#canadian poets

[mothtoflameblog]

morning, mourning

the fold of you

in pale and bed

counting fingers to the sound

of kitchen water and

rain.

sore and cotton knotted

silence like the absence

of interstate, scissors

sit to halve us

on the bedside table.

i kept them in my pocket

till i saw you again

jailed behind a fence row,

smoking the street

into a haze of winter.

i’m still trying to make this

radio work and i only pick

up the

sharper things now,

but i want you

to think of hearts

and what's inside them,

how to fill a hollow

place.

[poem-today]

A poem by Jeffery Donaldson

THE WORD ON COOTES PARADISE

The bay was called Cootes Paradise after an Englishman named Coote. A foot-wide path loses the last, stone-grey, staggered roof-tops with a casual turn and does not fold back

until across the break it stands in clear prospect of Arcadia. Below the hills, the thumb of a small lake might seem to press (from where a passing coot circles above)

into the soft dough of the wood, rising on three sides around it, lightly crusted and browned by the November fallen leaves.

The pond-side gathers debris like tea-bract at the brim, glinting ciphers from the stirred duff and sediment that I have come to read.

A sudden night frost has dropped in the bay a clear, brittle patina, an ice-skin that puckers on the water, where the coot now circles down, goes out and prints its name

with dibbled steps in the snow and flies off. That sheen over the bay's black element, for a while, will brace the morning's flurry where it fell, and rose winded like cold down.

But by noon the ice will have long darkened to lake-blues, and the mild light will sop up the nervous, scrawling, dotty signature

of our English migrator, long gone, who anyway always made it a practise, so the word goes, not to walk on water.

Jeffery Donaldson

Photograph: American Coot in flight by Kinan Echtay

Jeffery Donaldson's works copyright © to the author.

More poems by Jeffery Donaldson are available at the Canadian Poetry Online site.

[romaniasweetromania]

https://romaniasweetromania.com/2024/01/irving-layton-sunt-destul-de-convins-ca-sunt-un-geniu/

[theamazingstories]

REVIEW/PROMO: POLAR STARLIGHT & POLAR BOREALIS

Figure 1 – Rhea Rose Hi, there—welcome back! (Or maybe someone should say that to me, since I missed last week.) This week is going to be a departure from my usual movie/TV or book review, or even from my nattering on about my fannish life or stuff like that. Normally, I would do a review of the two things I’m going to present to you, but in this case I can’t; I must recuse myself from reviewing…

[artangelzink]

Spring Forward - an online poetry reading on March 22nd, 2023

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[yourdailyqueer]

Ian Iqbal Rashid

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: Born 1968  

Ethnicity: Indian

Nationality: Tanzanian / Canadian

Occupation: Poet, writer, screenwriter, journalist, producer, director

[manitat]

Leonard Cohen

[sfsolstice]

perhaps one day i might find myself amongst the québécois, should my brother follow through with plans to see montreal and if my friend wishes for a weekend or two spent with her;

i might find myself thinking of you then, perhaps just a distant ache or a fond winter memory, walking the cobblestone of the vieux and admiring the flora in the jardin;

how popular is parc du mont-royal? how beautiful is the notre-dame, and how sweet the produce of jean-talon? would we have affaired within the city's sights, in its days and its nights?

i know the thought might come, and i know it will likely pass, but i know— not without the heart heavy with regret; perhaps i might wonder of another life, perhaps i might hope it was true, but perhaps one day i might find myself amongst the québécois, and perhaps i might think of you.

[internationalemeteorologie]

Nicolas Delort

Ozymandias. 2023

"I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." P. B. Shelley, 1817

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Lmao ok so maybe not

[innervoiceartblog]

Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood (1939) is best known for her searing explorations of feminism, sexuality, and politics in books like The Handmaid’s Tale (1986), a dystopian novel that takes place in a United States, which has become a fundamentalist theocracy where women are forced to have children. She started writing the book on a battered, rented typewriter while on a fellowship in West Berlin. The book became an international best-seller. Atwood’s daughter was nine when it was published; by the time she was in high school, The Handmaid’s Tale was required reading. Atwood once said, “Men often ask me, ‘Why are your female characters so paranoid?’ It’s not paranoia. It’s recognition of their situation.”

Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario. Her father was an entomologist and the family lived for a long time in insect-research stations in the wilderness. She was 11 before she attended a full year of school. About growing up in near isolation, Atwood said: “There were no films or theatres in the North, and the radio didn’t work very well. But there were always books. I learned to read early, was an avid reader and read everything I could get my hands on — no one ever told me I couldn’t read a book. My mother liked quietness in children, and a child who is reading is very quiet.”

One day she was walking across a football field on her way home and began writing a poem in her head and decided to write it down. She says: “After that, writing was the only thing I wanted to do. I didn’t know that this poem of mine wasn’t at all good, and if I had known, I probably wouldn’t have cared.”

Her first novel was The Edible Woman (1969), about a woman who cannot eat and feels that she is being eaten. Atwood likes to write in longhand, preferably with a Rollerball pen, and is even the co-inventor of the LongPen, a remote signing device that allows a person to write in ink anywhere in the world using a tablet and the internet. Her books include Alias Grace (1996), Oryx and Crake (2003), and The Heart Goes Last (2015).

About the writing life, Margaret Atwood says: “You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.”

#TheWritersAlmanac

[canadachronicles]

"Let laureates sing with rapturous swing Of the wonder and glory of work; Let pulpiteers preach and with passion impeach The indolent wretches who shirk. No doubt they are right: in the stress of the fight It's the slackers who go to the wall; So though it's my shame I perversely proclaim It's fine to do nothing at all. It's fine to recline on the flat of one's spine, With never a thought in one's head: It's lovely to le staring up at the sky When others are earning their bread. It's great to feel one with the soil and the sun, Drowned deep in the grasses so tall; Oh it's noble to sweat, pounds and dollars to get, But; it's grand to do nothing at all. So sing to the praise of the fellows who laze Instead of lambasting the soil; The vagabonds gay who lounge by the way, Conscientious objectors to toil. But lest you should think, by this spatter of ink, The Muses still hold me in thrall, I'll round out my rhyme, and (until the next time) Work like hell; doing nothing at all."

--Laziness, Robert William Service

I am still jet-lagged, and I've caught a violent cold, returning from warmer climes; thus I can say, without any shame, I am thoroughly enjoying a little laziness!

[peachynm]

[thoughtportal]

[artangelzink]

Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio Presents A Poetry Reading for International Women's Day, March 8, 2023

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[yourdailyqueer]

Jillian Christmas

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: N/A

Ethnicity: Afro Canadian

Occupation: Poet, writer