To Revision and Beyond!—A Poetry Workshop from Page to Stage Calling all poets! You’ve written and rewritten your poem, maybe even workshopped it and incorporated the feedback of others to make it stronger—more poignant, innovative or musical. Now that you’ve accepted the gift and branded the poem “finished” (or close enough): what now? Lock it […]
Khashayar Mohammadi | MY CITY THE CITY, 1st Place Winner of the Vallum Poetry Award 2021
MY CITY THE CITY my city the city, or wherever I’m flung into the arms of back-alleys and streetcorner loot: the art of lower class feeling: to start at the shoe. Asphalt: faulted at the foundation and sinking. I neighbour a dozen names for Allah by proximity, I build clay bowls to crush: can you […]
Robyn Maree Pickens | ELEGY, 2nd Place Winner of the Vallum Poetry Award 2021
ELEGY it was lunchtime & you sliced pale not scarlet bananas onto bread our lungs were the scent of fruiting as we sank our baby teeth into sweet our lungs were young & sprinkled sugar was our first illicit the scent of mother, brother, & I wound deep into my limbic system desiccant now is […]
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – 19:1 “Bridges”
Submissions for Vallum 19:1 are now closed. Thank you for sending your work! The ability to move oneself towards future possibilities and potentials brings us to bridges, to principles of connection. Our current social and mental states can often seem to function on the premise of fragmentation, with past and present chaos always sweeping away a […]
VALLUM AWARD FOR POETRY 202O WINNER | j tate barlow | WALKING INTO AUGUST IN EAST-END TORONTO 2020
WALKING INTO AUGUST IN EAST-END TORONTO 2020 Is it how spruce don’t think, just do—arrange their boughs for things withwings to dip andglide on through? Or how the yellowcrane looms—strange arabesque-sur-bleu, distraction-dance, wide arcs boom-swung and slow—dwarfing all thatgrows nearby? Stow yourthrone in a box on high look down waydown to read what’s spelled below […]
POEM OF THE WEEK | George Elliott Clarke | WHITEWASH
WHITEWASH
White is waves bright as crinkled sunlight—or sunrise, done up in foam White is Grevens Paerecider, Ironworks Pear Eau-de-Vie, Lunenburg County Winery Montbeliard Pear Wine, and Belle-de-Brillet Poire-et-Cognac White is the missing link* between Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor White is a spic-and-span E.R. with a scatalogical surgeon wielding a shit-smeared scalpel White is a Snow White blow job necessitating a White House snow job White is white diamonds white gold white chocolate white weapons white Negroes*[…]VALLUM CHAPBOOK AWARD 2021 FINALIST | Nisha Patel | THIS IS NOT A DISORDER
Nisha Patel is an award-winning queer and disabled artist. She was the City of Edmonton’s 8th Poet Laureate, and the 2019 Canadian Individual Slam Champion. She currently works as the 2021 Regional Writer in Residence. She is a recipient of the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Award and the University of Alberta Alumni Award of Excellence. Her debut collection COCONUT is available now at Glass Bookshop. You can find her at nishapatel.ca.
Nisha Patel was one of the finalist of the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook Not a Disorder.
VALLUM CHAPBOOK AWARD 2021 HONOURABLE MENTION WINNER | Maurya Kerr | TOMMY NOUN.
ORION My boy came into the room and said, Mom, you are the hound, Dad is the hunter, and I am the— but he couldn’t remember, so stood there, silent. I wanted to know, but forgot how to speak, form my lips into language, started to say dear or hart or morn—even though I knew […]
POEM OF THE WEEK | Janine Certo | CONSPIRACY THEORY
CONSPIRACY THEORY a circle of reason / a proof that cannot be proved or disproved / a mad mixture / a template for order / cast, shaped, readymade and launched / requires immediate response (response must have no minor errors) / a distrust, a witch hunt, an elaborate dance / behind the scenes / eyewitness […]