📬 Send My Love to Anyone with Maggie Helwig, Tanis MacDonald, Susan Sanford Blades, Kevin Spenst, and Kirby

Hello SMLTA Readers,

Well this is a big issue with a new essay by Tanis MacDonald on the fraught world of literary citizenship, fiction by Susan Sanford Blades, an excerpt from Maggie Helwig’s new book, Encampment, and two poems from Kevin Spenst’s recent poetry collection.

Plus two essays from Kirby and two essays from me.

And I’ve just learned how to do table of contents! Exciting!

Hope you enjoy!

Kathryn

Issue 44 ContentsThe First Time

Don’t fuck with me, fellas! by

66 (or, as I like to call it), "Sexy Sex" by

Nonfiction

Excerpt from Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community by Maggie Helwig

Words Count

Unread: A River by

Fiction

Of Monsters and Dolls by

Poetry

Two poems from A Bouquet Brought Back from Space by

Books

Poets, put your books in the hands of your neighbours’ children by Kathryn Mockler

I wrote two blurbs this season one for A Song for Wildcats by Caitlin Galway and the other for Iris and the Dead by Miranda Schreiber

Ignore Me

On Not Wanting Children by Kathryn Mockler

Gatherings

Junction Reads, Wild Prose Readings, Mary Turfah, Deborah Dundas interviews Omar El Akkad, Remembering Canadian artist Kelly Mark, fiction by Amber Nuyens, Hannah Black, David Lynch & more!

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The First TimeNonfiction
I am writing this because I want you to understand my world, the world I live in, and the world I live alongside. I have been an Anglican priest since 2012; I have been the priest at St. Stephen-in-the-Fields, in Kensington Market in Toronto, since 2013. We have had, I guess somewhat famously, an encampment in our churchyard since about the spring of 2022, although there was no single clear point when it began, and it is tied up with events and choices going back for years, and is perhaps ultimately the responsibility of the poet and theologian Rowan Williams, who was once the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am writing this because I want you to understand that this is a world of real people, who struggle and are kind, who are often special and beautiful in ways that most of our society cannot and does not try to understand. I want you to understand that I have felt safer here than in most other places, hard as it has sometimes been.","size":"md","isEditorNode":true,"title":"I am writing this because I want you to understand my world, the world I live in, and the world I live alongside.","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2025-03-03T04:41:54.182Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f..., Art & Hybrid Works","id":156584914,"type":"newsletter","reaction_count":0,"comment_count":0,"publication_name":"Send My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... Count
Maybe you’re like me; for decades I have remembered to pay my literary dues. To read, to review, to mentor, to teach, to praise the work of others with a glad heart, all while writing, re-writing, learning and unlearning bad habits, fostering better habits, thinking well and less well, and generally not worrying about making an impact on the literary scene because any opinion that an impact has been made is always the decision of other people. Like many of us, while waiting for eyes on my work, I just due it.

And I’m not always – let me extend that to not often – read.","size":"md","isEditorNode":true,"title":"So I’m thinking about literary citizenship and its vicissitudes; that is, how paying dues is both necessary and fraught.","publishedBylines":[{"id":23973556,"name":"Tanis MacDonald","bio":"Tanis MacDonald is the author of Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female, and six other books. ","photo_url":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazon... MacDonald","primaryPublicationId":4181531}],"post_date":"2025-02-28T08:51:08.775Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... Count","id":156429905,"type":"newsletter","reaction_count":0,"comment_count":0,"publication_name":"Send My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f...
In my little life
I hope to hold
some wonder —
like so many","size":"md","isEditorNode":true,"title":"In my little life / I hope to hold /\nsome wonder","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2025-02-21T01:15:54.022Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... ","id":157235954,"type":"newsletter","reaction_count":0,"comment_count":0,"publication_name":"Send My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... & FilmsIgnore MeGatherings