A boy’s life: Nova Scotia poet Graeme Bezanson’s debut collection examines the quandary of youthful masculinity
The poems in Ultra Blue could reasonably be read as one long poem broken down into three parts.
Elbows up? Eight books from Americans and no Canadians on 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist
Griffin's sunny confidence about Canadians' ability to "sit with the best internationally" is being sorely tested.
As Ottawa’s VERSeFest marks its sixteenth year, rob mclennan reflects on its importance
VERSeFest arose out of a push to get the city's various poetry reading series – be they slam, stage, or page focused – to collaborate on a single event.
Calgary student prevented from performing Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang poem at a local Poetry in Voice recitation competition
The choice of poem is "an act of protest" against the climate of misogynistic abuse that teens and adult women are subject to on a daily basis.
Sixteen books that helped put 2025 in perspective
What our literary output offers is not a vision of perfectibility but an attempt to reckon with our world in all its contradiction, ambiguity, and fractiousness.
The march of time: In her third collection of poetry, katherena vermette considers our place as descendants and future ancestors
The combined slipperiness and multifaceted aspect of language is all over this volume.
Conor Mc Donnell channels T.S. Eliot in his latest book of poetry
The title of Mc Donnell's book alludes to a newsroom cliché deployed in the early stages of an ongoing crisis or upheaval.
Gillian Sze’s seventh poetry collection searches for meaning in the empty spaces between words
The slipperiness of words is part of Sze's fascination here, as are the empty spaces that require filling.
The debut full-length collection from Christina Shah contains ground-level poetry of the mundane, quotidian world
Shah eschews the elevated pretensions of mock epic or otherwise self-indulgent poetry.
“So much more than I ever bargained for”: Billy-Ray Belcourt’s third book of poetry examines the body through language and history
The extent to which the body, for a queer Cree writer, is tied into an ongoing history of displacement, dispersal, and disappearance is at the centre of Belcourt's writing.