online content from this issue

• An Interview with John Steffler Interviewed by Sharon Caseburg Sharon Caseburg: You noted in a 2010 interview with Open Book: Toronto that “wilderness or the uncontrollable and the unexpected are central subjects” in your collection Lookout. What is it about the uncontrollable that is desirable to write about? What do we learn about ourselves in exploring these wilder sides in literature? John Steffler: I think that a thing that defines the human is our species’ ...
• Dirty Snow by Tom Wayman A spray of reddish dust: desiccated earth, / Shreds of maple, hardened blood. / Black particulate: charcoal, ...
• Cave Art by John Steffler Early March sun hot on the coffee table and my stocking feet, I’m / looking at photos of iron oxide and charcoal ...
• Yellowknife by Ben Ladouceur My father underlines the words / he doesn’t understand. Dear father, / penultimate means next to last. ...
• Vulpes by Heather Davidson I was a fox before you knew me. / Felt things better with paws / that gave in to each crevice of pine needle, ...
• Son, on the non-existence of the Triceratops by Michelle Brown No trilobites, no ammonites, no longer / will I pray to a brontosaurus instead / of the Christian god. I will ...
• Award winner blue jay by Katherena Vermette poised for flight, one small / foot on the curb like a sprinter, this girl / with such rough skin the colour ...
• Drawbridge by Laura Matwichuk The car hangs by a thread from the bascule leaf, / emergency brake clenching metal, / momentary stillness. / ...
• Poetry Makes Love: On the Occasion of the Infinite in Poetry by Julie C. Robinson Mary Oliver is a poet who gives her attention to her natural surroundings and to a presence that she finds there. “The universe is full of radiant suggestion,” she writes. “Over and over in the butterfly we see the idea of transcendence. In the forest we see not the inert but the aspiring. In water that departs forever ...