Four dynamic poetic voices— each with distinct perspectives on spiritual enlightenment, trauma, pastoral beauty and the joys of the physical body— were highlighted at McClelland & Stewart’s 2025 spring poetry night held earlier this month.

Stephanie Cesca is a strong and capable storyteller. Her passion for detail and vivid imagination creates an authentic fictional world. Readers can see her characters in their mind’s eye. They can relate to their pain.

Throughout the book’s 384 pages, readers are kept guessing as to the killer’s motives. Could such rampaging violence be  a professional hit or a random act of madness? Or was the victim bludgeoned out of existence due to his shady business dealings and abusive, violent past?

Clewes is a sensory, effusive poet. Her lyrical words reflect a deep musical sense. In the third section, Calle Obispo, the poem of the same title, references Nobel Prize-winning poet and Polish-Lithuanian  author Czeslaw Milosz. The first stanza turns a plane trip into a spiritual experience.

Green’s complex, colloquial whimsy is grounded in a strong academic backbone and a broad knowledge base that references Wordsworth, Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath. And how she loves wordplay and puns,

Winning a literary award hikes a book’s profile, as the books are put on course curriculums, book club reading lists, and are listed as library best staff picks. This creates more profits for publishers, which is a boon for authors because it increases a book’s promotions budget.

I think books in this genre require a bright label along the spine: Beware. A second reading may be required to fully comprehend this book.

The collection’s title Titch – which means a small somebody – is a clever take on the moniker for Little Tich, a famous music hall performer from the turn of the twentieth Century, and a word derived from Australian and British slang. Flaherty’s poems inspire and entertain, however down-to-earth the poet’s subject matter.

The result is a gripping fictoire – heart-wrenching poems about the imagined life of a forgotten woman. Langevin syntax is direct and personal, reflecting a simple woman’s voice, but a voice of bewilderment and pain.

In her Oscar-winning film adaption of Women Talking, director and writer Sarah Polley stayed true most of the book’s plot, themes and characters. However, after including August as narrator in early drafts of the screenplay, Polley changed her mind, settling instead on a teenaged girl who addresses an assault victim’s unborn child as the film’s narrator. 

Maynard craved a special project, one that would kick-start her soul. “I longed for the Project the way, in my teens, I had longed to fall in love, with a hunger for completion that beat against my ribcage.”

“Poetry ought to be able to be enjoyed by everyone, not just other poets. I resist the idea that being difficult to understand is an indicator of superior merit.” Aeolus publish Allen Briesmaster

“Here was the place it happened. He got out. He went on. And on and on,” Lewis writes, detailing how she ate a meal in France and drank a toast to her grandfather’s success when she hit that milestone. “He would live; he had fifty-nine years still to live. Cheers to that.”

Eventually Morrissey found support in a group of strong women friends. Writing became the therapy that helped her tackle her fear and anxiety. Eventually she uncovered her storyteller’s voice. After that, there was no looking back.

“This vision is largely liberal, progressive, anglophone and centralist.” He mitigates this by adding he’s given “some attention” to voices that differ from this vision. Despite his detailed research and obvious academic knowledge, the book’s structure denies the author a unifying theme.

Ghostwalk: This is a collection of intriguing work from an intriguing soul. Perhaps in his next collection, Pooles will let the passion that fuels his dark imagery create content that will brave the light.

An existential shakedown is happening amid the purveyors of poetry, world-wide, and in this country. Some see it as a pugilistic free-for-all with multiple genres, platforms and delivery methods duking it out for eyeballs. Others see it as a Darwinian evolution of expression that has extended poetry’s popularity.

Poets write to communicate, especially a poet like Oloruntoba, who obviously burns with ideas and opinions about social and political issues. However, in the context of our current cultural matrix, does the literary/academic genre fail its mandate if talented, unique expression is often viewed as accessible?

Updating or altering Carmen and other “inappropriate” works of art to make them more “woke” will not create change. Why? Because people must understand and learn from the past’s mistakes if they are going to create a better future. Erasing or rewriting it won’t work.