Dive In | Poetry in Voice

We Wear the Mask

We Wear the Mask is a resilient and entrancing tug-of-war with external perceptions of self.

The Dead

This sonnet considers the fragmented, elusive way the dead resurface in our lives.

Echolalia

Exploring the tension between desire and satisfaction, this is “a poem that you have to kiss your way through without being kissed,” says Williams.

i am graffiti

This poem vibrates with anger and defiance in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Application Form

Identity is elusive. Maybe it doesn’t exist at all.

Letters

In this tender poem tracing a lost love, the speaker holds on by letting things go…

From Correspondences

Anne Michaels challenges us to find new maps to think about old experiences.

I’ve Tasted My Blood

In this thunderous poem, the speaker proclaims his rage, anguish, and hope in the face of war and oppression.

Laurentian Shield

This portrait of a rocky, silent Canadian landscape speaks to the country’s limitations and its potential.

How Not to Spill

Do you hold your hands shut, or do you let everything spill out?

The Lonely Land

In this free verse poem, snapshots of a wild landscape show that beauty and conflict are not mutually exclusive — and that one may be derived from the other.

the ghosts of women once girls

Poet Aja Monet reveals both gladness and sadness from a little girl enraptured by literature.

From Correspondences

Anne Michaels challenges us to find new maps to think about old experiences.

Where There’s a Wall

Both beauty and violence are just on the other side of the wall.

Modestine

A woman writes a tender poem about her dad’s struggle with dementia.

Guanahani, 11

This bracing ballad (re)considers the beauty and history of the Caribbean island where Christopher Columbus first landed.

Dinosaur Economics

In this poem, playful romanticization meets a stark awakening

A Stone Diary

A love poem to a stone takes on deeper, rockier meanings.

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

A clash of cultures in a department store bathroom showcases pride and power in the towns matrons as well as the space in the middle where the speaker lives

The New Experience

Join the speaker on a whirlwind journey towards a surprising realization.

Blank Sonnet

Set in Halifax of the 1930s, this sensual, inebriated love poem plays with the sonnet form.

The Visions of Stone Carrier

In this dreamlike piece exploring memory and primogeniture, N. Scott Momaday casts a haunting spell that transports the reader through mystery and reminiscence.

Before the Birth of One of Her Children

This frank, devout poem confronts the risks facing a 17th-century woman in childbirth.

from Exhibits from the American Water Museum

Natalie Diaz mourns the violence committed against the Mojave people (and by extension, Indigenous people across North America) and bodies of water, inextricably connected

One Art

When loss feels inevitable, sometimes the only thing to do is write it down…

Dear Updike

Evelyn Lau powerfully describes the world around her in order to grieve the loss of a beloved writer.

Weed Killer

Fiona Tinwei Lam moves from personal to universal and back to the personal in this chilling poem about the ecological destruction bequeathed from one generation to the next.

Plenty

Who would have thought a trip to the grocery store could be so full of beauty?

Blank Sonnet

Set in Halifax of the 1930s, this sensual, inebriated love poem plays with the sonnet form.

The Potato Harvest

This lonely poem is about so much more than a bare field.

The Dead

This sonnet considers the fragmented, elusive way the dead resurface in our lives.

My sister cries the sea

In this poem of environmental apocalypse, Mordecai pictures a divided planet as her sister, listening to the voices of plants and fish as they mourn habitat destruction in creole

In Flanders Fields

The dead summon us to action in this much-beloved poem of war.

A Breakfast for Barbarians

Come sit at this mythical table where guests eat the world’s mysteries for breakfast.

My Poem Without Me in It

Imagining herself removed from her own poem, a poet realizes how poetry gives her the space to create herself.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen brilliantly uses rhyme and meter in this brutal poem about a poison gas attack during WWI.

Two Hours on the Train

In this deceptively simple poem, a poet on a journey transcends time.

Salmon Courage

Deep bravery can emerge amid clashing familial hopes and truths. M. NourbeSe Philip shows us how.

But I’m No One

But I’m No one is a reflection on our tendency to fear death and the manifestation of this fear through uncanny beliefs.

Famous

In Famous, Naomi Nye speaks to the relationship between objects and the ideas they represent. She is as famous to the poem as the poem is famous its words.