Poetry is life
Posts
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I invited Karen Solie to read at our Celebration of On Occasion: Poems for the People last Friday. I wanted to have her alongside emerging writers (Misha Solomon, Chanel Sutherland, Sabyah Seyam, Ethel Meilleur, Lena Palacios, TLiem, myself, and my colleague Stephanie Bolster), but she was unable to make that event. Instead we are hosting…
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On the Occasion of the unboxing of On Occasion
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Sina Queyras Richard Siken’s book, I Do Know Some Things, has intrigued me for some months now. I was able to resist it when it was hypothetical, scrolling past me on the screen, on posts, ie, when it wasn’t “in my hands.” Once I picked it up though, just before New Years Eve, I couldn’t…
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I wasn’t going to go. Richard Avedon images were everywhere when I was growing up. I assumed the show at the Musee in Montreal would be the rich and famous as that is what he is known for. And there they were. Though not only. And not, aside from the odd inclusion of Patti Smith…
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You may have heard of Wanda Coleman through her sonnets, particularly the American Sonnets which were an inspiration for Terrence Hayes’ book of the same. I had a hard time choosing—I meant to post two but four insisted. I am trying not to be excessive because social media is so excessive as to be meaningless,…
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I’ve never kept a reading list before but my 14 year-old twins do, and they put me to shame last year. So: challenge accepted. This is not a full list–the purely entertaining reads are not included. These are largely texts I’m reading toward writing projects, and for teaching. You can find the full list here.…
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Lemon Hound is back. It was down for a number of years. Every time I tried to put it back up the site was instantly eaten by bots: the la language changed, it seemed to be spewing ads. It wasn’t secure, and the Internet was no longer the sweet pastures this site was born into…
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Cover reveal for On Occasion, a nee book coming in May 2026.
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2026 marks 30 years of looking at the art of Jeff Wall, Vancouver’s internationally acclaimed photo conceptualist. A monumental body of work—somehow diminished as it is presented here at MOCA in Toronto.
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We need new venues! New voices, reviews, interviews. Let’s vacate the corporate spaced & build better. Coming this spring, a new literary undertaking from emerging writers in Toronto. Support them if you can! Let’s give them a chance & see what they can do.
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Underneath this Vancouver, was another Vancouver, under which was a city known as something else, and under that another place, and another…and in every Fred Herzog image there are a million other images waiting for their turn. Detail from “Man with bandage,”Fred Herzog, Vancouver, 1968
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Thanks to all who have submitted to On Occasion: Poems for the People. We had an enormous response to this call and have been weighing each submission. Notifications have begun. Thank you for your patience.
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So many beings are relying on us to resist the dark forces of greed, the madness of the race for biggest billionaire, for unregulated Ai. We are watching the unmaking of the world which – flaws and all – made diverse democratic queer life possible. But they don’t have to be victorious. No. Go to…
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On Occasion: Poems for the People Deadline for submissions: September 7, 2025 In the tradition of the poem as an act of love, as an act of protest, an act of visionary incantation, of remembrance, of a call to arms, and a much-needed balm, Coach House Books is inviting poetry submissions for an upcoming anthology…
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Red Epic/Descent In a matter of weeks, they dropped off The earth, two loops that had not Crossed paths in my mind. That’s the way poets go: They drop upward, lifted on Iambs. Loss feels like a cork Popping, lines shoot like helium Into the atmosphere, too young Too vibrant, too many more Lines to…
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Thanks to Kathryn Mockler for sending this little provocation out into the world. To read the whole thing visit her substack. Not one of these words was written by Ai. In fact, might this be the last Ai free text? Ask google, ask—well, what about don’t? Or no? I have said no Ai a thousand…
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I don’t read very often these days, particularly not in the city I live in. A few months ago, in Toronto, I went to a reading curated by these folks & I felt so energized! Partly it was hearing former students read, but it was also smart curation & seeing new faces in the crowd.…
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I dreamed myself a particle. I was so small a casual breath from my current physical form would sweep me along with a wave of millions of other particles. I was so small I could not be distinguished from the billions of other particles. I was a particle among particles.
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How do we keep working? For more than a decade I have allowed teaching to define me. It’s wild. The institutional mechanism becomes a constraint. You start to remove yourself from equations, which is not always a bad thing. We need to create space for students. That’s what we do. The danger is that this…
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Because I begin essays but rarely complete them, and so poetry. Because to “fall into the singing” is the dream. Because stroke by stroke, syllable by syllable, word by word, to not only feel the rhythm & movement, but to get somewhere, is what poetry can do. Because collectively. Individually. In the poem. Is to…
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It is not a time to remain silent. But where should I not remain silent? And how? I feel like I’m waking up on a volcano. I am exploding with writing, fast and in fragments from the abrupt shifts from my creative practice to parenting, to pedagogue, mentor, administrator, and very likely a modicum of…
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I’ve been reading and loving the Malahat Review for more decades now, and always loved it. The CNF prize is relatively new, and it has been one I’ve watched since its beginnings. Particularly love that it’s named for Constance Rooke, who was a figure of some influence in my early writing life. She was such…
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I wrote about writing Rooms over at Kathryn Mockler’s Send My Love To Anyone. Here’s an excerpt: The Woolf of 1919 is on fire; emerging. The Woolf of 1929 is towering. The vistas were hers to describe, the descent not at all on her mind. The Woolf of 1939 is fatigued. Frayed. The house Woolf…
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Shelf Life is hosting a Virtual Launch. I’m looking forward to talking to Kyle Flemmer, a former Concordia student. Register! https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwvc-CpqzsrG9OavwUn9dg7a2Rqkvm1XDgB
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You’ll find my essay on working with Plath’s Ariel, here in particular the poem “Lady Lazarus” which among other things, I ran through a randomizer to create my version. Full essay over on LitHub and excerpted from “Sina Queyras on Sylvia Plath, ‘Lady Lazarus’” from The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems…
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From LAMBDA Literary Award winner Sina Queyras, Rooms offers a peek into the defining spaces a young queer writer moved through as they found their way from a life of chaos to a life of the mind Thirty years ago, a professor threw a chair at Sina Queyras after they’d turned in an essay on…
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It’s my pleasure to announce the publication of this lovingly compiled and edited Nicole Brossard Reader from Coach House Books. I worked closely with Genevieve and Erin, but Alana Wilcox is the true Brossard champion and deserves so much applause and praise for the work she has done to bring vital feminist experimental voices–such as…
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I’m excited to serve as Coordinator of Concordia’s Creative Writing Program for the 2020-21 academic year. My writing and teaching have long reflected my interest in innovative texts and dynamic, embodied, and sustainable writing practices. My recent book, My Ariel, interrogates gendered power dynamics in literary circles and their impact on creative women’s lives, and my current SSHRC funded research creation…
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MB: I wanted to get you to talk about the book a little bit in the context of lyric conceptualism. In “Lyric Conceptualism, A Manifesto in Progress,” you wrote, “The Lyric Conceptualist is not necessarily a feminine body but it has the stink of the impure, a certain irreverence for the master and therefore it…
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I will be on sabbatical as of January 2022 & unable to take on any new students until January 2023. I’ll attach an email subscription very soon–I would like to have a sense of how many people will come. This list will also be used to update you on the next sessions and also send…
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People have been asking me what I am teaching next year–here are the course descriptions. These are slightly different than what was posted in the actual calendar. Over the next year or two themes of discussion will include Literary Identities, how we see ourselves and our relationships to institutions and communities. Strategies of creative resistances…
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I’ve been finding all sorts of documents and random files as I try to rebuild my own files after a series of technical mishaps that may or may not have had anything to do with having twins a month before taking over directorship of Writers Read, publishing my first novel, and dealing with the ongoing…
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Well, at least I am on point. I believe I did this interview around 2007. It concerns my second book, TeethMarks, published in 2004. The interview finally appeared in print in 2014. I just found this email in my trash. Why it seemed to drift to the top of my trash this week I have…
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I published my first (or second…) poem in Room Of Own’s Own some…omg…some…thirty years ago? Is that possible? Must be. I was chuffed then and I’m chuffed now with this review from Adele Barclay. Thanks Room, thanks, Adele, thanks to all who have read and read poetry and respond.
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In a marvel of editing, the CBC posted a little over three minutes on the process of writing My Ariel. This content is at least six months old. 2018 was a difficult year and I have not been able to adequately respond to anything publicly. I’m very aware. So I do appreciate the opportunity. Also…
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This was fun. Talking with Al Filreis and (the lovely and amazing) Anna Safford earlier this year…during one of the busiest weeks of my fall season, which is partly why my New Years Resolution is better self care along with more activism from the large to the small. I’ve put the original version of Plath’s…
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ROLL CALL You who were not born in a boat. You who can not tread water. You who do not qualify for safe passage. You who are without a compass. You who cannot take the air between your hands and feel the ions of improbability. You who have not stepped out of the satin shadows.…
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Of all the poems to rewrite, or respond to, “Daddy” remains the most difficult (for me at least). It is its own ecosystem; it captures the range of traumas available to a young woman circa 1963 and onward, both inside and outside the house, the body, history. It enacts the repetitions of gendered trauma and…
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Big as My Ariel is there was a lot more that didn’t go in. I will post a few here over the next few weeks.
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Waving to my friend David Groff, who was the one to tell me Lemon Hound won the Lambda back in 2007, and is here again, just sending me this photo from AWP, as I was writing this post with the news that My Ariel is also up for a Lambda. I have been nominated a…
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I condensed my best of list for The Montreal Gazette. Here they are–
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I have had reviews. I have had lists. I am unbelievably lucky. And, as I write this I am waiting to hear whether my sister’s pain meds have kicked in. She is in palliative care in Northern British Columbia. I went to see her in October, and it’s not likely I will get back to…
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“Not long after I became a new mother of twins, campus sexual politics and accounts of sexual misconduct in the literary world arose ever closer in my sphere. I was angry on behalf of the many young women whose lives were affected – and by many of the responses around me. Then I became angry…
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Found this on the CBC. A radio interview from 2014 with the lovely & amazing Sonali Karnick. “Award-winning poet and professor Sina Queyras just published a pretty pink book about a dark topic. “MxT” deals with death and grief but in a lighter way with graphs and diagrams. 11:24. //www.cbc.ca/i/caffeine/syndicate/?mediaId=2443930554
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New York, I’ll be reading from My Ariel October 24 at Poet’s House. Come out if you can. Would love to see you all!
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I caught the first copy of My Ariel as it slid off the glue machine a few weeks back. My son caught the second (see video below!). The book is alive and kicking–pub date is officially September 18th, which happens by chance to be my mother’s birthday. This is more relevant than I thought it…
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I can’t believe I didn’t post this–it was amazing news. I’m totally chuffed. Thanks to the judges, and to Kenneth J. Harvey for founding the prize. The company is stellar.
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The latest from My Ariel is up. Thanks to Mark Bibbins at The Awl. The dead bell, the dead bell Every Christ a clap of bad behaviour, Ballsy as Blake, a birthmark Of meat, a red frill of privilege. Baby eaters all, a sweet girl In a white cage. Such a useful future Looming, the men…
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The latest poem from my new Plath manuscript is up at The Walrus. Thanks to Damian Rogers for choosing it. If they look familiar, they should be: they are re-visions, ghostings, confrontations, and responses to Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. “The Jailor,” The Walrus “I am no Lady, Lazarus,” Rusty Toque “Little Fugue,” The Awl “Thalidomide,” “The Rabbit Catcher,” The Malahat Review “Couriers,” “Cut,”…
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Several poems from My Ariel, my new manuscript, are up across the Internet. If they look familiar, they should be: they are re-visions, ghostings, confrontations, and responses to Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. I’ll be writing more about the project (like why on earth, and are you insane?), but not until next summer, when I have some time to…
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MxT generates its force through the perpetual denial of this promise. Over and over, the poems present a detached and clinical façade, only to have it break down or prove useless. For example, “A Manual for Remembering” instructs the reader on ways to encounter memory while remaining safe and insulated: “When remembering it is best…
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I feel the need to go back to the moment before I created Lemon Hound, the blog, which means, going back to the time of writing Lemon Hound, the book, a process that made me aware of my more vocal alter ego. Here she is, lounging confidently in an open window, on a bridge, in…
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“The scene is increasingly diverse,” observed Queyras, director of Writers Read, a Concordia University series that invites established and emerging writers from Canada and abroad to give public readings as well as master’s classes. “There are more readings at bookstores like Drawn & Quarterly and Argo, and at galleries like VAV and Phi Centre. There…
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I’m on the move in April. Hope to see you at one of these events. BROOKLYN April 14th, 7pm Brooklyn Public Library with Tonya Foster & Erica Hunt 10 Grand Army Plz,Brooklyn Belladonna* Collaborative YALE April 16th 8pm The Graduate Poetry Reading Series: Yale Linsly-Chittenden Hall (LC), LC 319 63 High St. New Haven, CT…
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I am rich in reviews and so thankful for the close reading! The Bullcalf, Arc Magazine and The Kenyon Review. Ben Purkert makes a case for the elegy as selfie. Not what I intended, but he makes a compelling case. Not all elegies, however, are necessarily selfless. Some are self-addressed. Sina Queyras’s M x T…
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Montreal: Atwater Library Friday, October 17: Sina Queyras and Ken Babstock Vancouver Writers Festival Friday, October 24, Waterfront Theatre, 10:00AM, Pure Poetry Kris Demeanor, Eve Joseph, Anne Kennedy, Christopher Levenson, Sina Queyras, Katherena Vermette Saturday, October 25 Performance Works, 8:00PM Poetry Bash: Ken Babstock,George Elliott Clarke, Billeh Nickerson, Sina Queyras, Katherena Vermette, Patricia Young Sunday, October 26 Waterfront Theatre, 1:30PM The Al Purdy Show:…
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Kathryn Mockler @themockler Jul 24 Just finished MxT by Sina Queyras @lemonhound So good! Make sure you read this book! Stephen Burt @accommodatingly · Jul 7 @sinaqueyras @coachhousebooks MxT! It’s passionately supergood, circuit diagrams & all. Hope to say so elsewhere soon. Adam Dickinson @AdamwDickinson Sina Queyras’s MxT is an ambitious and fully-realized work.…
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Thanks to Bert Almon for the love. The great strength of the book is not in the apparatus – circuit diagrams, tutelary figures – but in the texture. Queyras employs many forms: prose poems, poems in stanzas, representations of postcards, aphorisms (“All mature poets understand the need for dry wood chips”), found poems, concrete poetry. The tour…
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May 6, 2014 7:00 AM ET More from Mark Medley | @itsmarkmedley Peter J. Thompson/National Post It should come as no surprise that Queyras is critical of her own work, considering that, despite her insistence that she’s “not really a critic,” she has evolved into one of the country’s loudest critical voices, with a platform…
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‘Poetry succeeds where science fails to measure grief in this brilliant new collection by the esteemed Queyras.’ –Publishers Weekly, Spring Round Up, January 24, 2014
