My poem “Vicious Beauty” has been published in the Fall 2011 edition of The Found Poetry Review. It juxtaposes an excerpt from Bertrand Russell on beauty with words taken from a biography of Sid Vicious. I kinda like it.

You can check out the whole issue online.

As this is the fourth edition of Shelf Life, if you’ve been reading this blog with any regularity, you probably have a pretty good idea what it’s about. If you don’t, check out past editions for more info.

I’m going to try to make this as brief as I can, as we’re almost halfway through November, and I still have to get October’s written as well.

Onward:

96. Summer of My Amazing Luck, by Miriam Toews

I read A Complicated Kindness after it won the Governor General’s Award and loved it. When The Flying Troutmans came out I devoured it and declared it my favourite read in 2009, so I was eager to read Summer of My Amazing Luck when I stumbled across it in a used bookstore.

Unfortunately, this story wasn’t up to par. I wasn’t buying Lucy, the down on her luck single mom who doesn’t know who the father of her child is, and isn’t interested in finding out.

She becomes enamoured of Lish, who seems to be the heart of the novel, but I had such difficulty with Lucy that it just didn’t work for me. She lacked personality, and I never felt like I got to know who she was, and therefore, why I should care. It sounds harsh, but I adored the first two books I read from Toews, and I’m still looking forward to reading more.

Irma Voth, I’ve got my eye on you. Continue reading »

I just received the latest issue of Trigger93, which contains my essay “Marks: Uniting Spirit and Flesh”.

The theme of this issue is “Flesh”, and my piece is a personal essay on spiritual tattoos.  Though the ways this theme has been interpreted are as varied as they are powerful, from the interview with Anna Blume on ACT UP’s AIDS activism in the 90s to field notes on crucifixion in the Philippines from Christina Verano Carter – complete with striking photographs, to editor Ayesha Adamo’s piece on method acting, and the path she took to really get inside her character.

It’s a great issue, and I’ve only touched on some of the content. It’s well worth checking out.