The Open Issue

Souvankham Thammavongsa talks with Quentin Mills-Fenn, a.k.a. local critical writer and publicist, Bruce Symenka, about her third and most recent collection of poetry, Light. Her poem “Water” first appeared in CV2 in 2002 and then again when it was selected to receive the Lina Chartrand Poetry Award, an annual award that goes to a woman poet published in the previous year of CV2. “Water” hit the poetic sweet spot dead on. Spare, elegant and meditative, Souvankham’s work dispatches quickly the stratums of modern distraction most of us struggle with and heads for the organic — crystalline, moment of seeing — of understanding. Also in this issue you will find new work by a host of new and familiar poets including John Barton, Susan McCaslin, Daniel Cowper, Caitlynn Cummings, Ben Murray and Elise Marcella Godfrey. We also have a couple of reviews to round things out and the winning entries for the 2013 Young Buck Poetry Prize.