Dive In | Poetry in Voice

Marshlands

Quietly pause to take in the colours and sounds of a marsh.

Planet Earth

P.K. Page sings the praises of planet earth through extended metaphor and delightful constraint.

I’ve Tasted My Blood

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

Application Form

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

Opus 75, Sestina in B-flat for the Glockenspiel

A silent glockenspiel plays out a teenage girl’s anxieties about growing up and fitting in.

400: Coming Home

You can’t help thinking about your life on a long stretch of highway.

Full Metal Oji-Cree

That’s ok, our robomocassins will outlive you nine times over.

Salmon Courage

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

Community Garden

Seeking to escape internet trolls the speaker turns her eye to the garden

The Tyger

In the woods at night, the speaker talks to a magical animal…

sturgeon

Intense with empathy, the poem places poet and struggling fish in direct physical relation.

Insomnia

A dark, playful twist on what someone would do if they could only sleep…

dont worry yr hair

Having a bad day? This uplifting poem about the power of our inner potential should light a spark.

Community Garden

Seeking to escape internet trolls the speaker turns her eye to the garden

The Swimmer’s Moment

Will you choose to observe from the rim of the whirlpool, or its centre?

the knowing

Connie Fife cryptically combines land and body in this poem exploring connection to place and past.

Not the Music

In Not in the Music, Crozier explores the inviolable: the sacred parts of ourselves that we cherish as personal sanctuaries.

In Flanders Fields

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

An Innocent Little Girl

• Favzieh Rahgozar Barlas captures a snapshot of child marriage, its cultural and economic context, and its physical and emotional aftermath.

Dear Updike

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

Plenty

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

Other

In Other, Livesay breaks free of patriarchy’s hold and ventures into landscapes of mountain, cedar forests, night skies, and the fierce interior of her spirit.

I Am

The speaker longs to escape himself and to find freedom from within and without

i am graffiti

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

people arrived

Tracing and traveling with Kaie Kellough’s verse, the people in this poem plead to have their pulses read out loud.

These Poems, She Said

Can an argument be the foundation of a love poem? Robert Bringhurst certainly thinks so!

Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong

In this tender poem of healing, care and remembrance, Ocean Vuong reaches out to his younger self.

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.

Blank Sonnet

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

Qawanguq with Fox

Abigail Chabitnoy’s dreamscape of a poem depicts a coy little fox.

fluorine

Rita Wong uncovers the poisons in everyday life to teach us about our relationship to the natural world.

400: Coming Home

You can’t help thinking about your life on a long stretch of highway.

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

From Correspondences

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

Laurentian Shield

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

grass

In his short, funny poem, Ward Maxwell asks us to step on the grass, saying “it deserves it.” But isn’t that the point of grass?

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

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.

The Dead

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

I’ll Teach You Cree

By sharing with us the untranslatable aspects of Cree culture, Scofield immerses the reader with the sensorial experiences that deepen the bonds of community.