Author: ALU Editor
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In Review: The Week of March 30th
This week we launched ALU DiscoverVerse: Choose Your Own Poetry, a Canadian poetry binge, for #NPM20. Scroll on for details (+20% off featured books), a map of Canadian booksellers offering delivery, and more.
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DiscoverVerse: Lori Cayer + Mrs Romanov
Lori Cayer is next on deck for ALU DiscoverVerse. Today she chats with us about carrying the idea for her poetry collection Mrs Romanov (Porcupine’s Quill) for 20 years before it became an all-consuming effort to turn into a reality. Lori also shares more about the deep inspiration she takes from science, and the caretaker…
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DiscoverVerse: nathan dueck + A Very Special Episode
Poet nathan dueck joins us for ALU DiscoverVerse, a month-long poetry binge: we chat about his playful, pop-culture-inspired collection A Very Special Episode (Wolsak and Wynn), why silence makes him deeply uncomfortable, didactic German drama, and what a Santa’s hat and Gideon’s bible have to do with a Cabbage Patch kid.
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DiscoverVerse: Nolan Natasha + I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me?
All Lit Up DiscoverVerse kicks off with poet Nolan Natasha whose funny, compelling debut collection I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? (Invisible Publishing) takes on gender, identity, and human connection in the modern age. We virtually chatted with Nolan Natasha about completing a debut collection, slowing down, poetry prompts, and his own Choose…
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DiscoverVerse: Smokii Sumac + you are enough
Transmasculine Ktunaxa poet Smokii Sumac chats with us for ALU DiscoverVerse about his boisterous, touching, and often funny debut collection you are enough: love poems for the end of the world (Kegedonce Press) — which grew from a challenge to write one haiku a day — where he draws inspiration from, three things he’d take with him on his…
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DiscoverVerse: Choose Your Own Poetry Game
Play our Choose Your Own Poetry game where YOU are the narrator! Choose from multiple paths on the way to one ultimate goal: visiting your local bookstore to browse poetry. As you move through the story you will find poetry books to collect in your tote bag. There are a total of 36 poetry books to…
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DiscoverVerse: Choose Your Own Poetry
This National Poetry Month is an action-packed celebration of twenty-four poets who write in all kinds of spaces and explore all kinds of styles and themes that delight, offer reflection, and soothe our spirits. Join us here on the blog throughout the month for our feature poets, including interviews and excerpts from each, and get…
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In Review: The Week of March 23rd
Between binging Netflix’s Pandemic and further feeding our worries, we soothed our fears with poetry: reading it, listening to it, and sharing it with you. Scroll on for more on that, as well as an important take on accessibility and books from Amanda Leduc, a virtual chat with author Chih-Ying Lay about bridging Canadian readers…
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Read Harder Challenge #5: Audiobook of poetry
Throughout 2020, All Lit Up-er Tan Light is participating in BookRiot’s Read Harder Challenge—a reading task designed to expand readerly boundaries—and doing so with an indie twist. Each entry in this series will highlight one of her completed challenges along with a list of books from All Lit Up to have you reading harder, too!
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Q&A with Home Sickness author, Chih-Ying Lay
A multi-talented scientist, singer and writer hailing from Taipei, Chih-Ying Lay is the author of Home Sickness (Linda Leith Publishing), a new collection of stories that present a paradoxical yearning for home – the familiar feeling of homesickness – as well as an intense desire to escape from its tethers. In this interview, Chih-Ying discusses…
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The Humdrum Magical: On Accessible Formats in Publishing
Once upon a time there was a girl in a forest. Once upon a time, there was a prince who’d lost his way. Once upon a time, a girl donned a red cape and took her grandmother a basket filled with sweet cakes and wine.Once upon a time, a man who so longed for a child cried out,…
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Two Poems from Sweet Water
In recognition of World Water Day (March 22, 2020) we’re bringing you two poems from the collection Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds (Caitlin Press), the second in a trilogy, edited by Yvonne Blomer. Below, Yvonne shares more about our connection to water as an essential resource to our survival and her call to poets…
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In Review: The Week of March 16th
Social distancing didn’t stop us from featuring some pretty great authors on the blog this week: Raquel Fletcher talks about diversity in Quebec; Brian Orend talks Epilepsy and writing; and Jane Munro contemplates the relationship between deep listening and poetry. Plus we’ve got some strange and surreal book picks to mirror our strange times.
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Inner Ear: Listening for poems
The iceberg of consciousness …Once, I asked workshops of undergraduate and graduate poetry students to complete the following statement: “Learning to write poetry is like ….”The undergrads chose similes involving eyes and hands and minds. They said writing poetry is like “making a patchwork quilt” or “looking for something in the junk drawer.”The grads said…
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Off/Kilter: World Poetry Day
World Poetry Day is right around the corner (March 21st) and there really couldn’t be a better time to bring you three poetry picks from our Off/Kilter column. These collections all offer a window into the surreal nature of our world, and show us how, through this warped reflection, we might find the roots of…