This past weekend, Fiddlehead contributor Doyali Islam was on CBC's Sunday Morning talkiing with Michael Enright about "her childhood, the role of poetry in political resistance, and why she became a practitioner of parkour." As part of the discussion, she read "poem for your pocket," which we published last Autumn (The Fiddlehead, no. 269)!
You can listen to the interview here!
By Rachel Rose
Three writers: Birgül Oğuz, Karen Villeda, and Betsy Warland. Three different countries: Turkey, Mexico, Canada. Each writer grapples with gender and identity, with loss, with the limits of language, with persistence against the conspiracies of silence, with responding to violence as part of the quotidian, as part of civilian life. On the surface these writers appear to have little in common, and yet their answers, though written separately and thousands of miles apart, seem part of the same conversation.
Very recently, The Atlantic published “The Greatest Poet Alive: The Feral Genius of Australia’s Les Murray,” a gushing, appreciative overview of Murray’s career disguised as a review of his latest book Waiting for the Past. It is far from alone in its adoration of Murray’s distinguished career. Though he does have his detractors, and he was a major figure in Australia’s “poetry wars,” his name is regularly included on lists of potential Nobel Prize winners, and Joseph Brodsky’s claim that Murray is “quite simply, the one by whom the language lives” is oft-quoted.
I was thrilled to work with Katie Fewster-Yan to select poems from across the career of Mary Jo Salter. Together we debated, tussled, and celebrated over the choosing of this selection, which we hope you will enjoy.
By Robert Norsworthy
Michael Eden Reynolds has won our 25th annual Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem for "False Dichotomy or Monocot." Michael Eden Reynolds’ first book, Slant Room, was published by PQL in 2009. His second manuscript, Elsewhere Thought Known, has already been published in a parallel universe. Michael lives in Whitehorse where he works as a mental health/addictions counsellor.
By Emily Skov-Nielson
Rachel Rose's poems "Corona for Charlotte," "Good Measure," and "Sunflowers" appeared in The Fiddlehead Autumn 2015 issue.
Rachel Rose is currently Vancouver’s Poet Laureate. She has published four collections of poetry: Giving My Body to Science, Notes on Arrival and Departure, Song and Spectacle, and most recently, Marry & Burn. She is also a short story writer and an essayist whose work has been published in literary magazines and anthologies across Canada and the United States. Her poem, “Sunflowers” (among others), is featured in The Fiddlehead Autumn 2015 issue.
Photograph by Thomas Langdon
Frances Firth Gammon, one of the founding members of The Fiddlehead, has passed away at the age of 97. There will be a memorial at the Alumni Memorial Building (3 Bailey Dr.) on the UNB campus on November 29th at 4.30 p.m.
By Emily Skov-Nielson
There’s really no point in holding a grudge against winter since, let’s face it, it’s the prevailing season here in New Brunswick. So the next time the snow flies, resist the urge to curse and clench your jaw — sit back, pour yourself a glass of something dark and spirituous, and immerse yourself in Thompson’s magnetizing winter world: “this place suddenly yours.”
By Shane Neilson
[Editor's note: In honour of M. Travis Lane being shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry, we're pleased to reprint with permission Shane Neilson's introduction to the retrospective of her work that appeared in last summer's poetry issue, No. 260, Summer 2014.]
By Steven Suntres
In my mind, the palate for both techno and poetry is a massive suggestion for the two to fuse together and to create on a blank canvas. I foresee an opportunity, both in content and cultural relevance, to create something that is beautiful and authentic in both of these mediums coming together. They are both emotional experiences that could synthesize into a superpower of an emotional medium.
