The Interview Issue

Welcome to Vol 45.3 of CV2, the Winter 2023 issue, featuring poems, interviews, and reviews that we’re sure will warm your toes and your brains alike.

As is the case with every issue of CV2, we’re pleased to share with you what we hope will feel like a diverse array of poems and poetic writing, all exploring fresh, and often unexpected-yet-uncannily familiar avenues of thought. In “Flying V,” Jeremy Loveday googles “Why have Canada Geese stopped migrating?” Sarah Yi Mei Tsiang examines what it means to feel “Vincible.” Olajide Salawu shares with us a “Biography of a Fiji Man.” Carolyn Smart walks us through grief and love with “Grip” and “At the Cancer Centre doors.” Erica Jomphe shares two piercing poems written in French, “Sagittarius A*” and “Alfreda.” Emily Arnelien introduces a fresh addition to the canon of the Ophelia poem—to give you a taste of just a few of the treats that await you in the following pages.

In addition to all this great poetry, we’re also excited to share Daniel A. Rabuzzi’s enthusiastic and insightful review of Poetry’s Geographies: A Transatlantic Anthology of Translations, edited by Katherine M. Hedeen and Zoë Skoulding, which “makes a strong contribution to the field of translation poetics, especially within post- and decolonialist discussions, and as part of more holistic efforts at cultural translation—and uses compelling examples (57 poems translated into English by 12 poets, including Canadian Erín Moure, from Arabic, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Persian, Galician, and French).”

This special issue also features not just one, but two interviews, both conducted by our summer practicum student, Chloe Gandy, and both exploring poetry’s “tenderness, its truth, its rigidity, and its pretension.” Chloe’s discussions with poets Anna Swanson and Jónína Kirton provide keen insights into the ways in which poetry and poetic spaces can sometimes feel inaccessible and unwelcoming, and how we, as a community, might work collectively to change this. As Anna shares in her interview: “I have a deep appreciation for people who are building and experimenting with new ways of learning about poetry and creativity that try not to re-create the power structures we live within (white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, etc.). I’m not sure it’s possible to avoid these structures of harm entirely, but the intention to build a different kind of container is important.”

And with that, please come on in to what we hope is one small example of a “different kind of container” for poetry and poetic thought: a collection whose mission is to make you feel welcomed into the poetic space it creates for you as you wander its pages. Thank you for being here, and enjoy.