Interview with Jim Johnstone, editor and publisher of Anstruther Press

A few weeks ago, I managed to get up to Toronto to see the Summer launch of five brand new chapbooks from the mighty Anstruther Press. Jim Johnstone, editor and publisher, was gracious enough to an…

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Accident and Epiphany – A Review of Accidents After Happening by Robert Priest (ECW Press 2025)

reviewed by Chris Banks “I took a word from a word and the word was still full of words so I took another and another and just when I thought I might have too many I realized that every word I’d ta…

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The Woodlot interviews TNQ Reviews Editor Selena Mercuri

Chris Banks asked Selena Mercuri, Reviews Editor for The New Quarterly, a series of questions about the state of reviewing in Canada and the answers were fascinating. You are in for a treat! Tell u…

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Rough Beast vs. The Divine Feminine: A Review of We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us by Roxanna Bennett

reviewed by Courtney Bates-Hardy We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us is Roxanna Bennett’s fourth poetry collection with Gordon Hill Press. As a longtime Addams Family fan, I was intrigued …

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Startled To Be Here: A Review of We Drove All Day For This: New and Selected Poems by Bruce Taylor (Signal Editions, 2026)

reviewed by Chris Banks I’ve been spending the last few days reading Bruce Taylor’s We Drove All Day For This: New And Selected Poems out now with Signal Editions, and I’ve been really struck by th…

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Clear-eyed and Complex: A Review of Perfect Weather by Jamella Hagen (Gaspereau Press, 2026)

reviewed by rob maclennan Further to the first season of the relaunched Gaspereau Press comes Whitehorse, Yukon poet and editor Jamella Hagen’s full-length second poetry collection, Perfect Weather…

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The Quick & The Read: On ‘The Short’ Poem

by Chris Banks I do not usually write short poems, poems under ten or twelve lines, let’s say, because to do the short poem well requires a lot of thought, compression of words and ideas, and ultim…

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Devastating & Exact: A review of Farhang Book II (ECW press, 2026)

reviewed by Edward Palmer There is a theory of creativity buried inside Farhang Book II, and it arrives in one of the most unsettling images in recent Canadian poetry. The prisoner Farhang, broken …

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After The Blue Gate: A Reader’s Response and Poem inspired by Kathryn Macdonald’s The Blue Gate (Frontenac House, Spring 2026)

A review and a poem by by Antony Di Nardo Enormous poems. Vast as a blue sky. Tiny poems … “as tiny as my hand/in yours on that evening.” Evening poems. That time of day between certainty and ambig…

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Loneliness of the Long-Distance Poet: SubArctic Edition

by Dawn Macdonald I didn’t know there was an inside to be outside of. I thought poetry was in books, and books, through the magic of Canada Post, can go anywhere. Sure, I knew that Toronto consider…

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“Trickle-up Decency”: A Review of Alex Boyd’s Take This For The Pain: Essays On Writing and Life (Palimpsest Press, 2026)

reviewed by Chris Banks In his introduction to his collection of essays Take This For The Pain: Essays on Writing and Life out now with Palimpsest Press (Spring 2026), Canadian poet and novelist Al…

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Myth & Exile: A review of Qaf’s People by Sadiqa de Meijer (Vehicule Press, 2026)

reviewed by Chris Banks In an essay Hope and Nostalgia, the writer Leonora Simonovis has stated, “ exile for me is a lived experience that has influenced my sense of self and my relationships with …

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Nostalgia: Indulgence & Verdict

by Chris Banks I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia this week maybe because last Saturday night I went to see a cover band play the music of The Smiths, a band I associate with being sixteen ye…

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A Review of Empties by Neil Surkan (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2026)

reviewed by dalton derkson In his 1906 novel, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair writes: “All this was bad, and yet it was not the worst.” Is it an odd choice of quotation with which to open a …

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Notes From A Northern Writer

by Kim Fahner I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a poet outside of a larger, urban centre—and, even more, what it means to be a poet and writer living and working north of Barrie, O…

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Four Ways to Approach “everybody knows a ghost” by Elana Wolff (Guernica Editions, 2026).

Reviewed by John Oughton Elana Wolff is not an easy poet to read, but there’s no doubt that she’s a very good and original one. I know nobody else who writes the way she does. As for the worth of h…

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“Whatever It Takes”: A Review of Lisa Richter’s poetry collection Sublunary (University of Alberta, Spring 2026)

reviewed by Chris Banks In the opening poem ”Staying Power” of Lisa Richter’s new poetry collection Sublunary out with University of Alberta press (Spring, 2026), the poet Richter writes, “I stayed…

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What We Can Do Without: Jennifer Lovegrove’s The Tinder Sonnets (Book*hug Spring 2026)

reviewed by Chris Banks “The sonnet, like poetry, teaches you what you can do without,” said Diane Seuss who, after publishing her remarkable book of sonnets Frank a few years ago, has ignited a re…

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Brilliant Women Inc

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On Shane Neilson’s What to Feel, How To Feel: Essays on Neurodivergence and Neurofatherhood

reviewed by Alex Boyd People are sometimes only dimly aware doctors are human too. It’s among the various not-very-well-addressed concepts discussed by poet Shane Neilson in his immensely valuable …

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National Poetry Month : Carla Harris,

coming out of a seizure my empty eyes  sense static clouds surging  exhaustion throbs  soundless  as distant lightning  that pain wi...

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What We Can Do Without: Jennifer Lovegrove’s The Tinder Sonnets (Book*hug Spring 2026)

reviewed by Chris Banks “The sonnet, like poetry, teaches you what you can do without,” said Diane Seuss who, after publishing her remarkable book of sonnets Frank a few years ago, has ignited a re…

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‘To Break Through Or Leap’- The Distance of a Shout: Selected Poems by Michael Ondaatje

reviewed by Chris Banks What does one say about a Canadian poetry icon, like Michael Ondaatje, that has not already been said? I grew up after the Canadian Nationalism fanfare of the 1970s, so I en…

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