The Fiddlehead is excited to announce our 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Contest shortlist! The contest was judged by Jenna Lyn Albert, Adèle Barclay, and Canisia Lubrin. The winner of the $2000 contest prize will be announced in early April 2021 and the winning story will be featured in the Spring 2021 issue. Thank you to all who entered and congratulations to the following fifteen finalists!
Kate Cayley is a fiction writer, playwright, and poet who's work has been featured in many issues of The Fiddlehead. She has written a short story collection, How You Were Born, two collections of poetry, When This World Comes to an End and Other Houses, a young adult novel, The Hangman in the Mirror, and a number of plays. She has won the Trillium Book Award, the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction, an O. Henry Short Story Prize, and a Chalmers Fellowship, and been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the K. M. Hunter Award, and the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award, and long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize and the CBC Prize in both poetry and fiction.
Eleonore Schönmaier’s poetry has been published by The Fiddlehead many times, most recently in our 2020 Summer Poetry Issue. Her Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete is forthcoming in 2021 (MQUP). Her critically acclaimed Wavelengths of Your Song (MQUP) was published in German translation in 2020. In 2019 she won the National Broadsheet Contest. Her poetry has been widely anthologized including in Best Canadian Poetry. Find out more at eleonoreschonmaier.com!
Rose Maloukis
These Weeds
Spasms trouble a tired body, little flesh, no hunger.
Leaves cycle, vanish, more and more empty sky.
Dishes fallen to the floor. A mouthful of beaten rice — I cannot swallow!
A purple balloon buffeted by slow circulation, no direct draft.
Surface highlights, rotations wobble, roll then lull, they are imbalanced.
Are you alive if your breath — the balloon, under the blouse, senseless —
vacant.
Tanis MacDonald lives in Waterloo, Ontario, and is curious. She is most recently the author of Mobile (Book*hug 2019). Tanis MacDonald's poetry has appeared in several issues of The Fiddlehead over the years. Most recently, her poem Other Fish was published in our sold out autumn issue No. 285.
We're so excited to announce the launch of Arrivals and Departures: Objects | Food | Memories, the second in the Arrivals & Departures chapbook series! Arrivals and Departures emerges from two Fiddlehead-sponsored "Writing for Newcomers" workshops. The Fredericton workshop, Eat, Drink, Write, took place at the Multicultural Centre on November 2, 2019, and was facilitated by Salar Ghatta. The Halifax workshop, Arrivals and Departures: Objects, Memories and Transitions, was at Pier 21, the Canadian Museum of Immigration, on August 2, 2019. It was facilitated by Anthazia Kadir.
Gary Barwin is a writer and multidisciplinary artist and the author of twenty-four books including A Cemetery for Holes, with Tom Prime and For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems, ed. Alessandro Porco. A new novel, Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy will appear in 2021. Five of Barwin's poems can be found in The Fiddlehead Summer Poetry Issue 284.
Click read more to see which books Barwin recommends!
Mary Gilliland hails from the northeast United States. Her poetry has also appeared in such publications as AGNI, Hotel Amerika, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Stand, Vallum, and in Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms In Our Hands. Her award-winning The Ruined Walled Castle Garden will be out in 2020 from Bright Hill Press. Two of Mary's poems will be featured in the soon to be published Autumn issue 285 of The Fiddlehead. Subscribe now for your copy!
Keith Taylor retired a couple of years ago after teaching for many years at the University of Michigan. His most recent full length collection is The Bird-while (Wayne State University Press, 2017). His poetry will be featured in an upcoming issue of The Fiddlehead.
Click Read More for Keith's thoughts on Apollinaire’s Calligrammes!
It's time for the 17th annual Poetry Weekend! The first of several online events will be taking place online on Sunday, Oct 4, 2020 from 6:30-7:30 Atlantic time (5:30 Eastern).
Click Read More for the details!
