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.
Ruben's Salmon by Elise Thorburn is the winning story from our 2020 Short Fiction Contest:
Excerpt
Editorial Assistant Taidgh Lynch recently spoke to Naoko Kumagai about her short-fiction piece Karafuto, which was published in The Fiddlehead No. 285 (Autumn 2020). Kumagai has been published in Room magazine, Ricepaper magazine, and Event, and was also longlisted for the CBC non-fiction prize. She lives in Toronto
Morgan Charles' story Plagued was the winner of our 2020 Creative Nonfiction Contest. Recently, editorial board member William Bonfiglio spoke to Morgan about compassion, helplessness and writing during a pandemic.
Plagued is featured in our upcoming Fall Issue 285. Click Read more for the full interview!
The Fiddlehead is pleased to announce that Morgan Charles is the winner of our 2020 Creative Nonfiction Contest and $2000 prize! Morgan's story Plagued will be featured in our upcoming Fall issue no. 285.
Thank you to all who entered the creative nonfiction contest and congratulations to the fourteen finalists. And thanks again to our judge Ariel Gordon!
Welcome to the first in an ongoing column by Nancy Bauer, "State of the Art."
Kate Finegan's story "Blues Too Bright" won the fiction prize as part of The Fiddlehead's 26th annual literary contest. You can read an interview with her here.
Blues Too Bright
"Have you noticed the birds are shitting more lately?” Mother calls to ask. I wait for my eyes to focus and see that it’s six a.m. on the dot. I imagine she’s been sitting by the window since four, waiting for a reasonable hour to call.
Dominique Bernier-Cormier's poem "Fabric" won the Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem as part of The Fiddlehead's 26 annual literary contest. You can read an interview with Bernier-Cormier here.
Fabric
October 31st, 2016
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!
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.
