spring 2021
Table of Contents
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The Year We Considered Foster Care
Sunni Brown Wilkinson
The Retrograde of a Frigid Planet
Self-Portrait as an Internal Dialogue on Rue St-Laurent, 2016
Lauren Turner
Fits and Starts
Natasha Pepperl
The Deer Who Sneak Into Father's Butchering Shack at Night
L M Schmidt
Drought
Flash Flood
Samantha Jones
Ghazal With Malbec, No Cigarettes
Oxytocin Pandemic Love Poem
Lisa Richter
arma virumque cano
Revelation on Baptist Hill
Libby Maxey
Self-Portrait as Used Condom Riding the Wonder Wheel
Melissa Eleftherion
No Fixed Thing Space Follows Adam Day
White Rhino (Ceratotherium simum)
Coyote (Canis latrans)
Blue Morpho Butterfly (Morpho menelaus)
Jordan Mounteer
The Guilt of Not Wanting
Ashley Prince
Author Biographies
Author Biographies
Ronna Bloom is the author of six poetry collections. Her most recent book, The More (Pedlar Press, 2017), was longlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award. New work appears/is forthcoming in Juniper Poetry, Queen’s Quarterly, and Best Canadian Poetry 2021. She's Poet-in-Community to the University of Toronto.
Heather Bourbeau’s work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Meridian, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. Her recently completed collection, Monarch, is a poetic memoir of overlooked histories from her American West.
Robyn Bowes is a poet and fiction writer from Kenora, Ontario. From the fern gully forests of Southern Vancouver Island, she is currently completing a bachelor of fine arts in the University of British Columbia School of Creative Writing.
Michael Buckius hails from Lancaster, PA. He earned his BA in film and media arts from Temple University, and his MFA in creative writing from Northern Arizona University. He writes mostly poetry and nonfiction, and also directs music videos. His first chapbook, Future Sarcasm, is available from Tolsun Books (2020).
Biologist, poet, and visual artist Jan Conn grew up in Quebec and lives in Massachusetts. She studied art with Annemarie Buchman-Gerber and George Glenn (2014-2015) in Saskatchewan, and has exhibited paintings in Toronto, Massachusetts, and Colorado. Her ninth book is Tomorrow’s Bright White Light, Tightrope Press, 2016. Instagram handle: artistatplay001.
Nathan Curnow is an Australian poet, performer, and past editor of Going Down Swinging. His books include The Ghost Poetry Project (Puncher and Wattmann, 2009), RADAR (Walleah Press, 2012), The Right Wrong Notes (Flying Islands Books, 2015), and The Apocalypse Awards (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2016).
Adam Day is the author of Left-Handed Wolf (LSU Press, 2020), and of Model of a City in Civil War (Sarabande Books, 2015), and the recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, and of a PEN America Literary Award. He is the publisher of the cultural magazine, Action, Spectacle.
Melissa Eleftherion is the author of Field Guide to Autobiography (The Operating System, 2018) and ten chapbooks, including Trauma Suture (above/ground press, 2020). Born and raised in Brooklyn, Melissa lives in northern California, where she manages the Ukiah Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as Poet Laureate of Ukiah.
Daimys Ester García is a writer, artist, and educator from Miami, currently based in Binghamton, New York, finishing a PhD in comparative literature at SUNY Binghamton. Her work has appeared in Convivial Thinking and The Mantle.
Samantha Jones lives and writes in Calgary, Alberta on Treaty 7 territory, and is of mixed Black Canadian and European settler descent. She is a literary magazine enthusiast and contributor with poems recently published in Contemporary Verse 2, Grain, New Forum, Room, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter: @jones_yyc.
DS Maolalai has been nominated eight times for Best of the Net and five times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love Is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019)
Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she was raised off the grid. She holds a degree in applied mathematics and used to know a lot about infinite series. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Folio, Grain, Room, and Vallum: Contemporary Poetry.
Libby Maxey is a senior editor at Literary Mama. Her poems have appeared in the Emrys Journal, Crannóg Magazine, Stoneboat Literary Journal and elsewhere, and her first poetry collection, Kairos (2019), won Finishing Line Press’s New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. Her non-literary activities include singing classical repertoire and mothering sons.
Jordan Mounteer’s poems have appeared in Canadian and American publications and have won or been shortlisted for a number of awards. His first book Liminal came out with SonoNis Press in 2017. He currently lives in the Kootenays and works as a counsellor and mental health clinician.
Elisabeth Murawski is the author of Heiress (Texas Review Press, 2018), Zorba’s Daughter (Utah State University Press, 2010), Moon and Mercury (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1991), and three chapbooks. Still Life with Timex (Texas Review Press, 2021) won the 2020 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
Sergio A. Ortiz is a bilingual, gay Puerto Rican poet. A Best of the Web, Best of the Net, and Pushcart Prize nominee, he took second place in the 2016 Ramón Ataz Annual Poetry Competition. Recent poems have appeared in Gato Malo Editores, Maleta Ilegal, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Spillwords.
Natasha Pepperl’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review, Appalachian Review, The Meadow, The Anti-Languorous Project, and elsewhere. She hosts Just As Special, a foster care podcast focused on diversity, and is the daughter of an Iranian refugee. Read more of Natasha’s poetry at CeremoniesOfFamily.com.
Ashley Prince is a writer and social worker from Cobden, Ontario. She holds a bachelor of arts from the University of Prince Edward Island and a master’s of social work from Carleton University. Twitter: @AEPrince.
James Reil has published poetry and short fiction in journals including Event, The Antigonish Review, and Grain. His story “Dry” was chosen for the Journey Prize Anthology 6 (McClelland and Stewart, 1993). He lives near Ottawa with an unreasonable number of books and just the right number of pets.
Lisa Richter is a Toronto poet, essayist, and teacher. She is the author of two books, Closer to Where We Began (Tightrope Books, 2017) and Nautilus and Bone (Frontenac House, 2020), winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry and longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award.
Lauren Turner is a disabled poet and essayist. Her debut poetry collection, The Only Card in a Deck of Knives, came out with Wolsak & Wynn in August 2020. Read The Maynard’s review here. Lauren lives in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka land.
L M Schmidt is an Ottawa-based emerging writer. Her poetry explores expressions of debility and gender through her own positionality as a queer-disabled woman. Recently Room, Pussy Magic, and deathcap have published her work. She has an MA in philosophy from the University of Cambridge. Instagram/Twitter: @lmschmidt42
Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s poetry is forthcoming in Western Humanities Review, Mom Egg Review, JuxtaProse, and Ruminate. She is the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and The Ache & The Wing, winner of Sundress Publications’ 2020 Chapbook Prize, forthcoming June 2021.
Elana Wolff is a Toronto-based writer of poetry and creative nonfiction. Her work has recently appeared (or will appear) in The Dalhousie Review, Canadian Literature, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry, and Sepia. Her collection, Swoon (Guernica Editions, 2020), is the winner of the 2020 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry.
Aysegul Yildirim is a doctoral researcher who lives and writes in London, UK. Her most recent piece appeared in Sonic Field.