Lisa Young

In this  Hollywood , art is all "lies, connivance and darkness."   Kindle Edition (Biblioasis, 2016) Scrolling through the books on Biblioasis'  website ,  The Camera Always Lies , a novel by Hugh Hood, caught my eye. It's described as a story about " Hollywood politics and one woman’s struggle to survive them." I was intrigued, not only by the promise of an insider's view, but to boot, the main character is a woman. Sold. (Not to mention Hugh Hood's bio, which in itself is impressive.) I read the novel over two evenings and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Set in 1966-67, this is a very dark look at  Hollywood  filmmaking. Love and Art are all but extinguished in this Holly-land. The greed, lust and misogyny are palpable. Hugh Hood strikes the right balance by injecting humour into the mix. Even the truly "bad guys" are funny. And the overall statement Hood is making about art versus commercialism/careerism elevates ...

“I found myself in an Akashic Wood.”  Sonia Di Placido's poems, essays, and other writings have appeared in blogs, literary print and online journals such as   The Toronto Quarterly ,   Carousel ,   The Puritan ,   The White Wall Review   38,   Jacket2 , The California Journal of Women Writers , and the  Canthius Journal . Two anthologies worthy of mention:   Walk Myself Home, An Anthology of Violence Against Women   (Caitlin Press), and   The Poet to Poet Anthology (Guernica Editions). Sonia’s first full-length collection of poetry,   Exaltation in Cadmium Red , launched in 2012 with Guernica Editions. Her second book of poems with Guernica Editions is forthcoming in 2018. Sonia's also currently working on an epistolary series about poetry and writing.  Sonia's latest chapbook, The Akashic Wood ,  was published this past spring by LyricalMyrical Press. The opening quote by Emily Dickinson (from...

“ I didn’t have to challenge myself. Numerous challenges emerged on their own. ” BIOGRAPHICAL INFO: Michael Fraser has been published in numerous national and international anthologies and journals including:   Paris Atlantic ,   Arc , CV2 , and   The Caribbean Writer . He won   ARC ’s Reader’s Choice award for 2012, and was included in the Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 . He won   FreeFall ’s  2014 and 2015 Poetry Contests. His latest book is   To Greet Yourself Arriving (Tightrope Books). He is the creator and former director of the Plasticine Poetry Series.  Michael’s second collection of poetry   To Greet Yourself Arriving   was recently published by Tightrope Books. As the title suggests, this collection explores self-awareness, fragmented selves, and the best self. Some of the poems are portraits of people who have accomplished rare achievements, such as Bob Marley, Joe Frazier, Maya Angelou and Barack Ob...

Poetry editing is such a huge topic that I’ve been procrastinating writing about it. Where to begin? What to cover? Well, let’s start with a poem I’m editing that has some ants in it. Editing Session to Figure Out What to Do with the Ants: Usually, when I come across a poem that includes ants, I think, oh no, not ants again. The writer was sitting in the grass and saw ants and had nothing else to write about, so the ants got in there. Plus, ants are such a cliché  —  we're like them: small, exposed to all kinds of twisted fates. Find Poems that Cover Your Subject Matter What I like about the poem  —   Failing in the Presence of Ants   —  is that it does the unexpected  —  it reveres the ants  —  not to mention it’s just well written  —  and if something’s working, whether it’s about ants or not, it doesn’t really matter  —  all is forgiven. Finding poems that cover your...

It's almost the holidays and I'm on the threshold of that crucial pre-Christmas time where anything and everything feels possible. The world is all shiny and pretty (okay it is very dull and grey out there, but still) and in a few short days I'll have nothing but a beautiful holiday gleaming in front of me  –  a whole two weeks off. But what usually happens to all this time? The days just go poof and disappear. How can two weeks disappear into thin air? This year I'm determined not to let the days go by without carving out some creative time. So I need a plan, a simple plan, not too ambitious or too daunting. I need doable. And I need it to be fun. These are my holidays! Reading poetry every night is a great way to stay inspired. I have one writing workshop planned  –  just to keep me focused, and every night from 7-9 p.m. I'm going to be doing poetry-related work  –  whether editing or sending off poems to magazines. (Exceptions: Christmas Eve, Chri...

I knew I was experiencing an emotional hangover when I woke up the day after a friend’s birthday party, and I couldn’t stop replaying all the awkward moments of the night before. I worried that I’d come off as a super weirdo (the opposite of a superhero), and I cringed over and over again. This was not an unfamiliar scenario. The only difference was that I was fed up with feeling this way. I wondered why I felt it necessary to waste my time and energy fretting about the normal, albeit awkward moments, that came along with social interaction. But at the core of it was a deeper question: Why did I find it so hard to make a real connection with other people? Whenever I was at a social gathering, I tended to hover around the edges of the party, or I liked to escape to the kitchen. I was ineffectively trying to hide in plain sight. I deeply wanted to connect with others, but I found the landscape of socializing so full of pitfalls, it was almost too excruciating to bear. Even...

There's a certain urgency to share my work as soon as I've written it. My first reader is my husband, Mike. I'm looking to see whether he thinks it works overall. He'll point out any weak spots and do a quick proofread for me too. Sometimes I read my work aloud to him in the kitchen while dinner is cooking. The work I show Mike might still be in its early stages, but it feels complete in some way – enough that I think I have something. I need to have a first reader who appreciates that it's still a work in progress. Mike and I are a team. If something's off – I'll go back and fix it up and then have him read it again. We'll go back and forth this way. A first reader should have good judgment. Is a first reader a kind of gatekeeper? I think so. They're the ones who stop you from going forward when you're headed for disaster. Who isn't a good first reader? Someone who can't articulate what's wrong with a certain phrase or...