Megan Denton Ray's poem "As In Blackjack" appears in issue No. 279 (Spring 2019). Click "Read More" to access her music recommendation!

By Nancy Bauer

One recent June evening I attended a mesmerizing concert at the home of artist Stephen May, the first “house concert” I’d ever attended. Six other guests came, so with the host and four musicians, we were a gathering of twelve. The intimate group was surrounded by seven glorious May paintings and one pitiful palm tree. The musicians were plainly dressed: no theatrical tricks or garish makeup. . . .

By Ross Leckie

The sacred, the profane, and the glorious mundane shimmer through Kazim Ali’s poetry. The poems are visionary in the best sense of the word. They see both the translucence and the immanence of the world, a seeing that commingles vision, remembrance, and remembering, as he puts it in “Cover Me.” “Remembrance” is the odd word out here. Unlike vision and remembering, remembrance refers to something specific, a moment of history now commemorated. For Ali vision and remembering seem to step into a ceremony of memory that is elegiac, which can be as personal as a keepsake and as social as human slaughter: the museum, the monument, and the monumental. The visionary is given a body in these poems, through sex, embrace, travel, migration, and even something as simple as walking. . . .

By Sue Sinclair

I have just looked at the mock-up of the cover for the spring issue, and its millenial pink is making me consider the possibility that the shoulder-high snowbanks lining the driveway might not last forever. Thank you, Ian, designer extraordinaire. 

There is, of course, plenty beside the colour pink that makes this issue exciting. Kazim Ali, for starters. . . .

By Megan Kuklis
A Review of Darusha Wehm's The Home for Wayward Parrots (NeWest Press, 2018)

The Home for Wayward Parrots by Darusha Wehm is a charming novel that centres on the complicated lives of its many sweet characters. Exceptionally readable, the novel flows through the past and present of Brian “Gumbo” Guillemot’s life with such care that readers will not be able to put it down. This novel should be devoured in a single sitting.

by Rebecca Salazar

The following interview was conducted via email by Editorial Assistant and member of the Poetry Board Rebecca Salazar. Kim Trainor’s poem “Paper Birch” is the winner of The Fiddlehead’s 2019 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. 

----

By Kendra Guidolin

Ahmad Danny Ramadan has won The Fiddlehead’s 28th annual Short Fiction Prize for his story “My Name is Bridge.” The following interview was conducted via email with Editorial Assistant Kendra Guidolin in March/April 2019.

----

The Fiddlehead would like to congratulate the two Atlantic Canadian semifinalists in the 2019 Poetry In Voice Competition: Sophia Wilcott from Harbour View High School, Saint John, NB, and Berry Genge from Montague Regional High School, Montague, PEI. They are two of the 24 semifinalists chosen from over 10,000 students from 1,400 schools across Canada who will be competing for $25,000 in total prize money for themselves and their school libraries in an exciting, poetic evening at the National Finals Show, on Thursday, April 25th at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

odd sundays will be back at Tipsy Muse Café (86 Regent St), on March 31 beginning at 2 P.M. The featured readers will be Dian Day and Kayla Geitzler and there will be the usual open mic and free book draw..

~~~~~

The Fiddlehead is coming to Toronto! We'll be hosting an Introductory Spoken Word Workshop — "The Ecology of Story: Writing with Mother Earth" 3pm-5:30pm, in room MW130 on the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, with spoken word artists Sheniz Janmohamed and Mahlikah Awe:ri Enml'ga't Saqama'sgw (The Woman Who Stands and Walks In The Light). 

Later that evening, there will be an Open Mic at 7:30pm in room MW130 (workshop participants are encouraged, though not obligated, to perform!) featuring performances by Sheniz and Mahlikah on the theme of "Ecology."