Book: Bait & Switch: Essays, Reviews, Conversations, and Views on Canadian PoetryAuthor: Jim JohnstonePublisher: The Porcupine’s Quill (2024) Jim Johnstone is a Canadian poet in

A Cut Above You just can’t buy a good haircut online. I sit with mock patience at quarter to nine, waiting for a stylist much

the thrush last night our old thrush in the square descended from the ones who sang to soldiers as they rested from the Roman Wall

Middle of the Road I’ll ha’e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur Extremes meet – it’s the only way I ken To dodge the

Almost an apology In his last weeks I visit my father yellowed by medicine dying more quickly now leaning against the range heating his backside

Earthworms for Geoff Wood Earthworms, it seems, are made of tongues, and are able to taste with every inch of their writhing bodies. What a

‘The people need poetry that will be their own secret / To keep them awake forever’. So wrote Osip Mandelstam, the great Russian-language poet who