Even our finite world is brimming with choices, possibilities, transformations—this struck me as the main tenet in Klara du Plessis’ debut collection, Ekke. Her resonant poems, influenced by landscape, place, the body, and art, explore the exciting and multitudinous influences that act upon us in this seemingly concrete world. Continue reading Stones Skipping Across Water: On Klara du Plessis’ Ekke
PRISM international is proud to announce the winner of the 2017 Earle Birney Poetry Prize is Lydia Kwa for her poem “Letter to My Former Selves” published in PRISM 56.1: Liminal, available now!
Earle Birney established UBC’s MFA program in Creative Writing in 1965–the first university program in Canada. The Earle Birney Poetry Prize, awarded annually and worth $500, is PRISM‘s only in-house prize. A very special thanks to Mme. Justice Wailan Low for her generous and ongoing support.
There’s a moment towards the end of Kudos, the final installment of Rachel Cusk’s groundbreaking Outline trilogy, when the whole work—hundreds of pages of characters and conversation—abruptly and elegantly folds in on itself, smaller and smaller until, like a magic trick, it fits inside a single, luminous image. On her way to dinner in an unnamed European country, our narrator, Faye, is pulled off on a detour by her companion. Their destination is an old church that was completely ravaged by fire some fifty years earlier: the paintings and statues destroyed, the stonework “split into two by the heat.” Instead of restoring the church, Faye’s companion explains, the damaged interior was left untouched and reopened for worship. On her first visit, she had found the blackened interior so distressing she had wanted to scream. But then she realized the scorched walls were covered with something like images, ghostly shapes and textures left by the flames:
Suggestions: Use sounds, colours, textures. Break up long, spiralling sentences with shorter sentences. Single words. Stray from the traditional recipe format or write the recipe on a cue card. Smear it with cooked blueberries. Swallow it whole.
Interview by Jennifer Amos Photo Credit Richard Lautens, Toronto Star Joe Fiorito recently launched his first collection of poetry, City Poems. His ability to zero in on the heart of a story and his compassion are some of the hallmarks of his fiction and non-fiction writing, which continue to shine...
We are happy to announce that our annual PRISM international Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize is now open for submissions. We are so excited to tell everybody that our judge will be Griffin Poetry Prize winner Billy-Ray Belcourt. Check out this...
This is a favourite. To get you started, here are some ideas: The steps and ingredients to make an atomic bomb. The acqua alta phenomenon. Seismic sea waves. The splitting of light. Moon bows. Mirages. Summer Writing Prompts is...
Questions curated by Kyla Jamieson Photo credit Ming Kai Leung Doretta Lau is the author of the short story collection How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun? (Nightwood Editions, 2014). The book was shortlisted for the City of...
We’re so excited to introduce you to our Jacob Zilber prize winners, whose pieces you can read in our Summer issue, 56.4. The characters in these stories transport a dead body along a bourbon-hued river in the Philippines, hunt for the perfect pig-feet in Seoul and come to understand their pasts in the woven strands of carpets. Let’s get to know the minds behind these complex worlds.
