Erasure poetry—it’s one of the best ways to get almost anyone to try creating a poem. All you’ve gotta do is black out some words and leave others. Simple right? Well yes. Simple, but not easy. Erasure poetry, also known as blackout poetry, isn’t burdened by many rules but it’s no small feat to turn a text saying one thing into a poem saying something different.

Elena Bentley (MA English, University of Toronto) is a multi-genre writer and proud Métis aunty. Her ecent poetry chapbook, taliped (845 Press), was a finalist in the 2022 Vallum Chapbook Award. And the poetry is all erasure.

We welcome her to our Power Q & A series today to talk with us about choosing erasure poetry for this project.

Poems are playful, precocious, and powerful things, and these are just some of the reasons we are so giddy to celebrate National Poetry Month by hosting the incomparable Ellen Chang-Richardson on our blog, as part of our Power Q & A series.

Ellen’s poems use the power of blank space to make bold, breathtaking statements and allow room for exploration. In their just-released debut poetry collection, Blood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024), Ellen writes of race, of injury, and of belonging in stunning poems that fade in and out of the page. They bring their father’s, and their own, stories to light, writing against the background of the institutional racism of Canada, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the head tax and more. From Taiwan in the early 1990s to Oakville in the late 1990s, Toronto in the 2010s, Cambodia in the mid-1970s and Ottawa in the 2020s, Blood Belies takes the reader through time, asking them what it means to look the way we do? To carry scars? To persevere? To hope?

Today we welcome to our blog Patrick Connors, a poet living in Toronto and contributing to its rich poetic landscape. Patrick’s latest collection. The Long Defeat, is coming out with Mosiac Press.

In this new book, Connors explores the depths of human experience, influenced by personal challenges and global crises. Reflecting on his own experience of pandemic-induced unemployment, Connors captures universal themes of dissatisfaction and the desire for renewal.

Intrigued by the title, we asked Patrick to speak about what he hopes people will take away from this timely collection.

We love hearing from authors who move between genres, and Nicola Winstanley has some poignant insight into her transition from children’s literature to her first book for adults, Smoke (Wolsak & Wynn) a collection of short stories. Smoke is an unforgettable collection of short stories that is both searing and thought-provoking.

Smoke features a cast of characters across Canada and New Zealand, showing us glimpses into their lives of loss and heartbreak. In these eleven linked stories, Winstanley takes a hard look at intergenerational trauma and their impact on characters from multiple points of view, but her characters are not victims—anything but. Guilt, self-reflection, compassion, and forgiveness are central themes in this collection of stories that help us understand the degree of responsibility we hold toward the events that happen to us in life. 

Three-time Saskatchewan Book Award winner Michael Trussler’s latest book, Realia, (Radiant Press, 2024) grapples with the black fire of mental illness, revels in the joy inherent to colours, and probes what it means to be alive at the beginning of the Anthropocene. Perfectly clear, perfectly opaque, Trussler’s poetry implodes the lyric to channel the bright disintegration of our contemporary moment. We’re honoured to have Michael join us for this Power Q & A to speak to his experience of writing as a neurodivergent individual.

An accomplished and acclaimed writer in his own right, we first heard of Christopher DiRaddo through his work with The Violet Hour Reading Series. We were immediately struck by Chris’ openness, kindness, and generosity, and knew we wanted to ask him about his experience organizing and maintaining his vital series for queer writers in our current cultural landscape.

We’re honoured to have Chris join us for this Power Q & A.

Welcome, Chris!

Robin Pacific’s memoir, Skater Girl, (Guernica Editions, 2024) is an electric and disruptive examination of a life that challenges assumptions of not only how a memoir should read, but also, how women should act. It is definitely one of our favourite nonfiction reads this year, and we’re thrilled to have Robin on our Power Q & A to share a little bit more about her scrappy and sensational book.

Welcome Robin!

It’s National Poetry Month, and we are celebrating by showcasing poet Melanie Marttila. Her debut collection, The Art of Floating (Latitude 46) is a testament to years of honing her craft. The collection of five sections of free verse poems is wide-ranging and eclectic, bringing to life her deep connection with the earth and sky of Ontario. The aptly named collection describes her learned ability to ride the unpredictable waves of mental illness and prevent herself from drowning within it, while seeking solace in the natural world around her. These lyric poems are stunning and transportative, absorbing the reader with captivating imagery, complex diction, and highly relatable themes most pivotal in life, such as loss, grief, and hope.

More about Courtney Bates-Hardy: 

Courtney Bates-Hardy is the author of House of Mystery (ChiZine Publications, 2016) and a chapbook, Sea Foam (JackPine Press, 2013). Her poems have been published in Grain, Vallum, PRISM, and CAROUSEL, among others. She has been featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2021 (Biblioasis) and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is queer, neurodivergent, and disabled, and one-third of a writing group called The Pain Poets. She lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.

This doesn’t happen often around here, but we are excited to welcome a poetry reviewer to our Power Q & A series. melanie brannagan frederiksen is the poetry columnist for The Winnipeg Free Press, to our series to speak to the review landscape in Canada.

Welcome, melanie!

As a special feature, we welcome the phenomenal author and workshop facilitator Lauren Carter to our blog to talk about something many writers dream about often, and execute less: we’re talking about writer’s retreats—those elusively but oh-so beneficial companions to a healthy writing practice.

Lauren Carter is the award-winning author of five books, with news of the sixth coming soon. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a certificate in teaching and training adult learners and regularly teaches writing. From June 7-9, 2024, she will be co-leading Stillwater: A Trauma-Informed Writing Retreat at a gorgeous historic estate on Ontario’s Lake Simcoe. 

For this Power Q & A, we are delighted to welcome author Jade Wallace! Jade is known not only for their individual work—like their upcoming release, Amonia (Palimpsest Press, 2024) but also, for their incredible collaborations with other artists. Today, we want to know a little bit about what makes these collaborations work.

March is Epilepsy Month, and we are honoured to be featuring an excerpt from Nora Gold’s new novella, In Sickness and In Health, which is part of a set of novellas published earlier this month by Guernica Editions.

The narrative around epilepsy has been, historically, fraught with misinformation and prejudice, and Nora explores this stigma and shame in her writing.

Mere days from the official release of her glorious debut, we are delighted to have author Susan Wadds join us to answer a burning question about her much-anticipated, super salient novel, What the Living Do (Regal House Press, 2024).

We first came to admire the writing of Marion Agnew when we read her debut book, a memoir: Reverberations: A Daughter’s Mediations on Alzheimer’s. When her second book—the novel Making Up the Gods was published—we knew we had to invite her on our Power Q & A series. Even though the books are markedly different, in narrative approach as well as genre, there was a major similarity readers were picking up on, and we had a question.

We’re delighted to have Sahar Golshan, the author of SO LOUD! (Annick Press, 2024), join us for this Power Q & A. Sahar speaks about the power of reading and representation in childhood, and how this compelled her to tell this story of finding your voice in her new, incredibly fun, and touching children’s picture book.

Kate Rogers is the author of The Meaning of Leaving, a tender and unflinching collection of poems that strives to show society's thoughtless acceptance of violence towards the vulnerable: women, the natural world, and the unhoused who struggle with mental health and addiction issues. These are brave and tender poems that will ignite and unite.

These are also incredibly personal poems, many of which Rogers identifies as autobiographical. In this Power Q & A, we ask Kate about the impetus and challenges of this project.

Patrick Grace's collection of poetry, Deviant, is one of the most anticipated debuts of the year, tracing a tender and salient exploration of queer identity and belonging, as well as Patrick's personal experiences with the systemic dismissal of intimate partner violence that occurs in 2SLGBTQ+ relationships.

We're stoked to have him on this Power Q & A to ask one of our most pressing questions about the collection.

February 12-16 is 2024 Sexual Health Week here in Canada, and we’re always up for raising awareness about sexual health, education, and care—especially when we can do that through amazing CanLit. That’s why we’re almost inappropriately excited to be featuring an excerpt of award-winning author Susan Wadds’ upcoming novel, What the Living Do, due out with Regal House Publishing on March 18, 2024.

Our Power Q & A guest today is Carmela Circelli—a Toronto psychotherapist and philosophy professor at York University, and also the author of the novel, Love and Rain (Guernica Editions, 2023). Love and Rain is a stunning story that explores the human cost of political ideology against the backdrop of the FLQ movement in Quebec and the Red Brigades in Italy. Carmela's work resounds with the depth and immediacy of the human psyche, and shows, with painful clarity, how we flail and suffer in times of civil unrest.