Poem of the Week: Kevin Irie, “Night Fear”

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17:1, POTW

NIGHT FEAR

Dark works its way into the house, my life.
It turns on its lamp, using my hand.
Leases my thoughts for several hours.
Rents out my peace of mind

to panic.

It seems I’m under contract
to write out my fears.
It requires no signature,
only blood.
Here is the pen,
a sheet of paper,
the words provided by the dark to illuminate
just how short
I fall
of redemption.

My fingers grip tight around the pen,
as if fearing to let something
unclench its jaws.

And this is where you, reader, can choose not to look.
As I ready to let it all out on paper.

First, cover your mouth, or close your eyes.

My wrists will be
the last to open.

---

Kevin Irie is a Japanese-Canadian poet whose poetry has appeared in Canada, England, the States, and Australia, and been translated into Spanish, French, and Japanese. His book, Angel Blood: The Tess Poems (Frontenac House, 2004) was nominated for the ReLit Award. His book, Viewing Tom Tomson: A Minority Report (Frontenac House, 2012), was a finalist for the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Award and the Toronto Book Award. “Night Fear” is part of his new book, The Tantramar Re-Vision (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021) which was picked by the CBC as one of the Spring Poetry Books for 2021 and by Quill and Quire Magazine as part of its 2021 Summer Reading Guide. He lives in Toronto.

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 16:2 Fear.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Poem of the Week: Kieran Egan, “Looking Inward from Margaret River”

Tags

17:1, POTW

LOOKING INWARD FROM MARGARET RIVER

 

Driving from Perth south to Margaret River,
late in a warm and velvet evening
my friend pulled off the road
onto a dirt track where we bumped and swayed.
A fenced-off field on one side,
rows of vines on the other.
I turned to ask where we were going.
‘Wait’ he said.
Slowly onward some minutes more.
slow rocking in the dim glow from a moonless sky.
He cut the engine. ‘Wait.’
We sat in silence, the vine rows black on dark.
‘We can get out now.’
Electric insect noises, horses snuffling nearby, smell of manure.
‘Look up,’ he said.
A smear of muted colours spread across the sky
bright, clear, benumbing, our Milky Way
as this city boy had never seen it.

From the viewing platform of our remote planet,
a billion stars spread out below me.
‘The centre of our galaxy is there,’ he pointed,
his finger tip blacked out stars, nebulae, galaxies.
He seemed to know his way around.
I looked inward at that blurred and bulging glow,
for a moment fearing I might stumble,
fall forward down into that central light
and on and on into the black hole at its heart.

 

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Kieran Egan lives in Vancouver. His first poetry collection, Amplified Silence, was published by Silver Bow Publishing in 2021. His chapbook, Among the branches, was published by Alfred Gustav Press, Vancouver, (2019). A novel, Tenure, (a combination of comic campus thriller) was published by NeWest Press, 2021. He was shortlisted for the Times Literary Supplement Mick Imlah prize in 2017, and the Acumen International Poetry Competition, 2020, and his poems have appeared in the Canadian magazines Event, Canadian Literature, Quills, Literary Review of Canada, Dalhousie Review, Grain, Qwerty, Antigonish Review, Vallum, Canadian Quarterly, Ekphrastic Review, Spadina Literary Review, Pace, English Bay Review, Prairie Fire, and in many US and UK magazines. 

 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 17:2 Space.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Poem of the Week: Yusuf Saadi, “Is the Afterlife Lonely Too?”

Tags

17:1, POTW

IS THE AFTERLIFE LONELY TOO?

 

Outside of Kantian space and time, do you miss dancing
in dusty basements where sex was once phenomenal?

How sunlight threads in morning frost, breath pluming
in knots between you and the snow-marbled fields?

When depression knocks, do the dead hide inside
poems, in the corridors between stanzas, curling fetal

in a b’s womb? (Are you here, now?) When the dead speak,
do words signify perfectly with presence? Does each

sentence sound like a symphony? Or appear in the mind’s
eye in 4k imagery? Have you ever walked across the surface

of a star? Are they as lonely as they look in my city sky?
Do you dream of microwaves beeping? Or reading Kafka

whose words are black scars? What do the dead think about
after the afterglow, if no one’s breathing? Don’t you miss

feeling, feeling, feeling? And failing, the soul search that
follows, from which you promise yourself to be reborn?

 

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Yusuf Saadi‘s first collection, Pluviophile, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. He currently lives in Montreal. http://www.yusufsaadiwriter.wordpress.com.

 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 17:1 Home.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: Jade Wallace, “Anemone”

Tags

17:1, POTW

ANEMONE

 

I devoted my life to her after I saw her sleep.
When she sleeps, she still hears everything—
the planes of her face shift as I speak to her,
but her replies seem all rote or nonsense.
When she sleeps she is like God and I am too
simple for illumination. My words sink like shells,
small petrified sea blossoms, into her conscience as
deep as the ocean. Still I stream to her hand.
If a seraph should ask me how I feel about her or

how I feel about God, my answers would hardly differ—
I could pray to both of them with the same words:
I am iris and anemone,
changing blood into petals to catch your rain.
You are the almond, the algae, the elephant calf,
too vast a variance to be more knowable than a secret.
My ardour is only a flower’s covenant with a sycamore.
Your love is the limitless patience that a continent can have for a leaf.
When she sleeps, I run my fingers over the spines in our

bookcase and hear the dead letters quaking, waiting to
be revived. I know that she will wake. I know that one day
God will turn to look at me. There is correspondence that will
not be lost on the way and if it does not arrive today it will surely
arrive tomorrow. There are happenings that are inevitable and
upon which the present entirely depends. We have fields of vision
but there are also fields beyond vision and there are those so
great that they fill all of the fields over and under completely, existing
mostly out of sight. Still we always know them a little. They are

implied by every persistence in an inhospitable place. I learned this when
I lived alone and my coat grew softer about me with age but hidden itches
multiplied in the fabric of my hours. The world was incomprehensible with
errors of transcription that I could never find. My deeds were shrinking lines
bordered on all sides by deafening margins. I was less than a dog then, for
dogs at least will be mourned. Yet that is when I was surest of her, most certain
of God and of that which must come. I knew them as some plants know water—
not because I had seen rain, but because were it not for the lake sleeping
deep in the aquifer, my leaves would have long ago turned to dust.

 

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Jade Wallace‘s poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Canadian Literature, This Magazine, Hermine Annual, and elsewhere. They are the reviews editor for CAROUSEL and the author of several chapbooks, most recently the collaborative A Trip to the ZZOO (Collusion Books, 2020) and A Barely Concealed Design (Puddles of Sky Press, 2020), under the moniker MA|DE. Stay in touch: jadewallace.ca.

 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 17:1 Home.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “Shelter” by Louise Molloy

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17:1, Louise Molloy, Poem of the Week, POTW, Shelter

Shelter

 

In the cramp of the city-circle tunnel,
………… a commuter backs up against a closed door,
………… one arm crooked, hand splayed against the carriage roof,
…………  hunched within his winter coat,
………… chin tucked, eyes closed.

Across the rooftops from the kitchen window,
………… homebound traffic drones to mealtime clatter,
………… and shunted out of weariness he blinks,
………… a blue heron sits folded, a figurehead
………… on the prow of a nearby roof.

Carried within the stop and start of routines is shelter,
………… awkwardly stilled.

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Louise Molloy lives on the lands of the Boon Wurrung people in Melbourne, Australia, teaching English language and literacy courses for adults and writing for children’s magazines. Her poetry has appeared in Island, Overland, Going Down Swinging, Hecate and online in Cordite. 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 17:1 Home.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “What Is It” by Rae Marie Taylor

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17:1, Poem of the Week, POTW, Rae Marie Taylor, What Is It

What Is It

 

about the voices of those we love
that makes them
……….. song

Is it our cells
that sound
beyond the child’s complaint
or with the lilt of the toy’s story
that meld
the sister’s tone with the toast and jelly

that carries and unfolds the caress
that rings in the sound of voices of
those we love

What is it
about the sound of voices of those we love
how do they ring and carry
………. song
thoughtful knowing
and response

How do we do without them?

How is it that they bring us home?

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Montreal-based poet and visual artist Rae Marie Taylor shares her life and work in Quebec and the American Southwest. She has authored and produced seven bilingual Spoken Word shows, most recently Songs of Solidarity/Chants d’amité en mouvance with Montreal musicians Pierre Tanguay and Diane Labrosse. In print, her poems have appeared in both English and French journals such as Vallum, La revue POSSIBLES, the on-line reviews Mitra and Françoise Stéreo, Les Écrits #146 and the anthology Femmes rapaillées. Her book of essays, The Land: Our Gift and Wild Hope, was finalist for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards.

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 17:1 Home.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “When Water Breaks Inside” by loudvoice

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17:1, loudvoice, Poem of the Week, POTW, When Water Breaks Inside

When Water Breaks Inside

 

I thought about pouring my death chills and cold sweats down the
………. sink
my stomach said well, I guess, you think?
Because my worst memoirs defy the laws of physics

They make my body contort, stretch, distort
even against my greatest wishes
knee-deep in the wreckage, covered in soot, the sky is red
and the dust-devils are made of ash

I’ll look my people dead in the eye and into the mirror
like am I really worth this, I honestly have to ask
and I’m looking around this place, like hey, I’ve been here before in a
………. worse way

This is where people overdose
This is where the foundations of made-up minds crumble and decide
………. to take the first drink
This is where a few cousins of mine recently decided to commit
………. suicide

Even in writing this, I know I’ll sleep tonight, and do what I have to do
………. tomorrow

But I want you to wonder about my fellow indigenous men that don’t
………. leave this place
Like how the atrocities of colonialism made us be. And sealed some
………. fates, like that

***

I feel like water is pervading my eyes
Why is it so blurry?
I’m pretty sure it’s not just broken glasses
It might be years of bad habits
And continued practice
I wish I could tell you why I’m like this
My eyes are blurry
Tears are from a wellspring
Like the one my dad showed me to get water from
But now the water is pervading my eyes
It reaches up so hard
And I try my best to drink it all away—

But maybe it’s an oxymoron because it’s the cause
It’s that weak feeling in my chest
The one that makes me run
And feel unloved
I’m not even sure it makes sense
But I give it weight anyway
Like it would hold my hand in the deep dark
Or let me put my head on it to rest

They call it a dark night of the soul
Why am I here?
Why does it make my eyes water?
Why does it taste like tequila?
And why did I ask her to be my rehab?
She doesn’t deserve that

I guess I’ll wander away and hope she forgives me
I would like to wander on the moon
Because it might not be snow
It might be cold but the dark side is home
Until it’s not
Until I’m caught

It might be bright but at least it doesn’t cost a dollar
The disease festers on my heart and soul
And those things are my connection to the infinite
And that means I must promise you that I will visit those places
and bring you back things from there
It might take my life
It might not

I won’t let the dangerous spectre of that question linger any longer
………. than it has to
Because I proved it to myself once, or twice

I take my power of choice back

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loudvoice is a nêhiyawak napew (Cree man) from Ochapowace First Nation. His work has a exploratory emotional bent. He is a stage poet and hip hop artist.

Find him on Spotify. 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 17:1 Home. 

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “Speaking of Death” by Carolyn Marie Souaid

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"Speaking of Death, 17:1, Carolyn Marie Souaid, Poem of the Week, POTW

 

Speaking of Death

 

If I had my druthers I’d pick December
under a sheepskin throw.
In full view, attending to me,
a constellation of earthly possessions:
eyeglasses, ginger tea,
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.
Logs flaming in the stone hearth.
Hung from a nail, a winter scene
framed in mahogany—
horses trotting through fresh snow
or a Christmas cabin nestled in the woods,
smoke drifting sideways from the chimney.
Riches for the eyes,
and for the ears, as well:
the Great Mass in C-minor, swelling,
rising as it would from a dour cathedral.

Alternately,
I could slip away in summer sheets,
white Egyptian cotton, of preference.
Nibbling on toast
I would lie in bed, pale as a moth,
gaze longingly through the soft sheers
as sunlight fades over an English landscape—
woolly hilltops brushed with lavender,
chittering birds perched like quarter notes
on a thatched roof
before taking flight along the path of the stars.

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Carolyn Marie Souaid is the Montreal-based author of eight poetry collections and the acclaimed novel, Yasmeen Haddad Loves Joanasi Maqaittik. Her videopoem, Blood is Blood (with Endre Farkas), garnered a top prize at the 2012 Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. Her work has appeared in The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly,  the Literary Review of Canada and elsewhere, and has been featured on CBC-Radio. In April, she will be reading at the Sierra Poetry Festival alongside Hélène Dorion, Alain Cuerrier and Endre Farkas.

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 17:1 Home.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

 

2020 Year in Review: Part 2

Tags

17:1, 17:2, 2020, 2021, Year in Review

To put it lightly, 2020 was a year of changes. We have all had to learn to adapt to this new way of living, yet despite physical isolation, we at Vallum feel so lucky to have been able to connect with you through the digital sphere. Thank you for helping us continue to share the art of poetry — we are truly humbled by the support of our community and send our sincere wishes of health and happiness to you and your loved ones for this year to come. 

Despite the many challenges and uncertainties of this year, we managed to launch Vallum: Contemporary Poetry issues 17:1 and 17:2, and publish four chapbooks: The Bannisters by Paul Muldoon, A Tilt in the Wondering by Nicole Brossard (re-release), It Was Treaty / It Was Me by Matthew James Weigel (1st Place in the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award) and DC Poems by Joe Neubert (2nd Place in the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award). Read about our new chapbooks here.

Judy Barlow won the 2020 Award for Poetry with “Walking Into East-end Toronto 2020” while Mary Trafford received second place with “Border crossings.” Honourable mentions went to Josh Feit with “Linger Factor,” Esther Johnson with “we lost ahmaud,” and Michael Trussler with “As Unnoticed as Possible.”

We also participated in virtual press fairs Word on the Street (Toronto) and Expozine (Montreal), and hosted outreach workshops with new facilitators and organizers. 

To reflect on the year, we asked this year’s contributors to share their thoughts on the books they read in 2020 and what’s in store for the year ahead.

Here’s what some of the writers published in our latest issues had to say:

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Aisha Hamid

Favorite Book of Poetry Discovered this Year
If They Come For Us by Fatimah Asghar. As a student of poetry, I found the deconstruction of form refreshing; it opened up endless possibilities for me.  

What’s on your reading list for 2021?
Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar, Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed, Are you Enjoying? by Mira Sethi, If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha.

Best Writerly Advice. 
Notice the ordinary and the everyday – that’s where poetry is. And read books by womxn of color.

2020 Year in Review: Part 1

Tags

17:1, 17:2, 2020, Year in Review

To put it lightly, 2020 was a year of changes. We have all had to learn to adapt to this new way of living, yet despite physical isolation, we at Vallum feel so lucky to have been able to connect with you through the digital sphere. Thank you for helping us continue to share the art of poetry — we are truly humbled by the support of our community and send our sincere wishes of health and happiness to you and your loved ones for this year to come. 

Despite the many challenges and uncertainties of this year, we managed to launch Vallum: Contemporary Poetry issues 17:1 and 17:2, and publish four chapbooks: The Bannisters by Paul Muldoon, A Tilt in the Wondering by Nicole Brossard (re-release), It Was Treaty / It Was Me by Matthew James Weigel (1st Place in the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award) and DC Poems by Joe Neubert (2nd Place in the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award). Read about our new chapbooks here.

Judy Barlow won the 2020 Award for Poetry with “Walking Into East-end Toronto 2020” while Mary Trafford received second place with “Border crossings.” Honourable mentions went to Josh Feit with “Linger Factor,” Esther Johnson with “we lost ahmaud,” and Michael Trussler with “As Unnoticed as Possible.”

We also participated in virtual press fairs Word on the Street (Toronto) and Expozine (Montreal), and hosted outreach workshops with new facilitators and organizers. 

To reflect on the year, we asked this year’s contributors to share their thoughts on the books they read in 2020 and what’s in store for the year ahead.

Here’s what some of the writers published in our latest issues had to say:

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Archana Sridhar

Favorite Book of Poetry Discovered this Year
Cluster by Souvankham Thammavongsa

What’s on your 2021 reading list?
Luster by Raven Leilani and Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine

Best Writerly Advice
Always carry a notebook or a piece of paper and a pen – in case inspiration strikes in a meeting or on a walk or even at family dinner… I am always surprised when a poem comes, and reminded of the importance to make space to welcome it.

 

 

Roxanna Bennett

Favorite Book of Poetry Discovered this Year
Side Effects May Include Strangers by Dominik Parisien (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020) is a collection that means the world to me. It’s an intimate and insightful examination of pain written with exquisite vulnerability.

What’s on your reading list for 2021?   
Poetry-wise, I am super stoked for Khashayar Mohammadi’s Me, You, Then Snow (Gordon Hill, 2021) and for Kevin Heslop’s the correct fury of your why is a mountain (Gordon Hill Press, 2021). 

In terms of cultivating mindfulness in challenging times, I highly recommend these books to all beings:
Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body (Avery, 2018) Daniel Goleman, Richard J. Davidson,
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying (Penguin Press, 2018) by Michael Pollan,
The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living (Riverhead Books, 2009) by His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Shambhala, 2007) by Pema Chödrön, 
Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation (Simon and Schuster, 2017) by Robert Wright. 

I also recommend reading nothing to develop a relationship with inner silence.

Best Writerly Advice. 
You don’t need advice, writerly or otherwise, you already know exactly what to do and have everything you need inside of you.