spring 2015
Table of Contents
Return to Home PageNormal in Our Normal Suburb Kenneth Pobo
October Lately
William Vallieres
Hotel Lincoln Blues, Chicago
Thomas Zimmerman
Self-Portrait (Hospital Poem I) Chelsea Eckert
Victoria Summons Hall George Elliott Clarke
Idling on the North Saskatchewan
In American English
Curtis LeBlanc
Love and IKEA II
January is terrible so far
Ruth Daniell
Author Biographies
Author Biographies
Tanja Bartel is a Vancouver area teacher and writer. Her work has appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, The Prose Poem Project, emerge 2012 anthology, and Grain. She has performed her work at the 2012 Summer Dreams Literary Arts Festival and other venues in Vancouver. She is a graduate of the Simon Fraser University Writer's Studio (2012) and is currently completing an MFA at the University of British Columbia.
Megan Chursinoff is muralist of 15 years and co-creator of fine art window painting 'Suddenly it's Lovely'. She paints on wood, walls and glass and is experimenting with art in the digital medium. See her portfolio here. Megan also teaches piano, sings in the world music choir Roots and Rythyms, and plays folk cello and banjo with her friends.
Born in Nova Scotia in 1960 and raised in the capital city, Halifax, George Elliott Clarke spent the most memorable years of his childhood (1967-74) at 2357 Maynard Street, in a military, working-class, middle-class, and multiracial neighbourhood, in the city's hard-edge North End. He's been a poet—not always knowing it—since 1975, and is grateful to have won the approval of brethren and sistren bards, via generously awarded laurels, now and then.
J. Adam Collins is an editor for Night Owls Press and a freelance book designer in Portland, Oregon. He is a West Virginia native and holds an MA in Book Publishing from Portland State University. His poetry has been featured in PairShaped, Foliate Oak Literary, The Tishman Review, Bodega Mag, Gobshite Quarterly, Floating Bridge Press Review #5, and PDX Magazine, among others. Find out more about his work at jadamcollins.com.
Nathan Curnow lives in Ballarat, Australia, and is a past editor of literary journal Going Down Swinging. His work features in Best Australian Poems 2008, 2010 and 2013 (Black Inc) and has won numerous awards including the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize. RADAR, published by Walleah Press, is his most recent collection.
Originally from Prince George, BC, Ruth Daniell currently lives in Vancouver, where she teaches speech arts and writing at the Bolton Academy of Spoken Arts. She also leads and organizes a local literary reading series called Swoon, which focuses on discovering new and innovative work about love and desire. She holds a BA (Honours) from the University of Victoria and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. She has been honoured twice on the longlist for the CBC Poetry Prize and her poems and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals across North America and online, including The Malahat Review, Room Magazine, and Arc. Her poem “Fire and Safety” won the 2014 Young Buck Poetry Prize through Contemporary Verse 2.
Chelsea Eckert is a creative writing undergraduate at San Jose State University. Her work has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Magazine and Bird's Thumb, among others.
Miki Fukuda's poems have appeared in journals including Contemporary Verse 2, Eighteen Bridges, PRISM international and Earthlines (UK) and are forthcoming in Vallum and Talking Writing (US). Her booklet Songs from Twelve Moons of the Bear is forthcoming from Leaf Press in the Leaflet Small Book Series. Her poetry is anthologized in The Crooked Ledge of Another Day (Ascent Aspiration Publishing). In 2012, she was awarded a Banff Scholarship for its Wired Writing Studio residency program. She is currently seeking publication for her first collection of poetry What Shone Like Animals. She lives by the woods and lakes of Golden Acres Park, Nova Scotia.
John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in Paterson Literary Review, Rockhurst Review and Spindrift with work upcoming in New Plains Review, Leading Edge and Louisiana Literature.
Curtis LeBlanc was born and raised in St. Albert, Alberta. He currently resides in Vancouver, BC where he is an MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia. Recently, he was a runner-up in Broken Pencil’s Unearth Your Underworld fiction contest. His writing has appeared in Existere, Joyland, Sport Literate, Little Fiction, and is forthcoming in Poetry is Dead.
Steve Meagher is a writer from Toronto. His work has recently been featured in The Nashwaak Review and The Harpoon Review. His first collection of poems, Navy Blue, is forthcoming from Guernica Editions in 2016.
Kenneth Pobo has a new book forthcoming from Blue Light Press called Bend Of Quiet. His work has appeared in: Nimrod, Mudfish, Weber: The Contemporary West, Hawaii Review, Antigonish Review, and elsewhere.
Kristina is a 22-year-old Ohio college student waiting for the real world to come crashing down on her in beautiful and painful yet livable ways. Her work has previously been featured in print and webzine editions of The Recap, for which she works as an editor, and the zine Steer Queer. She writes, teaches, reads, draws, sings, performs, and hopes to one day combine all of these with a teacher's license and several puppets, and do some slice of good in this world.
William Vallières is a Montreal poet. His work has appeared in Plenitude, Matrix, and Lemon Hound. He is currently pursuing an MA at Concordia University.
Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His chapbook In Stereo: Thirteen Sonnets and Some Fire Music appeared from The Camel Saloon Books on Blog in 2012. Tom's website: thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com