Former PRISM poetry editor Rob Taylor sat down with poet, author and former journey carpenter Kate Braid to discuss her newly released poetry collection “Elemental” (Caitlin Press, 2018).

I spoke with you briefly for PRISM international back in 2014, and at that point you noted: “Looking over my recent poems, I’m a bit alarmed to find I’m writing more personally, neither behind the mask of another or out of my experience as a carpenter – which also became a sort of persona.” True to that statement, Elemental, though certainly structured around “elemental” themes, feels in other ways like your first “general” collection (your past collections having channeled Glenn Gould and Emily Carr, among others). In that sense it feels almost like you’re living the traditional poet’s trajectory in reverse (the early, more personal/general collection, followed by themed “projects”).
 
Do you think of this book in those terms (“general” and personal), and do you think it represents a larger shift in your preoccupations/energies as a writer? Did “removing the masks” allow you to access some more “elemental” part of yourself?

Continue reading I Keep Coming Back to What Gives Me Courage: An Interview with Kate Braid

Interview by Matthew Kok

Beni Xiao is a nanny and writer based in Vancouver, BC. They are tired all the time, so they would appreciate if you’d let them sleep. Bad Egg, Beni’s new chapbook, is full of quiet, important things. There is a garden of variety in these poems, and the chapbook is drawn together by the strength of Beni’s voice. The effect is a lot like having a small bug perched in your ear, joking, encouraging, asking. They are willing to go with you into storms. They will not lie and tell you your impact on the world is going to be anything other than what it is. They will tell you about the hard, strong thing we all need to be sometimes, and as they describe it you may believe it is you—it may depend on the day, or whose limbs you’ve found crossed over your own, but the bug will say it for you if you can’t. There is a whole world of people who will speak around the important things rather than to them, or ignore the strange and the wonderful, but none of them are in this chapbook. You should start listening to Beni Xiao—I promise it will be worth it.

Continue reading Get to Know: Beni Xiao