Debut Novel Coming in 2025

 

Really happy to be able to share the news that my novel, Smaller Animals, will published in November 2025.

I just got the cover and proofs from my publisher Collective Ink earlier this month and it's the culmination to this point of a journey that started back in the summer of 2019 when I decided to take the plunge and see if I had a full novel in me. In a broader sense, I've been writing creatively since high school, in various forms, and this has been a goal I never thought I'd really reach. It's exciting, humbling and sort of unbelievable all at once.

Stay tuned for more on how to pre-order and definitely let me know if you'd be interested in connecting on this!

New Poem

 Lament for Eden

You faded the other day,
like light in Eire’s west,
retiring from beating time,
sun and sweat, closing in shutters
making a mess of bed clothes.

These were the bookshelves we left
unorganized, the tattooed skin I
couldn’t interpret, absent-minded that
I was back then.

I was innocent of it, nursing
grief wounds that came
unhealed, scabrous in time,
that you had helped sew up
lick clean, dress in
silk covering.

And how playful we were, naked,
unashamed, frolicking through
meadows, melodious, without care
for cuts a branch bramble
would give to those not
heeding.

I fell too easily then, coarse
feet against night air and
grass stain; that the trick
mirror had revealed all
was worsened from wear.

As your form turned void,
shapeless then unholy, I wept:

thinking of how we would never
again be so close to our
Garden, always so distant
from Grace, in glass highways

endless stone arches.

Announcement on Novel Publishing

 Some exciting news:

As you may or may not know, I've had a novel manuscript I've been shopping around and refining for the last couple of years. As of last week I got an offer on publishing it and I've decided to move forward with it as Tuesday afternoon. 

It will be about a year or so from now until publication, so, more details to follow but for now suffice to say that I will be publishing with the Roundfire Books imprint of Collective Ink publishers.

I'm very excited  to have this happening and will hopefully set up a launch event next year in Ottawa to share the moment with supporters.

If anyone is interested in learning more, please do not hesitate to contact me! I would love to connect particularly if you have experience in the literary world or would be willing to help with promotion or endorsements over the next little while.

1 New Poem

None Too Revered

I had a dream of shirt threads
fraying, living like a hologram
version of broken hearts.

Living like the swinging edge of
fire escapes in new dawn light
where I might find you for solace,

As I stare through book pages,
wish I had a five-acre farm and
something to do besides

A worthless, non-melody hum of
widgets and frazzled minds,
poison ivy itch in summer

And brackish cold to bone
past November’s cruelties.

1 New Poem

Life in Whole

Mother

Nag

To Do

3.

5.

Licht

[ ]

1 New Poem

 Younger Shadows

You trace symbols of past wounds,
in dirt tracks at the protest camp,
miners and mavens ran in your
blood, not to get us sitting in
front of dress, answering to change
in screen glow.

You loved the silence after a
window shattered, the second of breath
after rags and tear gas,
the twitch of muscle hen taking
off on broken sneakers down alleyways,
the smile after clouds cleared on
demonstration day.

You told me, “even though this
place is alright for while we’re
young, I’m secretly planning to move
back to Montreal”, eyes echoed
past the bartender’s stubble, the
faux-neon Miller sign.

I wondered what would happen to
spray-paint sculptures, chalk slogans,
restless sparks, cuts locks, thrown-down
chains? You said
we’d see in time, can’t take anything
but memories with us
to the other side.

Of night? Of sleep? How long?
Answers were a white fence,
red brick window in age.

1 New Poem

Triptych Panels

I hear the echo,
Turn on the Bright Lights in background
cascade of warring engine rumble,

Comes around again in spaces
between sleeping, comes around
at half-past-one, comes

When I wonder on broken glass,
shattered concrete howling
names of bomb-blasts; should

Have protested, wound not have
made a sound, would not hold
a flicking light to burning

Scent of tire rubber. I watch it
pile on the contested roadway, fearful
faces made logic in time.

I make excuses for antics,
excuses of myself, place of pride
for charming rogues, resented and

Kept a fair-minded distance from
heart and hearth, the last of
figures in Rockefeller relief

Background: the mad thieves,
ideal painters carrying wild eyes,
ambition promoters, fools all.

I sip from the ten tarot cups
of simpler comforts (good shoes,
warm linen), dream of drying

Days when versions merge
and take across their leaden
faces against street sounds.

1 New Poem

Spatial Planes

I was part of the crowd,
watched bombs fall from
dream state shoreside,
said nothing,

Saw veins of concrete open,
spiling tar, oil fumes haze
like the anchorage of
ships capsized.

I lost heart and will,
for much more of the screaming,
much more than the ranconteur’s
words could extend.

Approach in the wedding dress aura,
beckon back to homefront comforts:
the forgetting of what happened walls
beyond.

Pausing, stand across and shape,
we whirled in the April skies,
setting off storms;

Your voice didn’t break the
cacophony, grim sights paces away;

It came like balms from
crosstown market, kept in
mason jars, pulled out

When keeping together got too
great for tender ears to
hear.

It forges a hardness,
a bloodless unwelcome
to these nights.