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For issue seven of Poetry Is Dead, guest editors Nikki Reimer and Kevin Spenst working on a collaborative issue. Each editor has separate submission calls to respond to.
Visit the Poetry Is Dead website for more information about submitting writing.
INSIDE
Nikki Reimer is looking for poetry and critical writing that examines the relationship between mental illness, art in general, and poetry in particular. Submissions that explore aspects of this relationship similar to the ones mentioned above, and/or any aspects of the relationship between mental illness and poetry are welcome. I’m curious about how poets who self-identify as mentally ill might make meaning or avoid making meaning out of their suffering, and how they conceive of the relationship between poetry and their mental health. What creative possibilities emerge by delving into the intersection of poetry and madness? What textual strategies do poets use to engage with and/or represent their mental illness? Does writing make poets crazy? Can it make us sane?
OUTSIDE
Kevin Spenst is looking for poetry that engages with the historical, institutional, linguistic, corporal and urban dimensions of mental illness and the strangeness of these worlds confining people in a precarious state of mind. How do the various forms of poetry (concrete, sound, poetic-essay and formal verse) parallel intentional and unintentional forms of confinement? What are the strategies that individuals use to liberate themselves? (a metal file, a legal defense, humour?) Can a poem help someone out of the troubling labyrinth of language? How can a poem reword “schizophrenia”?

Canada: Home to a Dangerous Industry
By Fred A. Reed & Robin Philpot

Alain Deneault and William Sacher wrote Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice for the World’s Mining Companies (2012) to provide Canadian and international public opinion with tools to help ask critical questions about Canadian activities in the South and in Eastern Europe, as well as about the role of the Canadian government in relation to these activities. It is hoped that the evidence presented here will encourage Canadians to enter public debate about how the mining industry is regulated in Canada and to form an opinion on this topic independent from the one suggested by official agencies or media that belong to large Canadian financial conglomerates and tend to espouse their interests.
Monday June 10, 2013 in Meta-Talon
For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, a play by Michel Tremblay, is currently being staged at the National Arts Centre (N.A.C.) in Ottawa, Ontario, as part of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival.

The following are excerpts from two reviews of the show, originally published in the Ottawa Citizen on June 3 and June 8, 2013, written by Patrick Langston.
Friday June 7, 2013 in Meta-TalonDrew Hayden Taylor’s Political Persuasions
Award-winning Ojibwa author and playwright Drew Hayden Taylor (Dead White Writer on the Floor, 2011) writes the occasional column for the Peterborough Examiner in Peterborough, Ontario. In his latest column, available in its original form here, he discusses his approach to storytelling and politics.

As a First Nations writer of fiction and non-fiction, and frequent lecturer on the university/college and conference circuit, I am commonly asked about my political persuasion. Do I swing left, right, or am I more ambidextrous?
Wednesday June 5, 2013 in Meta-Talon
The June 2013 issue of Quill & Quire includes a review of Daphne Marlatt’s latest book of poetry, Liquidities (Talonbooks, 2013). We republish this review here with permission from Quill & Quire.

Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now extends a project Daphne Marlatt began over 40 years ago with the 1972 publication of Vancouver Poems …
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts; the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program; and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council for our publishing activities.