gallery of heartache by Michael Russell
Gallery of Heartache is also about trying to find healing, however that can look on any particular day, often ugly and unappealing, or messy, but still, trying to make sense.
chapbook
we astronauts by Pearl Pirie
More observational than confessional, Pirie writes not from the margins, but from the centre of her own life. This is a radical act—to narrate one’s interiority and place it before the world without apology.
ITTY BITTY REVIEWS: Issue #2
With Reviews of books by Annick MacAskill, Elena Bentley, and Joshua Chris Bouchard
Birdology by Carolyne Van Der Meer
Birdology, Carolyne Van Der Meer’s most recent chapbook, offers an unflinching meditation on mortality and how our relationships with our parents evolve as we age, become more vulnerable, and eventually leave one another. This beautifully sequenced collection of tender poems and slender essays moves through what the author calls a “spell of grief,” accompanied by …
ITTY BITTY REVIEWS: Issue #1
Welcome to the first iteration of Michael Russell’s new column: Itty Bitty Reviews
The Jerome Ramcharitar Interview: The Riddle of Three Crimson Doors
Jerome Ramcharitar’s debut poetry collection The Riddle of Three Crimson Door (Cactus Press, 2025) is about language’s role in our consciousness, with meditations on dreams, animals, and the grotesque.
Lives of Dead Poets by Penn Kemp
This chapbook is a precious glimpse into an extraordinary time and a special group of writers
a disobedient gathering: poems for plants who can’t stay put by Katherine Barrett
The poems have a casual swagger and impish play with their subjects.
Nightstand: Leafing through a little darkness by Berdene Owen
Nightstand is a quirky chapbook, but one that works very well, The irreverence sheds light on the darkness Owen is exploring.
Mining the Quiet: Twelve Poems by Tara G. Harris
Harris takes the bleakness of her landscape and makes it beautiful.
I Am So Calm by Alice Burdick
[Burdick] concludes with admission of ephemerality of both grief and grace, “Our bodies take everything in, then dispose/ of the everything, gradually.”
Robert Duncan at Disney World by Andy Weaver
From what I’ve seen his form of poetry makes use of the whole page, not as in scattered individual words but as metrical spacing of phrases.
Why I Wrote This Book: Issue #40
Featuring Chelene Knight, Sheila Stewart, Damian Tarnopolsky, and Luciana Erregue
