This year's Poetry Contest judge is the prolific Lillian Allen. A leading Canadian poet and an international exponent of dub poetry, Lillian Allen was acclaimed a foremother of Canadian poetry by the League of Canadian Poets. She is a two-time Canadian Juno award...
I find this in the words of these authors—as they speak to the generosity of nature, and the changes taking place in our climate. As they delve into their interior lives and make demands for repair, stability, and rest. Their writing contemplates moments of breaking that bring us all much closer, or much further away from the future that we desire.
One of the epigraphs at the beginning of the novel is an invocation to the Loas. Ma Lou’s section also begins with an incantation to one of the manifestations of Erzulie. I wanted the reader to feel right away that they were being brought into a place where spirituality animates the culture in the best of ways—to accompany the characters in their lives.
It’s a recurring phrase in my work, and has come to mean a lot of things. Holding something half-heartedly you’d do with one hand. But if you really want something, to claim it, you’d take it with both hands. When this line appears at the end of the book, it’s about expansion and pushing. A lot of this chapbook is about permissions and entering oneself. Part of that is pushing away the smallness, letting myself be big.
Our 2020 Fiction Contest judge and Growing Room Festival author, Rebecca Fisseha, is the author of Daughters of Silence (Goose Lane Editions), which was listed among the most anticipated fiction titles of Fall 2019 by CBC Books and 49th Shelf, and one of Quill &...