Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 17

Jessi MacEachern, Cut Side Down

My review of Jessi MacEachern's Cut Side Down (Picton ON: Invisible Publishing, 2025), following A Number of Stunning Attacks (Invisible Publishing, 2021) [see my review of such here] is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jo-Ann Mort

Jo-AnnMort is a poet and journalist. Her first book of poetry, publishedwhen she was 69, is A Precise Chaos ,published by Arrowsmith Press (May 2025). A lifelong poet, Jo-Ann’s life took adifferent turn, and she returned to poetry writing after a 22-year hiatus.

1- How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent workcompare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Thisis my first book of poetry. I’m sixty-nine years old upon its publication. I’vepublished non-fiction previously, but this is my penultimate success--forstarters. I’m already working on another one.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction ornonfiction?
Well, I came to both poetry and nonfiction and journalism all at the sametime. I wrote my first poem when I was around 10 years old and was from then onwriting and reading poetry, though journalism and expository prose also held myinterest. I went to college to study poetry and then, a semester in gradschool, but after college, I got deeply involved in progressive politics andcreated an earning career for myself as a communications strategist (as opposedto a non-earning career as a poet!) I wasn’t trained as a journalist, but I wasintrigued to become one--I am somewhat of a frustrated foreign reporter atheart--and so I began to write opinion pieces and do some straight reporting andfeature writing for newspapers from overseas.

Then, from my late thirties to my late fifties, I stopped cold in writingpoetry. I filed tons of journalism, was a columnist at a weekly paper for awhile and wrote a lot of opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines in the USand UK and Israel, where I frequently travelled. I became an expert on Israeland the Occupied Palestinian Territories and have now been writing opinion andreported pieces from and about there since the 1980s. I also began to writeabout other countries with a progressive lens, like Poland and France.

When I began to write poetry again--when I turned 60--I wrote some poems aboutplaces and incidents on which I had reported. It has been fun to figure out thedifferences in how to describe something in a reported piece versus how todescribe something in a poem. Reporting must be factual, but poetry can make upfacts by discovering connections that we didn't know were there until beginningto write about them.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does yourwriting initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appearlooking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copiousnotes?
I usually start a poem with a line or sometimes even a word, or a memory.My first drafts sometimes are nothing but notes with brackets that I placethere for words to come. I like to go over a poem for several weeks before itis in its final form-at least for that moment.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of shortpieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a"book" from the very beginning?
I’m never working on a book-I work on poems, and then, as with my new book,I look for story arcs to bring them together.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are youthe sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings and talking to people about writing.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds ofquestions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think thecurrent questions are?
Hmm… since I am very active politically, many of my poems reflect that-orreflect the multitude of travel that I do. I hope that the poems will showconnections where people may not have considered them.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture?Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Writers should advocate for themselves and their art. If we can gain avoice because people are reading our work, then we should also speak out aboutour societal concerns-especially at this moment.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult oressential (or both)?
I work with editors when I write my journalism and find them to be veryhelpful. For this poetry book, I had a new experience--Arrowsmith Press hired acopyeditor to go over my manuscript. I loved working with a copyeditor,something I’d never done before for poetry. It was so interesting, making methink hard about every comma and capitalization. I also had a brilliant editorin the Arrowsmith publisher, Askold Melnyczuk, who is also a friend of mine.The book’s title was Askold’s idea—I had another title for the book. He alsosuggested some re-ordering of the poems that I wouldn’t have thought about, butI think he was correct.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given toyou directly)?
This isn’t quite advice, but it is words to write by--When I was in collegeat Sarah Lawrence,  I queried  a writer teaching there (with whom I didn’tstudy, but with whom I was friends ), the marvelous Grace Paley, and told herthat I was trying to find a an American Jewish female poet who wrote about herexperience of being such, and addressed many of the concerns that I had at thattime in my life. I wanted to read a poet whose work would inspire me to say,“yes, that’s how I see the world.” Grace’s answer to me was blunt (as shealways was). She said, “Jo-Ann, you are looking for your poems, your writing.”I have never forgotten that conversation decades later. Write yourself into theworld.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry tojournalism)? What do you see as the appeal?
It’s easy. My poetry training for sure helped me when I became ajournalist. I’m not trained as a journalist, but from the study of poetrywriting I learned about how to tell a story, how to be concise and how even oneword can have an impact on the entire reported story. Journalism fills one roleand poetry another. I’ll frequently report on something or write an opinioncolumn and then take those same thoughts and mold them into a poem. The poemwill find a different truth than the journalism and that’s terrific.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even haveone? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I begin my day by reading at least seven newspapers, although as I’vegotten older, I’ve allowed myself not to read entire articles and more justperuse headlines. But I read the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Guardian,(where I write frequent opinion pieces), LeMonde, the Wall Street Journal, theWashington Post, and Haaretz newspaper along with a round up that I receivefrom the Israeli media.

When I am really disciplined, I’ll open my journal and writesomething--anything--on the blank page. But I am not that disciplined.

I wish I had a routine. I always have a journal ongoing. I’ll carry it aroundwith me all day, put it on my desk in the morning, sleep with it near my bed atnight--just in case inspiration strikes. But, too often, I’ll go days withoutwriting in it, even as I’m schlepping it around.

I remember my first poetry workshop in college, taught by the wonderful poetTom Lux, who told us that we always had to be writing a poem, always had tohave something going on the page. I did that when I was younger, but I don’t doit anymore, and I’m not sure that I need to. I find that the best process forme comes in daydreaming or obsessing on one word or one image or thought andthen, I take notes in my journal or start a doc in my google drive, or I writea note on my phone.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (forlack of a better word) inspiration?
I return to poets I admire. And sometimes, favorite poems. I’ve also beenreading a lot of essays on writing by poets and finding these to be so helpful.These days, Denise Levertov’s essays are inspirational to me because she writesboth about process and content, and of course, she was a very political poet,too. My own writing is not as sparse as hers usually is, but I love readingabout how she writes, and I aspire to be sparser in my verse.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I have a lot of dried Eucalyptus in my apartment, so I guess that’s thescent or fragrance I associate with home.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are thereany other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science orvisual art?
Oh yes. I’m very inspired by music. But, for me music evokes memory-andthat is where the inspiration comes in. These days, the artist Wassily Kandinsky inspires me (I chose a print of his for my cover art for my book),because I think that he really speaks to our time where everything feelschaotic and out of control.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simplyyour life outside of your work?
So many writers are important to me--a few come to mind immediately: poetslike Muriel Rukeyser, Phil Levine, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Maxine Kumin, Yehuda Amichai, Mahmoud Darwish,Osip Mandelstam, many Polish poets like Wislawa Szymborska and Tadeusz Rozewicz, Octavio Paz; novelists like Marcel Proust (whose writing about memory is so very poetic and mimics the creativepoetry writing process)  and Lawrence(and his poetry), Iris Murdoch, Elsa Morante. I love reading novelists whocreate not only a world with their storytelling but a moral world.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I have a travel bucket list and since so much of what I write is inspiredby travel, I’m intrigued to find out what I would write were I able to travelto places like Japan, South Korea, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine (I’ve been toLviv just before the war but I want to go deeper into the country). I hadalways wanted to go to Russia, but I think that will probably stay off of my todo list for the foreseeable future. As you can tell, I’m not exactly a hang outon the beach vacation person!

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be?Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you notbeen a writer?
I can’t imagine anything else, especially because I’ve found that having abandonedmy poetry self for two decades and now having come back to it, I am wholeagain.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing is in my blood. It’s how I understand and explain the world.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I was blown away by Elsa Morante’s book History: a Novel. I found an oldused copy online I believe it’s set for a new reissue in the next year or so. Ihope so. She was an extraordinarily important novelist, married to a better-knownItalian novelist-Alberto Moravia. But this novel, which is nearly 1000 pages,is literally a history of Italy up through the rise of and then defeat offascism, told through the eyes of a peasant woman in Sicily. It’s a brilliantfeminist leftist novel, lyrical and magical also.

The recent Brazilian film I’m Still Here , is brilliant andhaunting—especially because it deals with the life of a leftist politicianunder the Brazilian dictatorship, but also because it feels so genuine, almostlike a documentary, even though it is a feature film based on a true story.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Poems for what I hope will be my second book.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ashley D. Escobar, GLIB

 

“I do this, I do that. I stealsaltine crackers.” It’s not necessarily one of her great lines but one I reallylike. One doesn’t expect much for a send up of Frank O’Hara but Ashley hastriumphed here by doing less. I personally love saltines but stealing them isnot great. Or it is great. It just doesn’t matter. It’s a kind of slap. I thinkthat’s a part of what’s going on. She makes these micro adjustments of order orkinds of discourse that end a chain of meaning so slightly. They provoke a mildwhat, it’s like a bump, one of my favorite things in poetry. It’s like themateriality of artifice that has to do with defining places as being here bythe fact that so subtly you say they are no more.

Her poems are verythingy. That’s what I meant by stuff. The world is constantly named. And framed.Also when I was saying that they don’t make me full, I mean that even thoughthere’s streams and streams of references and details none really matter, theexperience is how we glide through them swinging from vine to vine, that’s whyfast or slow it’s exactly the same. You don’t see more either way. It is theculture or cultures kinda. There’s no inside, there’s no outside. (Eileen Myles, “Glibbest of the GLIB”)

I’mstartled by how much I enjoyed New York City/San Francisco-based poet and filmmaker Ashley D. Escobar’s full-length poetry debut GLIB (ManhattanNY: Changes, 2025), winner of the Changes Book Prize, as selected by EileenMyles. The sixth book published to date by the press, Escobar’s GLIB offerspoems composed across first-person accumulative sweeps of precise moments, of,as Myles suggests, a concrete thingness, even if those things might lean intothe abstract or the metaphysical. “should I // fuck // up this deli sandwich,”she writes, to close the poem “Joyride,” “glossier you sticks to all cardigans// the suburbs are not // the end of all things // I am [.]” Escobar’s poems providea wealth of delightful, stellar lines, composing magical moments that sparkleacross these Frank O’Hara-esque narratives. The sparkles they do sparkle, andaccumulate into a clear-headed thoughtfulness, especially across stretches that,in another hand, could read as a meandering kind of chaos; through Escobar, thewaywardness is precisely the point, the means through which her poems find purpose,joyful dissonance, deep heart and chipped wisdom. As the poem “Wake Bake GetLaid” begins: “Everything – is orange – I am your unresolved – sonnet – Let’sget a shot – of my existential ennui – on the second floor – of Duane Reade –These are the end times – East Coast wildfire – season to follow – train derailment– The stores have run out – of mini – composition notebooks [.]” While purposefullyglib, the glib of her GLIB is simultaneous foundation and red herring, allowingthe poems a kind of freedom to talk about the real, in-between all the casualdismissals.

Withmore than a couple of O’Hara references throughout—“I was walking down 2ndave when the intangible turned tangible I thought I saw Frank O’Hara’s ghost soI looked  up at the trees they were allwearing sunglasses and the spaces in between the branches were spectacles oftheir own right Aidan told me to say hi to Frank but I didn’t know him ormaybe I did except I’ve never liked coke very much I’d rather have a pepsi anddisappear […],” begins the poem “April”—Escobar certainly presents multiple breathless,even staccato, O’Hara-esque “I did this, I did that” narrative trajectories,but one that holds less a narrative through-line than a series of rhythmic, operaticgestures, a flaneur of concrete abstract first-person meditation, swagger andexploration. “I’m a morning / and an evening person.” she writes, near the endof the poem “Roey’s,” “Afternoons eat me alive.” Or, as the sixth part of theseven-poem sequence “Potato of the Earth” reads:

coming and going
dropping your joint
first into a trash can
then off my balcony
leftover power bowl for
breakfast you know
you’re allowed to eat
in my bed and clap
backwards to the cats
on the street the poet
onstage and I simultaneously
thought of blackoutcurtains
I wish everything wassheer just
text me when you’re ready

 

Jessica Popeski, The Problem with Having a Body

 

iv

markham’s interlockingleaves
that tweenage hand trick
here’s the church here’sthe steeple
a sugar, norway, silver, emeraldqueen maple
and tulip, redmond linden,hackberry, horse chestnut
schubert chokecherrymarquee

a willow drizzles totarmac at harbord
the pong of a skunk feast
a block below bloor
candy cane spatter
meat fly-amassed

not supposed to bike buti bike
the way my body overburns

around ramhorn handles
nails tipped maroon shellac
all the rings are fallingfrom my fingers (“come clean”)

Followingthe chapbooks The Wrong Place (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2015) and Oratorio (Anstruther Press, 2015) [see my review of such here] comesToronto-based “dis/abled opera singer, Professor of English, Creative Writing,and Music, and internationally published, intersectional ecofeminist poet” Jessica Popeski’s full-length poetry debut, The Problem with Having a Body (GuelphON: Gordon Hill Press, 2025). As the back cover offers, this is a collection ofpoems “that unites Jessica Popeski’s preoccupations with intersectionalecofeminism, epigenetics, and the inheritance of fractured, grandmaternal generationallines. It reconciles private and public conflicts, examining how political andgeographical rupture and war zones generate traumatic, ancestral memory bychronicling experiences of moving through the world with dis/ability andanorexia. Accompanied by the insistence of matrilineal song, these poems askloud questions about cyclical bouts of anxiety and depression, madness, illness,voicelessness, and disordered eating.”

Thepoems in The Problem with Having a Body hold a precise measure ofdescriptive nuance; offering precise rhythm, hush, halt and flow. “when itrains it drizzles ceaselessly,” the short sequence “flatline” begins, “soeverything gets soaked / in my dreams i sleep / until six // ribs arescaffolding / stretch skin like cellophane / over leftovers [.]” Popeski writesthrough narratives of illness and the body, and matrilineal lines; of long-termdis/ability, wrapping her subject matter tight around the provocations of thebook’s title, and the title poem, that offers: “the problem with having a /body is you have to carry // it everywhere with you. / mine has held the curlicue/ of three babies & still // i’ve no one to show for it; / a hoard of manilamedical // files cramped & yellowing.”

Thecollection is structured in two sections, the bulk of which exists as “the prosand cons of staying sick,” followed by a far shorter section of more visually-focusedpoems, “sculptured,” akin to a kind of coda or punctuation. “this is how you /lose me.” she writes, to close the poem “this is how you lose me,” set in theopening section of the collection, “i won’t // eat for days, & / dream offolding // myself through / the tissuey air // of the humber / bay arch bridge.”That is such a lovely passage, that—“dream of folding // myself through / the tissueyair”—one of many that stopped me in my tracks, wanting to read it once more, abit slower. Hold on to that phrase, that image.

Thereis something curious about the way Popeski’s poems, specifically the morenarrative first-person lyrics of the opening section, seem to focus on themoments between occurrences, writing a kind of deceptive calm before the nextthing, the next event, or following what has already occurred. Her descriptivepassages write of movement, mid-gesture, offering layers of descriptivestraightforwardnesses that accumulate upon each other, but somehow end up somewhereother than the presumed sum of the poem’s parts. These are the poems that allowthe narrator the ability to hold it together through levels of uncertainty andillness. These are poem-markers, across a far broader narrative, not all of whichneeds to be seen to be understood. “the room in its semicircle,” the sequence “comeclean” ends, “sits up / a ruler-straight row / the youngest faces rose-redden /know this is what they have [.]”

Aswell, the poems in the book’s end-section shift from the narrative structuresof the pieces in the opening, instead offering grid-structures, building blocks,of words and phrases; poem-structures with titles “university health network,” “healthy,”“underweight,” “overweight,” “obese,” “extremely obese,” “muscle tension dysphonia/ false cards,” “krrrrrr,” “my oh my,” “nyay,” “kay” and “no.” There’s somethingof the Greek chorus to these poems, punctuating a number of the underlying subjectsthroughout the first section, providing something playful and serious to closeout. Utlizing the building blocks of shape, hashtag and repetition, the poem “obese,”reads, in full:

#pigout #sweettooth #foodcoma#cake
#pigout #sweettooth #foodcoma#cake #cook
             #sweettooth #foodcoma #cake #cook
             #sweettooth #foodcoma #cake #cook#fattofit
                        #sweettooth#foodcoma #cake #cook #fattofit
                        #sweettooth#foodcoma #cake #cook #fattofit

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ellen Chang-Richardson

Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet, writer, judicialassistant, and editor of Taiwanese and Chinese Cambodian descent. The author ofBlood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) and author/co-author of sixpoetry chapbooks, their multigenre work has appeared in Augur, the Ex-Puritan,Grain, Plenitude, Watch Your Head, and more.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How doesyour most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

It showed me that people cared to readwhat I am writing. My most recent work is less concrete than my previous—more“in the word” vs on the page.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction ornonfiction?

I’ve always been drawn to how poets shinea spotlight on what others may not immediately notice. Poets are acutelyattuned to the intricacies of the world and poetry brings those intricaciesinto sharp relief.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project?Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do firstdrafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?

It’s somewhere between the two. Itusually takes me a while to land on a concept but once I get going, the writingbecomes feverish. As for the difference between first and final shapes—I editmeticulously. A final shape may look like its draft, but it also may not. Thatprocess is usually intuition-based.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author ofshort pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working ona "book" from the very beginning?

On my phone, I keep an ongoing documentcalled “shit scripts” — which I add to nearly daily. When it comes to craftinga new poem, I will pluck from it and play with phrase/word placement. As forprojects, all of my book projects have a concept from the very beginning thatfills out through the process of writing it.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I love readings. There is so much to begained from hearing a piece read out loud. A poem may start and finish on thepage but it gains new life in the air.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? Whatkinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you eventhink the current questions are?

Memory. Collective ethics. How do we bethe change we want to see while the world is literally falling apart around us?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?

A writer is responsible for continuing todisrupt, to educate, and to inspire.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editordifficult or essential (or both)?

Essential—the right editor will helpelevate your writing to a place you didn’t even know it could go.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarilygiven to you directly)?

“Ifyou don’t see yourself in the literary landscape, then the landscape needs youmore than anyone.” — EdenRobinson

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry tocollaboration)? What do you see as the appeal?

Quite easy. There is so much knowledge,new ideas and elements of writerly craft, to be gained from working indifferent genres. Equally so when collaborating with peers. The mutualexpansion of mind is what makes cross-genre experimentation and collaborationso appealing.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you evenhave one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I hold down a full time job while alsobalancing my work for Riverbed and Roommagazine. Honestly, I try to write at least three hours every Sunday morningbut it doesn’t always pan out that way. I guess my writing routine has become abit more fluid—I write when the urge hits and continue writing until the urgegoes away—and that’s okay.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for(for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I focus on living; spending time withfriends, playing mahjong, playing video games, chatting with family, taking awalk, staring at the sky. It’s okay to not be writing all the time (a notion mydear collaborators in VII remind me of whenever I am close to despair).

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Fresh linens.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but arethere any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, scienceor visual art?

Contemporary art (particularlyexperiential installation, photography and film); experimental jazz/classicalmusic; science; and anything a little esoteric (like the history of fabrics forinstance).

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, orsimply your life outside of your work?

The Dada Reader: A CriticalAnthology edited by DawnAdes; Louise Bourgeois, Peter Zumthor:Steilneset Memorial from Forlaget Press; The Deep by RiversSoloman; Infinite Citizen of the ShakingTent by Liz Howard; Suture by Nic Brewer; Camera GeologicabySiobhan Angus.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Sky dive. And write for a few weeks inBali.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would itbe? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had younot been a writer?

I am where I want to be.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

Writing gives me the avenue I need toexpress myself. Even when I am creating visual art, I always gravitate back tothe written word.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last greatfilm?

Last great film? Nomadland by Chloé Zhao.
Last great book? Reuniting with Strangers by Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio.

20 - What are you currently working on?

A new chapbook and, possibly, aspeculative novella series. In terms of poetry though, I just completed myfull-length collection of ekphrasis. Huzzah!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Emily Bludworth de Barrios, Rich Wife

 

*

At night on a beach nearby

A woman was walking

All around her theinhalation and the exhalation of the surf

The ocean heaving in acontinuous soothing respiration

In this version of thestory

I have altered the shapeof society

At night on a beachnearby

A woman was walking

All around her the inhalationand the exhalation of the surf

The ocean heaving in a continuoussoothing respiration

In this version of thestory

A woman is walking atnight on a beach nearby

And nothing happens toher

She’s fine (“Rich Wife”)

Thethird full-length collection by Emily Bludworth de Barrios, a poetsimultaneously based in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia and Houston, Texas, is Rich Wife (Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2025), following Splendor (H_NGM_N Books, 2015) and Shopping, or The End of Time (The Universityof Wisconsin Press, 2022) [see my review of such here]. The book is self-describedas “a collection of long poems whose structure echo the cluttered charm of adresser adorned with hats and hairpins, vials and scarves. Traversing theinterlaced landscapes of motherhood, marriage, wealth, and the unspoken contractsof domestic life, Emily Bludworth de Barrios folds personal experience intofar-ranging meditations on beauty, nostalgia, power, and privilege.” Set as aquintet of five extended poem-sections—“Grandmother Worship,” “CollectingSticks,” “Rich Wife,” “The Pelvic Bone” and “Hera”—the poems in Bludworth deBarrios’ latest offer a slow unfold and unfurl, as her narrative lyricsaccumulate, surrounding and encompassing her subject matter through directsentences held by the heart. “Of course,” she writes, as part of the titlepoem-sequence, “The rich wife writes a book everyone will hate // Everyone willhate // Hatred seethes in oozing glossy pools // Sweep your hatred into littlepiles // And what will you do with your hatred?”

Thereis something interesting in the elasticity of these extended poem-sections,offering a stretch and fragment, a back-and-forth of pulled-apart lines and smallmoments, all set across an extensive and accumulated canvas. “Of the woman I know,”she writes, further on, “something bad has happened to each // It isn’t myplace to say what [.]” I find the physical scope of her poems, and her canvas,quite fascinating, structured down to the detail of the line, of the phrase. “Iwas born into a time when women were almost liberated,” she writes, “I was borninto a time // We put chemicals on our hair to make it curl // Chemicals on ourhair to make it straight // With metal clamps or tongs we made it crimp, orroll, or flat // Imagine a doll that has a person inside it // Imagine a humanwho wakes curled in the head of a doll / I open her eyelids like this // Like this I move her arm [.]” Through sentences that pull apart and re-stitch,Bludworth de Barrios writes of the rich wife, writes of women, writes of domestichelp and domestic power; of excess, possibility and cultural, social and societalworth; of domestic power with a powerlessness and vise versa; with all the latentand blatant contradictions and presumptions and collisions brought to bear.

She lives in aneighborhood with a gate

In her front living roomshe is closing the curtains now

Or a woman who works forher is closing the curtains now

She herself remainsmissing from view

 

Karen Solie, Wellwater: poems

 

BERKELEY HILLS, 2022

In Wildcat Canyon livethe laurels.
No rain in two months andnine days.
Like girls do, thelaurels grow
from the soil of a deepreserve.

Inside their frivolitythey gather
themselves, stilldropping
folded notes onto the others’open books,

though now they are doingit
underground. They cooltheir feet
in the pool of their ownshade.

When a leaf is pluckedfrom one
the others rustle theirclothes.

When that leaf is crushedin the hand
its fragrance calls backto the grove.

Thelatest by award-winning Canadian poet and editor Karen Solie [see my 2016 interview with her here], following Short Haul Engine (London ON: BrickBooks, 2001), Modern and Normal (Brick Books, 2005), Pigeon (TorontoON: Anansi, 2009) [see my review of such here], The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out (Anansi, 2015), The Living Option: Selected Poems (Northumberland UK: Bloodaxe Books, 2013) [see my review of such here] and TheCaiplie Caves (Anansi, 2019) [see my review of such here], is Wellwater: poems (Anansi, 2025). Solie is a curiosity in Canadian poetry, one of thefew poets of her (our) generation that sees broader attention in othercounties, with books and journal publications regularly in the United Kingdom(including a selected published there, for example), and her work has, over theyears, won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, Pat Lowther Award, Trillium BookAward and the Griffin Poetry Prize, as well as been shortlisted for the DerekWalcott Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. She’s also a Guggenheim Fellow, which makefor an even shorter list across Canadian poetry—the only other examples I canthink of are A.L. Moritz, Tim Bowling and Anne Carson. And all of this done, ofcourse, with a quiet and modest confidence across the depths of a Saskatchewan lyric.

Soliehas long been able to craft a contained and sustained tone across her poems; craftinga scene of familiar landscapes with new or renewed depth through carved linesand a narrative that appears direct but is something thicker, more complex. Herlines are striking, such as the opening of the poem “THE TREES IN RIVERDALEPARK,” that reads: “Diagonal paths quadrisect a square acre / white as the pagein February.” Her line is loaded, but with unexpected elements, offering adifferent kind of effect than the mere straightforward. How white, one mightask, is the February page? As the poem continues, writing:

In the soil of this basicgeometry
ash, elm, and maplethrive like understandings
whose bare logics arevisible,
understandings the theoremhas allowed.

Between roam bodies ofthe sensible world –
people, dogs, all those lovers
of the material andimmaterial

illuminated, as underworking hypotheses,
by sodium bulbs whosecostly inefficiencies
Los Angeles and Philadelphiahave apparently
moved on from.

Solieis very good at crafting a scene with intricate nuance and unexpected turns,whether image or narrative, and this collection offers poems that hold to thetight image-scene, with others that open up across the narrative a bit more,allowing air through the lines across a greater narrative and lyric distance. Listento this excerpt of the three-page poem “LAS CRUCES,” a poem that holds aquality of filmed narrative, of landscape:

In our morning’ssuffering at Texico
B— found a snake, ablack-necked snake,
against the wall of Red’sBorder Town Playorama,
said he’d get what lay inthe glove box to kill it
but it was harmless andafraid.
            I had always pitied the snake
beneath the foot of the BlessedVirgin,
it looked to mevulnerable to misrepresentation,
but B— said enmities
had been establishedbetween them, that purity
is not a passive quality,and Mary, like the bridge
in the Song of Songs, isbright as the sun,
lovely as the moon,

Solie’spoems offer both deep wisdom and a lightness across the line; a sparkle, if youwill, of truth, if that idea might still be one that holds any resonance: theheart of one true thing articulated across an otherwise landscape of dark. Her poemscraft deep wells of meditative thinking, lines that turn a leaf over in one’shand, to study every side.

Thelandscapes of her poem-scenes are solid, foundational; shifting from poem to poembut always returning, book after book, to the foundation of the people, physicaldetail, climate and intimacy of rural Saskatchewan, a sense of home and prairieSolie has in common with Prince Edward Island-based poet Bren Simmers [see my review of her latest collection here]: the further out either of them might movethrough the world, the stronger the pull to return back to the landscapes thatshaped them. As Solie writes, as part of the extended and descriptive “THEGRASSLANDS”: “And when you do venture in / with your tire tracks and snakegaiters //  the hospitality of grass / isa dry loaf, cracked cup, mattress of prairie wool, / northern bedstraw andgreat blanket flower, / wild licorice, clover, corn mint, bergamot, // andheat, rippling like curtains / as the grasshoppers saw away – / leave yourpacked lunch out they will eat it in an hour – [.]”

Thereis almost a kind of restlessness articulated through these poems, with aninability to remain still even across multiple poems on and around stillness,but rarely in the same geography, the same moment, beyond that aforementionedSaskatchewan (and Toronto, I’ve noticed). The poems, together, cite arestlessness, or perhaps a curiosity, perpetually seeking to reach acrossanother horizon to seek a better understanding of what might be out there,whether through moments across geography, or even across the narrator’s ownpast. It it the clarity, one suspects, she seeks. “An empty bottle rolled underthe passenger seat / and back out again // as my grandfather drove,” the poem “DUST”writes, “one foot on the gas, one on the brake, // it was a clear glass bottlewith white lettering, / and a sense of the conditional crept in through thevents // like dust, the incense of the road / scrubbing the air of clarity, ofall eels but the demands of dust, // what you need replaced / with what you don’t– you are ignored // by everything as you struggle with it.” It is through, onemight suggest, these moments together, that we might best know and appreciate thesepoems. Or, as the poem “MIRROR” concludes:

And it can take some timeto understand what side of the mirror you’re on.
Etymology is itselfhospitable,

like a brief stay inhospital, somewhere to rest, to recover.
Perhaps basic hospitalitywas enough for her.
Because if you decidesomething is enough, it’s enough.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Mahaila Smith

Mahaila Smith (they/them) is a researcher,poet and editor based on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabegin Ottawa, Ontario. Their novelette in verse, Seed Beetle, isforthcoming with Stelliform Press. Their recent chapbooks include Water-Kin(Metatron Press 2024) and Enter the Hyperreal (above/ground press 2024).You can find their work on their website at mahailasmith.ca.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your mostrecent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Myfirst chapbook, Claw Machine, came out in July 2020 with Anstruther Press! I was very lonely that summer, with all of my socializing happened overvideo calls. I launched that collection on Zoom with other new Anstrutherchapbook writers, including Kirby, Ayaz Pirani, Síle Englert andSamuel Strathman. I think the biggest thing that came from that experience wasthe greater sense of belonging I began to feel within the poetrycommunity. 

2 - How did you come to poetryfirst, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Ifirst began writing poetry as a child, with strict adherence to rhyme andsyllable count. I treated poetry like a logic puzzle then. When I was inuniversity I read 10:04 by Ben Lerner, which is about a poet in NewYork. That book includes autobiographical poems by the main character and setme on an obsession of writing autofictional poetry for the next couple ofyears. 

3 - How long does it take tostart any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly,or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their finalshape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

Usually,if I have an idea, then writing will come fairly quickly, and a poem won'tchange too much after the initial writing. As I write something I reread andedit it a few times to make sure it works. 

4 - Where does a poem usuallybegin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into alarger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?

Inthe past couple of years, I've been writing collections that have overarchingnarratives, including Seed Beetle,and the fungal horror MS I am working on as part of the John Newlove PoetryAward chapbook. I've been enjoying writing initial poems about characters andsettings and seeing how I can build out those worlds. 

5 - Are public readings partof or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoysdoing readings?

Ilike doing readings! Mostly because it's a chance to spend time withother writers I admire. I appreciate getting to hear other people read morethan reading myself. I find it so interesting to hear how others choose whatwords to put together and how they read their work. 

6 - Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?

Recentlysomeone told me that the main question a lot of people are working towardsis, how do we live well withothers? I think that you could argue that that is the question behindmy new collection. And probably the question behind a lot of work tocome. 

7 – What do you see thecurrent role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? Whatdo you think the role of the writer should be?

Currently,there are a lot of issues with the role of writers. Writers are exploited fromso many sides, rates of pay have stagnated and work is scraped to feed largelanguage models. I think that the current role of writers should be to protestxenophobia and fascism, ideologies that appear to be on the riseinternationally. 

8 - Do you find the process ofworking with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Ihad the immense pleasure of working with both Lynne Sargent and Selena Middleton on the edits for SeedBeetle. Working closely with outside editors was a new experience for meand definitely an essential one. Their feedback helped make the collection intosomething I'm very proud of. 

9 - What is the best piece ofadvice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Ithink the best advice I've heard is the work of writing isn't limited to justwriting. Make sure you are spending time with friends, with family, doingthings you enjoy, learning new things. Good writing comes from being inthe world. 

10 - What kind of writingroutine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day(for you) begin?

Ahh!I wish I had a daily writing routine. Everyday is different. I have been doingweekly writing sessions with other poets, including Helen Robertson, Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin and Ellen Chang-Richardson. I dearly appreciate writing with otherpeople. It keeps me inspired, motivated and accountable to my projects and tomy peers. I am not a morning person, but my mornings often begin with acup of herbal tea. In the past year I started using a website called 4theWords,and that has been motivating for me to hit a consistent daily word count.  

11 - When your writing getsstalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?

Iusually turn back to reading, working through my endless tbr pile. CurrentlyI'm reading Marisca Pichette's debut novella, Every Dark Cloud and Tlotlo Tsamaase's Womb City. When I'm stuck on characterdevelopment I like to rewatch Fleabag. 

12 - What fragrance remindsyou of home?

Thesmell of lilacs! There were two big lilac bushes in my parents' backyardgrowing up. 

13 - David W. McFadden oncesaid that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influenceyour work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Iam a frequent visitor to art galleries! I was raised in a family with twogallery curators, so that has always been an important part of my life. I havenot been writing ekphrastic poetry recently, but that is a form I turn to whenI am feeling uninspired. You can read one of my ekphrastic poems, Haze, in the Ekphrastic Review's page dedicated to poetic responsesto Lovers on the Beach by Müfide Kadri. 

14 - What other writers orwritings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Ilove writing that combines humour and sci-fi/fantasy. My all-time favouritewriter is Jasper Fforde. I have already mentioned Ben Lerner, who consistentlyinspires my poetry. Stuart Ross' poems inspire me to write surreality,especially his collection, I Cut My Finger. I attribute my interest in narrative poetry to Autobiography of Red by AnneCarson. 

15 - What would you like to dothat you haven't yet done?

Inmy writing work, I would like to complete a novel-length manuscript! I'm alsointerested in trying to do more script-writing.

16 - If you could pick anyother occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Fora summer, in 2019, I worked as an archaeological field tech for a culturalresource management company. I really miss doing that physical labour. Over thelockdown I became an obsessive baker, and I'm curious about what it would belike to work in a  bakery. 

17 - What made you write, asopposed to doing something else?

Mainlymy love for reading and hearing stories. I have always loved to make up storiesand write them down. It wasn't really a conscious decision, just something Iwas always compelled to do. 

18 - What was the last greatbook you read? What was the last great film?

Thelast great book I read was Cobalt byrecently retired MP Charlie Angus! It's about the history of the silver rush inCobalt Ontario. The last great film I saw was Sing Sing.

19 - What are you currentlyworking on?

Asidefrom the John Newlove Award poetry chapbook and aside from finishing my MA inNorthern studies, I am working on writing a longer fiction piece about sentientmetal, a fibre artist and a mining con man.

12or 20 (second series) questions;

Chaudiere Books : National Poetry Month,

In case you didn't catch, I curated and posted daily poems once again this year for National Poetry Month over at the Chaudiere Books blog. Can you believe this is the twelfth year I've been doing this? You can see links to the entire series of poems here, by the way. Either way, be sure to check out the poems by this year's poets. Thanks to everyone for participating! Helen Robertson ; rob mclennan ; Benjamin Niespodziany ; Jacqueline Valencia ; Sarah Wolfson ; Deborah Meadows ; Amanda Earl ; Dawn Macdonald ; Kendra Sullivan ; Tom Jenks ; Jason Heroux ; Leesa Dean ; Gloria Frym ; Kevin Stebner ; Jamie Kitts ; Michael Turner ; D. S. Stymeist ; Courtney Bates-Hardy ; Em Dial ; Edward Smallfield ; Carlos A. Pittella ; Karla Kelsey ; Scott Inniss ; Julie Paul ; Jack Saebyok Jung ; Salem Paige ; Lana Crossman ; Michael Boughn ; Tolu Oloruntoba ; Jaclyn Desforges ;

Michael Chang, Things a Bright Boy Can Do

 

HERE WE GO FOREVER

cody who goes both ways

they say familiarityaccelerates impact

in secret huddles

tender kid w/ the kindtan

poached pears

vanilla ice cream

who was wearing the flip-flops?

i’m illiterate b/c i didn’thave a high-school boyfriend

she smiled when theyasked but

it’s hard to get by w/that kind of sincerity

in the wet warm place

hand-hold ur thing iz asandwich

free rein in the blasthole

the mary jo bang

FromManhattan-based American poet and editor Michael Chang, following titles such as Heroes (Temz Review/845 Press, 2025), Toy Soldiers (Action,Spectacle, 2024), SWEET MOSS (Anstruther Press, 2024) [see my review of such here], SYNTHETIC JUNGLE (Northwestern University Press, 2023) and EMPLOYEESMUST WASH HANDS (GreenTower Press, 2024), is the full-length Things a Bright Boy Can Do (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2025). I’m all forcross-border conversation, obviously, but it is always a curiosity to see aCanadian small press produce a full-length by a non-Canadian poet (which meansit wouldn’t be eligible for Canada Council funding, putting the financial onus onpublishing such a title entirely on the press, something few publishers are ableto take on). It doesn’t happen that often, and it suggests the press is seekingto expand its reach, both in terms of foreign sales and attempting to bring anauthor into the Canadian literary conversation (although that might be anoverly generous speculation on my part), especially given this particular titleappears to be a unique edition and not, say, a Canadian edition of a title simultaneouslyappearing with a publisher in the author’s home country (such as with CoachHouse publishing a collection of essays moons back by American poet C.D.Wright, or Anansi publishing a poetry title by British poet Simon Armitage). Withchapbooks produced over the past two years through Temz Review/845 Press andAnstruther Press, as well as an author biography that cites publication inCanadian journals such as Capilano Review, Contemporary Verse 2,the Ex-Puritan, The Malahat Review and PRISM International,Canadian literature is certainly paying attention to Michael Chang, as much asMichael Chang seems to be attending Canadian publishers; perhaps a move northis being considered? [edit: I have since been informed that Michael Chang is actually Canadian]

Orperhaps I make too much of this; or perhaps, even further, borders mean notwhat they used to when it comes to how books are seen, distributed, articulatedand sold (beyond the current tariff nonsense, of course). On the surface, thepoems in Chang’s Things a Bright Boy Can Do are accumulative, whip-smart,hurt and funny, sassy and queer, comparable in many ways to the work of New England-based poet and editor Chen Chen [see my review of their 2023 collection,Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, here], speaking first-personlyric monologues around emergencies and histories, childhood recollection andliterary interveavings, violence and linguistic measure, cultural referencesand expansive gestures. “i detect your silence,” Chang writes, as part of “ATONEMENT,”“you you practiced // personification of ALLURE // fresh face pummelled red& teal // according to that distant sheepdog narcissa [.]” There is thesass, the casual glance and gesture of the deeply felt, deeply considered; thehighly-literature “flirty to righteousness, wrathful to lackadaisical,”providing an echo between the two, but in Chang, something different, as well:something looser, almost freer, allowing for the movement of the gesture todirect the narratives. “Matthew DICKMAN was so upset he could not stand,” the expansiveand gestural “BABY DRIVE SOUTH” writes, “Michael DICKMAN was investigated byanother agency due to / a conflict of interes // Paul MULDOON told you hishorse was larger than yours // CACONRAD sent anthrax to Betsy DeVos &  was awarded / the Medal of Freedom [.]” Atturns thoughtful, joyful, meditative and silly, Things a Bright Boy Can Dooffers a perspective on how one might live best and simply be within the world,within the moment, whatever else might be happening or happened, or even yet tohappen. Or, as the poem “KING OF THE WORLD” writes, just at the end: “on thisday // we go back to our old routine [.]”