Poetry
-
Happy 100th, Mr. Layton
To mark the centenary of the great Canadian poet Irving Layton, I thought I’d share one my favorites of his poems. Layton’s best work is bombastic, and this poem is what I like to call “a diatribe.” They’re lots of fun to write and almost as much fun to read. LETTER TO A LIBRARIAN Mr.…
-
Ottawa Versefest
Versefest, Ottawa’s own poetry festival, is right around the corner, making me feel very fortunate to be a newly-minted Ottawan. Not only that, but this year I have the special honour of contributing some of my own work to the festivities. I’m looking forward to warming up the audience for two of Canadian poetry’s most…
-
Voices of Venus
I’m so excited to be the featured poet at this month’s Voices of Venus reading in Ottawa. Warm up with us on February 8th at Venus Envy sex shop and bookstore with an evening of poetry! The event begins with an open mike, so be sure to bring your own poems!
-
Bywords
Something about seeing Ottawa blanketed in snow has helped me to feel more at home here. I’m also excited to be doing my first poetry reading in my new hometown, courtesy of local poetry outfit, Bywords. I was excited to have my poem, Confessional, featured on their site in December, and I’m now looking forward…
-
“After The Mountain”
McGill-Queen’s University Press recently released Failure’s Opposite, a collection of essays on the work of Canadian poet A.M. Klein, edited by Sherry Simon and Norman Ravvin. Klein was ahead of his time, using his mixed Jewish/francophone/anglophone background to develop a hybrid poetic language that Quebec English-language poets are just beginning to pay tribute to today.…
-
Conversation with Rhino
The solitary part of writing and freelancing isn’t something that normally bothers me. I enjoy the quiet of my work space and the independence of my routine. But every once in a while something happens to remind me of how much of my work takes place in my head and how important it is to…
-
Gabe Foreman’s “Complete Encyclopedia…”
Poetry doesn’t have to tell a story, but I must admit, I like it better when it does. It doesn’t have to be a linear story; the story doesn’t need to have characters or an ending. But I always enjoy a poetry collection more if I feel that the poems are somehow knitted together. Gabe…
-
Ken Babstock’s “Methodist Hatchet”
When I first moved to Canada, I went on a crusade to introduce myself to as much contemporary Canadian poetry as possible. Considering that I have spent the vast majority of my life less than an hour from the US/Canada border, I was a bit chagrined to realize how few Canadian writers I had ever…
-
Joshua Trotter’s “All This Could Be Yours”
I don’t understand why Hollywood insists on marketing movies by comparing them to other movies: “It’s Die Hard meets 2001: A Space Odyssey!” “It’s this year’s Shindler’s List!” Well, I do understand why, but I don’t like the idea that the only way to describe something positively is to compare it to something else that…
-
A Blue Ribbon
I’m proud and more than a little bit humbled that my poem, “The Undefended Border,” has won the 2011 Founder’s Prize from RHINO, a Chicago-based poetry journal and collective. I’ve admired their work from afar for a while now; I don’t get to Chicago too often, but their furious poetic activity certainly makes me wish…
ABBY PAIGE 