contemporary poetry
Kateryna Kobylianska is a Ukrainian abstract artist based in Montreal. With a portfolio featuring over 20 exhibitions worldwide, she has been pushing her artistic limits since 2018. She is getting inspired by nature, cultural theories, and the whole wild ride of human thoughts and behavior. The artwork: “A big bird flying away from the small cage”
Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem SKATEBOARD from a chapbook by Thurston Moore and John Kinsella.
Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem MORNING by Jeffrey Mackie
Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem PABLO PICASSO VISITS JAMES JOYCE AND THEY DISCUSS YOUTH
by Michael Mirolla
Congratulations on winning the 2024 Vallum Chapbook Award with A Mass Choir of Little Things!
T. Liem: In this work images and memories accumulate with a weighted pace, whole stanzas repeat like time-slowing refrains, and certain words become chant-like as in âA Letter from The Seaâ with sea and see. This feels like a particular kind of musicality. Would you talk about where your experience as a drummer intersects with your experience of composing poetry?
Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem Prelude by Jan Zwicky
Check out contest guidelines and send us your best work; we look forward to reading it!
T.Liem: The Whole Catastrophe was a pleasure to read. With my pencil in hand, I was tracing ideas, underlining phrases, and noting recurring lines. There is also so much sound-joy in reading it aloud, hearing your patterns of assonance and slant rhyme. It is this musicality that lets readers draw themselves along the earth with your speaker. These are poems which also feel like invitations. Congratulations on this publication and thanks for taking the time to talk about it with me!
Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem “DIGITAL BATH” by William Grant.
A Mass Choir of Little Things seems sculpted by decay. Poet and percussionist Ockert Greeff examines physical evidence of impending disaster and recent loss, from leftover clothes to leathery faces. Bodies and landscapes bear wounds of time and the promise of finality. In one poem, his mother giggles like a girl; in the next, she cannot recognize him. But Greeffâs sparse, vivid language also finds life within endings. He imagines his elderly mom as a baby turtle wading into the water; he chronicles organisms that persist. An orange pickup truck in the desert, a swimmer lifting his arms to the sky. Greeffâs preoccupation with âthe dark mass that is taking us allâ reveals a gentle attention to existence â the rhythms of a haircut, the silences of a funeral â figuring death as one part of the story.
Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem “SEPIA” by Frances Boyle.
âIn Jami Macartyâs The Whole Catastrophe, every asterisk indicates something precious. Macarty uses the poetic form to create space for what is otherwise omitted: the fresh air outside car windows, the stars blotted out by city infrastructures, a friend gone too soon. Chronicling a road trip to the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, Macarty reflects on fragility, greed and the disasters we must withstand, from toxic feedlots to carbon monoxide poisoning.
If you would like your work to be considered to appear in Vallumâs new digital series, submit your poem. Guidelines for the âPOEMS FROM THE CROWDâ Series Submissions are accepted from September 15, 2024 to January 15, 2025. There is no fee to submit your work. Submission Requirements: Poem: Submit one poem with a maximum […]
Ockert Greeff, for his chapbook: âA Mass Choir of Little Thingsâ Excerpt from chapbook: Â Â Â * Â Â * Â Â * I let go of my yellow lunchbox Watch it swirl away in the dark water Past the boy who cannot give up He is swimming, lifting his arms up High out of the water, […]
Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem IN THOSE DAYS FATHER REPAIRED THE CLOCK by Yi Lu, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem FALLING FROM HEIGHTS (VIEW 2) by Patrick M. Pilarski
Our talented facilitator, Heather Brunet, recently conducted a workshop titled “Poetic Maps” at St. Gabriel Elementary School (SEEDS classroom). Known for her dynamic approach and ability to connect with students, Heather introduced a powerful method to use metaphors, guiding sixth graders to explore and express their chosen places through poetic language. The workshop was a […]
Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem “THE MAN WHO COULD SMELL TIME” by Tom Wayman
Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem “Deer April” by Patience Wheatley
Theophylline: A Poetic Migration via the Modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké (de Castro, Vallejo)
By ErĂn Moure
House of Anansi Press 2023
Reviewed by Bill Neumire
Savor our Poem in Re-view section featuring the enchanting poem “On-Train Slashin'” by jwcurry
Exciting news! Tara McGowan-Ross shared her thoughts on our outreach program in Native Montreal. Take a peek to see the positive impact and stories behind what we’re doing. It’s all about community and making a difference. Check it out!
Savor our Poem in re-view section featuring the enchanting poem “Whistle” by Susan Gillis
RECURRING AWAKENING by FRANZ WRIGHT âFranz wrote fearlessly about mental illness, addiction, and loneliness, as well as about faith and the unending beauty of his world, no matter how broken; he never wrote a line that wasnât fiercely important to him, musical, as witty as it was deadly serious. Franz lived for poetryâat times it seemed […]
From the Immediate to the Timeless: A Conversation with Maya Clubine
Life Cycle of a Mayfly chronicles more than the life of a river bug. Maya Clubineâs collection, winner of the 2023 Vallum Chapbook Award, takes mayflies as a departure point for thinking about ecosystems, interdependence, and the lessons that we pass down through generations. Clubine considers the growth of a fly from nymph to imago alongside changing seasons, bird migrations, a fatherâs passing, a daughterâs return. Along the way, cycles tangle like a fishing line. In this interview, critic Rosie Long Decter talks with Clubine about structure, repetition, and the relationship between the cosmic and the minute.  Â
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Submissions for our Vallum Chapbook Award 2024 are now open!
WINNING CHAPBOOK: PUBLICATION + $300
ENTRY FEE:
$25 for Canadian entrants, $30 for U.S. and international entrants. Submissions and payments are processed through Vallumâs Submittable account.
Exciting News: Two New Vallum Chapbooks Now Available! đWe are thrilled to announce the release of two captivating chapbooks that have been carefully crafted by talented poets. These gems are now available for you
Vallum 2023 Poetry Award-winners!
Honourable Mention: Murray Mann, for poem: âHow I Kept My Pace with the Mountainsâ
Vallum 2023 Poetry Award-winners!
Finalist: Diana Hope Tegenkamp, for poem: âso I can bring you with meâ
Vallum 2023 Poetry Award-winners!
First Place: Bridget Huh, for poem: âTouching the Verbâ.
We are pleased to announce our winners for the 2023 Vallum Poetry Award!
We are thrilled to announce our short list for the 2023 Vallum Poetry Award. It was a pleasure to read everyone’s work and we are awash in gratitude and admiration for these poets gracing us with their work. Congratulations to the shortlisted poets! Murray Mann, âHow I Kept My Pace With The […]
Casey Flynn is a stay-at-home writer-dad and may or may not someday have a PhD in religion. These days he enjoys his 1.5-year-old daughter’s dramatic recitations interspersed with singing and dancing.
The task at hand,
the questioner mumbled,
is to ascertain the moment par
of when untruth becomes
truth
of when truth becomes
subservient.
coming up over the hill
then down a chill
into slivered light, a shiver
walking across green, grassy wholenessâ
A pull so she pivots on her heel. Thereâs a little girl clutching a book.
Galatea smiles consciously, imagines the process of petrification.
The girlâs eyes are a dark name scratched in an oak tree.
I read about you in art class. Youâre my favourite. Medusa is too.
after the deluge, thereâs the quiet. one colour
blue, an eyeless blank sky where i once felt your mind
close over my own like water in water.
death was a circle i broke when i surfaced,
emptiness splintering down on my shoulders â light
falls all over me, not passing though.
Iâve started carefully extracting you from family photos. Slice/slash. Thankfully scissors. Thankfully fire for a last labour of lost love, I blacken your aching silhouette âtil that one shot becomes a queen sized bed, my small frame curled against a shapeless ghost. Do you know the one? Call it foreshadowing: Iâm asleep, feeling safe. Your […]
Everything starts today. If renewal were easy,
weâd all begin again. Weâd drop our endless searching
for four-leaf clovers that declare us topped up
with good luck. Our efforts at self-improvement
The closest thing I have to a heritage
is a photograph of my grandmother
being fake-arrested in a fake saloon
in Arizona. Two cowboy actors aim
in the first photo
the apple is whole
In the mid-teens
You gave me a tuner
In Mayuhe, which Iâve
After
the joy of seedlings and
hopeful tiny plants,
what about those static seeds?
yes it is both river and sea
is a simple pleasure, 2×4 uprights
of old deck railing nailed
together for a compost box
using straightened nails. Each
board the same length, so
no sawing. Each dimension
Pygmalion, one arm draped across the cool white shoulder of Galatea,
the other hand dangling a martini glass, or maybe, in sensual fingers,
a cigarette in a holder. He rivets attention forever, her enduring form
endorsing his obsession. O, he compels, he scintillates.
Water when separate seeks again a place to pool. Tonight under the full autumn moon I feel the pull to return to water. The dewy heat from my heart moves away like the yellow leaves blowing from the tulip tree. Since you left, my body longs to return to a place of its kind. It […]
it hits me at the strangest times
snow falling down on my hands
standing outside the psychiatric hospital
sometimes the snow is so silent
i think iâm the only one in the world
and iâm alive, iâm alive.
my sister is dying at times she states it
her life parsed
phrases/phases terms/terminal …
A cure for root rot
How to burn this tree down
How to separate
the bones we bury
and the ones we carry
Mid-journey, turn and look back
at the tracks youâve made, the line
youâve furrowed into mud, into snow,
a weaving cursive through the slop.
Trees parked on the Boulevard of City Lights wait for the signal to change
from restless rapture to loving outrage at the taking down of his words,
jelly beans of rhyme spilt out in a golden stream.
Trees with arms outstretched like St. Francis drawing the birds in white chalk
across a charcoal sky, statues of the world reaching out for poetry.
i’ve seen it before with potted plants
whose roots expand to bloom in places too small
while others wait to be given soil beyond measure
from Life Cycle of a Mayfly, the winner of the 2023 Vallum Chapbook Award The sun sinks down toward the thin horizon. The weary peacock falls asleep inside its crowned flask. The Philosopher sits on a rock and jots a few brief observations about a river bug above the Black Sea. The river bug flies, […]
Returning home from evening mass
in the big car,
they were like canal boats then
sliding through the loose gravel, in the back seat
she pushed my cuticles up
with a silver file not unpainfully
âIntellectual curiosity about oneâs own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery,â: so writes the American poet, novelist, and essayist Siri Hustvedt. So quotes the Chilean-born QuĂ©bĂ©cois poet, novelist, and essayist Nicholas Dawson as he investigates his own illness, pushing through the multiple layered skins of depression, turning it over to examine it in this light and that, as a prism that might allow some strand of light into the complex, ailing self.
âThe problem is that Iâm a stranger to myself,â DĂ©lani Valin writes halfway through her dĂ©but collection Shapeshifters, in âWhat are the Ethics of Picking a Stinging Plant?â The third paragraph of this clever, subtle prose poem continues…
Interview by Lauren Turner A contemporary study of the institution, Gravitas boldly explores academiaâs tendency to tolerate gendered abuse. Amy Berkowitz lifts the veil on the ordinary violence that female students are subjected to â violence that goes so far as to interrupt their writing practices and distort their relationships to words and literature. Illuminated […]
Vallum is so pleased to congratulate Maya Clubine as the winner of this year’s award for her chapbook Life Cycle of a Mayfly, which will be published in the fall alongside a new chapbook by Karen Solie! About Life Cycle of a Mayfly Maya Clubineâs careful poetry avoids the easy delineation of beginning, middle, end. Rather, cycles of […]
We are thrilled to present six exciting and beautiful chapbooks as finalists. Click through below to read excerpts and come back soon to find out the winner!
from Show and Tell, a collaborative chapbook by André Babyn, Sasha Manoli, and Misha Solomon, a collective finalist in the Vallum Chapbook Award contest for 2023
from Tinderbox by Zak Jones, a finalist in the Vallum Chapbook Award contest for 2023
from The Solve by Medrie Purdham, a finalist in the Vallum Chapbook Award contest for 2023
from Life Cycle of a Mayfly by Maya Clubine, a finalist in the Vallum Chapbook Award contest for 2023
from a short history of longing by Karan Kapoor, a finalist in the Vallum Chapbook Award contest for 2023
from Basement Bedroom by Alicia Byrne Keane, a finalist in the Vallum Chapbook Award contest for 2023
It’s the summer solstice
The day the darkening begins
If I keep walking west I can precede this time again
In a year. Not much stamina
Foot-shoes sore
This collection pulls and weaves the wool of the ideal and ârealâ over (and under) critical aspects of identity; it is a small representation, a particular angle and nuance, on broader themes of culture, race, ethnicity, colour, ability, and queerness. It is my taste flight of fancy in the growth and inspiration that has come from âwinging itâ as a queer artist of colour: each collage piece is a different flavour of âthe dreamy and not so dreamyâ.
half is more than none, sense is the line you draw.
you canât see the horizon, even so i found a place. our promises are heat waves
but our bones vowed to step forward.
I dream a basement
in a boarding house
and I must go
down into its splintered
silver light searching
for cargo and machinery
crouched in corners
everything flashing
When I was younger
There were fewer machines
Later I sat in an office
Surrounded by wires and lights
They didnât keep me alive
But somehow connected
I dreamt we were a family
of Dilberts with Ziggy noses.
Mom was snapping
the sordid candid portraitâ
time-lapse, time-delay.
heat into my hands,
befuddled old dog
pushing against my arm
with its beseeching nose
and eyes, till I succumb,
Every night, in our dreams, we make a space
for us, somewhere no one else can find.
This evening, we arrange a rendez-vous in Gizeh,
where time is an eternityâa sparkle that blinds,
slicing lips in prismatic laughter, we can forget
future anxieties far too many to mention.
I dreamed I dug my own grave and looked
at the clouds as they lowered my coffin.
You werenât there. I know this, because
even when I was dead I wondered.
Unlike me, time moves on quickly.
You rooted your life
in magic numbers and rabbitâs feet
instead of something concrete
like your motherâs religion
now your perception is fading
so you set the clocks to military time,
try for one more hour of catching angels:
charge your stones, the moon is full
but veiled in vapour
pull the stars closer to your lips
that gave me nightmares
or maybe it was the giant hole
in the logic of importing butter
from New Zealand
or the giant hole in the ozoneâ
wait, isnât that healing? Didnât we do
one thing right? I donât miss hairspray.
Or maybe it was the giant gap
between me and the suffering
and yet I am still suffering,
still count myself among them,
paper cuts versus daggers
My reflection fades and distorts in the fogged damp
of double-panes, hanging against a fading, ice-blue
afternoon. Beyond the window frost coats trees
and stones not yet snow-smothered. Itâs a ghostly world,
dead as the moon.
Experiment
as you like: on your back
circled by vultures, your hands muffled
by your pillow. Still,
every night, senseless ocean worries over
the little deaths that
fold themselves
inside the big one.
Throat songs at midnight light
swing wavering sharp, land
soft as shrouds
rise again and again
eternal as rock echoes
eternal as ghost kisses
At an average of five a night
thatâs over 300 million daily in Late Antiquity
alone, or the Mediterranean Pagan-Christian
Intermediary Period, as my department
Was last rebranded. Funding cut.
Break the seal, play on double fast-forward,
salient images only pause on, note
and if typical stamp TYPICAL
that gets in and kills every last one, that fastens
on what it finds there and leaves a gory mess, yes
a nightmare is being trapped with its slippery
muscular intention and the means to do it
to smell the rancid Mustelid before it
weasels triumphant through a small wire hole
A stutter-self, a shadow without edge,
a last echo, mitochondrial must,
every question I donât want knowledge
of or an answer to. What lives in dust
I donât dream anymore.
Since I moved into this house,
My sleep is deep as the sea.
Flying only happens in dreams.
No one sees the moon-chord
direct the dead through the underground
or bones grip roots.
We lengthen as herons mid-air.
Our past melts yellow for the dayâs heat cradle.
i feel its twisted desire
it hisses an incantation
calls down the shadows of
betelgeuse bellatrix saiph rigel
to pin my shoulders my hips
against the bed
The blackberries arenât ripe,
havenât quite reached the cliffâs edge
from which there is no return without thorns
scratching like vinyl
Have you ever found yourself in a dream
following a path that seems familiar
a rutted winding way surrounded by uncertainty?
You pass through shadows of the forest
You cannot see ahead, but continue
trusting what you must
somewhere in New York, a woman collects
our dreamsâ
ear-tags our fleshy sleeping psyches and lines
them in neat taxonomies on her shelf
in mine, the bees have gone extinct and the fish
have sunk to mud and the backbones of
our ecosystems have collapsed under human weight
This space
was found
in a dream of tomorrow.
I wander through sleep
into these red squares,
and the light is of a kind
I have never before known.
What you need: a sheet, a pen, a
hand, I
use my right to write.
If your dreams are ending
badly, put them into words,
like this:
those images follow us
into nightsâ labyrinths crevices mud and monotone scumble
How do you know you havenât been infected
by the fungus that turns ants into zombies
and then erupts from your head, its fruiting
bodies releasing spores, which in turn infect
we promised each other we wouldnât
But youâd told me long ago you never planned to live past 30
But you didnât even get to be 30
But while youâd always wanted children, I didnât, that hurt you
But as a child in elementary school, they labelled you âdelinquentâ
But as a teen, being a dropout made you âbadassâ
Vast and lifeless
Imagine: it holds nothing, ever,
But its own damaged mass.
It travels alone
Bound to us
Like some old beaten dog
It had been forty years since
Iâd seen her face to face. No
surprise, I couldnât remember
how Julie made that planchette spider
from forks and a glass.
I pull aside a dreamer
who doesnât believe
in the dream
Its not the duration I say
But the rhythm of hell
and my thoughts
are kick drums
syncopated
Listen,
there are five things here:
The Sky
This Home
Birdsongs
Us
and Patience
I dreamt
my lover gave to me a wolf’s pelt.
My first response was contentment.
Sleep-buoyed, I knew this as important.
What if you had been born? And with you, the skyâ
in the night-ness of all things between
my dormant grief and his. And with you,
I was seven levels deep inside myself
on
floating a
lake
of ganglia
each level had a door that led to another door opened
with a sound I translated as
Winter pushes unto the land & a cold flame rises. A palmprint fades from the glass & the child wonders where it leaves to. A letter has just come in from the old country & everyone gathers around. Cousin Mac tells of a dream heâs been having lately in which he finds himself in a cave running
the summer I spent on the lake
I dropped some semaa as we jumped in the canoe
kwe told me stories of mishipeshu
of violence and death and vengeance
the wind picked up and blew against us
the entire way back
I do not think one should read poetry at night
just before sleeping,
for how can someone lay down to rest
when poems lift up your mind
as in âBullet Points,â or Love is the love of
who we are, it is a form of knowingâŠ
three hours of tremble
on a thin blue mat i trace
escape routes on google maps
fantasize quiet in my palms
i am fevered and adept i bode
vibration bid low on eBay
I come to
in the black
and itâs pouring
and Iâm not
sure which
house Iâm in
not that I have
If you like, you can begin with a choice: inside or outside?
Ask, what are you doing there? I think you’re in our bed… I guess
our bed is still warm. Are you? Other things follow, you.
this morning, a hole appears in your stomach. you rinse dishes that
roll inward. sprinkle flowers which disappear. your heartbeat ragged
like stems rotting in still water. it is no small devastation. sprung
without antecedent or count in. just a slow sink.
To say they distanced
to say it wasnât about spit
What began as a statement of rot
after reading a book about rot
Jake Byrne interviewed David about his new book, Dream of Me as Water, in late 2022. They spoke for an hour. This is an excerpt of their conversation.
Thus, with the poem âEverything,â begins Gary Barwinâs latest poetry collection, The Most Charming Creatures. Barwin, who has written 26 books, is also a composer (he earned his PhD in music composition) and multidisciplinary artist. Progressing in four sections, The Most Charming Creaturesâfollow-up to Barwinâs recent 2019 Selected Poems: For It Is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breatheâtakes its title from a science monograph. Explaining the title in an interview with Open Books, Barwin said:
When I heard Harbour Publishing were releasing a posthumous book by Patrick Lane, I knew it would be a must-read collection. Lane became one of the finest writers of his generation or any other by writing poetry at once easily accessible and breathtakingly lyrical.
Trailer Park Shakes is a lot of things, and in being a lot of things contains a lot of things to like. Itâs working-class writing, in the classical, economic-theory sense: this is not the writing of a suburban expatriate who just learned the word âkyriarchyâ in their MFA. This is not even the explicitly Marxist poetry of writers like Joe Wallace, Avery Lake, or Brendan Joyceâit expresses, in fact, the violent ways capitalism robs the most economically vulnerable of the material requirements for organizing (From âThe Slow Creeping Feeling that Everything Will Not be Okayâ: ârebellion quelled by the almighty dollar / Iâm too busy / I gotta go to work / I got a family to feedâ).
A Review of Time out of Time by Arlene Paré
In winter Iâll know
by the harsh call of raven
and in spring, by blossom.
In summer, a warm wind
i’m really sorry for spreading erroneous nutritional information I donât know if I believe the world is enough to hold the door to a drowning lullaby, to be_right_back.zip but before you find a way to RollbackTM the space in-between, it all happens very quickly you fall asleep waiting for your friends to join your […]
We are thrilled to announce the the winner of the 2023 Vallum Art Prize is Luce Hua for their series of collages “Of daydreams and nightmares.” Hua’s work is immediately compelling and evocative, revealing and reveling in the layers of each collage. Bolstered by an artist statement that is beautiful, playful (as you will see […]
War Canticles George Elliott Clarke Vallum Chapbook Series, 2022 35 pp I was married to a ghost on a mountain in northwest Seoul back in 1994. A trivial enough anecdote; I mention it to suggest that I might know a shaman when I see one. George Elliott Clarke is a shaman. […]
Poetry for Our Future! In 2021-22 VSEAL continued offering workshops through our Poetry for Our Future! outreach program. Our partner organizations were QPIRG, Spectrum Productions, Lasalle Elementary, the South Asian Women’s Community Centre, Unravelling in Rhymes, AGIR, Yellow Door, the Dawson Boys and Girls Club, Say Ăa, Bridges Adult Learning Centre, For Francis Public Library, Sioux […]
George Elliott Clarke reads an excerpt of his chapbook War Canticles.
AND HERE THEY DREAM (ii) Then the hallways multiplied. Your aunt was there, wandering, a book held in her hands. Sheâd sewn patterns into the pages, but many were still blank. She approached you, urgently: âI need help with this one,â she said, pointing to the bookâat which point you left the dream. […]
This issue features new poems by Lambda Literary fellow Nora Hikari, Terry Watada, Evan J, and more. Plus, an excerpt from George Elliott Clarkeâs War Canticles, as well as
Leah Oates has B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a Fulbright Fellow for study at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. Oates has had solo shows in Toronto at Black Cat Artspace and in the NYC area at Susan Eley Fine Art, The Central Park Arsenal Gallery, The Center for Book Arts, Real Art Ways, The Brooklyn Public Library and at the MTA Arts and Design Lightbox Project.
Write me to sleep,
Gentlyâlying
Beneath the beams, listless
As I am.
Blue bells, blue bonnets, blue
pool above it all; finished rain
settles dense vapour in violet
hyacinth combs, dousing air
Even here, along
an avenue as dementedly luxe as Fifth,
the sheer aplomb
of late-November ruthlessness
gets noticed.
A pair of zebra doves
pay a visit, pecking about the grass.
Iâm in the close shade
of an old twisty pink trumpet tree.
(largesse of autumn)
how shadowy the trees
to replace the taciturn
with another quietude
Once I could have loved.
But love was cleaved damp
from my body. Carved soft
and wet from the rest
of my hard existence,
cast aside, with everything
that could be renamed
âsubmission.â
The little body, washed;
cleaned; swaddled;
transferred
from broken hand
to broken hand
to cribâ
Recounting things overheard
in the unfamiliar places of childhood,
I never heard mentioned the radiation
of granites.
I am looking at pain,
my world turning brittle-edged and bright,
my body becoming a meditation on shardsâ
thoughts, incandescent and ecstatic.
My email bleeps. The sky goes grey. Cars ease by the mute bell
tower. Timeâs cosmic jokeâit speeds up when
you need it most. I thought I had wrapped my mind
around it like a bow
And has a vision of a mountain lake,
feather oil mixing with rain
The water at the shoreline a quivering mother
berating the rock
Before me mounds of food on Formica,
crooked mouths of porcelain at parties.
Before me staged smiles in tempered tonalities:
and weâre going back in time.
The cheap bleed of a red-tinged photographâ
and another, and another.
Charred cinnamon
scent of warmth, that lick
of gold, as much or more
than what it touchedâ
Not even the body of a loverâremembered,
of course, as all there is, in the end, is
memoryâcan ease you back to any place
youâd ever want to say you know
like the back of that loverâs neck after love.
Snarling, snapping, eyes wide
As he lunges at my wheelchair.
Each frostbite bark rises,
defensiveness a frozen mist.
after âThe Ballad of Othello Clemenceâ by George Elliott Clarke A ghost, I no longer know how to weep yet grieve the madness of false words believed. I recollect how I adored recitations of your exploits, how I traced the outline of your calloused hands, …your biceps, your lips; marking them ……with my scent, curling […]
we had to draw the old temples on a map from memory. they were destroyed centuries ago, rebuilt to different gods & destroyed again. now theyâre grassy platforms, marked & open, as if the air stays holy when not even rubble remains.
yeah, okay, the world is on fire,
but I have two AC units
in my fourth floor apartment.
theyâre not the window shakers,
but what Kelsy affectionately refers to
as âR2-D2sâ
in my old town the white boys from College Street
hide guns, weed, & bicycle parts in a wooded area
off Conotton Creek Trail. C said even the cops
smoke back there, shoot up, & leave the needles
stuck in the trees.
My grandfatherâs boyhood friend
would visit on a long June afternoon,
and when it came time for him to leave,
I would walk the old men to the corner bus
that ran south toward the city.
Have we come so far
and emerged nowhere
âA.I. tracking faces,
movies on demandâ
Open fourthârelaxed but defiant
chin up, shoulders back
fingers intertwined behind her back
the clothesline stret-ch-es
across the length
of the backyard
proof of fatherâs handiwork
a when is [human] only when still/âaliveâ to the naked eye. Our
menaceâs specter-rose rise-rises poetic, enveloped by sweet-
tooth/teethed fiends of possibility, non-noxious toxicity.
You said you asked how much
the ox-eyes cost and that I answered
midnight.
Sheâ
aroused by crispening airâ
takes off, a sudden blossoming
of white wings, long feathers.
The egret flies slow.
Ungainly, lopsided.
Flaps above
the yellow grass-tips.
Sometimes it takes two hands wrapped around to pour
if the vessel is full, if the liquid is at the lip.
Sometimes a curve forms from my wrist to forearm to rest
against thick glass or the raised ridges of spotted ceramic pulling
tendons to match the melting morphing slopes of my organs.
In the car lot,
I used a fob to lock
the only carâs door
as an old man
walked down from the hills
with an old dog
slowly trotting behind
stopping to smell every post
of the old wood fence
that kept the sheep
near the old ring fort…
The house flowers
in light. Be-
low that,
dirt. Deeper,
a glacier. And deepest:
fire.
Niceties?
We spurn bandages, medicines.
Lee rallies, bids us see Virginia as precious,
ourselves as audacious,
oblivious to high, Deep South percentages
of the deep-sixed…
Frankie Barnet is a Montreal-based writer. Her debut graphic novel, Kim: A Novel Idea, is an auto-fictional blend of real-world pain and celebrity fantasy that tells the story of a grad student trying to make sense of an online world and her own stubborn sadness. Protagonist Frankie spends her days scrolling Kardashian Instagrams, reading about sexual violence on social media, trying to help her boyfriend process the loss of his father, and talking to her vicious but infinitely wise cat Catman.
It would be hard not to be amazed by Ottawa poet, editor, critic and publisher Amanda Earlâs incredibly expansive, inclusive and long-awaited anthology Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry (Malmö, Sweden: Timglaset Editions, 2021), a book funded, in part, through an impressive crowdfunding campaign earlier this spring.
Invoking Willem Dafoe, Neil Armstrong, Ryan Gosling, Shia Labouf, Nicolas Cage, and Peter Falk while also tapping into American Psycho, GQ, Vanity Fair, and InstagramâPaul Zits, author of the previous collections Exhibit, Massacre Street, and Leap-Secondsâcreates an ironic speaker who marauds the earth searching only its âInstagrammabilityâ…
Although Sylvia Legrisâs sixth book of poetry, Garden Physic, opens with a poem titled âPlants Reduced to the Idea of Plantsâ which are then further playfully reduced to âwoodcuts / (circa 16th century) reduced to Victorian floor tile,â this collection clearly accomplishes just the opposite: it elevates, celebrates, and even apotheosizes plants…
We are pleased to announce our winner and finalist for the 2022 Vallum Poetry Award! Please congratulate our Finalist
We are thrilled to announce our short list for the 2022 Vallum Poetry Award. It was a pleasure to read everyone’s work and we are awash in gratitude and admiration for these poets gracing us with their work. Congratulations to the shortlisted poets! Abdulkareem Abdulkareem – “Self-portrait Of The […]
An essay by Dennis Cooley on “J’Accuse.”
Join us on Saturday August 13th from 12 – 4 pm for a poetry pop-up. Featured poets will be in the store, ready and equipped with a typewriter to write poems upon request. Say hi, browse their chapbooks, books and check out the store!
Each year Vallum Society for Education in Arts and Letters supports workshops throughout Montreal, Quebec and elsewhere. The next workshop has been made possible through a partnership between Unravelling in Rhymes and the South Asian Womenâs Community Centre, along with the Atwater Writers Exhibition. Details below!
Join us on July 23, 2022 at 3:30 PM ET for an online launch of issue 19:1 “Bridges.” Featuring readings from Robyn Maree Pickens, Meghan Kemp-gee, Matthew James Weigel, Julie Mannell, and Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi! The reading will be approximately 1-hour and Zoom’s closed captioning will be turned on. The event is open to all […]
We are so excited to read your work, but we’re giving you an extra two days to get your Poetry Award entry ready! Take the weekend to polish off your submission and get it to us by Sunday July 17th, 11:59 PM EDT.
We are thrilled to announce the winner of this year’s Chapbook Award!
Scott Cecchin (pronounced “ch-keen”) is a queer poet living on Traditional Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg Territory, in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, ON.
Elena Bentley (she/her) is a disabled, bi, and MĂ©tis/settler emerging poet, editor, and book reviewer from Saskatchewan.
Karen Mandell has taught literature and writing at various community centers and schools in Massachusetts.
Each year we receive hundreds of entries and we are grateful so many poets trust us with their work. After much consideration, we are so excited to announce three finalists for this year’s Chapbook Award.
The 2022 Vallum Poetry Award is open for submissions until July 15 The winner of the Vallum Poetry Award receives $750 and one finalist will receive $250, as well as publication in Vallum magazine. The submission fee is $25 for Canadian entrants, $30 for U.S. and international entrants. Payments are processed through our Submittable […]
19:1 | Bridges This issue features an interview with bpNichol Chapbook Award-winning poet Matthew James Weigel and new poems by rob mclennan, Johnson Cheu, Jami Macarty, and more. The issue also includes poems from the 2021 Vallum Poetry Award winners, Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi and Robyn Maree Pickens, as well as reviews by Bill Neumire and Deanna Fong. Artwork is from […]
More than a decade after George Elliott Clarke’s first Vallum chapbook, The Gospel of X, we are thrilled to announce the publication of War Canticles in a limited edition of 125 copies. And we’re publishing it in the spring, rather than the fall, because it’s been a long, difficult winter and we deserve some poetry! Visit […]
Winner of the 2022 Vallum Cover Award “Entangled” is a series of paintings dealing with the emotional and psychic landscapes brought about by the pandemic. In the artist’s own words: When the pandemic hit in 2020, the world quickly transitioned from “normal” to the unfamiliar: new rules, new information and new ways to live our […]
Hands
on the iron rail
guarding
against the sea
I know what it means to feel sorry
Iâve been sorry
The relief of rainstorm. They were both happy
to see again. The court choir broke open
It is a serious
responsibility
I donât know who
or I pretend not to know
From Hanlons to Centre I walk.
My parents were married on these islands, in the town
Where is the bridge between my body and yours?
This wobbling I in watercolour,
The bridge over Mayo River
Cracks hard in the winter air
Outside, a thunderstorm darkens. Violence lurks.
At a border. An office. An airport. A market.
I donât know if I believe the world is enough
to hold the door to a drowning lullaby, to be_right_back.zip
tree leaves fly stylishly,
another successful shedding of maples.
On some days, my body
feels like a stranger. I sit
Famously abrasive, Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â O, old rumpled legend, this
retired poet, contained and stationed past the Seigneury of Rigaud,
in Valois, a village within the village
Iâve been in this house too long.
Iâm forgetting where I come from, forgetting
The letter said I was in.
Ma in the small dark room.
A cup of tea. She sipped slowly, seriously.
Let go, said every full moon you woke
under. All your tarot cards, recurring
I love looking downriverâunder
the last two bridges before the harbour
An old woman stows her sewing in a wicker basket,
           hikes up her black dress
                       and leaps
Traffic slows around
the corner onto the Monroe
Cold wet sand
shadows in eclipse
the moon forgets
youâll forget the colour of the carpet
on the spaceshipâs bridge. (The action always
feet touching ground is occurring everywhere I walk
I kill something is occurring surrendering to melancholy
I celebrate the Brooklyn span of grandeur,
the lean red muscle of the stately Golden Gate,
Itâs /brij/ or, in Old English, âbrycgâ
A way, a noun and/or verb (as in movement: to bridge a gap or chasm)
and floating adrift among the spheres
I harmonize while washing dishes
onlooker with stars behind my eyes
It feels, no looks like a pearlescent pond.
Itâs quiet, reflecting a faraway sky that moods
neither dawn nor dusk. It looks, no
feels like the lightest pressure on wet leaves
You are a bridge.
You reached out your hand
And found me.
Trees, grown tall at a vale crevasse, crowd its edge.
They long to fulfill their purpose.
my city the city, or wherever Iâm 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.
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
THREADS OF A NETWORK: A CONVERSATION WITH MATTHEW JAMES WEIGEL INTERVIEW BY ROSIE LONG DECTER This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Matthew James Weigel is an artist of many disciplines. His work includes poetry, visual art, and scholarly research, projects that he weaves together through explorations of colonial violence and acts of […]
Dream of No One but Myself David Bradford Brick Books, 2021 David Bradfordâs Dream of No One but Myself sifts through fragments of memory, imagination, and documentary debris, tryingâand necessarily failingâto answer the subjectâs driving questions: âWho am I (to you)?â and âWhat do you want (from me)?â At its core, the book is a […]
Nicole Rayiza Fongâs second poetry book, OĐŻACULE, immediately announces itself as a different kind of reading experienceâwith a dramatis personae, staging, and theatrical dialogue, the collection embraces a hybridity of theater and verse.
ENTANGLED “Entangled” is a series of paintings dealing with the emotional and psychic landscapes brought about by the pandemic. In the artist’s own words: When the pandemic hit in 2020, the world quickly transitioned from “normal” to the unfamiliar: new rules, new information and new ways to live our lives. One of the most […]
Four-day workshop (March 5, 6, 12 and 13): Coming back to yourself through poetry, play and performance AGIR in collaboration with Vallum Society for Education in Arts and Letters is hosting a four-day workshop series facilitated by Angelic Goldsky. AGIR MontrĂ©al (Action LGBTQIA+ avec les ImmigrantEs et RĂ©fugiĂ©Es) is an autonomous non-profit organization, by and […]
To Revision and Beyond!âA Poetry Workshop from Page to Stage Calling all poets! Youâve written and rewritten your poem, maybe even workshopped it and incorporated the feedback of others to make it strongerâmore poignant, innovative or musical. Now that youâve accepted the gift and branded the poem âfinishedâ (or close enough): what now? Lock it […]
18:2 | The Power of Words At long last, Vallum‘s newest issue has arrived! This is our first-ever digital only issue which is being released in conjunction with our new website. To celebrate the occasion, this issue has been made available to read completely for free online. This issue features a translation of Daniel Saldaña Paris by Louis Sanger, new […]
Matthew James Weigel’s 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award-winning work has won Meet the Presses’ 2021 bpNichol Chapbook Award! Here is what judges Jennifer LoveGrove and Jordan Abel had to say about Weigel’s work: “Matthew James Weigel’s It Was Treaty/It Was Me is a uniquely unconventional and innovative poetic exploration of colonial archives, in which Weigel explores his personal connection […]
Dottie Gordon is the featured artist for Vallum 18:2 – The Power of Words. Artist’s Bio Dottie Gordon (JG) // // * 1993, Canada. Dottie is a textile printmaker, illustrator and painter who is self-taught, but grateful to have had the guidance and care of many mentors and a considerable amount of support from their […]
Advice and Rebuke (1) You will lose your way quite a few times. What with the repetition and the salary, you wonât find cause for singing. Even so, you will look for the sacred in giving up, in the sepia tone of things, in the dissolution of enthusiasm. (2) If you have any […]
WORDS Words say everything, he said. So many words to say everything, I say. So many times to be sure everything is said. Then the words have the final word: Let us live here, we who have no place else to go. Author’s Bio Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer […]
Mspsieleld by Sgtrane Iâve nveer been mcuh of a splleer my teehcars uesd to tlel me soohcl wasnotmy ftroe Iwas furttuane to psas, asyousee Iâm lkucy to hvae ajob taht dsnoeât need sniplleg osierwhte, Iâdbe uemnlpeyoyd onthehood tankhs, dadandmom, forthe flmaiy beiunsss asCEO I slhuod do rlaley good Author’s Bio Neil Garvie resides in Comox […]
Being I & Being Human: a Bilinguacultural Poem 1/ I vs æ: Denotations The first person singular …
1122 VIEW STREET The buildingâs gone, but its shadowâs not, torn down, white adobe, and, behind the red door, a paved courtyard open at one end where past notice I at one time lived. Worn rugs, walls aslant, scaly acoustic tile and a window Iâd not lock, ivy-draped to shroud a burglarâs light-fingered escape the […]
According to the survey If I had one word to describe myself? Irrepressible. One fruit? Strawberry. One meal? Garlic prawns with a peanut butter sandwich. One piece of playground equipment? The merry-go-round. What a delectable monster Iâve become it seems, wading through the middle of life as if it were a strange kind of kiddy […]
Enjoying a Walk Around a Frozen Lake ……….Came a sound: a sparrow-Mozart …..…..…..…..…..playing a tiny rusted piano! …..…..In the gathering light, I stopped. Straining to hear, …..…..…..…..…..I could almost feel …..…..ice expanding into the path of least resistance, starting in the mind, …..…..…..…..…..down the throat …..…..to the heart. The sound scatteredâthe wind on the lake […]
Inhale Evening burns pale blue edges while yellow-brown smears separate that blue from oranges, reds, and purples extinguish in black cityscapes and trees tops. Above, blue drains to night, spreading to black. And the sun sets to sleep. And we all sleep. Cities pretend to live on, awake, lighting the night with electricity, the sunâs […]
We Still Had Scrabble When we lost our way with words, when I could no longer talk to my mother, all utterances turned to confusion â ……….Now that you married your father⊠We still had Scrabble. Simple joy in adding a good word, working the edge, reaching the dark blue square, or triple word score […]
fetoscope fetoscope noun fe·to·scope | \ ËfÄ-tÉ-ËskĆp\ definition of fetoscope 1 : an endoscope for visual examination of the pregnant uterus 2 : a stethoscope for listening to the fetal heartbeat my mother works as a receptionist, my father, his grasp of english still slippery, works in a factory down the street. the shipping truck […]
Idle and Steam Obligation exists as a stabilizing force. Without it, our flesh would slide from its bones. This suggests obligation is also a physiological force. And it is, at least insomuch as every social pressure is felt by the body. Sitting in this same spot on the sofa, the right side, the side closest […]
Onions This argument is about onions. The proper way to cook them. The shadow of my father, standing over my shoulder, a dark heft, the abused child turned to a man: belittled, cowed, gaslit, instructed to ignore his own father assaulting his mother in front of the three siblings. In the kitchen he tells me […]
âGet Well Soonâ Cards in the Behavioral Detention Center I have black and white prints from Thomas Kincaid, to fill with sharp Crayolas. Winter fleeces of Salmon for these kids sleighing and sleighing. I move scrawls to fill in time. We think you might be ready to go home next Tuesday, they say. Outside, pine […]
Emergency Operation in Clouds Songs are too happy, sermons too long. Poetry whispers through the cream and the fear until the spin of service calls us to attend. We raise our right arms and scribble a promise, asking language to stand in our stead and fix the burning engines of the underworld. I am here […]
Driving Home From the Restaurant, I Forget One Word The night is bitter winter chill, the car unfamiliar, streetlights yellowing the driverâs face as he concentrates on the road. Off-guard, my father asks me, âHave you got far to drive tonight?â The car is unfamiliar to him, the streetlights yellow my face, but I donât […]
With Condolences The cards people sent when my mother diedâ reproductions of vases filled with pastel flowers, empty green forests, beaches with ebbing waves, friends and family meant well, but I only believe half of it: Your mom had a good life and is in a better place written in long hand. But then: May […]
Suffer for the Words Did you suffer for the words? Was it painful to put them out when they had come in aright? How did you bear the carnage, the disemboweling of your own fresh first thoughts? Does crimson flow on every page, in bloody bone-cutting sparseness, so clean thereâs no meat for the dog? […]
Ableist While you were sending flyers for running groups to people in wheelchairs you sent me a job ad the month after my retirement; a retirement, âI knowâthat you didnât agree with, ignorance clouding your sight like a thousand mosquitoes, buzzing over my words of permanent and disability, poisoning your flesh until your tongue cut […]
MOTION After Mayor Gregor Robertsonâs apology for the City of Vancouverâs role in the 1942 internment of Japanese Canadians THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT this writer-poet does hereby claim full perspective for their experiences. With both self-determination & sustenance, the writer-poet completely informs their sense of historical displacement, under- stands the colonial nature of a […]
IN MESHES the I, this I, an I is an uneven piece, a mismatched piece …………….a piece tugging at the corners that encase it, contain it ……..trying to stretch them, undo them, redo them the âcornersâ (which are not necessarily corners or at right angles) form a puzzle, a net, a fabric ……..……..……..……..……..……..in which the […]
Talking Apple Another night like this Iâll be split nerve. Say itâs the windâs rattle, somethinâ crazy, juddering. The limping house quivers a bone, bruises a calf, & humming a pretty heel, breaks my mistressâs shoe. A feeble dance. Broadwayâs fumbleâup-the-stairs; its blunder âback-to-bed. Fraying the carpetâs thread. Beating wool & silk. Unravel blunder. Cloud […]
PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS TARGET Iâm reading A.M. Kleinâs The Rocking Chair â rescued from the basement bargain-bin of a now bankrupt used book store â just to kill a little time while waiting for my wife and kids on a bench by the loading area at IKEA in the heart of old town […]
Gesture On my way out of his room I said Iâll see you. He raised his arm. I didnât think he had the strength. His forearm straight up, his knuckles facing me, he pumped his fist, bright, bitter glory in his eyes. Was it an insult? Was it pride flaming in him even when he […]
What it Means to Sing Forward i cycle through phrases of songs calling us alien, dirty, virus-infecting like the lady who struck me and screamed to an audience of fairies for five stops like shattering car windowsâ a Chinese doctor who couldnât arrive at work like laying-off a factory manager after a decade like tethering […]
The history of the unknown What recoiled in the white moth, the glacial eyes, the history of the unknown. Glass slippers for the moon I said, and meant I flew into that flame, immolating the self. Obituaries for saints, and cockles and bee padding pistils, the golden blossom of the marrow. Loving hounding sounds, that […]
ESTATE theyâve replaced the apricots with apricot walls now theyâre painting the stairs sixty years ago, every relic was sixty years nearer to hand the gold clocks on the ground floor hunker down in fifteen-minute intervals though only the duct tape ignored on the counter tells the time I walk outside for fresh air but […]
Afterword: Inheritance Author’s Bio Maurya Kerr is a bay area-based writer, educator, and artist. Mauryaâs poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue River Review, River Heron Review, Inverted Syntax, Oyster River Pages, Chestnut Review, Mason Jar Press Journal, Harbor Review, and The Future of Black: A […]
Excerpt from DES MONSTERAS signal bars | wi-fi | time | headphones | battery <DES MONSTERAS …….share | send To lose someone when they, or you, are still new is to lose whatever was real and also all the possibilities. In my first year my mother was often whisked to hospital. I assume that […]
Pluviophile Yusuf Saadi Nightwood Editions, 2020 Deifying rain and language, Yusuf Saadiâs debut poetry collection, Pluviophile (lover of rain), flows with a playful dedication to the music of words. In an interview with Ariel Gordon, Saadi said, âI donât have a theory of language or understand it at all, really, but I do often find […]
rushes from the river disappointment stephanie roberts McGill-Queenâs University Press, 2020 Part way through her latest book, rushes from the river disappointment, stephanie robertsâ speaker essentializes much of the collection when she says, in “Now I Know,” âthat first loss wakes the whole heart to its task / sometimes forever.â In roberts latest book, the […]
SOME LEAVES Gary Barwin and rob mclennan above/ground press, 2020 In a collection with a title that rings Whitmanian, seasoned collaborators with over 50 books published between them, rob mclennan and Gary Barwin offer five brief pages of poetry that come closer to feeling very Bradburian, examining the the collision of nature and the technology […]
Nothing You Build Here, Belongs Here Sara Cahill Marron Kelsay Books, 2021 The title of this book of poetry by Sara Cahill Marron suggests not just the provisional nature of our gig-economy servitude and the impermanence of late-stage capitalism where everything can be swept away in a moment, but also the alienation of contemporary urban […]
THE MIGRANT STATES Indran Amirthanayagam Hanging Loose Press, 2020 Indran Amirthanayagam has published seventeen books of poetry and recorded two albums with Haitian musicians. He is both a US diplomat and a citizen of the world who writes poetry in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, French and Portuguese. From the rousing preface to the final poem […]
WHERE BEAUTY SURVIVED: AN AFRICADIAN MEMOIR George Elliott Clarke Knopf, 2021 Renowned poet George Elliott Clarke begins each of his books of poetry with an epigraph on beauty; fittingly, then, the title of his latest book is Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir. In keeping with the former Parliamentary Poet Laureateâs lifelong preoccupation with the […]
The Eleventh Hour Carolyn Marie Souaid Ekstasis Editions, 2021 Both the title of Carolyn Marie Souaidâs latest collection of poetry and the bookâs cover graphicâthe former warning that time has all but run out, the latter depicting a burnt orange moon overhanging shadowy, monolithic industrial buildingsâthreaten the reader with a premonitory, possibly dispiriting literary experience. […]
WALKING INTO AUGUST IN EAST-END TORONTO 2020 Is it how spruce donât think, just doâarrange their boughs for things withwings to dip andglide on through? Or how the yellowcrane loomsâstrange arabesque-sur-bleu, distraction-dance, wide arcs boom-swung and slowâdwarfing all thatgrows nearby? Stow yourthrone in a box on high look down waydown to read whatâs spelled below […]
WHITEWASH White is waves bright as crinkled sunlightâor 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*Â 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 […]
Nisha Patel is an award-winning queer and disabled artist. She was the City of Edmontonâs 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 Artistsâ 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.
ORION My boy came into the room and said, Mom, you are the hound, Dad is the hunter, and I am theâ but he couldnât 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 mornâeven though I knew […]
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 […]
WHAT IS WORN IS WHAT HAS LIVED The wild rose was full with winter birds settled on the risen snow. Chickadee, nuthatch, junco. And in another house, your dying nearly complete. And the air thickening with snow, but the birds remained. How the heart closes a door so silently, nothing disturbs the quiet. And you […]
POSTCARD FROM THE ICE STORM â Independence, Oregon. January 2021 Dear Nâ Gone to bed happy, one hundred percent chance of a snow day, they sayâ midnightâgun-shot reports of tree-trunks cracked in two, ice-glazed oak chandeliers shattering on the rotunda floor. Utility poles crushing cars, the arctic insurrection cuts internet access, freezing assets and truth conditions. […]
TAPAS The first time I thought I was queer was after kissing my best friend in 7th grade. Or maybe …………………….. it was when I ate an apple. ……………………………………… The curve of the core and ……………………………………… seed so hidden and ……………………………………… poisonous. Maybe …………………….. it was drinking tea ……………………………………… with another friend and playing chess. […]
ONE MORE MOUNTAIN SUNRISE One more mountain sunrise, golden light, clouds of peach and lilac. The forest calls â I answer. Road dust and moss, pinecones and birdsong. I was going to write a poem for you. Instead, I chose one more mountain sunrise. Sally Quon is a back-country blogger, dirt-road diva, and teller […]
No thing, a zero in the amber of time, then one. At the edge of the mind a soft rime: then one.
The brook was running clear. Now itâs gone. Iâm here, cried the killdeer, Iâm here. Now itâs gone. Jewels of rain like Weâll grow rich with water, Like every number were prime. Then one. We built a small house in the womb of the woods. Twice you gave birth there. Now itâs gone. A storm sky etched by lightning, dissolved by light. Twelve bodies trenched with lye, then one. My name flashed in your mind, the[âŠ]
DES MONSTERAS, excerpt signal bars | wi-fi | time | headphones | battery <DES MONSTERAS share | send We came off the mountain and I was still holding the stick Iâd used to prod at the fire and as a baton to conduct us, singing; also to point at our paths and the solstice […]
if the forest heard is …………… it’s mirrors …. over ………………offering ………. until
a ….. jungle ….. here ……………. turn …………………………………… .dressed
leaping in ………………………………………………………………………. … mistakes
…………………………………………… are, as they all say ………………. embarrassed
…………………………………………… overâwhelming …………………..mushrooms
…………………………………………………………………………………………… images
ONE SHOT OVER THE LINE â after Kevin Carter Necklacing: the act of hanging a tire soaked in petrol around a personâs neck then lighting it on fire It gets heavy after a while and they always fall over crumpled into a pile of human remains in the sand the smell stays in your clothes […]
have you forgotten the terms of this pact, the lines we once lifted from songs that remind me of bells and stems, a collection of waves, a kill, a cure, a whim made permanent, arcane
did we ever lie close in the black of a room belonging to no-one, switched like breakers curved to conduct the pitch of a laugh, a meteor shower, a shimmer, a culvert, a quarry turned sleight of hand so thin the grasp of whispers held for hatching plans to stay somewhere within your reach, an iceberg, an archive, steady, remote unflinching, done and[âŠ]
THE GIRL The girl from high schoolânot my high schoolâhad long straight hair and a foxy face and her body, a cylinder, with slightly wider hips, was perfect for the sheath dresses she wore. Vee was a Circassian, famous beauties in their day, well-prized as slaves, her mother a refugee from Turkey, never marry a […]
THE SECOND PERSON HAS DEPARTED A gold sequin dress isnât any use in a fire. I scribble down every cypher I gathered about you. There is no kindness in letting you know when the world unclasps, emptying its prayer palms of us, our preordained survival. Did you expect me to carry a gun? asks the […]
chapel street shifts pitch deep winter;
its edges, sharper its scents brighter, brittle
like peppermint ……………. or bone
.
where fever …. bush frozen
berry holly reaches its thorns to bristle
my fingers with its bitter tang
…………………………………. where deep
QUICKNESS 1. let there be bears when you need bears and quickness like with rocks something that says watch 2. let there be quickness like with bears let the past arrive when you need sky like a wrist let the future 3. let the bears let the quickness let the rocks the sky let the […]
PERCENTAGES Iâm 100% sure that Iâm not 100% sure who I am. Iâm 78% sure that Iâm not a good person. Iâm 75% sure that Iâm not a bad person. Iâm 82% sure that my favourite colour is blue. Iâm 100% sure that Iâve never used needle drugs, but Iâm 100% sure that Iâve thought […]
DANGEROUS DRIVING ………. I clocked you on the verge as I dawdled in the slow laneâ …. knew I shouldnât stop but slowed and rolled my window downâ ……………………. you pulled out sharp ………. your bumper glancing mine. …. Now my heartâs a demented engine: It brakes at green lights ….. speeds up at red […]
THESE BODIES, SOMEHOW how quickly the past has burned with throttle and forgotten fire with lifelines and bloodlines and scalding astronomy how dense the eyes of the mind thick to the tongue, sweetening of shadow and raw as yew bark, peeled free with fingernails or the plying of a rusty pocket knife how vast and […]
TANKA Sous lâoeil vif-argent Tes pensĂ©es sâaccĂ©lĂšrent Fresques zĂ©brĂ©es dâor CrĂ©pitent soudain Tes paroles PersĂ©ides Author’s Bio PAUL-GEORGES LEROUX has published poetry and short stories. As a screenwriter, he has written and co-written both documentaries and fictions. He has lived in Iceland, France, and Greece. His poems appeared in poetry magazines such as Mouvances, […]
CLOUD …………………… like a metaphysician …………………… on call, the cloud scales to meet your unique business ………. needs, no matter where you sit ………………………… in the celestial …………………………………………….. org chart curls range from kinky to soft ringlets. whether ………. youâre black white Asian …………………… Latin Mediterranean ………. or any glorious combo of the above, there […]
THE CULTURAL BOOK OF THE DEAD â for James Dean The little bastard speeds into the canon …. An icon cloned on postage stamps ….On posters Transfiguration of a fan-fuelled self-absorption ….A leather jacket stoned on youth ….brooding fast-forwarding ….You know the reaching for a six-pack, the remote A script the cause for grief The […]
PRIME MOVER Teapot Dome North of Casper, near the seeps Of crude at Powder Spring That brought the early wildcatters West into Wyoming Speeding over drilling fields Where oil and water meet In pools beneath the horsehead pumps Lifting on the downbeat Up ahead a hundred feet A kiting bird of prey Pale wings flashing, […]
NOTE After we met I emailed you and asked if you wanted to have coffee with me and give me advice about finding an apartment in New York since you had recently moved there but you never responded because I think you assumed the apartment thing was just an excuse to see you again and […]
JURISDICTION OF THE SELF-CLEANING OVEN [Alberta in late 2006] That booze-wise, two-stroke shill the party boss. An assembly close to thirty years redundant. Civic revulsion stillborn. PR gloss the face of untried force: plain truth best blent with ooze, like bitumen under a cap of moss. More realtors by the day, his agents, sent corkscrew […]
WARRANT OFFICER HAWKO âfor Jason MacPhail Crow-nosed; cigar stub of a face, slaps blueberry pie into an outstretched tin canteen cup like an insult. Acting as if I was a freckle-wristed Dickensian character holding out a bowl for more. Slams in sludge-brown army stew, tills the muck with ladle; churns it until the mess-kit metamorphoses […]
THE WEIRD KID SEATED AT THE BACK OF THE CLASSROOM Speed freak is what they called him No speed was too great for this maniacal son Backing up in an easy roll his heartbeat quadruples Intensity white hot against a delicate summer breeze Engines simulate orgasm as pistons compress and eject their fluid Moonlight invigorates […]
SPEED Saint Senna saw God, so he said, as he zipped around the track at 300 km/hr. Slipped beyond design constraints, was a genius in the rain, this Brazilian bad boy not from the wrong side of town but the wrong hemisphere. Trashtalked with his motor mouth, showing up the Europeans at their sport on […]
THRIFT Thrift, thrift. Willâs word for speed, acceleration, ………. tempo of betrayal, the time it takes to hasten ambition, poison your brother, ………. marry his widow, speed up accession. Thrift is the itchy finger on the trigger, ………. split-second timing of do or die, blink of an assassinâs eyeâthrifty shutter speed ………. in the quick […]
WHY WE CRY ON PLANES Barred from our devices Itâs painfully apparentâ The world goes on without us. Inhaling the stale air Of many moods, Our freedom to choose Clooney or Witherspoon, I bear the breakneck interval Silently chanting Cancun, Cancun, Cancun. Author’s Bio ANDY MCGUIRE releases music under the alias John Alice. His […]
HESITATION MARKS I have worshipped the wrong gods and grace in the space of one heartbeat, ridged with bright shards of broken glass. My future lit by bridges and their burning or hot-wired to this smear of light and speed, tied up with ribbons into the shape of a man. Author’s Bio A. GARNETT […]
A NONPARTISAN CONVERSATION WITH GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKEÂ Interview by Henry Kronk Henry Kronk: You were just elected [or, as I should have said, appointed] to be the parliamentary poet laureate. Congratulations, by the way. George Elliott Clarke: Thank you, Henry. Merci beaucoup. HK: Would you have thought twice about [accepting] that appointment had Stephen Harperâs […]
WINTER WIND How do you kick up your heels with such gusto at three in the morning? Your rage rattles windows and doors, your wails mournful as a banshee scorned Awakened we dangle on bedsides like tree branches bent from your rampage. Click here to watch Katherine Noone read this poem. Author’s Bio Katherine […]
CHAINSAW DHAMMA After the pre-dawn hour of chanting and meditation in the dhamma hall on Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dhamma lokutaro yo ca tadattha-dipano (that which is beyond the conditioned world) and after the hot oatmeal prepared by the anagarikas in white …………………… lay attendants remains of frost dripping off the kitchen […]
INCORPORATE WORLD OF THE CORPORATE LEADER After reading Redesigning Leadership by John Maeda Twit for tat subject lines @ in pseudo aphorismsâ the leader seeks to climb on his own shoulders the kinship of his own acronyms into his last name. Where is the ship of his leadership? Who is stirring at the wheel? The […]
HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM HOME Woken by the erratic siren; coyote weaving the valley chanting code: three yips, a howl, pause. Looped. The moon floods the frozen world, the coyoteâs voice stitches together our careful, private distances. So close at one point she seemed just under my window, calling up. Calling on all the […]
THE MEGAFAUN: FACT OR FICTION? Itâs thought they died with their necks bent. The twelve-foot splay of their antlers the tonnage of their antlers driving their muzzles into ploughshares. A sacred knot in their shoulders a perpetual shrug in their shoulders heaving their bodies over plains endless with grass their heat through continents of ice […]
UNTAMED HEART Candles spark and flicker on the Cardiac ………. Unit, one for each year of my motherâs untamed ………………. heart. Her ticker flutters wilder than the rhythms of eighty-eight birthdays before. Beds in the Quad ………. cradle four heart patients, one for each chamber ………………. of the wordless heart. The lifespan longer than a […]
CORD First the forces: gases, heat and radiation; stars. We are stardust sing the physicist and bard. We are quartz and bats and roses, we are poetry: Rimbaud, Blake. Baudelaire, Bidart. Weâre fugue of Bach and Glass; Celan. World gets into us every breath. Yes to every sentence. I held to the imbecile cordâtill it […]
BESTIARY There is no place to hide before God ………. whose name we invented as if our imagination needed a shelter from the storm or a hut of our own to come home to or, perhaps, a safe to put away our terrific ………. treasures. There is no place to hide before animals, ………. themselves […]
BEDLAM SPRING* write in ink as green as arsenic wallpaper that killed Napoleon take photo of azure hole in clouds inebriate your eyes chartreuse leaves their new spring leap into fresh untamed season but bide a while bide a while burn your Russian amber drink your Irish tea stay away from strange men on the […]
SCHIZOPHRENIC the story starts with a daughter image of a white dove & stops with a shrinking room the crushing ceiling rushing to meet her between the beginning & the end his voice visits her from time to time the sweaty fear of fear glides by, a bicycle he wears a cock-feathered cap she has […]
SHIFTING BASELINE SYNDROME A cup of coffee was always a dollar fifty. The fisheries were always at their current level. From the windows of an airplane the Great Lakes were always noosed in four-lane highways. The land was always distributed in neat tight little stamps. There were never any birds here. A moose was always […]
THE BEAST IN THE GARDEN âMountain lion tours Gourmet Ghettoâ âBerkeleyside (headline), August 31, 2010 Pecking and pecking at the chicken-coop wire The chicken cannot hear the chicken-keeper; Eggs fall apart; their shells cannot hold; Loose embryos are spilled into the world, The bloody yolks are spilled, and everywhere Sustainable ingredients are spoiled; Chefs waste […]
THE SCURRYING WHITE MICE DISAPPEAR Where have they gone? The cage door unlocked is left open but that answers nothing. The snow outside will hide them if they are successful in crafting flattened versions of themselves and leave through the space where the high wall ends. This is only the nothing that is. Not a […]
RATATOSK In the Old Norse, âBore-tooth.â Family: sciuridae, from the ancient Greek: skiouros, meaning âshadow-tailed.â He is a streak of red zigzagging down that grey ash, hind legs outstretched as he runs away from the Eagle. He has new words for NĂdhögg, can easily leap onto that scaly head, whisper them into his ear, brown […]
THE WEED THAT GROWS WILD The weed that grows wild That you canât stomp out Green leaf purple buds The weed that gets you talking Laughing Presence weed, fabulizing weed Washingtonâs weed That makes a great shirt Weed you canât ignore growing on the path So aromatic That weed you had once in Ireland In […]
PASS THE NOTE in the palm of your hand. cup it in the hollow between life line and the lines of children. sometimes I check mine to see if my wife is pregnant again. pass it like a drug deal on a crowded subway platform and the trainâs about to come. somewhere there is […]
APPLE TO APPLE In the season of apples suspended in air, wood piles and winter spiders, you are lost with a canvas bag; an apple a book and a camera. Travel past previous windows, a green house between here and not take a photographbooks hold clues, save the apple for later. You fall forward from […]
LAST EVENING I STUMBLED Last evening I stumbled past smokers in doorways of boarding houses, ex-sailorsâ rooming houses beside the inland sea, & up the gravel road again towards the lighthouse poised between two harbours now its panning light engulfed by Christmas strings of orange & white, & sat still on a Muskoka chair, its […]
THE LONG STUDY Mother, now listen to my words. I see Your soul in anger; this is a foolish and an evil rage. Oh, I know when we stand before a helpless Doom, how hard it is to bear. [pause] âfrom âIphigenia in Aulis,â Euripides The Mother talked to me as if I were drawing […]
ODYSSEUS In the worst moments, when the sea rises up to engulf him or fires the arrows of the sun to scorch his eyes, the image he clings to is not the nymph, or the sorceress, or his wife or unknown child. Itâs the thought of roots, strong and hale past death, stretching into the […]
DECOMMISSIONED PLANES Itâs not easy to pull the track blinds, look for cedar waxwings or passenger jets through dadâs cheapo binoculars, check the furnace filters, pilot light, as engines rumble overhead. Decommissioned planes in long-term storage in the Mojave are obsolete yet invincible. Because of the dry climate, they donât rust, parts are recycled or […]
CONCUSSION 0H08D (or “Back Way To The Mental Hospital”)Â Haphazardness with uncertain quirks. The last main corner juxtaposes a junkyard. Psychiatrists never follow a script, what you feel is tolerable. The obvious route has padding that stops mid-air. Every change conveys ability, impromptu symmetry. If you jump youâll feel it laterâ your sunken body escaping […]
PTERYGOTA Two moths lie perched on a May leaf quivering downwind beats jacked legs torque, coursing electric They are the underdogs of meetings, the pheromones calling lost bottle, directionless longing for her. He looks at her with lidless kaleidoscopes. He does not speak English but he knows what love is. It is written on the […]
ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE But itâs gotta be Authentic And we both know Weâve never known Real love (Not even close) They sing about it And itâs gotta be Out there Somewhere (Please darling Leave before We get any deeper) Please tell me you believe Author’s Bio DAVID ROMANDA was born in Kelowna, […]
LE THORKELL MĂNI LâUnivers dans sa patte de marbre Tient dĂ©jĂ solidement mon cerveau Il mâenvahit, me parcourt Me libĂšre, me dĂ©sarme Me dâlestant de tout mon superflu De ce monstre agitĂ© De cet acharnement de drames Au profil de mes traits Se dĂ©coupe ma vie Tout contre mon coeur Un animal de lumiĂšre CriblĂ© […]
LE LIVRE DES MUTATIONS Dans le wagon-restaurant le fortune cookie conseillait sobrement: Nâajoutez aucun Bonsa Ă votre jardin. Je ne laisserai donc plus entrer une nouvelle arborescence dans ma vie. Ses branches dĂ©ploieraient Quatre saisons de petites tristesses. Le sentiment laquĂ© de ce qui sâen va, Le noir tunnel de ce qui sâen vient. Le […]
THE FALL October ripens as the fallen apples rot on an orchard bed. In the woods of Golden Acres Park, daylight descends whitely on branches, leaves, and the crushed-stone path that winds through the trees turning in fall. It is afternoon, is customary on the bed of stones for a hoary slumber to pin a […]
RUNNING AROUND LISTENING TO THE CARS Up to my ears in work, a family in the background, those late 80âs found me in a metallic blue Camaro listening to âDriveâ and driving I was the streets of Woodstock and roads of Oxford, especially from spring â86 to fall â88 Stopping for humid night tennis and […]
OIKONOMOS If thereâs no getting over it, youâre going under. Iâm afraid Weâve always been religious in this way. After the fight over the microwave You swore never to give an inch. You said Life was too short to share, which scared me: No one thinks of life that way when theyâre in loveâ Like […]
THINGS SHE IS AFRAID TO DO IN AMSTERDAM She cannot enter a coffee shop. No way could she swim into dark caverns of leafy decor where people nibble cakes and cookies, smoke and drink coffee. If she smoked a joint she could forget herself, abandon control and reject the diamond in the carbon. As a […]
FAMILY HEIRLOOMS Quartzite A crevasse decorated with icicles rose ahead, as if the deep cleft just now surmounted had not provided sufficient majesty. We considered clusters of clouds; they contained almost everything that was important to us. Schist Not this dent du requin, nor the quartzite and schist, granite and gneiss, which, despite their styles […]
EPIPHANY yes is it possible that there lies buried deep in the irascible and rough-hewn pod ………. of the wild purple vetch a pearl-green orb so perfectly matched to the bleeding gold of the setting sun no certainly not in colour or grandiloquence but in a numinous glowing intensity of such power that it flings […]
HEARTBLEED VIRUS â for Dominik and Phoebe Diamond She added one to my one: but no-one saw this fling as more than binary. My processor said âitâs just for funââ good enough for now, anyway. But O her 0 got to my 1, my fan superheated, all or none, her cipher stuck in my circuit: […]
FIG LEAVES In our doing and undoing, in our designs, the nakedness we try to hide: the corpse beneath the sheet laid out upon a stainless table. Plainly there, plainly. But we go on in our intricate designs. The clink of glasses, a swirl of opulence upon a porcelain plate, the tasteful tie and jacket, […]
OLIVES Itâs always the springy stir plan, plant, hope slipped i
