, the rare degenerative disease that is slowly killing her. She busies herself finding a director and a venue and overseeing the casting. It is something to occupy her time and her mind, but it is also a final project, a kind of opus.
The play, Wind in Her Sails, tells the story of Mom’s grandmother, Jean, who at the age of 16 saved the lives of those onboard a ship that wrecked in a storm off the coast of Newfoundland. I told the same story in my own first book, a family memoir about to be published.
Mom and I portray the event in different ways. In her play, Jean takes the wheel when the captain is knocked out, steering the ship to safety, heedless of the warning that “the wheel be a challenge even fer a strong man, miss.” Her play is about the strength—both physical and mental—of young outport women, despite the misogyny of their time. It is a drama in every sense of the word, full of peril and inspiration.
In my non-fiction version, I gather the fragments that live in old newspapers and oral histories, including Jean’s own poem about the experience. The stories don’t add up. The one from an archive that claims Jean took the wheel, the most exciting and dramatic version of the tale, can’t be true. Jean’s own poem says the wheel was smashed when the mast fell. My book is about the errors in the record, how we can’t ever know the real story.
My mother’s is a story about triumph, while mine is a story about inadequacy.
*
In grade four, my teacher invited a few of us in my class to write books to be included in the school library. I had already been writing stories and poems on my own, but this—this would get a laminated cover and pocket for a real borrowing card. It would be read by someone besides my teacher or my mom. I could see it all before me—book deals, bestseller lists, film adaptations. My career as a writer had finally begun.
I began the project with vigour and earnest. I wanted my story to be serious and important, to both move and inspire. I invented a girl, Danielle, the same age as me, whose mother had died and whose father was an alcoholic. Danielle was an earnest, capable girl, trying to take care of her family, like the girls in the books I read. She cooked, she cleaned. She made her father a birthday cake, and knowing vaguely that sometimes cakes were made with rum, I had him raging when he learned his daughter’s cake did not contain any booze.
My mother found my half-finished manuscript. After school she sat me down for a talk.
“There’s an expression,” she said gently. “Write what you know.”
My face burned. There was something in this conversation that evoked shame, but I didn’t fully understand why.
At first, I thought she was worried that people reading it would think it was a cry for help—that my own father was the abusive alcoholic on the page. I know now there was no danger of that. It could have been a much-needed lesson on my own privilege, appropriation of voice, and staying in my lane. But my mother meant it as a lesson on craft. Emotion is not inherent in plot—it has to come from a deeper place.
I ended up writing something about ghosts.
But I drew from my own life, creating grandparent characters very similar to my own, a detail about a little brother getting stuck in his own shirt, which had happened to mine the week before. I didn’t learn the lesson quite right—or maybe I learned it too well—starting to blur the lines between life and writing in a way that would sometimes paralyze me. Did I know this story enough? Who was I to tell it? And if I did feel the emotion deeply enough, could I still write it?
*
I first came to Jean’s story because she was a poet. I saw in her ballad’s existence a kind of writerly lineage. “It’s in the blood,” people say when a child exhibits a proclivity for the art or science of their parent. As if that means they have come by their talent more authentically, as if that means their work has more legitimacy.
Yet I know of no other poems or stories, and she never shared the ballad she wrote about the shipwreck, keeping it hidden until her death.
*
Mom sends me a new monologue she has written; she’s thinking of having an actor perform it before the play. “When you have time” is the email subject line. It’s called “The Dance.”
My husband and I love to dance, she writes. Of course, we don’t know what we’re doing. I didn’t say we dance well…just that we love to dance.
She writes about abandoning the ballroom classes for their own version of the steps. She writes about her own parents celebrating their 60th anniversary, the night before my wedding—how they danced in her kitchen, how in the middle of the night her mother, in the fog of Alzheimer’s, tried to walk out the front door. And she writes about her MSA.
On a recent cruise, I told my husband that I would love to give dancing a go again.
“I would never do anything that would make us look foolish,” he said.
So we practised a bit in our state room, because now I use a walker…There we were…Me holding on for dear life to the man I married while he maneuvered me around, until I got dizzy and collapsed on the bed. We never made it onto the dance floor, that night or any other night.
“Is the monologue good enough?” she asks. “To be mounted with Wind in Her Sails?”
I understand her question. It’s the same one that I would ask. But it’s the wrong question, too.
In these last months of your life, Mom, what else do you need to say?
No, forget the timeline, it’s irrelevant.
In this one life, what stories do you need heard? What do you want to make?
*
Jean wrote her poem about a single public event. But as I wrote about her, I became less interested in her heroism, real or imagined, and more interested in her life. How she worked, how she loved. Farmed, hooked mats, cooked fish. Lost infants to disease, lost a son in war, lost her mind in age. Kept secrets. Died. What was “in the blood” were her stories; it felt like they were also my stories. I wanted to map her life like a genome. Maybe “write what you know” should be “write what you want to know.”
The story I want to tell now is not romanticized by corset or sail, by historical and geographical distance. It is a story that is still unfolding.
I send Mom an essay I have written about her illness, called “Micrographia.” I am proud of the craft of it, relieved by the work of it. But is it good enough—to honour what she is going through, to remember? What words could ever be adequate?
*
A boy in my class took my ghost story out of the library.
“It was good,” he said. “I liked the part where the kid gets stuck in his shirt. That was funny.”
It was good.
*
The same evening Mom emails back. Her email is short but brimming with positive adjectives. “Deep respect and sincere pride in you,” she writes. And with that she seems to be gifting me—not the story, which is her life—but this tiny piece of it. She likes it. And maybe this is good enough.
*
“The Dance” ends with my mother dancing with my son.
He pushes my walker…trying to drive it. Sometimes I get behind the wheel and he chases me around the kitchen island.
What dance moves can we do together from my wheelchair?
He doesn’t care or even know if he is being judged.
Whirling past like a hurricane. Always smiling.
I can never fully know what my mother is going through. But our stories dance with each other, close, twirling, stepping on the other’s toes.
We make art imperfectly, incompletely, as a way of being in the world, hoping that it will be good enough to outlive us. Hoping that it will be good enough to help us share our truth with those who come after us.
Maybe the doubt is what keeps that truth close.
Maybe “write what you know” should be “write what you want to keep.”
Thank you for reading Send My Love to Anyone. This post is public so feel free to share it.
© 2023 "The Dance" by Jennifer Bowering Delisle was first published in Micrographia (Gordon Hill Press, 2023).
Jennifer Bowering Delisle is the author of three books of lyric nonfiction and poetry: Micrographia (2023), Deriving (2021), and The Bosun Chair (2017). She is on the board of NeWest Press. She lives in Edmonton on Treaty 6 territory.
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Micrographia
by Jennifer Bowering DelisleGordon Hill Press, 2023As Jennifer Bowering Delisle was on her path through infertility towards motherhood, she was simultaneously losing her own mother to a rare degenerative neurological disease and an approaching medically-assisted death. The lyric essays in Micrographia explore how losses can collide and reverberate both within our own lives and in our relationships with the rest of the world. How much do we share of our stories, and how much do we understand of what others are experiencing? Ultimately, this is a book about connection; “micrographia” is both the term for the diminished handwriting caused by neurological disease, and the narrative fragments offered here.
"Write what you want to keep,” says Jennifer Bowering Delisle. In these brilliant lyric essays about becoming a mother after infertility and miscarriage, and losing a mother to a cruel degenerative disease, she preserves for us the feeling of “both wishing and losing”—sweet and tart as a summer’s worth of raspberries, powerful enough to linger like heat on stone. – Susan Olding, author of Big Reader: Essays
"Micrographia is an extraordinary collection of sharply-crafted lyric essays. Jennifer Bowering Delisle exhibits a poet’s ear for resonance while skillfully weaving a structure that allows the cumulative power of small, carefully witnessed moments to billow into a powerful and moving story. Delisle writes by letting the smallest of details say what only they can say, but without shying away from the biggest of questions: "In this one life, what stories do you need heard? What do you want to make?" I couldn’t help but feel that Delisle writes with an ear tuned toward her readers’ own unimaginable losses. This is not a book only about her own grief, but a smart and capacious exploration of the vulnerabilities implicit in being alive—in bodies, in families, with losses we bear across generations. The care, both ethical and aesthetic, taken in crafting these essays is palpable in these pages. Micrographia delivers what it promises: a whole story about what it means to be human inscribed in the shell of a walnut. Reading Micrographia, I was reminded what the best writing—by which I mean not simply the most skillful but also the most ontologically curious and emotionally generous writing—can do." – Lisa Martin, author of Believing is not the same as Being Saved
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Hana Shafi | Issue 32
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“gasoline” and “Slushies n Cigarettes” from People You Know, Places You’ve Been: poems and illustrations © 2023 by Hana Shafi. Used with permission of Book*hug Press.
Hana Shafi is a writer and artist who illustrates under the name Frizz Kid. Both her visual art and writing frequently explore themes such as feminism, body politics, racism, and pop culture. She’s published articles in publications such as The Walrus, Hazlitt and This Magazine, and has been featured on Buzzfeed, CBC, Flare Magazine, and Shameless. She received the Women Who Inspire Award from the Canadian Council for Muslim Women in 2017. Her first book, It Begins With The Body was selected by CBC books as one of the best poetry books of 2018. Her second book, a compilation of essays and illustrations from her notable affirmation art series, titled Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty: Affirmations for the Real World came out in 2020. Hana and her family immigrated to Mississauga from Dubai in 1996, and she now lives in Toronto with her two cute, but sometimes annoying, cats.
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People You Know Places You’ve Been: poems and illustrations
by Hana ShafiBook*hug Press, 2023The latest poetry and artwork collection from Hana Shafi examines the everyday connections we make to the people and places we encounter. Despite the infinite variations of our lives, every urban dweller has sparred with a neighbour they disliked, seen beautiful strangers on public transit, told secrets to their hairdresser. We interact with these supporting characters on a daily basis—and often we are them for others.
Shafi celebrates the Antiheroes of the world (the alcoholic at your local bar, teenage girls); examines those in Beautiful Leading Roles (the hot professor, the rich couple); lauds older generations of Wizards and Crones; and flags the Nemeses (men who think they’re allies, competitors for produce at farmer’s markets). We sink into recognition at depictions of Palaces such as the greasy spoon, Dungeons of public transit, and the Liminal Spaces of checkout counters or waiting rooms (including that one at the end of the cosmos).
People You Know, Places You’ve Been is an insightful, charming collection that offers a sense of shared recognition and nostalgia, ultimately asking: what if seemingly mundane places are actually the foundations of who you are?
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Niloufar-Lily Soltani | Issue 32
Her cellmates told her she should not expect to leave the prison on her own on the release day. “No car is allowed on the premises and no one can know what this place looks like from the outside. “They will take you to Luna Park and leave you there.”
She did not believe this story until it happened.
She sat with Sister Matlab in the back of a car who only allowed her to remove her blindfold once they approached the park. They dropped her off, and as she got out of the car, the woman guard said, “I beg for your prayers.”
Zulaikha couldn’t believe what she had heard. She turned back and whispered, “Likewise.”
Birds were singing, and as she walked along the road, she looked up and saw two crows flying after each other. All the beauty of nature, tall willow trees, and soft blue sky seemed ignorant to her plight. How could this beautiful park, with its trees and birds, bear the secrets of the damned fort on top of the hill? She could not know the direction to the prison, but those tall trees and birds nesting in them could see the path to that fort of pains for decades—they stood tall and remained silent. What could they do? Trees burn and birds migrate, leaving those young men and women without hope, without the sounds of laughter and birdsong. That park was the end of all the worldly beauty. After one passed Luna Park, it was crossing a borderline to darkness and hatred.
***
Zulaikha had been in Evin for almost three months. Eleven- year-old Sohrab and his close friend Reza were waiting for her in front of a car outside Luna Park. She recognized Abdul’s taxi. She hugged both Sohrab and Reza. Abdul got out and said hello, walked toward her with his limping long legs and opened the car door humbly. She did not expect him to be there. She noticed all three of them were dressed nicely as though they had come to pick her up from a trip. Abdul was wearing a green shirt and was clean shaven. This man was good to her. But Assef was still there in front of her and in her dreams. She blamed Sohrab for his resemblance to his father as though it had blinded her from seeing Abdul the way he deserved to be seen. She beamed at Abdul.
Suddenly she felt an itch on her scalp. Her black chador was adding to her discomfort. She wanted to scratch her hair, but not in front of the boys. She needed to wash her hair with good shampoo when she got home. The last time she and her prison mates could take a shower was five days ago, when one of the girls had shouted, “Water is warm, ladies.”
“You all look so nice,” she said. “Look at me. I’m a mess.”
All three of them said “no” simultaneously. Their voices screamed their sincere attempt to convince her that things would be alright.
She glanced at Sohrab and Reza and observed a bond between them. Reza was the kind of close friend she had wished for her son for a long time.
***
She stayed in the dormitory sick and useless for a few days. She wrote to Aliah:
I dreamed about you last night. I want to sleep all day and dream about my awful life in freedom. The things that happened to me in the past year have been more horrific than my nightmares…
As her gaze settled on her words, she hesitated briefly, then tore the page apart. A minute later, she commenced anew, the words echoing the same sentiment as before.
A knock on her door provided a timely diversion.
Her first visitors were Abdul and his mother. They brought her a big pack of pastries and flowers. Other neighbours came afterward as if supporting her return was their duty. When they asked her what happened in Evin she refused to share any details. Talking about it would bring back the moments she wanted to leave behind.
A week later, she had had enough of useless days. She asked Abdul if he would give her a ride to a couple of the addresses she got from the prison mates. In one day, they went to two houses. Abdul parked outside and waited for her. She went inside for a few minutes, told them that their daughters were fine, prison food was not that bad, and a bunch of other lies. She carried a list of the items they needed or gave them small notes the girls had written on paper.
One night she dreamed of a long passionate kiss. This time it was Abdul’s. Thankfully, Assef was fading from her mind. Abdul’s kiss and touch liberated her from a man who never belonged to her. With Abdul, she discovered a new woman rising inside of her, as though the pain she had endured since the war had given birth to another Zulaikha, one who had been living there inside of her for a long time, quietly hidden, and who could now rise up and speak. The shyness of her youth was gone—she now demanded more and commanded her young lover. But why was she crying? Where were those tears coming from, at the climax of her pleasure? She did not understand. She only knew that this pleasure, this satisfaction, would not fill the emptiness of what she had lost. The tears, the urge for crying, came from losing dignity, from the humiliation and fear of returning to that same place where she had no control, no power.
Thank you for reading Send My Love to Anyone. This post is public so feel free to share it.
Niloufar-Lily Soltani is a fiction writer, poet, and translator based in Vancouver. She is a graduate of the Humber College creative writing program. Zulaikha is her debut novel.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedZulaikhaby Niloufar-Lily SoltaniInnana Publications, 2023In the winter of 2007, returning home from visiting her son in Amsterdam, Zulaikha accidentally runs into Kia, a family friend she hasn’t seen for many years. Kia’s father has passed away and he is flying home to attend his funeral. In a shocking twist, Zulaikha suspects that Kia may have had information about Zulaikha’s missing brother, Hessam, who disappeared shortly following the murder of their mutual friend, Abbass, during the Iran–Iraq War.
When the flight is suddenly cancelled, Zulaikha is taken into custody and questioned about her relationship with Kia by the European airport security. A day later, in Tehran, the Iranian authorities have their own agenda for intimidating her. A tense thriller explores the impacts of war and oppression through a sprawling, tender, imperfect love story, scored with the notes of the Arabic and Persian music and poetry that grace so many Middle Eastern lives.
This sweeping novel explores many timely topics, including oppression, women’s rights, class, race, and interracial marriage. It also sheds light on the tumultuous history of Iran from a new perspective. The novel reveals a forty-year period of upheaval in Iran, specifically in Zulaikha’s home, Khuzestan province, which boasts the bulk of Iran’s oil reserves—a place of intense tension between Iran and the U.S. still today.
“Zulaikha is an often suspenseful and always emotionally striking account of the inescapable reach of a violent history, and the grip that political realities have over personal truths.”
– Naben Ruthnum, author of Find You in The Dark and Your Life is Mine
“A hauntingly moving and brilliant book that paints a portrait of longing, heartache, love and hope. Zulaikha is an ambitious and powerful debut novel from a brave new voice bringing attention to the politics in Iran and how lives are affected, especially the lives of women. With sensitivity, Niloufar-Lily Soltani weaves a tale of courage, betrayal, and forgiveness. Fast-paced and well-written, this story captures you from its first page and carries you along like the achingly beautiful notes of the oud.”
– Sonia Saikaley, author of The Allspice Bath
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January 14, 2024
Gatherings | Issue 32
I’ll be reading at the Wild Prose Readings in Victoria on January 25, 2024 at 6:30pm with JD Derbyshire and Emi Sasagawa!
Hope to see you there!
The Vancouver launch of Anecdotes has a new date after being snowed out!
Please join us on February 29th! The event is free, but please register as there is limited space at the Upstart and Crow!
I’m reading at the Real Vancouver Writers’ Series on March 3, 2024.
This is a virtual event.
Details to come.
SMLTA columnist Kirby has a new book of poetry coming out: She.
I wrote a blurb for it. Check out what other readers are saying about this stunning book!
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.
Gatherings“Leaving Childhood Behind” by Mosab Abu Toha, Poets.org
Claire Schwartz on “Fady Joudah,” Jewish Currents
Samia Halaby’s retrospective was cancelled at Indiana University Bloomington. There’s a petition to reinstate it.
author
Samia Halaby on Instagram: ”“To Return, Infiltrate” like the sunshine dissolving the dark blue. Acrylic on canvas, 2016. #painting #palestine🇵🇸 #palestinians #lovegaza #savegazachildren #abstraction #abstractpainting”January 20, 2024
SMLTA contributor Farzana Doctor has a new book coming out this spring: 52 Weeks to a Sweeter Life: For Caregivers, Activists, and Helping Professionals
“A practical guide to self- and community care, written for helpers—the caregivers, activists, community leaders, mental health and medical professionals who are the first to help others, but the last to seek help themselves.”
Small Press Economies: A Dialogue by Hilary Plum and Matvei Yankelevich, Chicago Review
Canisia Lubrin’s debut book of fiction, Code Noir, launches in Toronto on February 5th at Another Story Bookshop with a stellar line up: Dionne Brand, Britta Badour, Christina Sharpe, Torkwase Dyson, Safiya Sinclair, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Kaie Kellough, Karlyn Percil, and Ola Mohammed.
Register for this free event.
Here’s a recent story from this collection "The Boy, The Girls, the Dog, and I Was There Yale Review
Lilian’s Nattel’s book Only Sisters had me sobbing in public! Multiple times!
Check out this Lillian Allen performance from 1988!
I’m on a Hal Hartley kick thanks do Criterion.
Started with The Unbelievable Truth and now onto The Book of Life. Lots of end of the world themes here.
Montreal International Poetry Prize is now accepting submissions until May 15th!
If you have any events, calls, news, or gatherings to share, please share them in the comments!
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January 5, 2024
Vancouver launch for Anecdotes
‘Anecdotes’ Launch: An Evening with Kathryn Mockler & Friends
Join us at Upstart & Crow on Thursday, Jan 18 at 6 p.m. for a lively evening of readings and conversation between four wonderful B.C. writers.
In this free event, hosted by Giller shortlisted writer Kevin Chong, we’ll toast the launch of Kathryn Mockler’s Anecdotes, a darkly funny collection of short stories published by our indie press favourite, Bookhug. And we’ll enjoy readings from amazing fellow writers Shashi Bhat, Christopher Evans, Chong and Mockler, along with great conversation.
Register for your free spot on this Eventbrite page as capacity is limited.
Location: 1387 Railspur Alley Vancouver, BC V6H 3R7
About the authors:
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). She is an assistant professor at the University of Victoria where she teaches screenwriting and fiction.
Kevin Chong is the award-winning author of several books of fiction and nonfiction. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The Rumpus, and more. He currently lives in Vancouver and is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus. The Double Life of Benson Yu was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Shashi Bhat is the author of the forthcoming story collection Death by a Thousand Cuts, and the novels The Most Precious Substance on Earth, a finalist for the 2022 Governor General’s Award for fiction, and The Family Took Shape, a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Bhat is the editor-in-chief of EVENT magazine and teaches creative writing at Douglas College.
Christopher Evans is a writer and editor, originally from the lands of the Lkwungen People, on the traditional territories of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, in Victoria, B.C. Chris is a former editor for PRISM internationalmagazine and currently teaches creative writing to children. His debut short story collection Nothing Could Be Further from the Truth was published by House of Anansi in 2022.
More about Upstart & Crow:
Located on Granville Island, Upstart & Crow is a literary arts studio for curious readers and creative storytellers alike. We are international in our outlook, and local in our sensibilities. We create opportunities to surface new talent and champion bold ideas through events, workshops, literary launches, unique partnerships — and yes, we also sell books!
Health precautions:
We want this event to be fun and safe. Masks are welcome, though we won’t enforce them. We hope that folks who come will be vaccinated and boosted and will stay home if they feel ill.
Accessibility:
The main studio of our shop is accessible for folks with mobility aids. There is a washroom on the main floor available for attendees.
Questions: hello@upstartandcrow.com
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December 25, 2023
Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 31
Hi friends,
In Issue 31 of Send My Love to Anyone, you’ll find excerpts from Kirby’s iconic book Poetry is Queer; Mary-Lou Zeitoun’s harrowing and hilarious YA novel, Jamilah at The End of the World; and Stephen Humphrey’s fascinating and necessary nonfiction book, Paths of Pollen, which “chronicles pollen’s vital mission to spread plant genes”.
Also in Issue 31 is a new poem by Tosh Sherkat and a round up of recommended readings and viewings, art, writing opportunities, and more by Sim Kern, Hala Alyan, Michael V. Smith, Lilian Nattel, Jessica Westhead, Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, Room Magazine, and more!
Hope you enjoy!
Kathryn
This is an extremely short list, but it will get you started, provide much needed strength, guidance, lust, and compassion for the daily.
I’ve had to come to a full stop here. Tears.
The special kinship often held between women and gays.","size":"md","isEditorNode":true,"title":"KIRBY \"It’s not a straight line.\" | The First Time","publishedBylines":[{"id":16955065,"name":"KIRBY","bio":"The pansy. Not the cream puff. poetryisqueer.com ","photo_url":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-... First Time","id":139483777,"type":"newsletter","reaction_count":0,"comment_count":0,"publication_name":"Send My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f...
Read an excerpt from Jamilah at the End of the World!","size":"sm","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Mary-Lou Zeitoun | Issue 31","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2023-12-06T19:38:07.178Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f...
Pollen’s job is to go places. It is an organism with no limbs, physical senses, or consciousness, yet it’s nonetheless tasked with a do-or-die mission to accomplish one of nature’s great errands: plant reproduction. ","size":"sm","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Stephen Humphrey | Issue 31","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2023-12-10T21:16:25.807Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f...
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