Melanie Dennis Unrau : How does a poem begin?

How does a poem begin?

 

 

 

In March 2026, seven versions of my poem “My Lullaby” from my book Goose (Assembly, 2025) were displayed in the Rooster Town Poetry Shed, a sidewalk poetry display in a part of Winnipeg that was built on land the city cleared by evicting the Métis community of Rooster Town. Bernie Kruchak, a white-settler resident who created and curates the Shed as a reconciliation project, went through the early drafts and alternate versions of my Goose poems to put together this series. The text below is adapted from the six artist’s statements I wrote for displaying in the Shed.

This is my first draft of “My Lullaby.” I made it by hand-tracing words and images where they appear in the source poem, using fine-tipped pens on tracing paper. The source is “My Lullaby” from the 1956 edition Northland Trails by “father of the tar sands” Sidney Clarke Ells (1878-1971), a mining engineer who devoted his career to building a tar-sands industry in the Athabasca region on Treaty 8 territory. Ells’s works are in the public domain. In this version, I test out words and patterns I might want to work with, seeking to convey both Ells’s earnest claims to love the land and my sense that those claims are disingenuous.

 

In this second draft, I lean into the lullaby. Instead of reproducing full words, I break up Ells’s often-cloying language and trace lullaby-like sounds. The effect is satisfyingly silly and ironic.

The third draft narrows the constraint of the previous version to trace only the lullaby-sounds “oo,” “lu,” and “la.” I made a mistake when tracing but continued to see how it would look; the next version would be one of the layers in the version that went in the book.

 

In this version, I trace part of Ells’s illustration for his poem. Eventually, I will end up layering images like this one with the word-layer of my poem.

 

This version combines a word-layer and an image-layer; it’s similar to the way the poem is built in layers over five pages in Goose. I would call this an alternate version of the poem rather than a draft.

 

Another alternate version combines a word-layer with two image-layers.

 

This photo, taken by Bernie Kruchak, shows one page from the five-page version of the poem “My Lullaby” that is published in Goose. Many tracings are layered on top of each other in this version—not so much a “final” version as one variation of a changeable poem.

 

 

 

Melanie Dennis Unrau is a white-settler poet, editor, scholar, parent, and climate organizer from Treaty One territory and Métis homeland in Winnipeg. She is the author of the poetry collections Goose (Assembly, 2025) and Happiness Threads: The Unborn Poems (The Muses’ Company, 2013), and the literary study The Rough Poets: Reading Oil-Worker Poetry (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2024). She co-edited the poetry anthology I’ll Get Right On It: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis (Roseway, 2025).

 

Réka Nyitrai : Two poems

 

 

The Fathers

Bird of prey. Absence, burning. Landscape with no rivers. Sunset stolen from my mother. // Red moon. Red snow. Red loneliness. A purse full of paper money. // A white granular fluid you either love or hate. A hatched pigeon egg. An eager pencil. My most faithful plagiarist. // A grave, that in five years, I have never once visited.

 

 

The Mothers

Heart filled with rainwater. Presence, towering. Landscape with rivers. // Dirty window. Pills. Rotten meat. // A rasping mouthpart that pierces the epidermis of the mirror causing angels to appear yellow or bronze. // A muted cry for help.

 

 

 

 

 

Réka Nyitrai is a spell, a sparrow, a lioness's tongue — a bird nest in a pool of dusk. A Romanian-Hungarian poet, she learned English (her primary language of writing) later in life, moving fluently between prose poems, haiku, and free verse, often channeling the feminist surrealist currents of Leonora Carrington, Aase Berg, and Aglaja Veteranyi. In 2020, she released a bilingual (Spanish and English) collection of haiku known as While Dreaming Your Dreams (Mano Ya Mano Books) which received a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award. She then released her debut full-length poetry collection, Moon Flogged, in 2024 through Broken Sleep Books, and recently released a chapbook through Ethel Zine called With a Swan's Nest on Her Back. Her second full-lenght poetry collection Split / Game of Little Deaths will be out with Piżama Press in May 2026.

Stan Rogal : notes from the field : Launch of The Wren: poems by Al Moritz

The Wren, Al Moritz
Anansi, 2026

 

 

 

Al sent me an email invitation to attend the launch of his latest poetry collection, The Wren, out with Anansi Press. Al and I have known each other casually for several decades, though I’d say we’ve met up more so at different literary or art events in recent years, by ‘recent years’ meaning post-COVID shutdown, and certainly quite often at the newly established, informative and entertaining, Soluble Fish ‘all-things-art’ talk series organized by writers Beatriz Hausner and Russell Smith, usually at the Free Times Café, though also now occurring from time to time at the venerable Arts and Letters Club.

The launch took place Thursday April 9 at the Flying Books Bookstore on College Street, Toronto, an enterprising enterprise established by Martha Sharpe, formerly of Anansi Press and Simon & Schuster, that combines a bricks-and-mortar bookstore with writing workshops, a mentorship program and a publishing house. There were maybe twenty chairs arranged in the space, though it didn’t take long for those chairs to fill, so that a majority of the audience was standing room only, leaned against the bookshelves and gathered straight back to the store entrance. It was a mixed-age crowd that likely included friends, teaching and literary associates, and former students of Al. Fortunately, there was a functioning sound system in place enabling the speakers to be heard amid the shuffle of feet.

Michael Redhill acted as emcee. He explained that he and Al went back many years as friends as well as having had a teacher/student relationship. Michael was also the editor for Al’s latest collection, all of which added an air of informality and camaraderie to the occasion which extended to include members of the audience. While Michael pointed out Al as an award-winning poet, he also noted that the celebrated and award-winning author Michael Ondaatje was in attendance as well as Karen Solie, who had recently won the prestigious and lucrative Windham-Campbell Prize for poetry. Of course, Michael Redhill himself was a former Giller Prize recipient.

Al read in his usual concise and articulate manner, adding short anecdotes and his own brand of droll humour as he proceeded. He mentioned that he wanted to keep the reading relatively short since it was to be followed both by a Q&A with Michael, as well as by a surprise presentation, whether a surprise for Al or for the audience or both, I wasn’t sure. The reading concluded with much applause.

During the Q&A, banter was exchanged about the impetus for the book’s creation as well as inquiring about Al’s writing process. Michael mentioned that he was always amazed at Al’s ability to remember people and events from years past as well as able to recite poems (or parts of poems) from diverse sources. Al, ever self-effacing, joked that it only seemed that he remembered more than the next person because he tended to dominate the conversations. This tickled the audience, having probably gone through the experience of conversing with Al themselves and — despite his attempt to deflect — felt a similar gobsmacked admiration for his sense of recall.

The surprise arrived with the introduction of four members of the Bengali community who were instrumental in starting up a newspaper-type magazine to include translations of the works of Canadian poets, Al being newly selected. He was, of course, delighted by the presentation. A woman read a poem in Bengali followed by Al’s recital in English. The evening ended with more applause and a line-up to purchase signed copies of The Wren.

It was a convivial, fun, and successful event. Warm congratulations to Al. I’d like to thank all those folks involved with the launch in particular. Big thanks and tip-of-the-hat as well going out to the other names I mentioned above — and to their projects — that keep poetry and the arts scene LIVE in Toronto.

 

 

 

Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner Jacquie Jacobs. His work has appeared almost magically in numerous magazines and anthologies. The author of several books, plus a handful of chapbooks, a 13th poetry collection was published in March 2025 with ecw press. Co-founder of Bald Ego Theatre and former coordinator of the popular Idler Pub Reading Series.

 

 

Elena Zhang : on My Little Sister

 

 

 

 

This chapbook grew out of the poem, “Lemons,” first published in Frozen Sea. It’s a little fictional account of a narrator losing their little sister, and after writing it I found myself wanting to continue exploring this fragile relationship between siblings.

I’ve always found this familial connection interesting, reflecting on my own experiences with my siblings, and just thinking about the idea of what it really means to be siblings. How can children grow up in the same household, yet have completely different childhoods? What truly keeps siblings together? How do they reflect each other’s personalities? How would siblings relate to each other if they were strangers? Siblings are sort of forced together as children without any choice in the matter. How does that impact their relationship? Would siblings choose each other as adults?

I didn’t necessarily want to answer these questions in my poems, but rather evoke these ideas through imagery and feeling. It was also fun to play around with different lines and forms, which I hadn’t done much before since I had mainly written prose poems. Some of the poems also came from much longer pieces of flash fiction that I felt weren’t really working, but ended up feeling much more impactful as tiny poems.

I hope this chapbook ends up resonating with a wide range of people, not just those who have siblings, but also people who think about the weird nature of friendships, found family, and invisible bonds.

 

 

 

Elena Zhang is a Chinese American writer and mother living in Chicago. She is the author of the micro-chapbook The Moon, My Heart (tiny wren lit, 2025) and My Little Sister (above/ground press, 2026), and her work can be found in HAD, Wigleaf, and X-R-A-Y, among other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and was selected for Best Microfiction 2024, 2025, and 2026.