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Stop! Look! Listen! Paul Luckhart's Listening Recommendation

As winter approaches, we should start to consider what music will accompany the gloom. Like central heating, stews, and mulled wine, Toronto musician Luka Kuplowsky’s, Capturing the Evening Song, is an essential comfort to get us through the cold. Released in the guts of winter 2022, Capturing the Evening Song is a meditation collection reminiscent of work by Beverly-Glenn Copeland and Hiroshi Yoshimura. It is a dreamy, synthy contemplation on simple, daily scenes.

Stop! Look! Listen! Jen McClanaghan's Reading Recomendation

I taught a class called Cotton at my New England university. In the course, we discussed the history of the crop, of the land, and the America commercial traditions of management, capital, and mortgaging, all of which came into being with plantation slavery. We wrote formal poems in response to contemporary news stories in which black men and women were being violently erased. At the end of the semester, my students pieced together a quilt.

Stop! Look! Listen! Mary Dean Lee's Listening Recommendation

I recently discovered a unique album called “I am in Need of Music: Songs on Poems by Elizabeth Bishop.” The Silken Water Suite with music composed by Alasdair MacLean and featuring soprano Suzie LeBlanc is arresting and beautiful. The four parts are: I. The silken water is weaving and weaving; II. Dear, my compass; III. Close, close all night; IV. Breakfast song. 

Stop! Look! Listen! Christine Wu's Reading Recommendation

A recent read-turned-favourite is There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job, written by Kikuko Tsumura and translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton. The narrator, burned out from her previous job, tries out a series of temp jobs with the caveat that they must be as undemanding as possible: “ideally, something along the lines of sitting all day in a chair”. Contrasted with our society’s focus on finding meaningful work, this premise is compelling from the start.

Stop! Look! Listen! Simon Brown’s Reading Recommendation

When I read Lisa Jarnot, it makes me want to write. So, given my frequent creative slumps, I keep Lisa’s collections close to my writing desk. I love all of them, but Ring of Fire is perhaps my favourite. It’s the kind of book you can either open up anywhere and plunge into for two minutes, or let yourself become engrossed, and reread the whole thing.

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