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.

 

Stan Rogal : Ars Poetica : Notes from the field

 

 

 

 

Horace’s “Ars Poetica” (or “horse’s arse” poetica, as some certain academic wits and half-wits have joked over the centuries, and who can blame them, poetry often needing a good kick in the pants to lighten up a bit) is a poem about poetry itself, where the poet reflects on their craft and answers the questions of what, how and why. I am making a similar attempt in this short article, though where Horace spoke of poetry’s affiliation with drama, I concern myself with poetry’s affiliation with music, most specifically, song writing.

In 2025 I had a collection of poems published by ECW Editions (a Misfit book) titled …more songs the radio won’t play… (the title inspired by Canadian singer-song writer Kathleen Edwards’ tune, “One More Song the Radio Won’t Like,” which got me to thinking, yeah, it’s one thing for an artist of any description to create a work, quite another to figure out how to get it out into the world and market it) in which I took popular songs from varying genres and through a series of techniques, i.e.: mixed discourse (including allusions and verbiage from the arts and sciences, philosophy, pop culture, literary theory), plus self-referentiality, plus the insertion and bending of biographical and historical facts (both of the songs and the performers) and tried to alter the lyrics so as to make the recycled songs outwardly unrecognizable while retaining some lingering sense or ‘feel’ of the original. Whether I succeeded or not on any substantive level is up to each individual reader, if and where there are any. What I did accomplish (I think) was to create pieces that were virtually impossible to exist as radio-playable songs. And if it all sounds too heavy and formalistic, I assure you, it isn’t. Wasn’t. It was a joy for me, with often humorous results.

Fine, I won’t bore you with examples. Suffice to say, I put my poetry writing hat back on the hook until I stumbled upon a Molly Johnson CD, titled Molly, where I noticed that the songs in the liner notes were written in block form as opposed to the usual stanza/chorus fashion that I was used to. Later still, I found that the group Chumbawamba had done the same thing with their CD, WYSIWYG, though adding side-note anti-establishment commentary rants alongside their already anti-establishment lyrics aimed at consumer society, vanity culture, corrupt politics and the soul-less entertainment industry: “all dressed up in drag inside a Gucci body bag,” as they so sweetly put it. Very cool, I thought. The songs were written more prose-poem-like, which made me imagine it might be fun to write my own prose poems, but use some song lyric techniques, such as including obvious hooks, bridges, rhythms, and nonsense phrases like “sha-na-na,” “oh me, oh my,” and “hey, hey, yeah, yeah, yeah…” in the mix. I proceeded to write seventy pieces (to date) under the title Borderblur Songspiel, “borderblur” issuing from the notion that I’m blurring the line between fiction, poetry and song, “songspiel” issuing from the Brechtian practice of using actors rather than trained singers to deliver stage songs in a manner more spoken than sung.

The manuscript is currently out in the ether, knock, knock, knocking on publisher’s doors. Wish me (and the manuscript) luck.

Now, most recently, I happened to be watching the local news where two broadcasters discussed using an AI generator program that enabled them to take their words (or lyrics) and by pasting and hitting a few choice buttons as to genre, mood, and gender, the program spat out a song, no knowledge or expertise of musical notation or instrumentation required. Which was perfect for me, since even though I enjoy listening to music, I have no professional training nor natural gift for the category. To wit, I recall having taken ballroom dance lessons with my ex-wife and still had to ask: Is this a fox trot or what? I still had to count the steps in my head. The concepts of 4/4 time and just ‘feel’ the music and let it move you were alien to me. I don’t hear the beat nor does the beat have any dance-like influence on my body, especially my two left feet. Needless to say, the only musical instrument I’ve ever been able to play with any sort of proficiency is the radio. But, I digress. At any rate, it struck me that maybe I could take some of my latest songspiel prose poems and convert them to actual songs. I searched for a program — the simplest I could find, natch, me being a confirmed Luddite — paid my money, and got down to business.

What discoveries did I make, you might ask? Well, to begin, I learned that much of my language — which I felt was perfectly adequate, interesting and presentable in its poetic state — often came across as too highfalutin and pretentious as a song. Add to this the fact that the AI generator had its own limitations, such as difficulty pronouncing certain proper names (‘Ingeborg’ with a soft rather than a hard first ‘g’), difficulty with long words (‘technological’ as one example, which was more-or-less slurred in some versions), a censor that made it unable to generate a particular text, though no reason given (I had to re-read a piece to see if I could discover what might be causing the difficulty and thought maybe the fact I’d used ‘fag’ instead of ‘cigarette’ might be the guilty culprit, and, sure enough, when I made the switch, everything was fine), and most obvious, I could tell that the program didn’t always understand the text’s meaning or intent, so sections became a wash, the program more concerned with making a line scan according to a built-in algorithm as opposed to having the line (or lines) make logical  (never mind emotional) sense: the program didn’t really understand or feel the lyrics to any great degree. All of this suggesting in no uncertain terms that I had to edit my work both to suit the generator’s programming as well as to meet my own needs. And let’s be honest here, I mainly wanted to hear my words come out of someone else’s mouth as a song, so I was willing to compromise and even sacrifice a level (or two) of poetic erudition and creativity. As for the question, “to rhyme or not to rhyme,” there really wasn’t much argument from me: Make it so, number one!

Bottom line, it’s been kind of a fun experiment and I’ve now managed to generate a couple of songs that I’m reasonably happy with. Sure, the music itself is generally simplistic and recognizable, though, at the same time, I was sometimes pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of back-up vocals and instrumental riffs as a sort-of bonus. Anyway, beyond the music, I appear to have come full-circle with this endeavour, first mutilating songs to become poems, secondly mutilating poems to become songs, to the point where now I’m unsure where one form ends and the other begins.

Thanks to Kathleen Edwards, Molly Johnson, and Chumbawamba for their inspiration, albeit unaware. And if all I’ve ended up with is “one more song the radio won’t like,” nothing new there! It isn’t the first time for me and I’m sure it won’t be the last, so, I’ll just continue to futz about and play happily alone in my own little sand box. Rock on!

 

 

 

 

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.