by Chloe Coome for National Poetry Month, April 2020 Poetry is interwoven into the cultural tapestry of Canada and one need only visit to experience its far-reaching influence. In Montreal, one can go to the Saint-Louis Square and see the Monuments of Émile Nelligan and Octave Crémazie – the first National Poet of Quebec and…

by Sonja Arntzen for National Poetry Month, April 2020 Since the early twentieth century, by a process Ezra Pound called “fructification,” the poetries of East Asia  have nourished poetry in English. Pound used the term writing a preface in 1918 for Ernest Fenollosa’s essay, “The Chinese Written Character as Medium for Poetry.” That essay was…

by Beatriz Hausner for National Poetry Month, April 2020 At its most essential, translation is the transfer of textual or verbal objects from one language to another. Literary translation can be more readily compared to a kind of alchemy, where the contents of one vessel are poured into another vessel, and back again, to create…

Listen to Kamal Parmar read her poem “It’s Only Words” as a medium to offer hope and healing during these difficult times. Nanaimo poet and writer, Kamal Parmar has been passionately involved in writing since high school and University years. Her genre is poetry and creative non-fiction and she dabbles frequently with Haiku poetry. Her…

by Mary Lee Bragg for National Poetry Month, April 2020 Anyone who has travelled to Portugal or spent time with Portugese people has heard fado – the guitar, the long melodic lines, the half sob of songs full of saudade. Fado is defined by saudade, a nostalgia that goes beyond a sense of loss to…

by Anita Dolman for National Poetry Month, 2020 As I was growing up, rural southwestern Ontario was a homogenous blend of mostly second-to-sixth-generation townies and farmers, all stemming more or less from Britain and Western Europe, with the occasional, exotic Eastern European family mixed in. Most families had long ago abandoned their ancestral languages at…

by Hugh Hazelton The Voice of the Other Growing up, I was always fascinated by history and geography, and as far as I can remember was perpetually in search of the other. The more ancient the civilization, the more exotic the hero(ine) or artist, the more distant the place, the greater my interest. Though I…

by Flavia Cosma for National Poetry Month, April 2020 Man knows much more than he understands. Alfred Adler, 1870 – 1937 A butterfly without wings would be just a poor insect moving with difficulty. Its oversized, colored wings make all the difference. A butterfly soars, dances, kisses beautiful flowers, it enchants us and makes us…

by Onjana Yawnghwe for National Poetry Month, April 2020 Poems are places for the mind, and as places mark you, so does poetry. Yet the mind is currently occupied, table for one. If the mind is a room, there would be no floor space, the shelves crowded with pictures of strangers, loose wires, and odd…