Issues

No. 218 Spring 2022


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Cover · Contents · Book Reviews · Contributor Notes

Issue 218 cover art by Emily Hermant

Contents:

Winners:
2022
Open Season Awards

Poetry
  • Ronna Bloom, "May I"    
  • Laura Cok, "Like Clockwork"
  • Francesca Schulz-Bianco, "spring" and "10 easy steps to my body"
  • Carolyn Smart, "Dressing"
  • Joan Rivard, "[amˈbigyoōəs] [lôs, läs]" and "Prophet"
    Read an interview with Joan Rivard on her poems.
  • T. Liem, "A Thousand Twangling Instruments," "Y Being Something Impossible," and "There Are No Actual Monsters in this Poem I Hope"
  • Katherine Alexandra Harvey, "Master of Eyeliner in a Moving Vehicle"
  • Jamie Evan Kitts, "Sushi Date"
  • Bill Howell, "Dream Rocovery" and "Existential Weather Report"
  • Aaron Tucker, two poems from "Settler Education": "As a Canadian child, I was taught" and "A good Canadian citizen"  
  • Steve Noyes, "The North End, Winnipeg"
  • Eric Wang, "Ode to Panda Express (and Boy #1)"
  • Domenica Martinello, "Hot Pump"
  • Judith Taylor, "A New Caress" 
Fiction
  • Suzannah Windsor, "Schism"
  • Jeff Noh, "Paris Syndrome"
  • Jaime Burnet, "Whisper Porn"
Creative Nonfiction
  • Kate Gies, "Foreign Bodies"
  • Shauna Andrews, "Symptoms of a Body"
Reviews
  • Poetry

  • Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Bramah and the Beggar Boy
    (Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021)
    (Reviewed by Manahil Bandukwala)

    Bardia Sinaee, Intruder
    (Toronto: Anansi, 2021)
    (Reviewed by Danielle Janess)

    Isabella Wang, Pebble Swing
    (Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021)
    (Reviewed by Steve Noyes)

    Fiction

  • Bill Stenson, Half Brothers and Other Stories  
    (Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue, 2021)
    (Reviewed by Jordan Marjorie Tucker)

  • Katie Zdybel, Equipoise
    (Holstein, ON: Exile, 2021)
    (Reviewed by Sara Mang)

  • Michelle Berry, Everything Turns Away
    (Hamilton: Buckrider Books, 2021)
    (Reviewed by Zoe McKenna)

  • Tamas Dobozy, Ghost Geographies
    (Vancouver: New Star Books, 2021)
    (Reviewed by J. R. Patterson)

  • Mentionables

  • Jake Kennedy, the Rublev Horse
    (Kentville: Gaspereau, 2021)

    Daphne Marlatt, Then Now
    (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2021)

    Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies
    (Toronto: Anansi, 2020)

    Don McKay, Lurch
    (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2021)

    (All reviewed by Book Reviews Editor Jay Ruzesky)

Cover
  • Emily Hermant, Core I, 2021
    Cast, pigmented silicone,
  • 47 cm x 38 cm
  • Courtesy of the artist and Monte Clark Gallery
  • Photograph: Rachel Topham Photography
Contributor Notes

    SHAUNA ANDREWS is a writer and editor with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of BC. She was longlisted for the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize. cowgirlgrammar.com

    MANAHIL BANDUKWALA is a writer and visual artist, and currently Coordinating Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine and Digital Content Editor for Canthius. She is a member of Ottawa-based writing collective VII. manahilbandukwala.com

    RONNA BLOOM, author of six books of poetry, most recently The More, has collaborated with filmmakers, architects, choreographers, and conservationists. Her chapbook, Who is your mercy contact?, will appear in 2022. ronnabloom.com

    JAIME BURNET writes fiction, practices employment and human rights law, and makes dark lofi folk music as sockfoot. Her first novel, Crocuses Hatch from Snow, was published in 2019. She lives with her family in Mulipjɨkejk/Herring Cove, Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia. She watches ASMR in real life.

    LAURA COK lives in Guelph, ON and works in corporate communications. She has been published widely in Canada. Her debut, Doubter’s Hymnal, was shortlisted for the 2020 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.

    KAITLIN DEBICKI is Kanien’kehá:ka, Wolf Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River. She is a mother, a language learner, and a tree and forest devotee. An Assistant Professor and secret poet, she lives an Indigiqueer life in Hamilton, ON with her daughter, her mini schnauz, and her ADHD.

    KATE GIES teaches creative writing and expressive arts at George Brown College. Her writing has appeared in Hobart, The Humber Literary Review, Minola Review, the anthology Release Any Words Stuck Inside of You, and other places.

    KATHERINE ALEXANDRA HARVEY, Executive Director of ReLit, and Founder and Editor of ReLit Magazine, has had work in Exile Quarterly, Quill & Quire, Riddle Fence, and more. Harvey’s first novel, Quiet Time, will be published in 2022.

    EMILY HERMANT, an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores communication, technology, gendered labour, and craft, received a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from SAIC in Chicago. She is Associate Professor of Sculpture + Expanded Practices at ECU in Vancouver, and represented by Monte Clark Gallery.

    BILL HOWELL has five poetry collections, with recent work in Canadian Literature, EVENT, Prairie Fire, and Queen’s Quarterly. Originally from Halifax, Bill was a producer-director at CBC Radio Drama for three decades. He lives in Toronto.

    DANIELLE JANESS is Managing Editor and Assistant Poetry Editor at the VIDA Review. Her debut collection, The Milk of Amnesia, was published in 2021.

    JAMIE EVAN KITTS is a writer, educator, settler from the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Wolastoqiyik People, and former Managing Editor of the Atlantic Canadian Poets’ Archive. Her current project, “Table Manner,” is a zine-sized prose-poem food/queer/love “ep.” Find her in Hungry, Qwerty, and elsewhere.

    T. LIEM is the author of OBITS (2018). Her writing has been published in Apogee, Plenitude, Room Magazine, Boston Review, Grain, Maisonneuve, and elsewhere. She lives in Tio’Tia:ke/Montreal, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territories.

    SARA MANG is a storyteller from Labrador who lives in Ottawa with her husband, three children, and coonhound. Her work has appeared in journals in Canada, the US, and the UK. In 2021, she was nominated for a National Magazine Award in fiction.

    DOMENICA MARTINELLO, from Montreal, QC, is the author of All Day I Dream about Sirens (2019). She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

    ZOE MCKENNA recently completed her MA at the University of Victoria with a focus on horror fiction in Canada. Her reviews can be found in Quill & Quire and The British Columbia Review (formerly The Ormsby Review). Twitter: @zoevmckenna

    JEFF NOH is a Montreal-based writer whose fiction has appeared in carte blanche and Best Canadian Stories. In 2020, he was a UNESCO writer-in-residence in Bucheon, South Korea. He is currently working on his first book, a novel.

    STEVE NOYES’s poems have recently appeared in The Literary Review of Canada, Queen’s Quarterly, Stand, and Poetry Pacific. He lives in Sheffield, England.

    BAHAR ORANG is a writer living in Toronto. Her first book is Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty (2020).

    J. R. PATTERSON was born in Manitoba and raised on a beef and grain farm on the Canadian Prairies. His experiences as a farm labourer, factory worker, and musician inform much of his writing.

    ELLISE RAMOS is a mother and a writer, held hostage by her cat, Sharptooth, in Toronto. When not facilitating writing workshops for the Writer’s Collective of Canada, she is selling vintage jewelry as Harmony van der Schyff. elliseramos.com

    JOAN RIVARD has an MA in English Literature from Carleton University, and will complete an online program in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford in 2022.

    FRANCESCA SCHULZ-BIANCO is a Canadian journalist and poet based in Berlin.

    IAN CLAY SEWALL is a Canadian based in Los Angeles. An MFA candidate at Antioch University, he has stories in Soundings East, Santa Ana River Review, and Prairie Fire. His films have won awards in both the US and Canada.

    CAROLYN SMART's seven collections of poetry include Careen and Hooked. She founded the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, is Poetry Editor for McGill-Queen’s Press, and for thirty years taught Creative Writing at Queen’s University.

    JUDITH TAYLOR lives in Toronto and writes about friendship.

    AARON TUCKER, author of six books, most recently Catalogue d’oiseaux (2021) and the novel Y (2018), grew up on the unceded territory of the Syilx (Okanagan) Peoples and currently resides in Tkaronto on the Dish with One Spoon Territory. aarontucker.ca

    JORDAN MARJORIE TUCKER, writer, teacher, audio journalist, and full-time flaneuse, negotiates with the void on the traditional lands of the Tsq’escenemc (Canim Lake First Nation) within Secwepemcúecw.

    ERIC WANG is a writer residing in Scarborough, ON. He hopes everyone is taking good care of themselves.

    SUZANNAH WINDSOR, a dual citizen of Canada and Australia currently living in Northwestern Ontario, has had work in Geist, Dalhousie Review, Prairie Fire, and others.