Return to Writing

Last year, when Liz Howard won the Griffin Poetry Prize, she told the audience that writing saved her life. “[F]or me, poetry made life possible,” she said. I get this. I understand this a lot. Lately, things have not been easy for my family, and I’ve been at my mother’s. Before coming here, I was in […]

Jennifer Manuel: Out of a Jar (on Writing with Honesty)

I’ve been on a reading blitz lately about residential schools. I’ve read a couple novels that address this atrocious time in Canadian history, and I’m deep into volume one of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, a text that every Canadian should read, and which many will read, thanks to […]

New Growth

The world up here is covered in slowly thinning snow; the ice not yet sliding down the river. The sun is warmer, the ravens are talking up a storm, the crows are back, and the magpies are busy building their stick-pod nests. It’s spring, that time when whatever you plant will start to sprout. For […]

Places Like These

Last fall, I wrote a story. It was early morning, and I had the itch, and it was one of those great days when the thing just poured out of me. The draft I ended up with hardly needed any work. A few changes, a bit of shifting around, tweaks here and there, and I […]