Kathryn Mockler's Blog, page 9
May 6, 2025
I would like to send my love to other members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, particularly trans people.
What is your first memory of existing?My first true memory (a memory not based on something my parents told me later) is of playing hide-and-seek with my little sister. I was maybe 3 or 4, so she would have been 2 or 3 at the time. I became overwhelmed with fear while hiding from (or with, I can’t remember) her, to the point that eventually she had to console me (thanks, Maggie).
I have a line in a poem from my first book, No Meeting Without Body, that references this incident: “Though younger, he was the brave one” (the poem, “Tiller,” is ostensibly about Cain and Abel). That describes the way my sister was as a child to a T: teeny but fearless.
What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?Also with my sister—I remember us playing on a big bed, perhaps my mother’s, in another childhood home after our parents split. Post-separation, my mom rented a floor of an old Victorian house in Old South, a neighbourhood in my hometown (London, Ontario). The bed wasn’t a bed to us, but a wooden raft, the room, which seemed enormous, the rough seas, and the two of us were castaways. This storytelling is the earliest artistic creation I can recall. At this point, we were probably around the ages of 4 and 5.
What is the best or worst dream you ever had?I have some very persistent recurring nightmares. One theme that has kept coming back over the decades is facing some kind of threat and not being able to speak up or make an audible sound. Over the past few years, I’ve woken up screaming from such dreams, which is alarming in some ways, but also reassuring—I’m relieved at the thought that I would be able to make a sound if I were under attack.
What do you cherish most about this world?Most consistently? The birds.
Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?I never gave much thought to ghosts until I moved to Nova Scotia almost a decade ago. This is a very haunted place. I believe in ghosts now for sure.
If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?I would like to send my love to other members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, particularly trans people. There’s nothing wrong with the way we are. Natural variations in sex, gender, and sexuality are just that: natural. Queer and trans people have always been here—for some examples, see Leslie Feinberg’s seminal study, Transgender Warriors. I wish fascists would stop trying to use all of us—and again, particularly trans people—as scapegoats in their efforts to terrorize and control the general population.
Annick MacAskill is the author of four full-length poetry collections, including Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022), winner of the Governor General’s Award, and Votive (Gaspereau Press, 2024), which is currently shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award and the Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award. Her fiction has appeared in journals including Canthius, Plenitude, The Ampersand Review, and Event, and has been longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and shortlisted with the National Magazine Awards. MacAskill is a member of Room Magazine’s Growing Room Collective and the publisher of Opaat Press. She lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia), on the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq. annickmacaskill.com
Votive considers various forms of devotion and our often fraught attempts to respond to “our confusion, our curiosity.” These are poems concerned with the way we use stories, old and new, to connect our experiences, and the way we persist in our quest for love, hope and meaning when language falters—“What we couldn’t say we found in the skies.” MacAskill’s great gift resides in her facility for coaxing things evasive and intuitive into crisp form and language, in voicing what “so quickly I / knew and knew and knew.”
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I want a death as real as possible
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Myth
by Terese Mason PierreHouse of Anansi Press. 2025Myth, the much-anticipated debut collection from the multi-talented Terese Mason Pierre, weaves between worlds (‘real’ and ‘imaginary’) unearthing the unsettling: our jaded and joyful relationships to land, ancestry, trauma, self, and future. In three movements and two interludes, the poems in Myth move symphonically from tropical islands to barren cities, from lucid dreams to the mysteries of reality, from the sea to the cosmos. A dynamic mix of speculative poetry and ecstatic lyricism, the otherworldly and the sublime, Pierre’s poems never stray too long or too far from the spell of unspoiled nature: “The palm trees nod / at the ocean / the ocean does / what it always does / trusts the moon completely.”
Friends ‘with benefits’ tour the wonders of Grenada’s landscapes; extraterrestrials visit the Caribbean and the locals don’t seem phased; red birds “saunter airily like tourists,” La Diablesse lures helpless suitors to their dooms. This collection asks: How can myths manifest themselves in our daily lives? What do we actually mean when we say we love ourselves and others? And how do we pursue/create futures that honour our truths, histories and legacies?
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Fear is valuable
This was a poem I wrote the first time Trump was elected. Seems appropriate now as well.
GeeseText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhat can be done about all the loudmouths?What can be done about the Canadian geese—so they don’t smell my fear when I walk by?Don’t stare a goose in the eye. And when you pass don’t turn around to see if he is followingyou because if he‘s not, he will start. He willmake a point of it because Canadian geeseknow that above all else—fear is valuable.
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I was such a goody-two-shoes.
What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?My earliest memories of creativity have always involved music. My father would often sing to me, as a child, and sometimes he’d make up lyrics to songs. We had a keyboard, even though no one in the family knew how to play it, but he’d still make up tunes on the keys. I would sing with him, as a toddler and three-year-old. My father would also create lullabies this way. He’d sing me to sleep with, “Eidelweiss,” with different, made-up lyrics—usually my name, and affirmations that he loved me.
What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.The advice I’d give to my early-adult self (aged 18-21) would be to be a little more adventurous, take more risks. I was such a goody-two-shoes. Despite this, I was already adept at lying to my strict parents. Why not keep it up? Why not push it a little farther? I wished I’d stayed out later, dated more, said yes to more opportunities.
What is the best or worst dream you ever had?The worst dream I’ve had was about feeling trapped. I had this dream when I was about sixteen. It is the most vivid dream in my memory. At the time I had this dream, I lived in an apartment building with a separate laundry area for the tenants.
In this dream, the laundry was in the basement (not the case in real life). I went downstairs to do the laundry, by myself, and encountered a man with a large stack of magazines. He was sitting on the staircase, and I had to pass him to enter the laundry room. I assumed he was waiting for his laundry. I had never seen this man before, but that was normal with how many people had lived in my building. He was tall—judging by the length of his legs—and white, with a bowl cut. I put my clothes in the washing machine, and he asked if I wanted to read some magazines with him. I declined and left. When I returned to move my clothes from the washing machine to the dryer, the man, still sitting on the stairs, asked again if I’d like to read with him. I said no a second time.
Then he stood up and walked down the stairs toward me, maybe two steps. I stepped backward. He was blocking what I believed to be the only exit. We stared at each other, and I thought he was going to assault me. I thought he was going to kill me. He did not. He sat on a lower step, opened a magazine, and started reading. I ran past him, all the way to my apartment, into my bedroom, into my walk-in closet, and shut the door.
Later that night, I had forgotten to take the clothes out of the dryer. My mother was upset, and demanded I get the clothes, even though it was late, even though I promised to do it the next morning. I went back to the laundry room. It was dark, and the only light came from the tiny window by the ceiling, and the digital numbers on the laundry machines. I found my basket, which I’d left there, and started unloading the dryer. I heard a door open, then shut, and looked towards the stairs, but no one was there. I turned back to the dryer, and then suddenly man was there—having entered from a different door I did not see. He was not standing very close to me, and seemed just as shocked to see me. Still, I was overcome with fear. I collapsed onto the ground, shaking. The man looked at me for a few seconds, then went up the stairs.
I pulled myself out of this dream so violently, I sat up in bed—just like in the movies. I left my bedroom to where my mother slept on the couch, and lay beside her, shaking. I was so, so afraid. I had never been so afraid. I wrapped my arms around my mother and cried, waiting for dawn.
What is your favourite coincidence?My favorite coincidence is taking two weeks off in the summer of 2023 for my birthday, at the suggestion of my supervisor, then later discovering that those same two weeks were the Banff Summer Residency. I applied, and was accepted. I got to spend my birthday in Banff, working on a novel, surrounded by the loveliest people.
What do you cherish most about this world?What I cherish most about this world is how diverse it is. So many people are living so many different kinds of lives, all at the same time. There are no two stories that are the same. Living in a multicultural city—at a time when the concept of diversity is being threatened—I am invited, daily, to challenge my perspectives about what it means to be alive, to love, and to fight. I must take time to appreciate how complex the world is, and I am better for it.
If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?I would send my love to my younger brother. The older I get, the more I cherish my sibling. I don’t always tell him I love him, and as we live apart now, we don’t spend as much time together. He has entered his late twenties, and with that comes a very daunting life survey. He’s working very hard to build the life he wants, and I hope he knows that I’m always rooting for him to succeed. He has my shoulder, my ear, my heart, should he need it.
Terese Mason Pierre (she/her) is a writer, poet, and editor whose work has appeared in the Walrus, ROOM, Brick, Quill & Quire, Uncanny, and Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her work has been nominated for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, Best of the Net, the Aurora Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Ignyte Award. She is one of ten winners of the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize and was named a Writers’ Trust Rising Star. Terese is the chief programming officer at Augur, a speculative arts nonprofit, and co-director of AugurCon, Augur’s biennial speculative arts conference. Terese lives in Toronto.
Myth, the much-anticipated debut collection from the multi-talented Terese Mason Pierre, weaves between worlds (‘real’ and ‘imaginary’) unearthing the unsettling: our jaded and joyful relationships to land, ancestry, trauma, self, and future. In three movements and two interludes, the poems in Myth move symphonically from tropical islands to barren cities, from lucid dreams to the mysteries of reality, from the sea to the cosmos. A dynamic mix of speculative poetry and ecstatic lyricism, the otherworldly and the sublime, Pierre’s poems never stray too long or too far from the spell of unspoiled nature: “The palm trees nod / at the ocean / the ocean does / what it always does / trusts the moon completely.”
Friends ‘with benefits’ tour the wonders of Grenada’s landscapes; extraterrestrials visit the Caribbean and the locals don’t seem phased; red birds “saunter airily like tourists,” La Diablesse lures helpless suitors to their dooms. This collection asks: How can myths manifest themselves in our daily lives? What do we actually mean when we say we love ourselves and others? And how do we pursue/create futures that honour our truths, histories and legacies?
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May 5, 2025
Radical Honesty
I made up a fun game.
Well, maybe I didn’t quite make it up.
Perhaps it’s a version of a game I played as a child, but I revamped it yesterday when visiting my mother in the hospital and a little at a loss for how we could pass the time.
It is the perfect game to play for someone in the busy and noisy acute floor where the bed alarms and screaming patients are frightening, but I also I think it’s a good game for kids, for anyone with anxiety, for anyone who needs to distract themselves from the terrible world or to kill time.
This game (the way we were playing it) required radical honesty I reminded my mother who at other times in her life was prone to lie.
“White lies are okay,” she told me once, “as long as they don’t hurt anyone.”
The problem though is that sometimes they do.
Having a complicated relationship with a parent you’re caring for can be difficult. The little hurts bubble up when when you’re not expecting them.
Playing a game that requires radical honesty with a woman who has lied to me more times than I can remember is, well, ironic to say the least. That I created such a game on a whim is strange.
In any case, while I note the past in these moments, I’m trying not to dwell on it.
I call my version of this game, Am I Psychic?
Am I Psychic? has the perfect ratio of win-losses to be satisfying for all players.
We played for over an hour.
And it was fun.
It was a great way to be in the moment and not think of where we were or the hard times facing us.
As for my mom’s radical honesty?
She was.
Or rather her face gave her away every time.
Am I Psychic? RulesPlayer 1 picks a number between 1 and 10 and holds it in their mind. If the person has trouble remembering, have them write it out on a piece of paper.
Player 2 tries to guess this number. They get three guesses before Player 1 reveals the number.
There are three rounds in Am I Psychic? and each round concludes when a player is the first to win three games.
The winner of Am I Psychic? is the player who wins the most rounds out of three.
And the prize? A cookie bought for them by the loser.
For extra fun and to extend the game, I suggest doing a recap every once in a while like a sports announcer.
Something like “The stakes are high, Joyce has won two games in round one and Kathryn has only won one. Now it’s Kathryn’s turn to guess the number between one and ten. Who will win the cookie? Is Kathryn Psychic?”
I won the cookie, but the game was close, and I’m going to buy one for my mom too because she put up a hell of a fight!
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I don’t want anyone petting my lizard.
My mother’s hands holding a pecan tart she’s about to enjoy.My mother has Alzheimer’s nearing late stage. The hospital wanted to discharge her—back to an independent living situation where she was falling multiple times a day.
Doctors with the pushiness of telemarketers tried to force us to send her back to her apartment. One day a PSW who had been caring for her all week whispered in my ear, “Keep fighting. She can’t go home”.
From what I’ve come to understand, this is common. The system is bursting at the seams.
Fortunately, the assisted living place where she lives refused to let her come back because it isn’t safe and that seemed to put an end to the conversation. Well that and some reminders from my sister (a retired psychologist) of their legal obligations, but it took over a week. Lost time to get her onto a long term care home list. But we were lucky to have a voice in the family that doctors would listen to.
Each day in the hospital, she risks picking up an infection.
She has no idea where she is. She is frightened, and it is heartbreaking.
Despite all this, she can still make me laugh.
The other day she said, “I don’t want anyone petting my lizard.”
“Do you have a lizard?” I asked.
“I used to,” she said.
When my grandfather had Alzheimer’s and saw buffalo running in the hallways, I remember being horrified that both my mother and grandmother were laughing about it. They were laughing to the point of tears.
“That’s not funny,” I chastised them.
“Well, you can either laugh or cry,” my mother said.
I’m doing both.
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I’m participating in the Authors for eSims for Gaza auction fundraiser.
The Authors for eSims online book auction is now OPEN, until Sunday May 19 at 5 pm.
I’m participating in the Authors for eSims for Gaza auction fundraiser.
Bid on over 110 autographed books and special prize bundles from your favourite authors (novels! poetry collections! children’s books! memoirs! feedback on your own writing! signed copies for your whole book club! characters named after you! and more!).
Funds go directly to Crips for eSims for Gaza’s mutual aid efforts helping Palestinians in Gaza stay connected with each other and the rest of the world.
What I’m DonatingI’m donating a signed copy of my debut story collection, Anecdotes, an Anecdotes button, and a one-year paid subscription to Send My Love to Anyone.
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May 4, 2025
This game (the way we were playing it) required radical honesty I reminded my mother who at other times in her life was prone to lie.
I made up a fun game.
Well, maybe I didn’t quite make it up.
Perhaps it’s a version of a game I played as a child, but I revamped it yesterday when visiting my mother in the hospital and a little at a loss for how we could pass the time.
It is the perfect game to play for someone in the busy and noisy acute floor where the bed alarms and screaming patients are frightening, but I also I think it’s a good game for kids, for anyone with anxiety, for anyone who needs to distract themselves from the terrible world or to kill time.
This game (the way we were playing it) required radical honesty I reminded my mother who at other times in her life was prone to lie.
“White lies are okay,” she told me once, “as long as they don’t hurt anyone.”
The problem though is that sometimes they do.
Having a complicated relationship with a parent you’re caring for can be difficult. The little hurts bubble up when when you’re not expecting them.
Playing a game that requires radical honesty with …
"I thought it was about the poetry."
On a certain morning, mid-March, I was wakened by a fellow poet in Montreal, “Kirby, you’re going to the Griffins!” followed by a few similar texts, then going online to see what the fuss was actually about, and indeed my dear poet friend Dale Martin Smith’s brilliant long poem, The Size of Paradise was selected as a Finalist for the 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize which I published at knife | fork | book.
How on earth? Nearly 700 international titles, ten selected. KFB? Canada on the map! Newsworthy to be sure. This is a big fucking deal.
We dropped everything and met for drinks on the Danforth to celebrate.
Dale’s book, The Size of Paradise pictured here at his local Book City on the DanforthThen, the CanPo chorus on various social media platforms: “NO CANADIANS made the list.” (Huh?) Followed by hollers and lists of Canadian poets they would have selected (I have my own). Still peeved over Griffin’s decision a few years back of dropping the separate (but equal?) Canadian award, for a single International Winner.
I, too, remember when this happened, and like many were none too pleased, not by them dropping the Canadian category (hell, it’s their dough, they can do what they want ffs) but how they did it, staging it as some “BIG ANNOUNCEMENT,” and silly me with an imagination thought, “Omg, THEY’RE GOING TO OPEN A POETRY CENTRE!” How positively grand! Maybe, I could be a greeter! (or a loo attendant!) but, no, their BIG NEWS was they were dropping the Canadian Prize to have ONE BIG INTERNATIONAL PURSE, THE BIGGEST (of all time at the time).
That and its purse-holder claiming, “we brought Canadian poets to the place where they can now compete alongside anyone on an International stage.” Paraphrased, but that’s the gist.
No centre. They simply wanted to be bigger. “The biggest.” Isn’t that grand?
As I heard two poets discuss (after a poet they trumpeted had lost that year), “It ain’t about the poetry,” heading towards the exit.
Seated that very same year at the gala dinner (guest of a guest) I’m at a table with one or two poets and what I can only describe as “the monied.” A fine gentleman next to me asked, “So what is it that you do?”
“I run a poetry shop in Kensington Market, knife | fork | book.”
“A poetry shop?” his startled reply, “Is there any money in it?”
I looked about the banquet hall and said, “I see a lot of money!” The whole table laughed.
Poets Dale Martin Smith & r. kolewe (who also does layout/design for KFB)I am thrilled for Dale, and the press, that we were selected as finalists. It’s an amazing story. A Canadian poet (born in Texas, immigrated here with his family to teach writing) Canadian designer, printed at Coach House. And is KFB the first (and only) Canadian poetry micro-press nominated?
However, that didn’t match the narrative some insisted upon, that (to them) there were no Canadians on the list, and The Star waited until the shortlist was announced to decisively declare, “there are no Canadians on the list.”
“O, that’ll happen.” Mr. Griffin replies.
Really? This is the news story?! “NO CANADIANS AT THE GRIFFINS”
Have they read Dale’s book? Bought it since? Congratulated KFB? (I’ll leave that hang there.)
Here’s how the news was greeted by poet, CAConrad on Instagram:
CAConrad on Dale Smith: “This is needed now more than ever.”CAConrad: It is so exciting to see Dale Martin Smith’s The Size of Paradise up for a Griffin Poetry Prize. It was one of my favourite books of 2024 and the kind of poetry you will always want in your life! Dale is also one of my favourite people. His Slow Poetry is a view of local poetry communities, and the love and nurturing of these important communities. This is needed now more than ever. If you haven’t read The Size of Paradise yet, please buy it from my favourite Canadian poetry press knife | fork | book, published by the one and only Kirby.
A poet I deeply respect and admire wrote to me: “You are very mild in your acceptance of the world's ways, which is a good thing, in fact a great thing.”
And, they know as well as you dear reader, I am anything but mild. I’m simply not going to allow myself to go there, to play that small. Disappointed, yes. I can live. But puny? No thank you.
I thought it was about the poetry. For me, it still is. Congrats Dale, fellow finalists, jurors.
A Canadian bookseller is thrilled they’ll finally get to hear poet Diane Seuss.
Kirby’s the publisher at knife | fork | book and featured columnist at Send My Love To Anyone. Hear them read their latest SHE, cover to cover, Mother’s Day and see them at Soft Fest (w/Angie Quick) on June 14th London, ONSupport Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it
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May 3, 2025
Comply with the law, or don’t. It’s not the end of the world.
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Shadow Price: Poems
by Farah GhafoorHouse of Anansi Press, 2025Borrowing its title from a finance term—“the estimated price of a good or service for which no market price exists”—Shadow Price is a stunning debut that examines the idea of value in a world that burns under our capitalist lens.
What gives life value? How do we serve existing societal structures that determine its cost? Employing both surreal and documentary imagery, Farah Ghafoor's arresting collection articulates how narrative is used to revise the past and manipulate the future, ultimately forming our present-day climate crisis. Interrogating personal complicity, generational implications, and the shock of our collective disregard for a world that sustains every living thing, Shadow Price captures the complexities of living and writing as a young poet born in the year that “climate change denial” first appeared in print. Mourning the loss of Earth’s biodiversity, from insects to mammoths to trees, these introspective poems invite us to consider the risks and rewards of loving what may vanish in our lifetime.
Shadow Price charges readers to contemplate their power and purpose in the world today, recognizing that there is hope even in the belly of the beast.
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