In a month-long act of resistance, poets remind us that poetry can push back against forces that marginalize voices, erase stories, and impose control over how we live and imagine.
An interview with poet Jennifer LoveGrove
ALL LIT UP: How would you describe The Tinder Sonnets to someone picking it up for the first time?
JENNIFER LOVEGROVE: The Tinder Sonnets is a collection of poetry that explores female sexual desire, contemporary heterosexual dating dynamics, exposes the harms of misogyny and male entitlement and critiques these patriarchal systems. Weaving myth and folklore from the natural world rich in metaphor with lived experience as a middle-aged woman refusing invisibility, these poems celebrate empowerment and lust and give voice to profound disillusionment and rage under patriarchy. The poems are all in sonnet form, rich in sonic texture, with fragments of conversations and messages woven throughout sensory imagery.
ALU: How do you see poetry as an act of resistance?
JENNIFER: Poetry in general is the opposite of capitalism. It doesn’t generate wealth. It is often critical of power. It allows us to understand things in a different way, expanding the scope of our imagination and by extension, our capacity for empathy. Poets are, generally speaking, people who resist. Not all, but many poets are sensitive and outside the comforts of the mainstream, and rebel against injustice.
ALU: What does poetry allow you to say or refuse that other forms don’t?
JENNIFER: Poetry, to me, is an ideal form. It’s the most expansive with the least rules and barriers to participation. It has all of the benefits in terms of conveying of ideas as prose, but with more fluidity and space to experiment, to use language as a tool for art-making rather than only for narrative. Arguably fiction can do much of this too, but it’s rarer, and for me, much more difficult and constricting. Poetry allows for refusal too, not just in terms of subject matter but in the way that you use language. Gaps on the page, what is left out, erasures are refusals, and refusals can be powerful.
ALU: Is there a line (in your own or someone else’s work) that you return to?
JENNIFER: When I edit other writers, I often tell them to go deeper and to write what scares them. I had a few moments in the later stages of writing The Tinder Sonnets where I wrote some lines that scared me a little. Where I wondered if it was “too much.” One of those is from the poem “Stibnite, house of antimony: dating as aversion therapy.” When I wrote that piece, I’d really had enough of feeling dehumanized by men and I was angry. Almost flippantly, I threw in the line “Don’t worry. I’m not even a person.” Every single day now I read about or see something horrifying happening in the world, more colonial aggression or genocide, or something awful happening to someone I know at the hands of an ex, or even just deeply disappointing experiences with men, and I think “I’m not even a person.” We’re at a stage where it’s far too easy to dehumanize each other and cause profound damage and harm.
ALU: How do you sustain a practice of writing poetry in politically or personally challenging times?
JENNIFER: When in the midst of a crisis, it may not be possible to have the time or focus to write, but I know now that I will return to it. I try not to let gaps in writing time stress me out as much as they used to. These experiences of difficult times – personally or politically – will inevitably make their way into my writing in some manner. It’s unavoidable for me and I think leads to better writing. The passion, the intensity, the insights come through difficulty and fuel the writing. Sometimes though, I have had to put writing and other things aside to deal with traumatic and/or urgent situations (especially in 2025), and I’ve accepted that, because I know that I’ll be able to work on the writing when the crises pass. Rest is important, and I have to pace myself. Limit the doom scrolling. Recoup energy. Write critically of power.
Read an excerpt from The Tinder Sonnets
Their plumes sweep
the
sky, but the sky is stone
Showy gold blooms swoon in late summer, we
met in August. Miscanthus sinensis,
Huron Sentinel. Rust flutter, I want
to be this soft, be this shimmer, I
want I want I want I want I want. I
know, I get it. Can I want maybe
less. First, F— set his fat gold watch
on the table. Then belt. Like offerings.
Large bronze flowers temptingly turn to puffy fawn-
coloured seed heads the texture of
chenille. Obsessed with my nipples, and my
generous ass. Upright habit, special order
item. Maiden grass. Offers winter
interest. No one else had
ever kissed me that much.
Maiden grass offers winter interest,
ice maiden, iron maiden, rust flutter.
My maidenhead: special order item.
Showy gold blooms droop into autumn, my
anxious attachment disorder. Obsessed
with nits, hip bones, and nipples, this listing
maiden voyage aboard a gilded
raft. I hadn’t been vulnerable in
years. Temptingly turn to puffy
saltwater swells. I get it. Can I want
maybe less belt-like offerings, large
bronze flowers as a benediction plunders
our offsets. To be this soft, be this
shimmer. I want an upright habit,
secure detachment.
I gnawed his hip bones, he bucked and growled, Please
please please, do whatever you want to me,
anything, please, don’t even ask me first.
A benediction plundered our offsets;
I hadn’t been vulnerable in years.
Skylight. Stopgap. Sophistry. This mattered.
Dumped me for a triathlete in
Barrie, a nutritionist in our
ugliest city. I’m not proud of
my response or I’m too proud. Nits,
nobodies, nirvanas. Best friend scoffed,
everybody knows that’s not even a real job. I
guess we choose things: our avoidants,
assessors, assailants. It’s all so
storefront, so malaise-facade.
Reprinted with permission from Book*hug Press.
Watch Jennifer read from The Tinder Sonnets
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Jennifer LoveGrove’s latest book is The Tinder Sonnets (Book*hug, 2026). She is the author of the Giller Prize-longlisted novel Watch How We Walk, as well as three poetry collections: Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes (longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award), I Should Never Have Fired the Sentinel, and The Dagger Between Her Teeth. She is currently working on a new novel and creative nonfiction. She divides her time between downtown Toronto and Squirrel Creek Retreat in rural Ontario.
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Thanks to Jennifer for answering our questions, and to Book*hug Press for the text excerpt from The Tinder Sonnets, which is available to purchase here on All Lit Up (and get 15% off + FREE shipping Canada-wide with the code POETSRESIST until April 30!).
Follow our NPM series all month long to discover new poetry or connect with old favourites, and visit our poetry shop here.
