Finding joy without even lookin’ for it
You know those days when everywhere you turn the same idea confronts you, breathes itself into your ear, blares out from the television set, slides into…
Stepping into a river of dream
Thirty-five thousand feet above the Atlantic I jump-start our Irish adventure by reading Inishbream, Theresa Kishkan’s novella born of her own time in Ireland years ago.…
Here you are, alive …
… Would you like to make a comment? This morning an excerpt from Mary Oliver’s Long Life: Essays and Other Writings danced into my awareness: Poets…
Poetry in reverse: Part 2 of 3
Reversing someone else’s poem is a way of being in conversation with another poet. Elee Kraljii Gardiner, the gifted Vancouver writer, writing teacher, and publisher who…
upholSTORIES: Be glad your couch can’t talk
The ultra-talented Carin Makuz has created upholSTORIES—an exhibition of photographs and stories showing now until May 14 in Gallery A of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in…
Poetry in reverse: Part 1 of 3
Elee Kraljii Gardiner is the author of serpentine loop (Anvil Press, 2016), an innovative, beautiful book of poems that has been shortlisted for the League of…
Poetry in reverse: Part 3 of 3
“For 100 days, Juliane Okot Bitek recorded the lingering nightmare of the Rwandan genocide in a poem—each poem recalling the senseless loss of life and of…
13 reasons to attend a writers’ retreat
For rural writers, these effects amplify. (Click on the photos for larger images.) Yoga. Writing, writing, writing! You may accidentally discover a stellar location for a…
The world-ending fire
During my recent thought-train ride, I learned that Paul Kingsnorth published a collection of Wendell Berry’s essays in January titled The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell…
Poetry and prose
If you’re not a regular reader of Shawna Lemay’s Transactions With Beauty, you’re missing out on one of the most exquisitely thought-provoking conversations on the web—about…