2020
The Many Gendered Other Reading List
A Reading List Created by the Feminist Caucus In this troubled time, we are all looking for brilliant, beautiful and insightful poetry. The Feminist Caucus has put together a reading list along the theme of Many Gendered Other. As writers, we all acutely feel “other” in some way, and have been lifted out of our sense of “otherness” or…
Read MoreLearn to Read Minds in Only 171,476* Easy Steps!
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…
Read MoreThe Languages of Poetry
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…
Read MoreThe Power of Poetry
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…
Read MoreWhen Poems Are Rooms
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…
Read MoreLanguage, Travel, Eros, Being: How the Airplane, Structured Like a Language Is “A World of Poetry”
by Adeena Karasick for National Poetry Month, April 2020 As a New York based, Canadian poet, performer, lecturer, committed to a poetics of diaspora, nomadicism, or as bill bissett says “yesmadicism,” I have found myself on a lot of airplanes. Coincidentally, the publication of this article in honor of National Poetry Month coincides with the…
Read MorePoetry and the Condition of Communication
by Adebe DeRango-Adem for National Poetry Month, April 2020 It is understood by most that medical doctors save lives—and I cannot overemphasize the critical importance of our frontline health workers at this time. Yet I continue to believe that writers (creative writers, at that) also have the power to heal societies. While World Poetry Day…
Read MoreFrom Poetry Nation to Instagram
by Feng Zhou for National Poetry Month, April 2020 There is an old book called “General Songs of Tang” in China, which recorded about 3,000 poets and 50,000 poems written in the Tang Dynasty (from 618 to 907). The book earned China its nickname: poetry nation. Today, the book still fascinates and inspires the whole…
Read MoreNPM 2020: The Weekly Roundup (April 1 – 10)
Welcome to the first weekly round-up for National Poetry Month 2020. Below are highlights from this week’s NPM announcements, activities, blog, events, poetry prompts and more. Celebrating the 2020 LCP Book Awards Longlist In honour of our first announcement of the 2020 Book Awards season, we would like to take an opportunity to congratulate and celebrate the…
Read MoreTranslating Poetry
by Erín Moure for National Poetry Month, April 2020 Toronto-native poet Norma Cole got me translating poetry. I wouldn’t have had the confidence on my own! I’d been improving my French for over a decade in Montreal when, in 1996, Norma emailed me from San Francisco asking me to co-translate some poems from French with…
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