Recent interviews
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An Interview with Carmine Starnino
Tim Bowling: You set out early on, back in the mid-’90s, to be a poet and a critic. You’ve maintained a place in both worlds when many poets opt out of the critical side of things. Have you been pleased with the way you’ve maintained that balance?
Carmine Starnino: For the most part, yes. But I can’t say that I’ve had any choice in the matter. I have no opt-out button when it comes to writing
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An Interview with Ken Babstock
Sharon Caseburg: Congratulations on last year’s Griffin Prize win for Methodist Hatchet (House of Anansi Press, 2011). Over the course of your career you’ve been nominated for or have won several prestigious Canadian poetry awards. What does the Griffin Prize win mean for you personally?
Ken Babstock: Thank you, Sharon. And we’re off! Already trying to walk a fine line between seeming gracious,
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An Interview with Johanna Skibsrud
Michelle Elrick: Though many people around the world were introduced to your work through your 2010 Giller Prize-winning novel The Sentimentalists, you have also published two books of poetry, Late Nights with Wild Cowboys, and I Do Not Think That I Could Love a Human Being, as well as a book of short stories, all masterfully rendered. Do you feel more at home in a particular genre? How do
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New poetry
- The Poet He was born crying and he died laughing. / And in-between? Some smiles / given mostly to the old, / the young, ...
- Crimes Over dinner, I told how we lit the lampless night. / With butane from a yellow can, we drew pentagrams / and ...
- the thimble-sparrow headfirst, into / the / harsh window / like a hammer (i ...
- Photo of a Family Vacation [1967] He is a blade slipping on the skin of a trout. / He is a blade and he is slipping and he is a trout. / Skirting ...
- Song of a Summer Half-life / of a half-crushed wasp: writhing / and whiptailed. / * / Mr. Venom-Sac / knocked splat. / ...
Essays and reviews
- Rathven (Part 2 of “Homestead: Venturing into the Poetics of Place”) The imagination of going home so frequently means going ‘back’ in both space and time. Back to the old familiar things, to the way things used to be… the truth is that you can never simply ‘go back,’ to home or to anywhere else. When you get ‘there’ the place will have moved on just as you yourself will have changed. ...
- Where to Begin (Part 1 of “Homestead: Venturing into the Poetics of Place”) “I’m going home,” I tell the cab driver, as he loads my suitcases into the trunk. He smiles and says, “Alright then,” puts the car into gear and pulls away from the curb outside my house in Winnipeg. It’s 4:52 a.m. and we’re on our way to the Richardson International Airport, where I’ll board the 6:30 flight to Toronto ...
- Making Art in Winnipeg To practice art in this particular town is risky. Like all particular towns, this one has its perils. Some say it’s the wind. Some say it’s the moment the summer sky’s split white by lightning. It’s the shadow of the peregrine falcon that haunts the high glass towers. It’s the black ice, the burning stubble, the reckless ...
