Stephen Kent Roney | A Review of War Canticles

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. […]

New Chapbook from George Elliott Clarke | War Canticles

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 […]

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 […]

A NONPARTISAN CONVERSATION WITH GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE | Interview by Henry Kronk

A NONPARTISAN CONVERSATION WITH GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE  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 Harper’s […]

George Elliott Clarke | ENOCH 1: 1-19

ENOCH 1: 1-19 The end is Horror: Mountains melt in slides of lava and mud; The globe flares sheer fire. So much blood will flood the Earth, it’ll tilt back, wobbling on its axis. Monarchs, millionaires, military monsters, traders, traitors, will be penned in a valley brimmed— rimmed—with flame. They’ll be banded with iron fetters […]

George Elliott Clarke | TOWARDS A DECLENSION OF “UNPRECEDENTED”

TOWARDS A DECLENSION OF “UNPRECEDENTED” The virus’s unnoticeable, studded, burr-like form is not unprecedented Terror, when one recalls medieval tortures, also not unprecedented— if we check Roman imperial customs— like crucifixion. Nor is it unprecedented that blanching corpses land in that ancient fridge, the grave. Unprecedented, but not really, is the disruption of plump rats’ […]