It’s the winners of the 2022 writing contests! Also featuring work from Margaret Sweatman, Cooper Skjeie, Robbie Chesick, Eric Wang & more!
Cover image by Tétro.
Poetry
Jody Baltessen
Robbie Chesick
Danielle Hubbard
Claire Matthews
Suzanne Nussey
Cooper Skjeie
Kathleen Wall
Eric Wang
Fiction
Alexandra G. McKay
John Van Rys
Margaret Sweatman
Margaret Watson
Creative Non-Fiction
Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt
Kate Bird
Judith Wright
Poetry Preview
Section of “Manitou Trail Untethered”
Jody Baltessen
Boreal Aubade
As lichen rhizines. Fractured gneiss pebbled under the tent.
The citrus of pine. Interpolate my skin.
The taste of truffle. The hard bite of iron.
I caution myself to be gradual. Hold a banded rock. Its surface rough.
Folds of feldspar mica quartz. Calibrate a metamorphic time
where there is always river, flowing past tree—bur oak balsam fir
black spruce. Exposed roots scrabbling for meagre soil.
I open my lungs to lowbush blueberry, breathe the infinite sky.
All its tributaries.
My bones ache a slow awakening.
