Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Poets Resist: National Poetry Month 2017
Fists up for National Poetry Month! And we mean that in the best way possible. This year, we feel everyone could see a little more solidarity and community, so we’re getting poetically political with Poets Resist, a series dedicated to poetry as a form of resistance. Every day on the blog we will feature a…
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In Review: The Week of March 27th
We’re gearing up for National Poetry Month, and will be ready to announce this year’s NPM series on Monday, but until then we’ve rounded up this week’s literary tidbits, including Canada Reads buzz and a tail-wagging congrats.
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National Poetry Month: A Journey
With spring comes National Poetry Month, an ALU favourite, and a time for us to get even more poetically charged. (Or in this year’s case, poetically-political…and that’s all we’ll reveal for now.) So in advance of our NPM series on Monday, we’re throwing it back to the last few years to remind us of all…
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One Life in Many Languages
The year was 1960 when I first began scribbling poems and stories in my notebooks. My advent into the world of creative writing (although I wasn’t aware it was creative at the time) started as a reaction to what I sometimes refer to as “my immigrant damage,” a very real childhood trauma. It was the…
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If You Liked x, Read y, Canada Reads 2017 Edition: Books 3, 4, and the WINNER
And just like that, it’s all over! We won’t spoil the winner of this year’s Canada Reads bout in this header, but we will say we’re thrilled about the book that lead this pack (WINK). Here’s our pairings for the third and fourth books eliminated, and for the winner!
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Canada Reads, ALU Style
We’re all about Canada Reads here at ALU, and we just can’t resist the chance to take part with our own twist. Below we defend and recommend books we think all Canadians should read from poetry to memoir. And all these books are winners in our eyes, so go on and check out our picks…
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If You Liked x, Read y, Canada Reads 2017 Edition: Books 1 and 2
Spoiler alert! We’ve been keeping up on this year’s CBC Canada Reads debates hosted by Ali Hassan, and we can’t resist bringing similar books to you based on what got eliminated. Though we hate to see them go, we have the perfect literary bandage to soothe your Canada Reads elimination woes. Today we’ll be discussing…
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This Week in Lit Events: March 27-April 2nd
Did someone say “launch season”? Spring is officially here with great launches and readings in Toronto and St. John’s this week.Are you hosting an event featuring an author whose titles are available on All Lit Up? Send the event details, including author, book, date, time, and address to hello@alllitup.ca to be included in our listings.
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Character Study: Skin Flick
In Norm Foster’s comedy Skin Flick (Playwrights Canada Press), a middle-aged couple and their friend all find themselves suddenly out of work. Strapped for cash and inspired by an x-rated film, the trio try their hand at making an adult film. Also along for the ride is a birthday telegram messenger who accidentally finds herself under the…
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In Review: The Week of March 20th
It’s a fresh new season both in weather (well, we’re still kind of waiting for that one) and in books. In between getting our spring reads on with all the new titles out there, we stopped to pluck this week’s literary tidbits for you.
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My Accents and Me
I breathe in the smell of cloves and cheap wine. Nostalgia pulls the corners of my mouth upward as I scan the small area of Petržalka’s Christmas market. Set on a square patch of concrete and enclosed with darkened high-rises, its flickering lights are like will-o’-wisps drawing me in. It is one of the less…
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Where in Canada: Call of the Water
The lake in Jesse Ruddock’s debut novel Shot-Blue (Coach House Books) may be an invention, but it’s based off the lakes north of Muskoka that Ruddock visited and worked on as a carpenter’s apprentice growing up. For this Where in Canada, Jesse shares what a morning on a remote northern Ontario lake is like, and how…
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Poetry in Motion: Players
John Nyman’s Players is a poetic fusion of pop culture and high art that, as publisher Palimpsest Press puts it, “bends genre expectations, unravelling with a flow that’s both unique and engaging.” Watch Nyman puts his poetry in motion, below.
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Poetry 101 with Sandy Shreve and Kate Braid
For World Poetry Day, we wanted to get our form down right, so we asked co-editors Sandy Shreve and Kate Braid of In Fine Form: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry (Caitlin Press) to break it down for us. Below, they lay out the structures of 10 different poetry forms and suggest a poet who…
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This Week in Lit Events: March 20-26th
This week it’s VERSeFest, the outstanding Ottawa festival of words. Not in our nation’s capital? There’s more events in Toronto, St. John’s, and Vancouver this week to check out.Are you hosting an event featuring an author whose titles are available on All Lit Up? Send the event details, including author, book, date, time, and address to hello@alllitup.ca to…
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