Sealey Challenge

I do relish being able to read again. 

After the biggest concussion (aka the Year I Was Dead)  and losing access to language and not being able to parse conversation, let alone poetry for months. After learning I have macular degeneration and that vision is even more ephemeral than life itself. After what I suspect was a mini-stroke a couple decades ago when I lost access to literacy, language, and numeracy for a few hours, well, after that, I go all in on reading, gathering what I can of lives different from my own, minds out of reach otherwise. 

My brain is getting back its old speed and likes to have a lot of grist for its mill so the millstones don’t grind each other down. It works off my spare energy, especially when my body is non-compliant with my wishes for it.

As an extension of my shopping default —blue cheese or cream? Both. Or gouda? Take all the options— I complicated my life by adding this challenge to my reading rather than displace fiction, and non-fiction. It was a silly amount to attempt to read, even if half were chapbooks and Whitman was the push to finish the last 200 pages of Civil war era and end of life poems. 

The thing about this richness of options, is among people doing Sealey Challenge is I see few books I recognize, or have read, among participants. There are just so many writers. I didn’t end up finishing a few I set up to read at the end of July (yet!) and, muddled duck, I seem to have read 34 instead of 31. (Not sure which days I did double.)

Someone, (was it Jason Christie, or Ryan Fitzpatrick?) suggested a poem a day for Sealey Challenge. That seems sound. (Maybe next year.)

I suppose I’ve read so much I glean for the saliant and suprise, not skimming but not dwelling and basking in each syllable and implication.

I read something like, 5300 pages in a month, 113 pages per book, ranging from 10 pages to almost 700. Week one was trying to wrap up books partly read scattered around and close those off. Half were chapbooks. But 47 titles in August. I feel like I character assonate myself by admitting that. Yes, I did do other things — regular life maintenance, construction, cooking, editing, managing book review editor crunch, volunteering, being first reader for a magazine — but also my body decided I need 6 hours sleep. So that opened a lot of awkward hours.

I aimed to complete 5 poetry collections in French. (Reach for the moon.) I managed 2. I forfeited attempts on 3 and read another poetry collection in translation. Some, like Dancing with Joy, were more than half poems I’d read before (not anthologized), and 5 of the 34 were re-reads so that makes the cognitive load different. But there’s these that I did complete:

1. Des Gouttes de lumière: häikus, par Carmen Leblanc, ill, de Valérie Albert, 2026)
2. edgeless by rob mclennan (Caitlin Press, 2026)
3. Chroma by Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Gary Barwin (Pinhole Press, 2026)
4. The Emperor of Japan by Dag T. Straumsvåg (above/ground, 2026)
5. i saved you a seat by Lauren Frederick (author, 2026)
6. the way home by Jamie Wimberly (Red Moon Press, 2026)
7. Mapless: poems by Kyla Houbolt (Shine, 2026)
8. Weeds of Canada by Dawn Macdonald (above/ground, 2026)
9. Between Two Dates: Haiku and Senryu by Kwaku Feni Adow (Mamba Africa Press, 2020)
10. Choral Coral Carol by James Lindsay (KFB, 2026)
11. Too Small For Meat by Barnabas I. Adeleke (author, 2018)
12. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (Modern Library/Random house, 1892, 2001)
13. Origin Stories by rob mclennan (above/ground, 2026)
14. Songs of Kabir, trans by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, preface by Wendy Doniger (New York Review of Books, 2011)
15. Letters Left Unopened by Paul Lee (author, 2026)
16. After by Chris Johnson (Paper Bill Press, 2026)
17. Just Saying by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan, 2013)
18. Blind Painting by Robert Melançon, trans Philip Stratford (Signal/Véhicule, 1985)
19. Endangered Metaphors by George Swede (author, 2020)
20. Parasites of Heaven by Leonard Cohen (M&S, 1966)
21. Prospectus of Ambient Wonders by matthew burnside (Kith Books, 2025)
22. A Beginner’s Guide to Building Your Own Chysalis by Alex Cregan (Kith Books, 2023)
23. Running After Shadows by Hifsa Ashraf (Human/Kind Press, 2020)
24. Once Around the Sun: One Hundred Haiku by Graham High (Ram Publications, 2002)
25. Multimorbid by Rebecca Wood (Kith Books, 2026)
26. Grief is Not Shelf Stable by Jamez Terry (Kith Books, 2026)
27. S’agripper aux fleurs: haïku par Louise Canapé, Louve Mathieu, et Jeanne-D’Arc Vollant (Éditions David, 2012)
28. The Hobo by Phil Hall (Discord Review Press, 2025)
29. River Woman by Katherena Vermette (Anansi, 2018)
30. At the Gates of the Theme Park by Peter Norman (Mansfield, 2010)
31. Dancing with Joy edited by Roger Housden (Harmony Books, 2007)
32. Metaphysical Dictionary by Svetlana Lilova, illustrated by Graham Falk (Dumagrad Books, 2016)
33. without syntax by Lee Gurga (Modern Haiku Press, 2020)
34. The Loon Poems by Vera Lake (Flat Singles Press, 2025)

Parasites of Heaven by Leonard Cohen (M&S, 1966) most surprised because all his young man poems are different than his later poetry and what was gathered in his selected. 

Many stretched my brain to read in parallel like At the Gates of the Theme Park by Peter Norman (Mansfield, 2010) with its surreality and darkeness beside Dancing with Joy edited by Roger Housden (Harmony Books, 2007) which was oddly familiar, bland and closed.

S’agripper aux fleurs: haïku par Louise Canapé, Louve Mathieu, et Jeanne-D’Arc Vollant (Éditions David, 2012) was most gratifying because reading the Inuit writers’ haiku in French was able to reach me, but Songs of Kabir, trans by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (New York Review of Books, 2011) I enjoyed most thoroughly and am perhaps most likely of all to re-read. (Not withstanding I have reread a few of these already.)

*

In similar vein, I previously posted a list of 2026 favourites, but that was about halfway through the year and now we’re three quarters, or thereabouts, so here are new favs; many haiku, a couple poetry, some essays, some fan fiction and other novels. 

Of what I read this month, i saved you a seat by Lauren Frederick (author, 2026) was most moving, and Multimorbid by Rebecca Wood (Kith Books, 2026) was heartening and relatable as disability poems. I also loved mclennan’s edgeless and Armantout’s Just Saying. It was just as good to reread Metaphysical Dictionary by Svetlana Lilova as the first and second time, and I still think everyone should buy it.

this summer’s best reads

Songs of Kabir, trans by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, preface by Wendy Doniger (New York Review of Books, 2011) poetry

Turtle Dreams: The Red Moon Anthology of English Language Poetry 2025, ed. by Jim Kacian (Red Moon Press, 2026) haiku

No End in Strangeness by Bruce Taylor (Cormorant Books, 2011) poetry

tap dancing in my socks: haiku by Bill Kennedy (Red Moon Press, 2022) haiku

Factory Settings by Anonymous (AO3, 2023) fan fic

Upstate Dim Sum, 2015, issue 1 (Route 9 Haiku Group, 2015) haiku

Operatives by Monty Reid (sider0xylon press, 2026) poetry

Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal (Quirk Books, 2022) novel

Garden-Body by Angel T. Dionne (ARC, X-R-A-Y Lit, fall 2026) poetry

at the airport terminal by bearwonder (A03, 2021) fan fic

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017) essays

Let This Radicalize You: organizing the revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba (Haymarket, 2023) essays

One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (M&S, 2025) essays

Vanishing Culture, edited by Luca Messarra, Chris Freeland and Julia Ziskina (Internet Archive Press, 2026) essays

The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book by Gord Hill (Arsenal, 2012) graphic

I’m not sure if there’s any pattern you can draw from any of this but if your tastes align and you can find the following, you might want to grab any of these too. (Or anything from Kith Books.)

Because you know I keep track, here’s another set of personal accountablity stats for the spreadsheet geeks.

57% were read on paper over the year so far. (Paper is nice but hard to move around, easy to damafge, and trouble in dim lighting, and/or made in unfortunate sizes or choice of typeface.) (Compare this to 5 years ago when it was 68% paper when I was tracking this so I’d know if I’d mistplaced a file or a paper book.)

37 books so far were read aloud, compared to 47 read aloud in all of 2025.

About 10% were by GLBTQQ2+ writers that I know of, about 5% by trans writers that I know of.

Just over 60% poetry. About half of titles were by Canadian, 10% British, 35% American, 10% elsewhere and some unknown. 

How did I source these books? 

About half were free by some means which is kind of a requirement with the constraints of my appetites paired with my negligible income. Some I got from the library, some at the small press fair, some from my own shelves (flagged to read or reread), some from online, others from publishers, a few from authors, a couple thrift stores. (Only one I reviewed.)