Canadian Writer blog links

Funny, all this time I was labouring under the impression -- the delusion, as it turns out -- that for some mysterious reason I was one of the few Canadians on the poetblog block. This may have been true when I started back in May, 2004, but it sure ain't true now. Be that as it may, most of my little blog community -- found mostly via either the seemingly exhaustive blogroll on Silliman's Blog or Victoria Chang's deceased blog -- comes from south of the border. (See links lists to the right.) That may be soon a'changing. Here's an extensive listing of Canadian poet/literary bloggers -- a resource for myself as much as for others -- cut and pasted directly from Rob McLennan's blog. (A huge thanks, Rob.) As he puts it, why do so many of them have not a single link to another...? Yeah, why? Why have we been labouring in isolation from each other? These include (and the rest of the commentary is Rob's, not mine):

Stuart Ross (Toronto), Michael Winter (Toronto/Newfoundland; writing these lovely bits of nonfiction/fictions), Corey Frost (Montreal/New York), poet/critic Gregory Betts (St. Catharine's ON), fiction writer Kate Sutherland (Toronto), expat Sina Queyras (New York), Jennifer Mulligan (Ottawa/Gatineau), Mark Truscott (Toronto), former Ottawa resident Wanda O'Connor (Montreal), Jon
Paul Fiorentino (Montreal), Rhona McAdam (Victoria), Ariel Gordon & her other one (Winnipeg), Tracy Hamon (Regina), Karla Andrich (Winnipeg), Jennifer LoveGrove (Toronto), Ken Kowal (Winnipeg), Rob Budde (Prince George BC), Jordan Scott (Coquitlam BC/Calgary), unknown (Toronto), Gary Barwin (Hamilton ON), Julia Williams (Calgary), George Murray (now in St. Johns NFLD), Thomas Wharton (Edmonton), Erin Noteboom (Waterloo ON), Zoe Whittall (Toronto), Harold Rhenisch & another one (150 Mile House BC), Kellie Underhill (Sackville NB), Peter Garner (Montreal), Bernadette Wagner (Regina), Jan Lars Jensen (Nova Scotia), J.R. Carpenter (Montreal), Pearl Pirie (Ottawa), Claude Lalumiere (Montreal), Abigail Friedman (QC), Marcus McCann (Ottawa), Lou Reeves (Ottawa), Nienke Hinton (Toronto), "mompoet" (Port Moody BC), Vincent Tinguely (Montreal), Sherwin Tjia (Montreal), Shawnda Wilson (Montreal), Jude Goodwin (Squamish BC), Jim Munro (Toronto), William Gibson (Vancouver), etc

more focused on poetry,

including poet ryan fitzpatrick (Calgary), Bywords editor Amanda Earl (Ottawa), Jeremy Stewart (Prince George BC), Denielle (Prince George BC), Ian Whistle (Nepean ON/Winnipeg), Jennifer Mulligan (Ottawa/Gatineau), Chris Hutchinson (Vancouver), Weldon Hunter (Vancouver), etc

reviews & announcements,

including poet/editor derek beaulieu (Calgary), former Ottawa resident Laurie Fuhr (Calgary), Bywords editor Amanda Earl (Ottawa), Nathaniel G. Moore (Toronto), kevin Spenst (Vancouver) etc

entertaining visuals, whether artwork, comic books or visual/concrete poetry:

ross priddle (Medicine Hat AB), Tom Fowler (Ottawa) etc

many of which still work some variant on all of the above (none of these considerations, as I give them, are absolute). What floors me are the ones who can keep more than one blog going at a time (I can barely keep up with my one). Why does Toronto lad Nathaniel G. Moore need one, two, three, four blogs? There's even a writers retreat with a blog, & then of course the blog for the late Montreal poet Irving Layton...

The collaborative ones are particularly interesting, including the one Ariel Gordon, Bren Simmers & others keep, as well as this one (when does Gordon find time to do anything else?) or this one, by folk I don't seem to know, as are the geographically-related collaborative blogs, including the one Rob Budde plays about in his northern British Columbia, The Calgary Blow-Out, or trans-cribing Canada, the Winnipeg Words, or my own attempts through the ottawa poetry newsletter. I think Anansi has touring authors get blogs, which is why (it seems) Lisa Moore started, and Michael Winter too, but he keeps going...

Vancouver writer/editor Wayde Compton keeps one with others, on his Hogan's Alley Project, working to celebrate the early histories of the black community in Vancouver. Apparently Toronto poet and ECW Press editor Michael Holmes has started one for mostly ECW business; The Mercury Press also has one for notices (& then all the others on my sidebar that I just haven't mentioned...). Has the blog simply replaced the noticeboard?

And then there are all the Canadians living abroad, working their own variations, including Sina Queyras (Toronto/Montreal) and Corey Frost & his other one (Montreal) wandering New York, or Todd Swift (Montreal), Frances Kruk (Calgary), Richard Rathwell (Ottawa/Vancouver) and John Stiles (Nova Scotia), currently living in England, or poet Neile Graham in Seattle. Where else?