poets

Power Q & A with Mallory Tater

Power Q & A with Mallory Tater

I discovered my love of swimming in 2019. One of my best friends had just died, and I was searching for escapism—away from screens, away from work, and, in some ways, away from my own body. The weightlessness of being submerged in the public pool eased my angst and softened the tension and grief in my neck and shoulders. The quiet beneath the water cleared my mind. The rhythm I could build toward, channel, and disrupt brought me a sense of control and steadiness. Stripping down my body and taking a warm shower before and after felt reverent. Small talk with strangers—those quiet good mornings in the lobby and the lanes—became part of the day’s calm order. The pool, like the poem, became a place of repetition, refining, and resistance. 

Power Q & A with Stephanie Bolster

Power Q & A with Stephanie Bolster

The timing of the book’s release was coincidental, though it’s a fortunate coincidence in that Katrina and the subsequent levee breaches that wreaked such devastation in New Orleans are back in the public consciousness and may make readers more interested in the perspective the book offers. Sadly, the inequalities the disaster highlighted are even more acute now than they were then, and the climate change that contributed to the storm has only worsened.

Excerpt from Long Exposure

Excerpt from Long Exposure

After Hurricane Katrina, the photographer Robert Polidori flew to New Orleans to document the devastation. In the wreckage he witnessed, and in her questions about what she saw in what he saw, Stephanie Bolster found the beginnings of a long poem. Those questions led to unexpected places; meanwhile, life kept pouring in. The ensuing book, Long Exposure, is Bolster’s fifth, a roaming, associative exploration of disasters and their ongoing aftermaths, sufferings large and small, and the vulnerability and value of our own lives. Incremental, unsettling, Long Exposure rushes to and through us.

Power Q & A with Guy Elston

Power Q & A with Guy Elston

To put it simply, because I’m not that interested in myself. Which isn’t true, of course – what poet isn’t obsessed with themselves – but perhaps I'm not that interested in the front-facing, autobiographical concept of ‘Guy Elston’. Memory, identity, the cause and effect of life and its happenings – it’s all a sheer mountain face, senseless. I need an angle, a longer way round.

Power Q & A with Amanda Shankland

Power Q & A with Amanda Shankland

Speech Dries Here on the Tongue (edited by Hollay Ghadery, Rasiqra Revulva, and Amanda Shankland) is an anthology of poetry by Canadian authors, published by The Porcupine’s Quill, exploring the relationship between environmental collapse and mental health.

It’s been listed as a book to read by Quill & Quire and CBC Books, and we’re honoured to have one of the editors, Amanda Shankland, join us for this Power Q & A to talk about where this anthology started for her.

Power Q & A with Alex Gurtis

Power Q & A with Alex Gurtis

We became aware of American poet Alex Gurtis through his work as a literary critic and then further familiarized ourselves with his work in the literary community—specifically, his work uplifting Canadian authors. Then, we learned more about his poetry, and our interest was doubly piqued. We picked up his chapbook, When the Ocean Comes to Me (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and were blown away.

Power Q & A with Barbara Tran

Power Q & A with Barbara Tran

Barbara Tran’s entrancing poetry collection, Precedented Parrotting (Palimpsest Press, 2024), was a finalist for the Governor General Literary Award for Poetry. This beautiful book stands as an expansive debut that plumbs personal archives and traverses the natural world.

We are honoured to have Barbara join us for our Power Q & A series to speak with us about the visual impact of her work, which uses the whole stage of the page.

Power Q & A with Sheila Stewart

Power Q & A with Sheila Stewart

Sheila Stewart’s stunning poetry collection, If I Write About My Father, (Ekstasis Editions, 2024) dismantles the patriarchal religious ideologies of Sheila’s upbringing by a protestant minister, while sustaining the emotional intimacy experienced in familial relationships. 

Sheila explores the daughter-father relationship, uncovering the complexities of growing up as the minister’s only daughter in a family shaped by church and manse in small-town southern Ontario. She braids narrative and lyric, the textures of liturgy and memory. While critiquing patriarchal weight and constraint, the work explores how a particular religious upbringing shapes thinking, the rhythms of language, and the fabric of consciousness.