Reading, Writing, Listening: Author Spotlight – Stan Rogal
February 18, 2021
Stan Rogal was born in Vancouver and now lives and writes in Toronto. Rogal’s work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US, and Europe. The author of twenty-six books: seven novels, seven stories, and twelve poetry collections, as well as several chapbooks. Rogal has an MA in English from York University and has coordinated the popular Idler Pub Reading Series for ten years.
Stan Rogal’s poem “Ennui” can be read on our website at https://canlit.ca/article/ennui/.
Canadian Literature issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening is available to order through our online store.
Reading, Writing, Listening: Author Spotlight – Michael Lithgow
February 11, 2021
Michael Lithgow’s poetry and writing have appeared in literary and academic journals including The / tEmz / Review, Poemeleon, Event, Literary Review of Canada, ARC Poetry, Cultural Trends, CV 2, Seismopolite, and TNQ. His first book of poetry, Waking in the Tree House, was shortlisted for the Quebec Writers Federation First Book Award. Work from this collection was included in the 2012 Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books). His second collection, Who We Thought We Were As We Fell (Cormorant Books), will be out in spring 2021.
His poem “Tumbling in spring” can be read on our website at https://canlit.ca/article/tumbling-in-spring/.
Canadian Literature issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening is available to order through our online store.
Reading, Writing, Listening: Author Spotlight – Dale Tracy
February 4, 2021
Dale Tracy, a contract faculty member, has been an assistant professor in the Department of English, Culture, and Communication and is currently associate chair of the Writing Centre at the Royal Military College. She is the author of With the Witnesses: Poetry, Compassion, and Claimed Experience (McGill-Queen’s, 2017) and the chapbooks Celebration Machine (Proper Tales, 2018) and The Mystery of Ornament (above/ground, 2020). She is guest editor of the special issue Metonymy, Poetics, Performance (Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 2018), and her articles are available in diverse journals, including Canadian Literature, Modern Drama, World Literature, and Mosaic.
Article
“A Note—Doing the work with Metonymy: Three Insights from Canadian Theatre”
Abstract
Building on Alicia Elliott’s exhortation to “do the work” in “CanLit is a Raging Dumpster Fire,” I pursue the metonymic after the metaphoric. In metaphor, one thing substitutes for another: the dumpster fire takes the place of the field of relations that creates the conditions for controversies and crises. In contrast, metonymy is contiguous: its readability depends on showing the conventional, assumed, or actual relationships between one thing and another. Metaphor conceals connections; metonymy works by virtue of them. Three recent Canadian plays help me think about what metonymy can add to discourse about doing the work: Daniel MacIvor’s Who Killed Spalding Gray? (2017), Jess Dobkin’s The Magic Hour (2017), and Marcus Youssef and James Long’s Winners and Losers (2015). My strategy is metonymical like “CanLit” is: I read each play for an insight it might offer within the signifying field of Canadian literature, culture, and nation.
Canadian Literature issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening is available to order through our online store.
Reading, Writing, Listening: Author Spotlight – Chelsea Coupal
January 28, 2021
Her poem “St. Peter’s Abbey, Muenster, Saskatchewan” can be read on our website at https://canlit.ca/article/st-peters-abbey-muenster-saskatchewan/
Canadian Literature issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening is available to order through our online store.
Reading, Writing, Listening: Author Spotlight – Kristina Getz
January 21, 2021
Kristina Getz is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English at York University. Her dissertation, “Portraits of the Artist as Mother: Feminist Reconfigurations of the Maternal in Modern and Contemporary Canadian Literature,” employs feminist and maternal theory in order to explore the intersection of motherhood and creativity.
Article
“Alice Munro’s ‘Providence’ Second-Wave Feminism, and the (Im)possibilities of Reconciling Motherhood and Liberation”
Abstract
Amidst the theoretical and discursive landscape of 1970s liberationist feminism, Alice Munro published her 1978 short-story cycle, Who Do You Think You Are? The seventh story in the collection, “Providence,” remains one of the earliest examples of Canadian prose which explicitly explores the conflicts inherent to women’s experiences of feminist liberation and motherhood, and is among Munro’s least critically explored stories. “Providence” captures the tenuous and exquisite experience of single-mothering a young child, its difficulties and sacrifices, and the equally painful and (still) unspeakable choice to leave one’s maternal role behind. Munro’s central protagonist ultimately chooses feminist liberation over motherhood, unable to reconcile her desire for personal autonomy and freedom from the patriarchal family with her daughter’s need to be mothered.
Canadian Literature issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening is available to order through our online store.
Reading, Writing, Listening: Author Spotlight – Joanne Epp
January 14, 2021
Photo by Anthony Mark Schellenberg
Joanne Epp’s poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Juniper, and other journals, and her collaborative translations with Sally Ito and Sarah Klassen have appeared in The Polyglot. Her first full-length poetry collection, Eigenheim, was published by Turnstone Press in 2015; her second, Cattail Skyline, is forthcoming in 2021. She lives in Winnipeg.
Her poem “Affirmation” can be read on our website at http://canlit.ca/article/affirmation/.
Canadian Literature issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening is available to order through our online store.
Reading, Writing, Listening: Author Spotlight – Bronwyn Malloy
January 7, 2021
Bronwyn Malloy is a PhD Candidate at the University of British Columbia. Her research centres on contemporary song lyrics and poetry.
Article
“’Tuned every ear towards a tiny lengthening of light’: Listening for Weak Hope in John K. Samson’s Winter Wheat”
Abstract
This article posits weak hope, which I characterize as a combination of resignation, optimism, and generative delusion, as a productive framework through which to listen to Winnipeg singer-songwriter John K. Samson’s 2016 album Winter Wheat. In turn, I suggest that engaging closely with Samson’s lyrics offers up a kind of weak, tenuous hope for the listener—though we may not know exactly “what survival means” (“Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist”), we can—in fact, we must—“recommit [ourselves] to the healing of the world” and “pursue a practice that will strengthen [our] heart[s] (“Postdoc Blues”). For the attentive listener, the very act of engaging with the weak hope audible in and enacted by Samson’s lyrics can form part of a practice that “strengthen[s our] heart[s],” by listening closely and imaginatively to the radical, unflinching empathy that Samson models in his precise, demanding song lyrics.
Canadian Literature issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening is available to order through our online store.
Reading, Writing, Listening: Author Spotlight – Tom Wayman
December 31, 2020
Photo by Jude Dillon
Tom Wayman’s newest poetry collection is Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time (Harbour, 2020). His essay collection, If You’re Not Free at Work, Where Are You Free: Literature and Social Change (Guernica), was a finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s 2019 Pegasus Award, selected as one of the five best books of poetry criticism published in the US in 2018. He lives in the Selkirk Mountains of southeastern B.C.
His poem “In a Bleak Time” can be read on our website at http://canlit.ca/article/in-a-bleak-time/.
Canadian Literature issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening is available to order through our online store.
Reading, Writing, Listening: Author Spotlight – Emilie Sarah Caravecchia
December 24, 2020
Emilie Sarah Caravecchia, occupante de Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), est professeure de littérature française au Collège Montmorency et est coordonnatrice du programme de Littérature. Après, quelque quinze années d’enseignement, elle est retournée à l’Université de Montréal, au Département de littératures et de langues du monde, où elle a amorcé ses recherches sur les littératures autochtones produites dans le contexte francophone du Québec.
Elle a publié dans Libérer la colère (2018) et Post-Scriptum (2019). Elle a également remporté la Bourse d’excellence en Études Autochtones du Festival Métropolis Bleu pour son essai Que veut dire une société juste? (2020).
Article
“Se redéfinir dans la langue colonisatrice. Nouvelles voix autochtones francophones : Chroniques de Kitchike de Picar-Sioui et Bréviaire du matricule 082 de Cousineau-Mollen”
Abstract
L’écriture littéraire dans la langue colonisatrice est un choix conscient pour l’auteur.trice autochtone. Dans Chroniques de Kitchike de Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui (Wendat) et de Bréviaire du matricule 082 de Maya Cousineau-Mollen (Innu), ces deux nouvelles voix littéraires illustrent la dépossession identitaire des leur. Chez P.-Sioui, la réappropriation passe par l’humour et les jeux sémantiques. Dans ses nouvelles, il illustre les travestissements identitaires en jouant sur les vocables et en soulignant le caractère fictif de la connaissance des langues ancestrales. Pour C.-Mollen, la réappropriation de la narration identitaire s’exprime plutôt par le sarcasme et la colère. Si, la poétesse joue sur la langue coloniale législative ayant réduit l’identité « indienne » à des chiffres, elle y répond par la résurgence de l’Innu-aïmun. Cela dit, sa réappropriation est également celle de sa condition de femme autochtone revendiquant sa sexualité libérée des fictions coloniales de la princesse ou de la « squaw ».
Canadian Literature issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening is available to order through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues/.
Reading, Writing, Listening : Author Spotlight – Jade Wallace
December 17, 2020
Jade Wallace’s poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming internationally, including in Grain Magazine, PRISM International, and The South Carolina Review. They are an organizing member of Draft Reading Series, the reviews editor for CAROUSEL, and one half of the collaborative writing entity MA|DE, whose sophomore collaborative chapbook, ZZOO, is forthcoming with Collusion Books in October 2020. <jadewallace.ca>
Their poem “Grip” can be read on our website at bit.ly/241WallaceP.
Canadian Literature issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening is available to order through our online store.