September was a pretty banner month for me. For one thing, I got to attend a 10-day writing residency on an off-the-grid island, with two other writers, a wood-fired sauna, and some attendant loons and beavers. For another, I got my hands on Claire-Louise Bennett's newest book, Checkout 19. If you aren't familiar with Claire-Louise … Continue reading I Will Follow Claire-Louise Bennett Anywhere
This is a small, slim book, and I read it at nights, over the course of about a week, sitting in my overly warm house during a heat wave. It was perfection. The Honey Month is a collection of poems and vignettes that envelop you in a world of sensuousness, magic, and metaphor. It balances … Continue reading Sweet, Sultry Summer Nights: The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar
I used to say, only sort of in jest, that I was in favour of public shaming. I didn't mean that I thought we needed to bring back the stocks or anything like that (okay, okay, I may have joked that we needed to bring back the stocks), but I had an idea that people … Continue reading Ideas and Revolutions: I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom
The lady herself: Muriel Spark in 1960. For a long time, Muriel Spark was a name in the back of my mind. I saw her books in used bookstores and thought, I should read those. I knew of the film adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but I wasn't sure about it—not only … Continue reading Muriel Spark & Me
This morning I awoke to a frost-covered world. Autumn is marching along; we are now more than halfway through October. One of these mornings I will wake up to snow—it's a matter of weeks, or maybe even days, now. As I watched the sky lighten from midnight to sapphire to icy blue and the sun … Continue reading Waking Early
So I had this dream. In my dream I was on a stage, and I was really belting it out. The dream is fuzzy (as dreams are), but I think I was singing—which is not something that I do in my waking hours, except maybe at home, for fun, when only my cats can hear … Continue reading That Time The Poet X Turned Up in my Dreams
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