Ancestral magicians perform not tricks, but truly magical acts, like taking a blue and white pearl the colour of the earth and placing it in her work-hard palms. This is my mother, entangled in sisters, brought to peace in age, throwing off years like a hot fur coat, years of bitterness turned some...
After Natalia Ginzburg’s “He and I” He likes working on the patio. I prefer cooking up a stew or pouring out cocktails. I do the grocery shopping, take the car to the mechanic, and ferry cardboard to the recycling centre. He keeps the house plants alive, launders the sheets and towels, and fills...
A Bop Reports note Crocodiles with leather purses. Mountain Goats in puff sleeve boho shirts. Animals foregoing shoes, and girls, now Toucans, selling their Kia Souls to fly wingtip-to-wingtip to work, while Rabbits sleep on their husbands’ heads, hearts beating slow despite the predators next door...
The cuckoo has laid its eggs in my (mother’s) brain. It found the cerebrum a spongy roost, an almost natural habitat and now, flying the coop, expects me to take care of the babies. I consult a field guide. Learn the cuckoo is a strange relative of the roadrunner, its song a series of hollow...
By the time we flew into L.A., I felt like sending my body through one of those X-ray machines in security to make sure my brain was still intact. If a picnic in Stanley Park was all the disruption Malcolm could handle to his daily routine, why did I think for one moment—one second—that he could...
Well another day spent boot-walking through my allotted patchwork of registered burns and cutblocks. Rototilling circles around piles of slash and struck-by-thunder trees. In the heat of the day, I sweat through dark coveralls. Here I am: picking up skulls of birds. Woodpecker feathers, horsehair...
Reviewed by Li Charmaine Anne Hollay Ghadery, The Unravelling of Ou (Palimpsest Press, 2026), 200pp., $21.95. Loss is presumed as we age: the loss of ignorance along with a loss of innocence. Yet across countries, time periods, and generations, a new grandmother retains her childlike wonder—and...
Interview by Shawn Syms In connection with the annual Victoria Festival of Authors taking place October 12 to 18, 2026, Plenitude book reviews editor Shawn Syms interviews Jordan Abel, a queer Nisga’a writer from Vancouver and author of multiple books including The Place of Scraps, Un/inhabited...
Announcing the shortlist for our first-ever Summer Poetry Contest! Misha Solomon selected this shortlist from a longlist of eleven poems, as put together from close to 200 poems by our managing editor, Patrick Grace. Misha’s grand-prize winner selection will be announced November 1, so stay tuned...
