poetry

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 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. 

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As a literary journal housed in Fredericton, we at The Fiddlehead were moved when we received a poem from Deputy Sheriff Jason Henderson in the wake of the shooting on August 10th in our city. “The Wolf Hunter” is written in honour of law enforcement and is dedicated to Cst Robb Costello and Cst. Sara Burns of the Fredericton Police Force, both of whom were murdered that day along with citizens Donnie Robichaud and Bobbie-Lee Wright. We wish strength to everyone affected by these deaths.
—Sue Sinclair, Editor

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The Wolf Hunter

Interview by Emily Skov-Nielsen, Marketing and Promotions for The Fiddlehead. Rebecca Thomas will be in Fredericton on August 25 to give a workshop "Writing Your Guts Out" from 2-4 at the Fredericton public Library and to give a reading later that evening at 7pm, also at the Fredericton Public Library. For more information, visit the Facebook event here or scroll down to see the poster.

By Colin Johnson    

Matthew Hollett’s poem “The Day After the Best Before” has won The Fiddlehead’s 2018 Literary Contest Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem. This interview was conducted over e-mail by Editorial Assistant Colin Johnson in the first weeks of March 2018 and has been edited for clarity.