rob mclennan : SUBTEXT, by Nicole Raziya Fong

SUBTEXT, Nicole Raziya Fong
Talonbooks, 2026

 

 

 

The third full-length collection from Montreal poet and collaborator Nicole Raziya Fong is SUBTEXT (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2026), a title that follows a handful of chapbooks including Fargone (2014), Leguminosae Delusion Athletics (with Andy Martrich; Calgary AB: The Blasted Tree, 2021) and FLIGHT MODE IN THE CITY (Spiral Editions, 2023), as well as their full-length debut, PEЯFACT (Talonbooks, 2019), “a three-part series of poems interrogating the nature of experience, language, trauma, and identity,” and OЯACULE (Talonbooks, 2021), a book the author described in their 2019 “12 or 20 questions” interview as “a psychic window into suppressed memory, lived resistance and anger.” Furthering their book-length investigations through language, memory and trauma, the back cover of SUBTEXT describes the collection as one that “peers into the imperceptible psychic strata created by intergenerational trauma, confronting the challenge of finding one’s place in a sensorium of concealed realities and obscured memories.”

As the opening sequence of accumulating and self-contained stanzas, includes: “Every morning I consider what it is / I’d like to remove from myself and / give back to you. I extract this thing / with decisiveness, writing it down / on my hands with black ink before / falling back into the depths of sleep.” The collage of  SUBTEXT includes bursts of short scenes, strings of collaged phrases and reversed text, inverted images and narrative overlays, attempting a clarity through a process that itself is purposefully obscured, blurred, fragmented, and, at times, even cinematic. Further in the same sequence, writing: “Memory levels the spaces I’ve / set aside for transformation.” At the back of the collection, Fong’s “AUTHOR NOTE” closes:

The poetic and theoretical modes of SUBTEXT allow memory to manifest in forms that resist narrative closure, moving in the mode of what Édouard Glissant termed errantry (l’errance). The poetics of errantry is rhizomatic, moving through multiplicity, polyvocality, and contradiction while refusing a singular point of origin. Errantry allows for a model of identity that is composite and relation-based, one which embraces the diffusions and opacities specific to diasporic experience.

SUBTEXT is woven from autobiographical thread: traces of light I shone into the unknowable darkness of the unconscious, where the Analyst might have said that answers existed.

This project is an errant archive.

Fong certainly isn’t the first literary writer to explore memory, trauma and family archive in writing as a way through—recent further examples might include Montreal poet and editor Darby Minott Bradford’s Dream of No One but Myself (London ON: Brick Books, 2021), Vancouver poet and editor Andrea Actis’ Grey All Over (Brick Books, 2021), Ottawa poet and editor Margo LaPierre’s Ajar (Toronto ON: Guernica Editions, 2025) or American poet chaun webster’s nonfiction title, Without Terminus (Minneapolis MN: Graywolf Press, 2026)—but rarely is this done through such an open structure of experimentation through form and the unconscious. Shifting and reinterpreting meaning through visual overlays and stitched lines, the effect is one of a shifting foundation, purposefully so, attempting to tear at the roots to construct something entirely and uniquely transformed, and thus, reclaimed. In the opening section, Fong writes: “Just because something / appears does not mean it has / shown itself. What does not / show itself is something that / can never seem (show itself / as something it’s not). With / ease I can picture myself as / I am now, which is to say, / changed, [...].” A declaration through the archive isn’t enough, but an entire rebuilding of what the archive has wrought, pulled apart and reassembled, forces the archive to thus justify its existence at every level. As their author biography at the end of the collection offers: “Their artistic work seeks to delimit and reconstruct the incorporeal into inhabiting a more muscular physique.” The way through such trauma is unknowable, so why not the language, certainly, pushing the possibilities of how one articulates or works a text as a way to document and archive, set down on the page any element of that level of intimate trauma. As part of their interview for Touch the Donkey (published March 2020), Fong responds:

Perhaps you could say that in my first, PERFACT, I was just beginning this process of engaging with language and memory in an exploratory way. The writing I’m doing now is at once a crystallization and expansion of the concerns I had perhaps unconsciously begun broaching in PERFACT but weren’t fully developed there. For whatever reason I feel a lot less constrained by formal expectations now than I did in PERFACT and the ability to see the page as an expansive site of potential rather than a rigid, lineated space by which concept should be conveyed in a particular manner has been exciting for me. I really can’t say where my work is headed as I never know what is coming until it comes. The work changes as I do, in an equally unpredictable way.

SUBTEXT is assembled into four extended sections—“Neutral Grey,” “SUBTEXT,” “Disagreement Over the Cloud’s True Colour Interactions” and “Scenes on Heartbreak”—there is something compelling in the way that this particular work exists as an ongoing exploration and examination, both on family history and how trauma has impacted them, but an interrogation into the process of working through such experiences through the archive, through text. Fong’s texts don’t let up any less on their own purposes and reasonings, pushing a way through to think openly and honestly on how and what language interrogates, just as much as it interrogates.

I wake up in Montréal; it’s late afternoon.
From where I stand, the clouds seem tinted
with an orange hue. 

 

       I am born.

I mean enactment in the sense of an expressive
language parting from metaphor. Not to
transform things into appearance, but to make
them exist in the entirety of their being. Yet while
“the uncovering destroys a deception; it does not
discover anything authentically appearing.”

 

“What we seem to be to others” – I want to say –
“is only a part of what we are.” 

I mean, it’s not a part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

rob mclennan lives in Ottawa, where he is very famous and has lots of friends. His latest poetry title edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026) recently published, as well as the book-length essay A river runs through it: a writing diary , collaborating with Julie Carr (Caitlin Press, 2026), and new chapbooks Small studies in blue (Broke Press, 2026) and selected poems v1 (Subpress, 2026).

Peter Hrastovec : TWO BOOKS, TWO FRIENDS, TWO VIEWS OF LIGHT

THE SHAPE OF DISAPPEARING LETTERS, Marty Gervais
Mosaic Press, 2026

WHEN YOU’RE DOWN ON YOUR KNEES IN A FIELD CALLED FOREVER, John B. Lee
Mosaic Press, 2026

 

 

Marty Gervais and John B. Lee have been friends forever. Their prominence as poets here in Southwest Ontario and throughout much of Canada has flourished like their bond in a decades-long association through writing.  They have shared the stage on numerous occasions, completed many reading road trips together and have formed, quintessentially, a brotherhood by the book. And they have garnered a faithful following of readers and other writers who have been drawn to their genius and the generosity of their wise counsel as editors and publishers.

It is fitting that, this year, Mosaic Press has released a collection of poetry by each of these talented and influential artists, a celebration of sorts and, for each of them, an invitation to explore themes of generational memory and lessons learned. And as with everything they do, Gervais and Lee do not disappoint.

In THE SHAPE OF DISAPPEARING LETTERS, Marty Gervais tackles his own physical limitations with deeply moving, personal poems. We are asked to bear witness to the subject of his macular degeneration and eventual blindness. These poems are tough, bittersweet but, in many ways, uplifting and inspirational.

With vision problems detected early in his youth, Gervais recalls a visit to the optometrist that is revelatory:

Barely five and I didn’t see

the point of all these letters and

asked what kind of language this was

The doctor frowned and said

“Just read what you see…please”

I struggled to make neither head nor tail

of this alphabetic scrabble and asked again,

“Is there supposed to be some kind of story here?”

The poet’s enormous challenge is a shared, hereditary experience, as we learn of his own father’s trials and tribulations:

But each morning, despite failing eyes

he worked his way down the stairs

to a cheerless basement room to stand

and paint till he heard my mother

call him back for lunch

The anguish of impaired vision does not impede nor diminish the artist in either of them. His father’s avocation was visual art; for Marty Gervais, it is photography. And as we have come to know, the call of the camera has long complimented his poetic writing and spawned several successful stand-alone books of images.    At this stage in his life, Gervais leans greatly on his photographic talent, not as a crutch but as a useful tool to feed his journalist’s curiosity and to enhance the nature and the essence of his prolific artistry:

I work the camera’s aperture ring

brightening the viewfinder, awaiting

the muted click to say I’m in focus

and the picture is ready

His images are sharp, his memory focused. What Gervais shares with his readers is not aimed to draw pity nor to declare his own remorse. These poems are a testament to the profound wonder and awe he finds in the simple things that we all take for granted and that will for him, in time, disappear sadly and permanently. And despite this turn of events, he rejoices in the light that will remain.

And so, too, John B. Lee, writes with reverence regarding everyday influences in his life, the things he has seen and experienced and what has shaped his understanding of the sweet moments and mysteries of his world.  As you read WHEN YOU’RE DOWN ON YOUR KNEES IN A FIELD CALLED FOREVER, you may think that you have discovered a prophet, a latter-day Tiresias, strong in language and forceful in moral sentiment: 

I missed the closing of the church

the last liturgy

of the millennium

before the building died

into another purpose

in the market place

the final homily

its moral

taken from the torn-out pages

of the death of God

The last vestiges of the farm-boy life he once knew is eroding, as farms vanish and agricultural hamlets dwindle. And so, he laments,

all that is left for the citizens

of the village of my youth

where i went to school

it seems, is the last

unlasting community of

the graveyard

though even there

the pigeon-chested earth

caves in

almost enough to swallow

the names

of all and every single one

of the once-loved dead

an inbreath

of green ground

over the broken ribs

of the fallen-in oak

and old wood coffins

whereby and wherefore

the common crush of time

levels every Lazarus

Like any remarkable storyteller, Lee threads a narrative element in his poetry. But there is often a didactic component as well, something to be gleaned, a lucid message, a prized take-away. His work is rich with childhood memories of a hard-working farm family, the land fertile with cash crops, the wide-open spaces teeming with adventures and possibilities for a young daydreamer. And with all of that comes the ensuing realization that charmed youth gives way to a sobering epiphany-- that the best times remain vivid, picture-perfect reminiscences that we harbour in our hearts while longing for a repeat performance.

And so, with an imaginative child’s determination, an afternoon in an idyllic setting is meant to be

off to the barns or

out to the fields or

back to the woodlot

or down the lane

to lay siege on the cornstalks

finding the worth

of a windfallen branch

how one was a musket

another a sword

in swashbuckler shadow

of broken-back fences

 

i’d follow the ambient light

to the shelter of heaven

and read my way home

by the stars

 

and oh, what story i was

what a maker of widows

what a hero of storms

That emphatic assertion bears repeating for its simplicity and its truth. Says John B. Lee, “…and oh, what story I was…”.

He may perhaps have to share that declaration with his friend, Marty Gervais, with a slight variance: “what story they both were”.   May their story continue.

 

 

 

 

Peter Hrastovec is the current poet laureate for the City of Windsor (Ontario). His most recent chapbook is Limbo Moon, published by Woodbridge Farm Books.

 

Harold Hoefle : Three poems

 

 

 

To Be

Gibraltar, James Wilson Morrice, c.1913. Oil and graphite on wood.

 

It dominates.  A massive gold rock   
shaped like a wedge, flecked with silvery blue
and fronted by a blur of beach figures,
one standing apart.  A woman in a wide black hat          
topped with feathers, a stroke of royal blue 
at her feet.  Crowd, loner.  Someone
will always break off.  Go alone. 
Another’s voice annuls silence, but what if
silence threatens, absence knifes?
No person or animal to commune with. 
Life as desert, cold at night.                                                            

Painted black, far behind the woman, another 
solitary.  A man drives a white horse-drawn cart. 
The backdrop is rock, the monolith
that gathers worker and hedonist, as if
Morrice knew: nearness to a mountain
ennobles the smallest human act,
done at the hour of doing and doing
nothing, which only appears so. 

In this place, with iron bars, a Greek hero
split a mountain, creating two.  Gibraltar                                
and her African twin: the Pillars of Hercules.  

 

 

Running on Ice                                                                                               

Crunch it down,
pound its spread
with the bang
of shoes
hammering west
to the sunset,    
body leaning   
into minus nine
(wind chill
minus twenty),
the air       
invisible
blackflies      
biting my face –
pain, sure,    
but countered
by colour                             
splitting the world,
a thousand glints
of snow                                        
under a blue
so impacted,       
so massively
stalactite 
only a god       
could smash it, 
break the sky 
to show us
what grows behind –      
and when the seen
shatters
we’ll run to the cold,
in the cold,
the cold
the one thing
we know. 

 

 

On Being a Leafs Fan                         

“There is eternal hope, but not for us.”
                          – Kafka

 

Loving the feel of a book and the world     
it gives you…later, watching puck-
size goslings swim in their parents’ wake,
paralleling the shore – these things layer
your life, as does cursing the Leafs,          
who are your children and all your fathers.    
  
In a bowered garden, cradling your device
of choice, you stream the playoff game.  Your hopes
so low, worms snuggle up and ask, in the gentlest
of worm voices, You okay?  Oh, don’t worry,    
soon you’ll be with us.  We too were fans.  We
are still trod upon.  Life, death – they meet at your
feet. 

Other questions: should your guy elbow the head
and concuss their guy, because last game
he hurt one of yours?  Are you into Old School pay-
back, flexing lex talionis, injury for injury? 
Will you bench your conscience for the game
or forever?                                                                   

Game Seven, down 5-1.  In the lingo     
of Leafs Nation, you text a friend.  Shit! 
Shithead!  Later, quiet, at breakfast,
you spoon up the soggy bowl of sorrow. 
Why give those guys your time.   
Maybe, for us, they’re all our time is worth.

 

 

 

Harold Hoefle’s poems have won the Bliss Carman Award, the Great Blue Heron Poetry Award (2014), and a National Magazine Awards silver medal. His debut collection of poems, The Night Chorus, was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. He has also published a collection of short-fiction called The Mountain Clinic (Oberon Press). These poems are from Leaning In, a new chapbook out this month with above/ground press. Harold lives in Ottawa, teaches in Montreal.

Christina Wells : Letters from the Field: (mostly) St. John’s, Newfoundland

 

 

Notes: Poetry Events in and around St. John’s
Date: July 15, 2026 

At Kym Greeley’s artist talk last night for her new exhibition, The Borrowing Days, I got talking to one of the artists in attendance, Gary Smith, who told me his wife is organizing a poetry reading at The Battery Cafe sometime in August. This feels very ‘Battery’—this openness to hosting on-the-ground, local events. The Battery cafe is at the bottom of Signal Hill and although it’s quite small, there are events cropping up there constantly: jazz, storytelling circles, poetry nights, open mics. It’s a go-to place to encounter local music and art.

The Theatre Hill Bar + Cafe at The Majestic is also open to hosting new events. While celebrating poetry month back in April, The Theatre collaborated with writers Nicole Haldoupis and Kathrine Abbass to organize and emcee a Poetry & Prose night, with featured readers and an open mic. I read my poetry at the first of these events with my friend, Ophelia Fernandes. The event was so well attended that now they hold one every month. You get to immerse yourself in the work of featured readers, but the open mic portion of the evening is where the event really shines. Every month there’s something new to tease the palette—a smorgasbord of locals, tourists, published poets, and first timers showing up to share their work and cheer each other on. In a short amount of time, Nicole, Katherine, and The Theatre have whipped up a staple for the creative community. I’ll definitely be back as an open mic’er next time.

And this isn’t the only duo waxing poetic around town. The Sad Clown Collective is a St. John’s group that hosts spoken word events, poetry readings, and writing events. According to their Instagram, hosts Sara Anne Meyer and Lucan Ings-Simms are “two clowns just holding space for spoken word performers and poets.” I haven’t made it out for an event yet, but a pic from their February gathering at The Newfoundland Embassy displayed the festivities:

Pool Hall Poetry Prompts:

1. Diamonte Poem

2. Write what you noticed about a stranger today

3. Write a love note to a ghost

4. A screaming song. 

A somewhat newer entity, Low Tide Collective is a community-centred poetic partnership between myself and Mercy Williams. Our goal is to contribute to the community by organizing local, paid opportunities for both emerging and established poets. In November 2025, we collaborated with O’Brien Farm to put off a Learning to Listen evening, complete with a fire by the barn, charcuterie, local beers, and poetry readings. Local poets Darren Ivany, Susan White, Nicole Haldoupis, Mercy, and I read alongside the wonderfully kind and lovely Don McKay. This summer we’ve teamed up with MUN’s Botanical Garden for their Twilight Thursday events. On July 9th, we led a poetry walk through the gardens. Participants carried their poetry note books to collect sounds or impressions, and we stopped throughout the walk to listen to poetry: Joy Abraham in the greenhouse, Taylor Brown in the pagoda, Matthew Hollett  by the lake, and Susan White and Darren Ivany in the woods. Mercy and I will facilitate a nature and place-based writing workshop there on July 23rd and experiment with mixing sound bathing and poetry at our final event on August 9th.

        

Notes: Journals and Magazines
Date: July 16, 2026 

Moving from practice to print, Memorial University’s student-run literary journal, Paragon, has been in existence since 2007 but publication has been sporadic, depending on student interest and availability. In 2023, Nicole Haldoupis, an MA student at the time, re-ignited the energy around Paragon and in 2024, I joined her in the effort to revive it. We’ve put together three issues so far as co-managing editors—issues #9, #10, and #11. Past student editors include Katie Baggs, Randy Drover, and Allison Graves, to name just a few. The current faculty supervisor is Dr. Michelle Porter. Together, we’re just starting to dig into issue #12.

It’s unclear if we can claim Horseshoe as the western Newfoundland equivalent to Paragon, or Paragon as the eastern Newfoundland equivalent to Horseshoe, but it is also edited in part by graduate students in the Master of Applied Literary Arts program at MUN’s Grenfell Campus in Corner Brook, NL. I’m not sure exactly who’s running the show over there these days, but whenever I’ve communicated with the journal, it’s the wonderful poet Adam Beardsworth who emails back.

Toothcut is a quirky and refreshingly feisty new literary journal out of St. John’s. Something you can really cut your teeth on (as they like to say). This journal, welcoming both literary pieces and saucy secrets, is put together by a fabulous team: Caleb J. Browne, Jenna James, Tanner Hudson, and Nick Corcoran. I met Anna Hansen-robitschek, their board chair, at the Sparks Literary Festival in April of this year (Paragon and Toothcut were tabling buddies) and she was brimming with collaborative ideas for how to bring Paragon and Toothcut together. Perhaps there’s a joint book-sale fundraiser in our future?

Of course, I can’t end this post without mentioning the quintessential literary magazines of Newfoundland and Labrador. The NL Quarterly has been in existence for, wait for it, 125 years! (a moment for rapturous applause). It’s the longest running journal in Canada (that’s still under the same name). That’s hard to take in, but impressively true. The managing  editor over there is the indefatigable Joan Sullivan. Then there’s Riddle Fence, where many a writer and artist have gotten their start. The staff and board page is a who’s who list of writers these days, featuring: novelist Elisabeth De Mariaffi as executive director, fiction writer Carmella Gray-Cosgrove as managing editor, and writers such as Randy Drover, Anna Swanson, Susie Taylor, and Sharon Bala as associate editors. Last, but never least, we can’t forget the amazing Them Days, a magazine run out of Happy Valley-Goose Bay in Labrador. Them Days first began as a Heritage Society project in 1973 and became available to the public in ‘75. The long-serving founding editor was Doris (Martin) Saunders. These days, Aimee Chalk has the reins and the whole staff are passionate about documenting and connecting Labrador communities and voices.

Squeaking in one last note. WritersNL supports writers at all levels and stages of their careers here in NL. A strong advocate for literary arts in the province, WritersNL annually offers the NL book awards, the Fresh Fish Award for emerging writers, an in-demand mentorship program, and more. This year’s poetry mentor is none other than wordsmith, Matthew Hollett! A huge shoutout to George Murray—one of Canada’s leading poets, a steadfast community organizer, and a mentor to many—who’s currently serving as executive director.

Notes: Recent Poetry Publications
Date: July 17, 2026 

Finally, it bears mentioning the wealth of fresh, delightful poetry that Newfoundland and Labrador is constantly pumping out. Here are a few recent(ish) publications I’ve enjoyed lately:

No Place Like by Adam Beardsworth (Gaspereau Press, 2023)

Chores by Maggie Burton (Breakwater Books, 2023)

The Debt by Andreae Callanan (Biblioasis, 2021)

Romantic by Mark Callanan (Bibioasis, 2021)

Interrobang by Mary Dalton (Vehicule Press, 2024)

The Chrome Chair by Danielle Devereaux (Riddle Fence Debuts, 2024)

I Dreamed I was an Afterthought by Allie Duff (Guernica Editions, 2024)

Optic Nerve by Matthew Hollett (Brick Books, 2023)

And you Can’t Help but Listen by Jamie Jackman (Brack and Brine, 2024)

Water/Wept by Daze Jefferies (Anstruther Press, 2023)

Lurch by Don McKay (McClelland and Stewart, 2021)

Familiar Monsters of the Flood by Tia McLennan (Riddle Fence Debuts, 2024)

A Long Goodbye to the River Styx by Sara Anne Meyer (self-published, 2024)

Black Girl in the Ring by Delores V. Mullings (Breakwater Books, 2026)

Last Hours by Jennifer May Newhook (Riddle Fence Debuts, 2024)

Inquiries by Michelle Porter (Breakwater Books, 2019)

Total Party Kill by Craig Frances Power (Breakwater Books, 2024)

Where the Sea Kuniks the Land by Ashley Qilavaq-Savard (Inhabit Books, 2022)

Garbage Poems by Anna Swanson (Brick Books, 2025)

Island by Douglas Walbourne-Gough (Goose Lane Editions, 2024)

The Wind Has Robbed the Legs Off a Madwoman by Agnes Walsh (Breakwater Books, 2024)

I suppose I’ll leave my new chapbook here too, recently published by above/ground press (thanks rob!). The Unknotter is a short collection of poems I compiled from a larger working manuscript, Speaking in Tongues.

Reflections: I really do think that what people say is true—in Newfoundland, you can throw a rock in any direction and hit a writer!

 

 

photo captions:
: Ophelia Fernandez at The Theatre Hill, 2026.
: Poetry Walk with Low Tide Collective at the MUN Botanical Garden, 2026
: Nicole Haldoupis at the Paragon table, Sparks Literary Festival, 2026

 

 

Christina Wells (she/her) is a multi-genre writer from Northern Arm, NL/Ktaqmkuk. Her award-winning work, which explores memory and place, has appeared in The New Quarterly, ROOM, Riddle Fence, Horseshoe Magazine, The Newfoundland Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, and Yolk. She holds an MA from MUN and is now a PhD student there. She currently lives in St. John’s, NL.