A month or so ago, shared titles completed as first instalment of Read in the Head, (the RITH is gonna get you?). New name for #95books I guess.

From where I left off, with the third in bold being my favourites, which isn’t to say the others weren’t interesting. They held my interest long enough to not be abandoned.

I seem to be in a cluster of books from Nordic countries and Romanian writing. Also underway beyond those below is The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catherina Ingelman-Sundberg,

More than half the reads this year so far have been from libraries, free downloads, review copies or gifts. Overall half is Canadian, a fifth published this year or last and 10% from before 1900.

Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, trans by Christopher Fry and Johan Fillinger (Oxford, 1867, 1970)

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow/Harper Collins, 2025)

In Search of Dracula: a True History of Dracula and Vampire Legends by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu (New York Graphic Society, 1972)

Peter F Yacht Club #34: Holiday Special (above/ground, 2024)

Robert Duncan at Disney World by Andy Weaver (above/ground, 2025)

Birds of Happiness Aren’t Blue and 85 other very Funny and Somewhat Educational Nature Essays by Paul Hetzler (Paul Hetzler, 2023)

The Thinker by Derek Webster (Turret House, 2024)

the heron still there: 500 tan renga by Grant D. Savage and Claudia Coutu Radmore (Éditions des petits nuages)

Hawking Comes Close to Finding God by Simon Peter Eggertsen (Turret House Press, 2024)

Touch the Donkey, issue 44, Jan 2025 (above/ground, 2025)

For My Neighbours in Hell by Irving Layton (Mosaic Press, 1980)

Nothing Without Us Too, ed. by Cait Gordon and Talia C. Johnson (Renaissance Press, 2022)

Elegy for Opportunity by Natalie Lim (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025)

Toward an Origin Story by Laurie D Graham (Model Press, 2025)

Provenance by Annie Leckie (Orbit, 2017)

Notes from Gethsemani by Phil Hall (Nomados Press, 2014)

Divergent Paths: Family Histories of Irish Immigrants in Britain, 1820-1920 by John Herson (Manchester University Press, 2015)

Unmet: poems by Stephanie Roberts (Biblioasis, 2025)

Consanguinity by S.E. Chaves (Grow and Grow, 2013)

The Beginning of the End (Again) by Addled Mongoose (AO3, 2023)

Race Against Time by Ellen MacArthur (Penguin, 2005)

Dog and Moon by Kelly Shepherd (Osaka, University of Regina, 2025)

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard (Grove Weldenfld, 1967)

I Am So Calm by Alice Burdick (above/ground, 2025)

Old Vines by Sevdrag (AO3, 2021)

ligament/ ligature by Andy Weaver (Model Press, 2022)

Gay Girl Prayers by Emily Austin (Brick, 2024)

Rushes from the River Disappointment by stephanie roberts (McGill-Queens, 2020)

More Perfect by Most_Dismal_Feldsparkle (AO3, 2020)

Everyone in this room will someday be dead by Emily Austin (Simon & Shuster, 2021)

Last to the Party by Chuqiao Yang (Gooselane, 2024)

Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot (Faber, 1944)

Find the Light by klikandtuna (AO3, 2024)

Love after Babel and other Poems by Chandramohan S. (Daraja Press, 2020)

Poetic Veneration by A.F. Moritz and John Reibetanz (A Fieldnotes Chapbook, 2023)

The Crofter and the Laird by John McPhee (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1969)

Find Every Sky by klikandtuna/Steph (AO3, 2024)

You’re the Bad Guys/Ineffable Spies by Nebz_AlphaCenturi (AO3, 2025)

The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot (Faber & Faber, 1940, 1999)

The Shattered Plinth by Irving Layton (M&S, 1968)

The Edge of Europe: A Kinetic Image by Pentii Saarikoski, trans by Anselm Hollo (Action Books, 1982/2007)

The Magpie at Night: The Complete Poems of Li Qingzhao (1084-1151) trans by Wendy Chen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025)

Mayfly, issue 78, Winter 2025, edited by Randy & Shirley Brooks (Brooks Books, 2025)

Myth by Terese Mason Pierre (Anansi, 2025)

New Poems: by Christina Georgina Rossetti (Project Gutenburg, Little Brown and Company, 1876, 1906)

I’m going to try to share a few things again of interest to other writers. It’s my week-anniversary of feeling lousy and another headache is rising, but I’ll post while I can.

*

The schedule for VerseFest, spring 2025, running March 25-29th is now up. It’s at venues around the city.

*

An informal writing group open to newcomers of fiction, memoir or poetry, Write Night, is Tuesday, March 11, 7 – 8:30 PM at Biblio Wakefield Library as on the second Tuesday of each month from October to May. Linda Vanderlee moderates and does a zoom version monthly as well.

*

On March 12th is the Montreal Review of Books issue launch which they are putting to youtube. It’s through Blue Metropolis which starts online April 14.

*

This seems as true as at time of writing:

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years –
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres –
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.
And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion.
And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate – but there is no competition –
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious.
But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying.
The rest is not our business.”

Y.B. Yeats, Four Quartets

*

Zinesters, I’m passing this along…the poetry collective RODAISUN, has been distributing their poetry monthly in Montreal since July 2021. The group is three multidisciplinary female artists, Iva Čelebić, Emma Cosgrove and Catherine Machado. They’ll next do 6 issues annually by subscription, thicker, slicker double issues, sent out every two months, for a total of $12. Link to sign up for mailing service: https://www.grapeseedbooks.com/product-page/rodaisun-in-the-mail

*

The Haiku Canada Weekend schedule is now posted at the Haiku Canada website along with registration info. It will be Friday, May 16th to Sunday May 18th, at Bishop’s University, Lennoxville, Québec, Canada. 

*

I’m probably forgetting something.

Correction, I’m certainly forgetting most things. That is how I remember one thing.

Pinhole Press spring series chapbooks! Each title is also available for preorder now on the website. 

Shop

‘Chroma,’ by Gary Barwin & Elee Kraljii Gardiner (cover design by the poets themselves). 

‘Love’s Little Dojo,’ by Jordan Williamson.

‘we astronauts,’ by Pearl Pirie.

‘DTES Watching,’ by Pari Mokradi  (cover photograph by the poet).

A resumé of Émile Nelligan in 10 minute video. He made his opus, then was institutionalized mad for decades. At this time dementia and convenience of family put people in such asylums and it was guarded by former guards and policemen more than by nurses, at least in Ireland’s equivalent. So many gaps in knowledge and history.

*

Doing data entry in French which the computer tries to spellcheck all to English words. It’s enough to make handwritten text more attractive, almost.

*

Are you on Bluesky? There are Canadian poets starter packs and haiku and tanka and waka starter packs

*

“I seized the day, but I didn’t lift with my knees, so I seized my back too.” Dzintra Sullivan on the dead bird site.

*

I have a structural problem, with books. So far my digital storage isn’t jammed but there is no way in sweet purgatory that these stacks are all going into those shelves. They have overrun the box capacity and heaven help but 4 more at least are coming by mail this month. Not to mention the wish list and the inevitable caving in at least some cases.

I have to make some hard calls. No, no, not purge. Probably. Boxing up anthologies and magazines so there is room for novels, history books and single author poetry collections. Even that mitigates little. I could actually box up some to sell that I expect I won’t read again. I believe I have a box or two that I meant to drop off at a book fair but mislaid when the time came. Or I unconsciously wanted to keep them.

Two walls are covered floor to ceiling in shelves. There’s a lot of windows and few options with quilting supplies also overflowing containment. And now more canvasses, and more embroidery gear. This is getting a little out of hand. But to be surrounded by possibility and options is rather delightful.

I do need more order in the office to function tho.

*

Book mail out of the blue is so heartening. And a genuine personal letter. Letters are not dead as presumed.

*

It’s disheartening how little fun many seem to have while writing poetry. Play and nonsense isn’t fun, nor letting loose some cynical remark? Poets, are you well?

Where is the art I suppose is the question, (she grumps). And in high-art-device poetry, where is the heart and body? Hard to please, I know.

Why can a novel be unput-downable and even written well poetry, off-putting? It must be me that’s shifting, yes? Or randomness of finding worse poetry and better fiction? Or narrative being the medicine I need, over intensity of impressions? Some books are such wonderful rides that all else pales besides and it seems despair alone that anything else could be written so sweetly.