Staff – CAROUSEL Magazine: Blog

April 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Hollay Ghadery

Introducing our April 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Hollay Ghadery is a writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Her fiction, nonfiction and poetry have been published in various literary journals, including Grain, Room, The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead and The Malahat Review. Her memoir on mixed-race identity and mental health, Fuse, came out with Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in spring 2021. Her debut collection

March 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Joanna Acevedo

Introducing our March 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Joanna Acevedo (she/they) is the Pushcart nominated author of the chapbook List of Demands (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and the books The Pathophysiology of Longing (Black Centipede Press, 2020) and Unsaid Things (Flexible Press, 2021). She received her MFA in Fiction from New York University in 2021. More: joannaacevedo.net Over the course of the month, Acevedo will review the following books: • Gabrielle Bates’ debut poetry collection Judas Goat (Tin House,

New at USEREVIEW in 2023

Staff
02, 2023
Book Review, Review
0

Since our debut more than two years ago in September 2020, CAROUSEL’s USEREVIEW has published over 100 traditional, experimental and short-form capsule reviews. Last year, we debuted our Reviewer-in-Residence program, in which we published short capsule reviews from a single reviewer for three weeks in a row. Never ones to coast, we decided this year to expand our Reviewer-in-Residence program to shine an even brighter spotlight on individual reviewers’ critical practices. For 2023, we have

IN MEMORIAM: David Haskins

Staff
04, 2022
Poet
0

Remembering writer David Haskins (ca. 1945-2022) We at CAROUSEL were deeply sorry to hear of the passing of teacher, father, writer and friend to literature, David Haskins, of Grimsby, Ontario. An emigrant from post-war Britain, Haskins spent his entire adult life in Ontario, where he taught high school English for 36 years, and will continue to be fondly remembered by students as an engaged, thoughtful and kind teacher. As a writer, Haskins was the author

WRITING THE TAROT themed call — deadline: Mar 15/22

Don’t Delay — submit today! SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORIAL STATEMENT Pick a card, any card . . . Tarot is a vehicle of storytelling. Tarot is divination, self-reflection, ritual. Tarot cards take on new meanings in new contexts, as they travel through the deck to find your touch. The symbols of the cards are laid out before The Magician. Metal bends under his finger tips. Before he can create, he considers the tarot in its most

From the Archive: Sandy Pool (CAROUSEL 40)

Staff
11, 2021
Poem
0

SANDY POOL Excerpt from The Ebbinghaus Illusion: A Book of Hybrid Non-Fiction The Ebbinghaus Illusion elegizes the death of my former partner who suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. After a short battle, my partner chose to take his life, rather than suffer the debilitating effects of the disease. The Ebbinghaus Illusion is structured around a standardized Alzheimer’s memory test. Each piece is titled with a word from the Alzheimer’s word list, which is used to

From the Archive: David Haskins (CAROUSEL 40)

Staff
11, 2021
Poem
0

DAVID HASKINS Burning Chair Under the spreading locust limbs, a chair,old, rustic, of bent vines and cedar boards,host to rampant English ivy entwinedaround its feet, winding through its spines,rooting out marrow from its bones, the splits and nicks and splintered shards,the frame twisted as if by hurricane,the seat planks broken from their moorings,fallen askew, showing rot in their ends. In the cool autumnal breezeleaves drift onto the wrecklike pear-shaped daubs of yellowpaint, a last gasp

From the Archive: Chelsea Coupal (CAROUSEL 40)

Staff
10, 2021
Poem
0

CHELSEA COUPAL Rural Hangover I picture myself sometimes, slimas I was then, walking in, stripping down, lying down in that dirt-morninglight, hungover, and nausea tucked under my mind like an old note.I didn’t mind those mornings: click of dried contacts, tumbleweedstomach, and the sun pouring through bedroom windowsslowly. Before the farmhouse, you lived in a trailerwith walls so thin I swear you could see through them.Hardly a yard, just pasture, and cattle peering in, curious

USEREVIEW 049: A Bespoke Respoke

Gary Barwin uses the medium of sound poetry to respond to visual poetry, in this sensory-blurring experimental review of Kate Siklosi and psw’s collaborative artists’ book, Reply (2021). ISBN n/a | 40pp | €22.00 — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Print is synaesthetic. Its shapes and textures, papers and colours make the inner fingers tingle, the brainskin prickle. Looking is tactile, kinesthetic. Reading is musical, evokes sound. And collaboration, such as between Kate Siklosi and psw in

USEREVIEW 048 (Capsule): Talking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator

Rosalind M. PepallTalking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator (Véhicule Press, 2020)ISBN 978-1-55065-541-4 | 224 pp | $22.95 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY In Talking to a Portrait, Rosalind M. Pepall employs a prose style that combines personal essay with art history to recount notable stories that unfurled during her decades as a curator for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. None of this is within my areas of expertise, and so I

USEREVIEW 046 (Capsule): Blood Rises

David HaskinsBlood Rises (Guernica Editions, 2020)ISBN 978-1-77183-538-1 | 144 pp | $20 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Blood Rises is an apt title for the latest poetry collection from longtime figure in the literary scene, David Haskins. These poems are rich in lifeblood — the substance that rises to the skin at the sight of injustice, that brightens the cheek during unstoppable laughter, that pulses on insistently in the face of death and grief. The

USEREVIEW 045 (Capsule): Anthesis

Sue GoyetteAnthesis (Gaspereau Press, 2020)ISBN 978-1-554472-10-9 | 80 pp | $19.95 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY It was difficult for me, while reading Sue Goyette’s Anthesis, not to compare it to her earlier poetry collection The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl (Gaspereau Press, 2015), which likewise recounts childhood trauma. The difference between the books is that the factual events that form the basis of The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl are readily discoverable in the

USEREVIEW 044 (Capsule): Ghost Tracks

Sneha Subramanian KantaGhost Tracks (Louisiana Literature Press, 2020)ISBN 978-0-94508-351-1 | 30 pp | $8.95 USD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY There are ghosts everywhere in Kanta’s chapbook of poetry. The ghosts “freckle silence” and “remove fishhooks from animal bodies” and are “carried on the wind” with “hands full of flowers.” We are told by the title to expect tracks, traces, as if the ghosts were deer disappearing into the woods, but instead the ghosts are moving about in front

From the Archive: Jessica Bromley Bartram (CAROUSEL 39)

Staff
07, 2021
Artist, Fiction
0

JESSICA BROMLEY BARTRAM Skyscrapers When the city sleeps, it emerges, unfurling cloudlike from a ravine and stepping carefully over grumbling streets. Bleary-eyed drivers blink it away, their brains filled with thoughts of home or the next city, naming it Bridge Shadow or Passing Tree. Its missteps leave cars covered in stormy grey streaks that refuse to fade, drivers whose peripheral vision is now filled with flickering shadows, almost-forms almost visible if only they could turn

USEREVIEW 041 (Capsule): A Map of Rain Days

Jennifer HoseinA Map of Rain Days (Guernica Editions, 2020)ISBN 978-1-771834-41-4 | 128 pp | $20 CAD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY “My mother’s toes are / crooked and curled / in a misguided, arthritic map / of rain days,” writes Jennifer Hosein in the eponymous poem of her debut collection, A Map of Rain Days. In these lines there is a conflation of body and world, but also of space and time. Time becomes an entity that is spatially

USEREVIEW 040 (Capsule): Gold Rush

Claire CaldwellGold Rush (Invisible Publishing, 2020)ISBN 978-1-988784-46-5 | 80 pp | $17.95 CAD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Writing about pioneers and summer camp risks a confrontation with banal, or even dangerous, sentimentalism. However, in her sophomore poetry collection, Gold Rush, Claire Caldwell is circumspect, scrutinizing and assessing her subjects with the critical eye they deserve — and she never mistakes pyrite for gold. See, for instance, her poem ‘After the Gold Rush,’ in which the speaker declares, “We

From the Archive: Fan Wu (CAROUSEL 39)

Staff
06, 2021
Poem
0

FAN WU from Songs Heard on The River Styx Charon Before Breakfast Charon moves along his sloop, fern-heavy with morning sleep.He rubs his eyes then his wrists together.Standing sexless, two words — pistil, stamen — flash across his mind, illustrated like in the Grade 9 Biology textbook he once read for proof of nature’s perfect design, lovewise.An anchor tethers him to the limitless sea.Anther and pollen.Something Lacan once said occurs to him:“Love is giving something

USEREVIEW 036: A Colossal Problem

There was supposed to be a review of Jeremy Colangelo’s debut short fiction collection Beneath the Statue (Now Or Never Publishing, 2020), but due to unforeseen circumstances, there will be none. To find out what led to this utter catastrophe, please read on. ISBN 978-1-98968-910-3 | 184 pp | $19.95 CAD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Dear Jade Wallace, Reviews Editor for CAROUSEL, Thank you for sending me a review copy of Jeremy Colangelo’s debut short fiction collection, Beneath

From the Archive: Paige Cooper (CAROUSEL 38)

Staff
05, 2021
Fiction
0

PAIGE COOPER The Man from Atlantis Ingrid is my mother’s name. The only reason I’d ever have a daughter would be to name her Ingrid and let her cry herself to sleep. I’m sorry, I’m a sulker. I was warned. When her boyfriend wouldn’t marry her, Ingrid took his last name anyway and became Ingrid Vivian. When she was twenty, Vivian gave Ingrid an ultimatum: change in six months, or it’s over. They were driving

From the Archive: Michael e. Casteels (CAROUSEL 38)

Staff
05, 2021
Poem
0

MICHAEL E. CASTEELS 4 Poems The Cattle Business I was rousting some steers that had taken up residence in the house. I gathered a coil of rope and slung it over the pommel of my saddle. Some of these old mossyhorns had grown up here and had no wish to leave. A brindle steer lurched through the breezeway, scraping the walls with his horns. A twisty creek trickled down the front steps and pooled among