Poetry

Nestle In Words Like An Animal: The Poetic G/Rasp of Tongue, Throat, and Mouth in G by Kirby

G, Klara du Plessis & Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi. Palimpsest Press, 2023.

First, let’s talk about the design/packaging of this book.

It’s exquisite. The colour palette, fonts, printed endpapers, on signature Coach House zephyr, readable text on the page. A book you want to pick up, hold, caress with the eyes and the touch. Congrats to in-house designer Ellie Hastings, editor Jim Johnstone, and publisher Aimee Parent Dunn. Finery.

With the abundance of high caliber poetry books published each year in Canada, it’s extremely difficult to narrow down which specific poetry collections to recommend. The only criteria I can think of on which to base that recommendation is that feeling you get when you finish reading it. More than appreciation or admiration, it’s a deep sense of relief that you get and a genuine thankfulness that this book exists, and you were lucky enough to find it.  

Ian Stephens’s lone book-length publication, Diary of a Trademark, feels like something of a lost classic, a rough (in all senses of the word) snapshot of early-nineties Montreal through the eyes of a gay man who died soon after the book was published. In Diary, Stephens knows he is succumbing to HIV/AIDS and, in the essay that opens the collection, “Weary State of Grace,” discusses a recent hospital stay in visceral detail.

The Fiddlehead is pleased to announce the finalists of our 2023 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Contest, judged by Kirby, Sadiqa de Meiher, and Rebecca Salazar! The winner of the $2000 contest prize will be announced in early April 2024 and the winning poem will appear in the Spring 2024 issue (299). Thank you to all who entered and congratulations to the following fifteen finalists!