Alastair Morrison

A MARRIAGE His paintings were small, suggestions of houses, pinpricks of green for trees. She'd set her glass down, say, Paint like you're blind, from memory and passion— two words he especially didn't care for. She'd say, Paint like you're on fire. But their house was already burning, and he was going blind and deaf. So he'd carry the painting back down to the basement, resume with his thinnest sable brush. He would never touch her the way she wanted, though she kept asking him to, like this, in front of everybody. — Julie Bruck

A heartbreaking poem by one of Canada's finest

www.acla.org/sites/defaul...

Submissions open March 1. Send us your strongest poems and be part of the next issue!

The winter issue of "The Fiddlehead" resting on the seat of a rocking chair. The seat is covered in black and white pillow ticking. The journal cover shows a vague figure of a person standing in a bus shelter. It appears to be a winter night with snow on the ground and the roof of the shelter.

I received my contributor's copy of the winter issue of "The Fiddlehead." An honour to be included in such an incredible issue. Thank you to the editors.

Thrilled and honored to be included. Thank you Phillip and @thefiddlehead@gmail.com.

Susan Robertson After the Flood Trees full-leafed in the wooded lot at the end of the street. Limbs pendant with damp umbrella the path. Drops still fall from the sodden leaves. I can't see the houses. It's May and northern forests are burning. A red-eyed vireo calls and calls.

From our winter issue, a new poem by Susan Robertson

Congratulations!

Columbia University says US immigration agents lied to detain student Administrators say agents 'made misrepresentations', claimed missing person search to detain woman at school building.

www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/...

An interview with poet Polly Clark features in Issue 7 of @madridlitmag.bsky.social. She speaks about her new Bloodaxe retrospective, Afterlife: New & Selected Poems, out today, and shares a poem from the book.

don't forget that we're running two (Ottawa, in-person) poetry workshops as part of our 16th annual festival next month: by Toronto poet/editor Paul Vermeersch, and by Calgary poet/performer Sheri-D Wilson; spaces still available! see here for further information: verseottawa.ca/en/versefest

Many congratulations!

It’s publication week for Tales of Health, a book that brings a medical humanities framework to the Romantic genre of the National Tale and its questions of health and citizenship.

Leila Chatti, Wildness Before Something Sublime POSTCARD Sky of new snow open like eternity. Numinous, benign. All day wind moves the day along. January still blank as if unbegun. I’ve com...

Leila Chatti, Wildness Before Something Sublime / @leilachatti.bsky.social @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social ;
robmclennan.blogspot.com/2026/02/leil...

Emma Bolden | Contemporary History The trees spend the last of their coppers. Everyone’s selling their fists and my nose just bleeds and bleeds. In better times we have no idea we’re living in better times. Every blessing settles down in bed next to a curse. Sometimes I look out of my window and think, what’s so great about that? The blinds snap shut. A change in season changes nothing. Neither does my handful of Kleenex, red, red, red. When the first boy broke my heart, I imagined my actual heart, bleached bloodless, unpumping. My Sicilian grandfather offered to send him a black handprint and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t consider it. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t sometimes think revenge is a synonym for relief. Late November, and all around me the air conditioner still hums out its chill. It’s easy, if you’re not careful, to hear a threat as a comfort, as a song.

hiiii i'm super excited to have a new poem in the latest issue of @upthestaircase.bsky.social. i hope you'll give the issue a visit: www.upthestaircase.org

Third American death linked to ICE crackdown uncovered by Newsweek While the 23-year-old's death was reported in March 2025, it was not made clear that a federal agent fired the fatal shot.

For a whole year, DHS hid that they murdered Ruben, a young man in Texas, after a traffic stop.

Just like they did with Silverio, Renee, Keith, Alex, and Linda, they lied and avoided accountability. How many more people have to be executed before my colleagues realize that reforms are not enough?

My novel, The Unravelling of Ou, is featured in the Foreword Reviews Writers of Color column and I’m delighted. Not just because it’s marvellous review, but because as an “ethnically ambiguous” mixed race individual, it’s wonderful to be seen.

www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-...

#bookreview

Allergy Dad by David Wanczyk - Rattle: Poetry He isn’t allergic to gluten, he’s allergic to sesame, so if you tell me one more time the bun is gluten-free

Inspired by today's incredibly poem on @rattlepoetry.bsky.social

rattle.com/allergy-dad-...

late-phase imperialism, seen by children—as Conrad said, "not a pretty thing when you look into it too much"

Two tuberculosis cases detected at Camp East Montana ICE facility Eighteen cases of COVID-19 were also identified. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar on Friday visited the 5,000-bed tent facility on the Fort Bliss Army base and said she saw many "chronic issues."

Two active cases of tuberculosis and 18 cases of COVID-19 have been identified at a massive immigration detention center in El Paso, according to the local Democratic member of Congress.

www.texastribune.org/2026/02/07/i...

Gender Insight Through co-creation and mixed methods research the projects will increase our understanding of the influence of biopsychosocial factors during hormonal transitions such as puberty and menopause, in th...

Come work with us!

Two fully funded 36-month PhD positions in the history of medicine at Charité Berlin.

The positions are part of the EU-funded Gender Insight network researching biopsychosocial aspects of diverse hormonal transitions.

Deadline 28 Feb 2026

#histmed

genderinsight.eu

I wish you were here, dear,
in this hemisphere,
as I sit on the porch
sipping a beer.
It’s evening; the sun is setting,
boys shout and gulls are crying.
What’s the point of forgetting
if it’s followed by dying?

- Joseph Brodsky, "A Song"

the ottawa small press book fair, spring 2026 edition: June 20, 2026 span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:      the ottawa     small press     book fair spring 2026 : will be held on Satur...

the ottawa small press book fair, spring 2026 edition: June 20, 2026 / @ottawasmallpress.bsky.social ;
smallpressbookfair.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-...

Ottawa’s two current poets laureate have curated a very cool reading of eight Ottawa poets (in English and French) writing on visual art, all included in accompanying above/ground press handout chapbook! / @ottawaartgallery.bsky.social @versefest-ottawa.bsky.social

3 journalists killed in Israeli airstrike in Gaza, including cameraman who worked with CBS News An Israeli airstrike killed three journalists in Gaza on Wednesday, the territory's civil defense agency said. One of those killed, Abed Shaat, had worked for years as a cameraman for CBS News and oth...

A producer in the London bureau is the *only* CBS person quoted in their story about Israel killing its longtime freelance cameramen in Gaza—someone who once filed dispatches for them from an ambulance, while wounded.

Not quoted: The network’s editor in chief.

www.cbsnews.com/news/journal...

Hamilton friends, Sharp Words is coming up fast and the third panel of the day is this great discussion between Brad Smith and Jamie Tennant - we hope you can come down to Bridgeworks and join us! You can find the full details here: www.sharpwords.ca

In memory of Louis Zukofsky, born on 23 January, 1904, here are my Five Love Sonnets with Rhymes Stolen from Louis Zukofsky's "A"–9.
From the Autumn 2024 issue of @exactingclam.bsky.social

Note: line 4 of poem 1 should read: by the eye perceives an ordering resemblance.

Cover of CV2, showing a bulletin board crowded with mailed greetings and festooned with "happy birthday" crepe paper.

Text of a poem named "The Interpretation of Dreams."

@cv2magazine.bsky.social makes such a lovely magazine, and I'm happy to have this poem win a spot there. As a huge fan of The Weakerthans, I feel the proximity to a gem from John K. Samson an added bit of luck.

Poet Karen Solie at the T.S.Eliot awards ceremony. She wears a red dress and stands at a lectern.

Congratulations to Karen Solie, winner of the @tseliotprize.bsky.social with Wellwater (Picador)!

Watch Young Critic Caleb Simon's video review of the collection at www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwIJ...

#TSEliotPrize

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Karen Solie won the 2025 TS Eliot poetry prize for Wellwater, a collection exploring environmental destruction.

Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale | Home Matthew L. Reznicek is Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He has published widely on British and Irish romantic literature, and particularly on the intersection of health and illness in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writing.

New blurb: 'Tales of Health is one of the best recent examples of medical humanities approaches in literary studies...a rigorous formal exploration of the national tale and a complexly intersecting disability theoretical provocation...’ www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....