Language Matters

"May you live in interesting times." So goes the ancient Chinese curse. In Quebec, we are always living in "interesting" times. Where else in Canada, perhaps even the world, do you have official language police that patrol the highways and byways of the province looking for missing accents, illegal apostrophes and on/off switches in the wrong language? Where else in Canada do you have to make sure that sign size matters? Is it 30% bigger or smaller than the other? Where else in Canada do you pause to consider how to say hello to someone before you actually do?

Launched in 2009 on St. Jean Baptiste Day, Poetry Quebec was an online magazine dedicated to showcasing the English-language poets and poetry of "la belle province." Its founding editors and publishers -- poets themselves -- came from very different backgrounds but shared the desire to make sure the English-language poetry of Quebec got the attention it deserved.

In this book, some of the best and most innovative English-language poets of Canada -- rising stars and award-winning authors -- reflect on these and other questions of politics and poetics. Culled from the website and expanded for this publication, those interviewed include Rhodes scholar Mark Abley, Maxianne Berger, Stephanie Bolster (Governor General's Award winner), Jason Camlot, Brian Campbell, performance poet Moe Clark, Mary di Michele (Trillium Prize nominee), Gabe Foreman (A.M. Klein Poetry Prize winner), Susan Gillis (A.M. Klein Poetry Prize winner), Charlotte Hussey, performance poets kaie kellough and Catherine Kidd, Angela Leuck, Steve Luxton, David McGimpsey (Governor General's Award nominee), Erin Moure (Governor General's Award winner), Robyn Sarah, Richard Sommer, Gillian Sze, Mahamud Siad Togane, and editors Endre Farkas and Carolyn Marie Souaid (winners, Zebra International Poetry Film Festival, Berlin).

Carolyn Marie Souaid has been writing and publishing poetry for over 20 years. The author of seven books and the winner of the David McKeen Award for her first collection,Swimming into the Light, she has also been shortlisted for the A.M. Klein Prize and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Much of her work deals with the bridging of worlds; the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility of it, but the necessity of the struggle. She has toured her work across Canada and in France. Since the 1990s, she has been a key figure on the Montreal literary scene, having co-produced two major local events, Poetry in Motion (the poetry-on-the-buses project) and the Circus of Words / Cirque des mots, a multidisciplinary, multilingual cabaret focusing on the "theatre" of poetry. Souaid is a founding member and editor ofPoetry Quebec, an online magazine focusing on the English language poets and poetry of Quebec.