REVIEWS & INTERVIEWS
Review of For the Birds. For the Humans. by Today's Book of Poetry (link)
Review of Trust Only the Beasts in the Water by Jami McCarty for The Maynard (link)
Advance Praise for my forthcoming book:
“Poetry best draws me in when a confluence of things occurs: language, narrative experience, and meaning that extends out of the poem itself to invoke insight or an insightful moment. The best poetry moves away from certain things too: cliché, stock phrasing, and a certain narcissism of existing only for the sake of itself.
'Seeds' resisted all the right things and moved towards all the right things to captivate. The more times I read the poem, the more it revealed to me in terms of the narrative situation. The line level drama here, too, was well considered as the narrator moves from the burning to the woods, to the boardrooms. Jarred perception sets time out of the ordinary and I was reminded of the craft of the great American poet, James Tate, who is adept at leaps and gaps for the sake of creating uncomfortableness and surreal perception. Consider the impact of the line, “Mortgage research and persistent fungi.” The author generates two seemingly unrelated concrete images in order to support the experience of the narrator as dissociated, of living in two worlds at once. There are two worlds existing simultaneously, one where the baby lives and one where the baby dies. The line, “Just missed” is aptly chosen. Undoubtedly, it will become a refrain for the narrator and her lack of “potential babies”. Everything about this poem rang of polished craft and sophistication."
Micheline Mayor, Calgary's Poet Laureate, on Arc's 2017 Diane Brebner Prize Winning Poem, "Seeds"
"Some of her poems are based on form, some surreal, some are bracing lyrics — all feature vivid images propelled by artful repetition. Associations among the images detour strict logic, but pull the reader or listener along to wherever she wants to take us."
Jean Van Loon
Interview on Poetry Mini Interviews blog (link here)
Interview on the Touch the Donkey Blog (link here)
Interview with Shazia Hafiz Ramji up on the Invisiblog (link here)
Interview with Kiki Petrosino and Dan Rosenberg about my poem "Shellac" in Transom Issue 11: Evening in An Occupied Country (link here)