poetry

Fredericton (NB) March 26, 2020 - The Fiddlehead and the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick have announced the shortlisted titles for the fifth annual New Brunswick Book Awards. The program celebrates books published in the 2019 calendar year and in three categories: poetry, fiction and nonfiction. The competition is open to traditionally published and self-published authors. The awards presentation ceremony, originally planned for May 23 in Fredericton, has been postponed due to COVID-19.

Editorial Assistant Melissa Spohr Weiss interviewed Barbara Pelman about her creative process—inspiration, poetic form, and the craft of writing. Barbara Pelman’s memoir will appear in the upcoming special 75th anniversary issue of The Fiddlehead.

Editorial Assistant Melissa Spohr Weiss interviewed Anna Swanson about swimming and writing, creating “found poetry” out of “garbage words,” and her mode of poetic creation that at once came out of and embodies the lived experience of physical and cognitive constraints following a serious concussion. Anna Swanson’s poem, “Portals,” will appear in the upcoming special 75th anniversary issue of The Fiddlehead that will be published in spring

Editorial Assistant Melissa Spohr interviewed Susan Musgrave about her creative process, the roles of emotion, dreams, unknowing, and the subconscious, and the poet’s relationship to the poem in its becoming and ongoing revision. Three of Susan Musgrave’s poems—"More Than Seeing," "What We Do,“ and "Life in the Uncontainable World"—will appear in the upcoming special 75th anniversary issue of The Fiddlehead that will be published in spring.

Photo credit: Regina Akhankina

Editorial Assistant Douglas Walbourne-Gough interviewed Sue Goyette about emergence, vulnerability, and engagement in the practices of writing and reading poetry. An excerpt from Sue Goyette's book-length poem, Anthesis, will appear in the upcoming special 75th anniversary issue of The Fiddlehead that will be published in spring.

Georgette LeBlanc's poems "neufs mot," "aux États," and "retour de l'exil" were originally published in Alma (Éditions Perce-Neige, 2007). They are reprinted here and in our Autumn 2019 issue with permission, and with many thanks to Perce-Neige.

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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