Kate Cayley, Melanie Marttila, Mahaila Smith, Susan Gevirtz + Noah Berlatsky : virtual reading series #33

a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, originally prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

Kate Cayley : “Mary Shelley at the End of her Life, Recalling the Monster”

Kate Cayley has published two short story collections, three collections of poetry, and a young adult novel, and her plays have been performed in Canada, the US and the UK. She has won the Trillium Book Award, the Mitchell Prize for Faith and Poetry, the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction, and an O. Henry Prize, and been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, among other awards. She is a frequent writing collaborator with immersive company Zuppa Theatre, most recently on The Archive of Missing Things and This Is Nowhere, and her writing has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, Best Canadian Stories, Brick, Electric Literature, Joyland, The New Quarterly and The North American Review. She lives in Toronto with her wife and their three children.

Melanie Marttila :“Imagined”

Melanie Marttila has been writing since the age of seven, when she made her first submission to CBC’s Pencil Box. She is a graduate of the University of Windsor’s masters program in English Literature and Creative Writing and her poetry has appeared in Polar Borealis, Polar Starlight, and Sulphur. Her short fiction has appeared in Pulp Literature, On Spec, Pirating Pups, and Home for the Howlidays. She lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario, in the house where three generations of her family have lived, on the street that bears her surname, with her spouse and their dog, Torvi.

Mahaila Smith :“My Lethal Fear of Being Consumed” & “Overhang”

Mahaila Smith (any pronouns) is a young femme writer, living and working on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa, Ontario. They are one of the co-editors for The Sprawl Mag. They like learning theory and writing speculative poetry. Their recent chapbooks include Water-Kin (Metatron Press 2024) and Enter the Hyperreal (above/ground press 2024). Their novelette in verse, Seed Beetle, is newly published with Stelliform Press. You can find more of their poems on their website: mahailasmith.ca.

Susan Gevirtz : reading 3 excerpts from the book AERODROME ORION & Starry Messenger : “so they drove…” ; “Prologue / [to be read in Aviation English]” ; “Brief History of the Sky: A Manual for Air Traffic Controllers”

Susan Gevirtz’s recent books of poetry include Burns (Pamenar), Hotel abc (Nightboat) and Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger (Kelsey Street). Her critical books are Narrative’s Journey: The Fiction and Film Writing of Dorothy Richardson (Peter Lang) and Coming Events (Collected Writings) (Nightboat). She is based in San Francisco.

Noah Berlatsky : “One Day Gravity Stopped,” “On Finding the Creature,” “Time Will Fuck You Blues” and “True Love”

Noah Berlatsky (he/him) is a freelance writer in Chicago. His full-length collections are Not Akhmatova (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024), Gnarly Thumbs (Anxiety Press, 2025), Meaning Is Embarrassing (Ranger, 2025) and Brevity (Nun Prophet, 2025).

Beatrice Szymkowiak, Katie Berta, J-T Kelly, Tom Jenks + Cary Fagan : virtual reading series #32

a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, originally prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

Beatrice Szymkowiak : Three poems from B/RDS

Beatrice Szymkowiak is a French-American writer and scholar. She graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Red Zone (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a poetry chapbook, as well as the winner of the 2017 OmniDawn Single Poem Broadside Contest, and the recipient of the 2022 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry for her full-length collection B/RDS, published by the University of Utah Press in 2023. Her work also has appeared in numerous poetry magazines.

Katie Berta : “Like That” and “Birthday”

Katie Berta’s debut poetry collection, retribution forthcoming, won the Hollis Summers Prize and was published by Ohio University Press in 2024. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Cincinnati Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Denver Quarterly, The Yale Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Bennington Review, among other magazines. She has received residencies from Millay Arts, Ragdale, and The Hambidge Center, fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, and an Iowa Review Award. She is the managing editor of The Iowa Review and teaches literary editing at the University of Iowa and poetry at Arizona State University.

J-T Kelly : “Crossing,” “Keeping House,” and “West”

J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis. He lives in a brick house with his wife and their six children. He is the author of the chapbook Like Now (CCCP/Subpress, 2023).

Tom Jenks : from Melamine

Tom Jenks is a UK poet and text artist. Melamine, a sequence of 8 line poems, will be published by The Red Ceilings in 2024. Details of his other books and his artwork can be found at https://tomjenks.uk. He edits zimzalla, a small press specialising in literary objects, details of which can be found at https://zimzalla.co.uk.

Cary Fagan : “Any Moment Now”

Cary Fagan is the author of eight novels and five story collections, most recently The Animals (book*hug). He has also written many novels and picture books for children.  His next book is a collection of stories called A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News.

Samantha Jones, Karen Enns, Luke Hathaway/Daniel Cabena, Endi Hartigan + Katie Ebbitt : virtual reading series #31

a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, originally prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

Samantha Jones : “Three Monuments,” published in G U E S T 22 (March 2022), edited by Kyle Flemmer, published by above/ground press.

Samantha Jones (she/her) lives and writes in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary, Alberta) on the traditional territory of the Treaty 7 peoples, and home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3. Sam is a magazine and journal enthusiast with writing in THIS, Room, Grain, CV2, Watch Your Head, GeoHumanities, Arctic, and elsewhere. Her visual poetry chapbook, Site Orientation, was published by the Blasted Tree in the spring of 2022. Sam has a background in geology and is currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary where she studies carbon cycling in the Canadian Arctic. She comes from a mixed background; she is white settler and Black Canadian. Sam enjoys developing content, including workshops, that highlight underrepresented voices and writers—she is the founder and facilitator of the Diverse Voices Roundtable for BIPOC Writers at the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society in Calgary. When she isn’t up to her eyeballs in science or poetry, you can find her making epic constructions with her kiddo or browsing the book and stationary shops of Calgary.

Karen Enns : “Place of the Steelhead,” “Middens, Gordon Head,” “Night Sounds” and “Almost”

Karen Enns is the author of three previous books of poetry: Cloud Physics, winner of the Raymond Souster Award, Ordinary Hours, and That Other Beauty. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Luke Hathaway and Daniel Cabena : As the hart…

Daniel Cabena (co-creator, with Luke Hathaway, of the audio book for The Affirmations) is a concert singer, recitalist, chamber musician, and singing actor; he is also a curator of texts and music. With Luke he shares the artistic direction of ANIMA, a metamorphosing ensemble — a place where old texts and melodies are animated by spirit and voice. To this work Daniel brings a background in early music and liturgical music scholarship and a commitment to exploring how music functions in different performance contexts and traditions. Daniel’s singing and teaching are also informed by the Alexander Technique, in which movement education field he is a teacher-trainee. He teaches singing and music at Wilfrid Laurier University and at Laurier's Beckett School of Music in Waterloo.

Luke Hathaway is a trans poet, librettist, and theatre maker who lives in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, where he teaches English literature and creative writing at Saint Mary’s University. His mythopoeic word-worlds have given rise to new choral works by Colin Labadie, James Rolfe, and Zachary Wadsworth, and to the folk opera the sign of jonas, a collaboration with Benton Roark. He is the author of four collections of poetry, one of which — Years, Months, and Days — was named a Best Book of the Year in the New York Times. His most recent collection, The Affirmations (‘a trans-mystical work of love and change’), is published by Biblioasis.

Endi Bogue Hartigan : crawdads being most precise ; second entries: |clippablefan|; hour entry: all galaxies are not clocks ; you be the woodcutter ; hour entry: All bells must hold all clocks

Endi Bogue Hartigan’s latest book oh orchid o’clock (Omnidawn Publishing, 2023) explores clock measure, temporal presence in today’s realities, and impacts of our obsessions with time and instrumentation. She is author of the seaweed sd treble clef (Oxyeye Press, 2021), a chapbook of poems and photographs; the poetry book Pool [5 choruses] (Omnidawn, 2014) which was selected for the Omnidawn Open Prize; a collaborative chapbook out of the flowering ribs (Linda Hutchins and EBH, 2012); and One Sun Storm (Center for Literary Publishing, 2018), which won the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her work has also appeared in numerous journals and in collaborative projects with artists and writers in the Pacific Northwest. More on her work is at endiboguehartigan.com.

Katie Ebbitt : from AIR SIGN

Katie Ebbitt is a poet/psycho-behavioralist living in NYC. She is the author of the chapbooks ANOTHER LIFE (Counterpath, 2016), Para Ana (Inpatient, 2019), Air Sign (Creative Writing Department, 2024) and HYSTERICAL PREGNANCY (above/ground press, 2024). Fecund, her first full-length book, will be released by Keith LLC.

Michael Fraser, Alexandra Oliver, Alice Burdick, Adrian Lürssen + Leigh Chadwick : virtual reading series #30

a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, originally prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

Michael Fraser : “Frances Jane Scroggins Brown”

Michael Fraser is published in various national and international journals and anthologies. He is published in Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 and 2018. He has won numerous awards, including Freefall Magazine’s 2014 and 2015 poetry contests, the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize, and the 2018 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition. The Day-Breakers is his third book of poems.

Alexandra Oliver : “Young Politician at a Rotary Club Tea,” “How to Stop,” and “Triptych: American Wives”

Alexandra Oliver was born in Vancouver, BC. She is the author of Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway (Biblioasis 2013, winner of the 2014 Pat Lowther Memorial Award), Let the Empire Down (Biblioasis 2016), and the chapbook On the Oven Sits a Maiden (Frog Hollow Press 2018). She is the co-editor (with Annie Finch) of Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters (Penguin Random House/Everyman’s Library 2015). A PhD candidate in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, she lives in Burlington, Ontario with her husband and son.

Alice Burdick : “Brush fire,” “Lightning in October,” and “Inquiry”

Alice Burdick (she/her) lives in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, and is the author of four full-length poetry collections, Simple Master, Flutter, Holler, and Book of Short Sentences, and one selected: Deportment: The Poetry of Alice Burdick (which came out through Wilfrid Laurier University Press).  She has also authored two cookbooks, and her essays and poetry have appeared in many print and online chapbooks, broadsides, folios, magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 1990s. She has been a judge for various awards, including the bpNichol Chapbook Award. She also visits elementary and high school English classes as a “Poet In Your Class” through Poetry in Voice/les Voix de la Poésie, and leads workshops through the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia.

Adrian Lürssen : “TEETH [A Methodology],” “TRAIN” and “WAR”

Born and raised in apartheid-era South Africa and then Washington, DC, Adrian Lürssen now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His book HUMAN IS TO WANDER was selected by Gillian Conoley for the Colorado Prize for Poetry and will be published by the Center for Literary Publishing in November, 2022. He is also the author of the chapbook NEOWISE, from Trainwreck Press (Canada).

Leigh Chadwick : “XIII.” and “Frankie Cosmos Is a Good Band Name” from Your Favorite Poet (Malarkey Books, 2022)

Leigh Chadwick is the author of the poetry collection Your Favorite Poet (Malarkey Books, 2022) and the collaborative poetry collection Too Much Tongue (Autofocus, 2022), co-written with Adrienne Marie Barrios. Her poetry has appeared in Salamander, Passages North, The Indianapolis Review, and Hobart, among others. She is the executive editor of Redacted Books and is a regular contributor at Olney Magazine, where she conducts the “Mediocre Conversations” interview series. Find her online and www.leighchadwick.com and on Twitter at @LeighChadwick5.

Janice Lee, Dan Rosenberg, Randy Lundy, Aaron Kreuter + Alison Calder : virtual reading series #29

a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, originally prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

Janice Lee : 3 untitled poems from Separation Anxiety (forthcoming August 2022, CLASH Books)

Janice Lee is a Korean-American writer, teacher, spiritual scholar, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 7 books of fiction, creative nonfiction & poetry, most recently Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021) and Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022). A roundtable, unanimous dreamers chime in, a collaborative novel co-authored with Brenda Iijima, is also forthcoming in 2022 from Meekling Press. An essay (co-authored with Jared Woodland) is featured in the recently released 4K restoration of Sátántangó (dir. Béla Tarr) from Arbelos Films. She writes about interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the filmic long take, slowness, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the Korean concept of han, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? Incorporating shamanic and energetic healing, she teaches workshops on inherited trauma, healing and writing, and practices in several lineages, including the medicine tradition of the Q’ero, Zen Buddhism (in the tradition of Plum Village and Thich Nhat Hanh), plant & animal medicine, and Korean shamanic ritual (Muism). She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University.

Dan Rosenberg : “Cause and Effect,” “Is It Astronomy or Astrology” and “The Stapler”

Dan Rosenberg’s most recent book, Bassinet, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2022. His work has won the American Poetry Journal Book Prize and the Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest, and recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Kenyon Review, Conduit, and Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets. Rosenberg teaches literature, creative writing, and translation theory at Wells College in Aurora, NY. Find him at DanRosenberg.us

Randy Lundy : “Thinking of Nothing,” Field Notes for the Self (2020)

Randy Lundy is an Irish, Norwegian, and Cree member of the Barren Lands First Nation in northern Manitoba. He is the author of four award-winning books of poetry, most recently Field Notes for the Self (2020) and Blackbird Song (2018), both from the University of Regina Press. He currently teaches in the English Department at the University of Toronto, Scarborough and is Series Editor of the Oskana Poetry & Poetics series at University of Regina Press.

Aaron Kreuter : “Shifting Baseline Syndrome,” “Catasrophists Anonymous,” and “Bonetown”

Aaron Kreuter is the author of the short story collection You and Me, Belonging (2018) and the poetry collection Arguments for Lawn Chairs (2016). His writing has appeared in places such as Grain Magazine, The Puritan, The Temz Review, and The Rusty Toque. Kreuter lives in Toronto and is a postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University. Shifting Baseline Syndrome is his second book of poems.

Alison Calder : “At 50,” “In the ‘70s” and “The Future”

Alison Calder grew up in Saskatoon. Her poetry has won two Manitoba Book Awards and been a finalist for both the Gerald Lampert Award and the Pat Lowther Award. Synaptic is her third collection. She now lives in Winnipeg, where she teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba.

R. Kolewe, Nate Logan, Katie Naughton, Sue Bracken + Catherine Hunter : virtual reading series #28

a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, originally prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

R. Kolewe : “Four Scatters from a notebook with the word Breeze on the cover”

R. Kolewe has published three collections of poetry, Afterletters (Book*hug 2014), Inspecting Nostalgia (Talonbooks 2017) and The Absence of Zero (Book*hug 2021) as well as several chapbooks. He lives in Toronto.

Nate Logan : “Any Major Dude Will Tell You,” “Diner,” and “Laura Described Poetry”

Nate Logan is the author of Small Town (The Magnificent Field, 2021) and Inside the Golden Days of Missing You (Magic Helicopter Press, 2019). He teaches at Franklin College and Marian University.

Katie Naughton : “Study,” “debt ritual: drift” and “debt ritual: grain”

Katie Naughton is the author of the chapbook Study (above/ground press, 2021). Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Jubilat, Tagvverk, and elsewhere. She is at work on two collections of poems, “Debt Ritual” and “the real ethereal,” which was a finalist for the 2021 Nightboat Poetry Prize and Autumn House Press Book Prize. She is the publicity editor for Essay Press, editor and project manager at the HOW(ever) and How2 Digital Archive Project (launching in 2022), and founder of Etcetera, a web journal of reading recommendations from poets (www.etceterapoetry.com). She lives in Buffalo, NY, where she is a doctoral candidate in the Poetics program at SUNY – Buffalo.

Sue Bracken : “Little Victories,” “The Evolution of Feathers” and “Frequent Flyer”

Sue Bracken’s work has appeared in GUEST [a journal of guest editors], Hart House Review (forthcoming 2022), Dusie (forthcoming 2022), Touch the Donkey, WEIMAG, The New Quarterly, Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology (Mansfield Press), The Totally Unknown Writer’s Festival 2015: Stories (Life Rattle Press) and other publications. Her first collection of poems When Centipedes Dream was published by Tightrope Books in 2018.

Sue lives and writes in Toronto in a home overthrown by artists and animals.

Catherine Hunter : two poems from St. Boniface Elegies (2019): “Submission” and “Irish Studies”

Catherine Hunter is a poet and fiction writer who teaches creative writing at the University of Winnipeg. Her most recent book, St. Boniface Elegies (Signature, 2019), won Manitoba’s Lansdowne Poetry Prize and was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Her short story “Calling You” (Prairie Fire, Spring, 2020) won gold in the National Magazine Awards. Her books are Latent Heat, Lunar Wake, and Necessary Crimes (poems) and After Light, In the First Early Days of My Death, Queen of Diamonds, The Dead of Midnight, and Where Shadows Burn (fiction).

James Yeary, Vanessa Jimenez Gabb, Monica Mody, Jenny Drai + Ben Robinson : virtual reading series #27

a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, originally prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

Ben Robinson : “Low Vacancy”

Ben Robinson is a poet, musician and librarian. His most recent publication is Without Form from The Blasted Tree. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. You can find him online at benrobinson.work

Jenny Drai : “Wulf and Eadwacer” (translated from the Old English) and “Wide Tracks”

Jenny Drai is the author of three collections of poetry, including Wine Dark and The History Worker from Black Lawrence Press and [the door] from Trembling Pillow Press. More recently, her short fiction has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review and Pleiades, where she was awarded the Agnes B. Crump Prize for Experimental Fiction, as well as other journals. She is online at jennydrai.com and lives in Dortmund, Germany.

Monica Mody : “Ordinary Annals”

Monica Mody is the author of Kala Pani (1913 Press), the forthcoming Bright Parallel (Copper Coin), and three chapbooks including Ordinary Annals (above/ground). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in anthologies including Extinction Violin: The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets, What is Time: An Anthology of New Indian Writing, Hibiscus: Poems that Heal and Empower, and &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing. Her poetry also appears in Poetry International, Indian Quarterly, Almost Island, Boston Review, and other lit magazines. She has been a recipient of the Sparks Prize Fellowship (Notre Dame), the Zora Neale Hurston Award (Naropa), and a Toto Award for Creative Writing. Monica was born in Ranchi, India, and lives right now in San Francisco – Ohlone territory.

James Yeary : “The Fishes”, “Neptune’s Back”, “The Sky at her Furthest”

James Yeary is a Portland-based poet, artist and publisher. Since 2008, he has collaborated with Nate Orton and Chris Ashby on the long-running site-based zine series My Day, which is approaching its fiftieth installment. He has published a number of books and objects under the names c_L books and spitch, the latter of which will be issuing a career-spanning collection by Sotere Torregian. The chapbook The 66,512 (written under the nomdegwar Urie V-J) is forthcoming from above/ground. 

Vanessa Jimenez Gabb : an excerpt from the “You and Me, Forever” section from Basic Needs

Vanessa Jimenez Gabb is the author of the poetry collections, Basic Needs (forthcoming October 26, 2021, Rescue Press) and Images for Radical Politics (2016, Rescue Press). She is from and lives in Brooklyn, NY. More at vanessajimenezgabb.com

George Elliott Clarke, John M. Bennett, Jay Heins, Emmalea Russo + Valerie Witte : virtual reading series #26

George Elliott Clarke : “Orphée Noir,” “N— Inventory” and “The Song of Solomon”

Acclaimed for his narrative lyric suites (Whylah Falls and Execution Poems), his lyric “colouring books” (Blue, Black, Red, and Gold), his selected poems (Blues and Bliss), his opera libretti and plays (Beatrice Chancy and Trudeau: Long March, Shining Path), George Elliott Clarke now presents us with his epic-in-progress, Canticles, a work that views History as a web of imperialism, enslavement, and insurrection. A native Africadian, Canada’s 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate ranges the atlas and ransacks the library to ink lines unflinching before Atrocity and unquiet before Oppression.

John M. Bennett : “JOHNNY WAKES UP”

John M. Bennett has published over 400 books and chapbooks of poetry and other materials. He has published, exhibited and performed his word art worldwide in thousands of publications and venues.  He was editor and publisher of LOST AND FOUND TIMES (1975-2005), and is Founding Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries.  Richard Kostelanetz has called him “the seminal American poet of my generation”.  His work, publications, and papers are collected in several major institutions, including Washington University (St. Louis), SUNY Buffalo, The Ohio State University, The Museum of Modern Art, and other major libraries.  His PhD (UCLA 1970) is in Latin American Literature.  His latest books are Select Poems, Poetry Hotel Press/Luna Bisonte Prods, 2016; The World of Burning, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2017; Poemas visuales, con movimientos con ruidos con combinaciones (with Osvaldo Cibils), Deep White Sound, 2017;  Olas Cursis, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2018, Sesos Extremos, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2018; Dropped in the Dark Box, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2019; Leg Mist, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2019; OJIJETE, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2020, and Having Been Named: De-Reading Popol Vuh, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2021  He is co-editor, with Geoffrey D. Smith, of two works by William S. Burroughs: Everything Lost: The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs; and William S. Burroughs' “The Revised Boy Scout Manual”: An Electronic Revolution; both published by The Ohio State University Press.

Jay Heins : “Baldwin Cemetery,” “(im)mortal” and “night”

Jay Heins was born and raised in the Ottawa Valley. book of hours, his first collection poetry and photography, explores love of place, family, the body, aging, grief, and loss. Jay holds a BFA from University of Ottawa and does art direction/production with the OER Project. He lives in Ottawa with Tanya and Samuel.

Emmalea Russo : Two poems from G (Futurepoem, 2018) and one new poem “Confetti”

Emmalea Russo is the author of G (2018), Wave Archive (2019). Recent writing has appeared in Artforum, American Chordata, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Granta, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. A new chapbook, Great Mineral Silence (2020) is out from Sputnik & Fizzle. She lives at the Jersey shore.

Valerie Witte : Excerpt from the manuscript "hold short bravo"

Valerie Witte is the author of The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (Operating System, 2019), co-written with Sarah Rosenthal; and a game of correspondence (Black Radish, 2015). Her latest chapbooks are Listening Through the Body: An Exercise in Sustained Coordination (above/ground press, 2021) and It’s been a long time since I’ve dreamt of someone (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). Her work has also appeared in VOLT, Diagram, Dusie, Alice Blue, Interim, and elsewhere. More at valeriewitte.com

Tim Duffy, Sarah Venart, Joshua Beckman, Joshua Corey + Leesa Dean : virtual reading series #25

a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

Tim Duffy : “Between the Church and the Door” and “Cart”

Tim Duffy is a poet and teacher working in Connecticut. His work has appeared recently in Bodega, Pleiades, Entropy, Rabbit Oak among others. He is the founder and EIC of 8 Poems Journal.

Sarah Venart : “Octopus Laser” and “Stun Guns”

Sarah Venart was raised in New Brunswick and lives and teaches in Montreal. She is the author of I AM THE BIG HEART and WOODSHEDDING.

Joshua Beckman : “If You Pray These Days” and “poem n form d bill bissett”

Joshua Beckman is the author of a number of books including The Inside of an Apple, The Lives of the Poems & Three Talks, and most recently Animal Days.

Joshua Corey : “Exterior Century,” “Interior Medusa,” and “Interior Birth.”

Joshua Corey is a poet, critic, translator, and novelist whose books include The Barons (Omnidawn Publishing, 2014), The Transcendental Circuit; Otherworlds of Poetry (MadHat Press, 2018), a new translation with Jean-Luc Garneau of Francis Ponge's Le parti pris des choses as Partisan of Things (Kenning Editions, 2016), and the forthcoming Hannah and the Master (MadHat Press). He lives in Evanston, Illinoi with his wife and about-to-be teenage daughter, and teaches English at Lake Forest College.

Leesa Dean : “Self-Isolation”

Leesa Dean is a graduate of the University of Guelph's MFA program and a Creative Writing Instructor at Selkirk College. Her collection of short stories, Waiting for the Cyclone, was nominated for the 2017 Trillium and Relit Awards. Her poetry chapbook, The Desert Itabira, was published by above/ground press last year. She is a settler on Sinixt territory in the Slocan Valley where she roams her small acreage, finding inspiration in the wildness surrounding her, and mostly fails at trying to grow melons. The long poem read for this series is from a manuscript in progress titled How to Survive which explores macro and micro forms of survival, ranging from the species level to the personal, including meditations on the author's summer spent at Aircrew Survival camp in Northern Alberta in 1995 and her mother's life-long repercussions from having polio as a child, a condition that ultimately killed her at the age of 60.