An Inked Shorthand of Marks

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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!

Jami Macarty: My pleasure, T.! The image of you reading with your “pencil in hand” makes me a happy poet. I love that you read the poems aloud, for aloud was part of their compositional process and that allowed you to hear the poems like ears hear birds, their words song. A “sound-joy”! Hurrah, your compound, your reading aloud, and your pencil! Thank you for the gift of your attention to my poems. I am excited for this chance to talk with you about The Whole Catastrophe.

INTERVIEW WITH ROSIE LONG DECTER AND VALLUM CHAPBOOK-WINNER MAYA CLUBINE

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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 Clubine’s 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 father’s passing, a daughter’s 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.   

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Gravitas / Poèmes deep: An Interview with Amy Berkowitz

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Interview by Lauren Turner A contemporary study of the institution, Gravitas boldly explores academia’s tendency to tolerate gendered abuse. Amy Berkowitz lifts the veil on the ordinary violence that female students are subjected to — violence that goes so far as to interrupt their writing practices and distort their relationships to words and literature. Illuminated […]

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 […]

LILAC PAINTED WALLS AND BLACK FABRIC: A CONVERSATION WITH MONICA MCCLURE | INTERVIEW BY JAY WINSTON RITCHIE

LILAC PAINTED WALLS AND BLACK FABRIC: A CONVERSATION WITH MONICA MCCLURE | INTERVIEW BY JAY WINSTON RITCHIE

 

Jay Winston Ritchie: When did you start writing poetry?

Monica McClure: I always wrote poetry …. I remember covering my lilacpainted walls one day with black fabric and writing very disparate poems on the walls. One was an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem that was about the death of a friend, and not accepting that death. I loved the brazenness of it. It goes: “You have gone to feed the roses so elegant and curled but[…]

A Conversation with Jason Camlot, Author of CANLIT ACROSS MEDIA: UNARCHIVING THE LITERARY EVENT | Interview by Rosie Long Decter

A Conversation with Jason Camlot Author of CANLIT ACROSS MEDIA: UNARCHIVING THE LITERARY EVENT Interview by Rosie Long Decter Jason Camlot is a Montreal-based poet and an English professor at Concordia University. Over the course of his formidable career, he’s published four poetry collections and several academic texts. Camlot’s scholarly research ranges from Victorian literary […]