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.

 

Christina Wells: on The Unknotter

 

 

 

I was in Toronto recently, walking in Leslieville (feeling lost, despite all my apps), when I heard church bells. I looked up for a steeple, only to find the sound was coming from an electric car accelerating at the intersection. The car sound was the church bell. I stopped mid-sidewalk, struck by the oddity, and opened my notes app to write the moment down. The objects—the car, motor, my memory of bell-sound, me in Leslieville—briefly pulled toward one another in a slidey, synergistic way. I love how my brain was tricked.

In her introduction to Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson writes of Stesichorus, a poet of Greek Antiquity whose poems “released being” from Homer’s adjectives used as “latches of being.” In his poetry, Stesichorus undid these latches, “sending the substances in the world…floating up.” ​​When meaning is released, it becomes defamiliarized. A kind of trickery happens: the electric car is the church bell is the motor is the liturgical tradition is the omen of climate change. Everything molts and reassigns. It’s this surprise, this slip of objects and moments, that pulls me into writing poetry.

My series poem “The Unknotter” in The Unknotter chapbook came from a Riddle Fence callout for pieces about “Knots, Nets, and Ties that Bind.” I was developing my creative master’s thesis at Memorial University—a poetry manuscript with the working title Tongues and Interpretation—and unpacking stories from my childhood: the folkloric tales of my Nan, the religious imagery of the church. Nan blended stories of angel visitations with fairy changelings, making the veil between biblical instruction and Newfoundland superstition very thin. My childhood was also full of hunting, fishing, and berrypicking in rural Newfoundland. Many of the poems in the chapbook address this: “Spilling Suns” speaks, in part, to the 90s cod moratorium; “Moose Tongue and Heart in Partridgeberry Syrup” meditates on the muscle memory of moose and my father’s recipes; “Fascia” is about a young girl trying to stay wild while being forced to wear dresses and pantyhose; “Fire on the Lake” and “Black Island Hymn” are poems of appreciation for my father, who taught me that you can row your way home in the pitch dark and warm up on the surface of the ice.

The Riddle Fence call brought to mind the years my family spent cod fishing in the Bay of Exploits and the times our hook got stuck on the sea bed—latched onto basalt rock, or hooked onto coral or brainy holdfast on the ocean floor. There were always tangles of line on the boat’s fiberglass floor, either from hauling in the line too fast or releasing the reel too quickly on a tight line, causing a kickback that made a nest of knots. I loved the challenge of untangling. I resisted cutting the line.

Initially, the rough draft of “The Unknotter” was a pages-long, narrative poem that outlined this experience, with sections like:

I am the unknotter, detangler
of fishing line on this August
day afloat on the Bay
of Exploits, surrounded by a smattering
of small islands: Pigeon Islands, Little Berry Island.

I was meeting regularly with fellow student, Mercy Williams, and supervisor, Dr. Michelle Porter, to share and discuss poetry. It was Dr. Porter who encouraged me to disassemble this poem and reassemble it using the overlapping images of folklore, religion, and rural life—playing with the images to see what new connections might be revealed.

The images slipped toward one another:

My father afloat
on the bay               exploits,
all around us 

a jumble 

Pigeon                    (Island)
Little Berry   (Island)
Tinker                     (Island)

whale exhale like raptured souls
releasing all around us

Sections like:

perhaps I can prove to father
what mettle I am made of
and he will be glad we saved the line
perhaps he will know finally and deeper,
                               that I am his

became:

unravelling on the boat floor,
perhaps father will see
what mettle I am made of,
perhaps he’ll be glad we saved the line 

he marvels
at my faith in unknotting,
detangling

yet darkness surfaces,
spills across his face
like black tide
an ancient codex
I cannot read

I imagine doorposts
slathered in blood
pray the shadow passes 

but it passes into me

What emerged were echoes of family line and ancient narratives, bringing an almost biblical weight to a summer day. Earlier drafts didn’t yet “unlatch” these moments—they stayed anchored to a linear narrative. By reassembling, remaining curious, and experimenting at the level of the line, I experienced that sought-after trickery and slidiness I felt in Toronto. This is not a stylistic experiment but a poetic practice—an undoing of latches, a noticing of what has been fastened, a question: what can be released?

 

 

 

 

 

Christina Wells (she/her) is a multi-genre writer from Northern Arm, Newfoundland (Ktaqmkuk). Her award-winning work has appeared in The New Quarterly, ROOM, Riddle Fence, Horseshoe Magazine, Newfoundland Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, and Yolk. Recently, she began working with Amadeus Choir's Creative Choral Lab, working with emerging composers to set her poetry to music. She's also managing editor at Paragon and an English PhD student at Memorial University. She lives in St. John's with her beautifully unruly family and long-suffering dog, Bowen.