Northern Poetry Review is an online home for poems, reviews of poetry books, articles and interviews, with emphasis on the Canadian poetry scene. We chose the NPR acronym despite that lovely institution, National Public Radio. The editors of the site, Alex Boyd and Dani Couture, will publish sample poems by selected poets, and hope to encourage accessible, honest and diplomatic reviews of books published across the country written by reviewers across the country.
As we hope to encourage reviews by writers across the country, publishers are requested to refrain from mailing books to us that will need to be redirected to the reviewer. Instead, we ask that books be sent directly to the reviewer when a review is arranged.
Alex Boyd is the reviews editor, and Dani Couture is the poetry editor. Both editors arrange interviews and articles. We're sorry, but at this time we don't accept unsolicited poetry submissions. If you are interested in reviewing for the site, please contact Alex. If you have a book you'd like to see reviewed, feel free to email Alex, but please understand NPR is maintained in addition to full-time jobs and other commitments, and while encouraging a limited number of reviewers to generously donate their time.
Alex Boyd writes poems, fiction, reviews and essays, and has had reviews and articles published in magazines and newspapers such as Books in Canada, The Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire and on various websites such as The Danforth Review and poetryx.com. In Toronto he is the organizer and host of the popular IV lounge reading series. His first full-length book of poems, Making Bones Walk, is published by Luna Publications.
Dani Couture is a writer currently living in Toronto. She has written reviews, articles and essays for Word: the magazine for readers and writers, The Danforth Review, GoodReports and the Globe and Mail. Her first full-length book of poems, "good meat", was published by Pedlar Press in 2006.
Canadians have an odd relationship to the U.S. We define ourselves against them, first of all. Many of us in urban centres find guns appalling, our history is closer to compromise than conflict, possibly born out of the need to accommodate both French and English, and the same need has introduced a greater love -- at least in theory -- of diversity, and a recognition diversity is a strength, not a weakness. There is a distinct Canadian identity that Canadians...continue reading
Your second collection of poems, The Cold Panes of Surfaces, is out now. Your first book, Bonfires, won the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award in 2004. Did winning a national award for your first book bolster your artistic confidence while working on your second, or did you find it daunting, as though you had more to live up to than other poets working on a second collection?
I think it certainly gave me a boost of confidence and the permission I needed to do what I wanted to do artistically with the second book. I didn't feel any outside pressure because of winning the CAA award, or feel that I had any expectations to live up to. Winning the award was terrific, and it was good publicity, but it was also an education on how fleeting such praise can be, and how it leaves your writing life virtually...continue reading