In the Roundtable Podcast episode 85 I talk to poet, anthologist, and author of “Medicine Unbundled: a journey through the minefield of Indigenous health care,” Gary Geddes.
Poetry
Jeremy Paxman and Poetry’s Bad Rap
A GUARDIAN UK article, written by Alison Flood and published over the weekend, quotes the Forward prize judge and TV presenter Jeremy Paxman as wishing aloud that “poetry ‘would raise its game a little bit, raise its sights’, and ‘aim to… Read More ›
Sei Shonagon and the Pillow Book
A PILLOW BOOK is an open-ended and spontaneous collection of fragments, and as such may include lists, observations, poems, short personal essays and diary entries. A precursor of the genre zuihitsu (random jottings – the more literal meaning to proceed,… Read More ›
Your Writing is Not Like a Barry Manilow Song
AT DINNER, my good friend Adrian M. Kelly (author of Down Sterling Road, which can he purchased here. Only one copy left!) observed that it’s difficult to make a living from serious writing.
Commonplacing Considered
FOR THE PAST twenty years and more I’ve maintained a collection of quotations in black, made-in-Czechoslovakia, Pragotrade-branded volumes. This sort of collection is known as a “commonplace book,” and the keeping of one commonplacing. I take such care to mention… Read More ›
The Virtue of Watching Your Language
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE is not unique in having a fluid, ever-changing character. Best described as a Low German dialect imbricated by Latin and Greek, via eleventh century Frenchified Norseman, English has changed a good amount since Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the… Read More ›
The Decay Of Poetry In The Year Of Revolution
When the terrible European war which everyone had known for years was coming finally did arrive, W. H. Auden composed a poem, “September 1, 1939,” which begins: I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid… Read More ›
Pablo Neruda
There was a moment in an interview I conducted in the 1990s with American social documentary photographer, Milton Rogovin, at which it occurred to me that I had arrived at a single degree of separation from the great Chilean poet… Read More ›
The Potter’s Field of Form, Part Two
[Part one of this essay was printed in ASH Volume 2, Number 2, Spring 1995] Having attempted (at the end of part one) to provoke the reader, I’ll now return to my principal subject: poems. We’ve three more writers to… Read More ›
The Potter’s Field of Form: Catherine Kidd, Sylvie Bourassa, Janet Madsen, Matt Santateresa, Ibi Kaslik and Jason Heroux —Six Montreal Poets (Part One)
Note: This article originally appeared in ASH Magazine, issue Number 2 Volume 2 (Spring 1995). I’m asked by the curious if I’ve discovered the next ——— yet: you can fill in the space with whatever “great” poet you prefer. The… Read More ›
Today, A Poem
Three Pathetic Fallacies River is a lonely geography, the silence of its endless course colder than any corpse. Sloppy hands ascend, eager as fish, to touch the dimpled pink of flesh. There is a jag in the sky that bleeds… Read More ›
