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Platforms and Sites

A Poetry Mixtape Edited by Phoebe Wang

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The Poems

My Grandmother’s Love Letters

Hart Crane

There are no stars tonight

But those of memory.

Yet how much room for memory there is

In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room...

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Letters

Russell Thornton

I threw away your letters.

Years ago, just like that.

The tight black swirls,

circles and strokes

filling fine sheets —

I would not see them again....

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Dear Diaspora Child

Cicely Belle Blain

it's okay if you only learned about your culture from Google

it's okay if you only read your language at the public library

it's...

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Spacetime

Yusuf Saadi

We Twitter, Tinder, Tumblr through eternity. Loquacious

text messages flit from fingertips, waves of data spill

through our skulls. Every cm² of oxygen overflowing...

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Dear Updike

Evelyn Lau

I dreaded those future aeons when I would not be present —

an endless succession of days I would miss, with their own

news and songs and styles of machine. ...

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Internet Safety

Sennah Yee

My dad taught me to never give out my real name, age,

address, or photos. This seemed obvious to me. My fake

birthday entry was always my crush's birthday plus a

...

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An Online Friend Dies Somewhere Outside the Internet

Raoul Fernandes

Freezes, goes blue screen, shuts down. Dead pixel, dark.

Ghost echoes, lossy in the source code. Time zones away,

people who have actually shaken hands with my online friend...

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Livejournal.com/lonelyradio

Kayla Czaga

We could read your words from anywhere

but you felt like the only soul sitting

in your swivel chair listening to your parents

dream-breathing down the hall...

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The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

Ezra Pound

After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate,...

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Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris

Raymond Antrobus

When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car

the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.

I use the past tense though this is irrelevant

in Daniel's language, which...

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Inner Life

Ariana Reines

Those tweets I sent about Duke Ellington

While my mom was being evicted again

According to what ethics under the sun

Can I possibly have been speaking? A

Kind...

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Where There’s a Wall

Joy Kogawa

Where there’s a wall

there’s a way through a

gate or door. There’s even

...

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The Playlist

We are currently adding to the Mixtape playlists, so check back soon and often! Send us your recitation of one the poems in this Mixtape, and we may add it to the Playlist!

Thierney Dignadice: "Two Guns In The Sky For Daniel Harris" by Raymond Antrobus

Anisa Pirani: “Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris” by Raymond Antrobus

Stephanie Omorotionmwan: "Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris" by Raymond Antrobus

Jenny Wang: "Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris" by Raymond Antrobus

Amira Aouchiche: "Dear Diaspora Child" by Cicely Belle Blain

Chandra Miller: “Where There’s a Wall” by Joy Kogawa

Ghada Charki: “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound

Recommended Reading

Teaching Epistolary Poems:

Brooks-Motl, Hannah. “Learning the Epistolary Poem.” Poetry Foundation. 29 August 2013.

Rekdal, Paisley. “Paisley Rekdale– The Epistolary Poem.” Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies: In the Classroom Blog Series. 15 March 2020.

Zdanys, Jonas, ed. Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems. Lamar University Press, 2015.

Historical Epistolary Poems:

Horace; Ferry, David, trans. The Epistles of Horace. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997.

Finch, Anne, Countess of Winchilsea. “A Letter to Daphnis.” 1685.

Montague, Lady Mary Wortley. “Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband." 1724.

Mlinko, Ange. “Anne Finch: Countess of Winchilsea: ‘The Answer’". Poetry Foundation. 14 July 2010.

Ovid; Murgatroyd, Paul, Bridget Reeves, Sarah Parker, trans. Ovid's Heroides: A New Translation and Critical Essays. Routledge, 2017.

Pope, Alexander “Eloisa to Abelard”, 1717.

Pope, Alexander “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot”, 1735.

Contemporary Epistolary Poems:

Browne, Laynie. The Desire of Letters. Counterpath Press. 2010.

Hughes, Langston. “Letter.” Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

Schuyler, James. “Letter Poem to Kenneth Koch.” Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2010.

Knight, Chelene. Dear Current Occupant: A Memoir. Bookhug Press, 2018

Lai, Larissa. Iron Goddess of Mercy. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021.

Mayer, Bernadette. The Desire of Mothers to Please Others in Letters. Hard Press Editions, 1994, reissued by Nightboat Books, 2017.

Pollard, Clare. Ovid’s Heroines. Bloodaxe Books, 2013.

Tsiang, Sarah Yi-Mei, Status Update. Oolichan Books, 2015.

Phoebe‘s Liner Notes

Papryrus scrolls or Facetime calls– what we used to communicate has changed, but the role of poetry has connected us for millennia. In fact, this is one of the vital functions of poetry– to reach ears over time and space. This mixtape includes poems that take the form of letters, known as ‘epistolary’ poems. This poetic form has roots in classical poets such as Ovid and Horace, and in the 17^th and 18^th century, poems of address would contain debates and professions of friendship and love. The form continues to be reimagined by Canadian and American poets, with simple notes such as William Carlos’ William’s “This Is Just to Say”. While technology has evolved, the motivation to express a message to a specific other remains unchanged. These poems place the reader into the position of someone listening in to a private exchange. There is a unique tension in how a poem which begins as an intimate need becomes a public document and expression.

We begin with Ezra Pound’s translation of Li Po’s “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”, a letter that arranges a reunion between a husband and his young wife, while also drawing a portrait of a young woman who finds the language to tell her own story. Hart Crane is another modernist poet, whose grandmother’s letter gives rise to the “stumble” of memory. We move to Canadian contemporary poets, where Russell Thornton’s epistle is an act of letting go, Evelyn Lau’s address is both an elegy to another author in a season when creativity is stinted, and Joy Kogawa asks how letters might slip through walls of violence and oppression. Cecily Belle Bains’ “Dear Diaspora Child” creates its own recipients, as any reader who has never “set foot on the soil of your people” is reassured by the cascading repetition of her poem.

As letters are replaced with emails, texts, social media, phone and video calls, sites and blogs, this collection mixes in poems that allude to these platforms. They address the fear of disconnection and the strangeness of learning about someone through the filter of screens. Paradoxically, these forms of media are barriers as well as facilitators of connection. Learning of a death of an online friend, Raoul Fernandes is doubly removed, first physically from the long distance loss and again as the blue screen cannot facilitate the speaker’s grief. In “SpaceTime,” Yusef Saadi’s jumble of platforms and plethora of shared data and images can’t fill a lifetime. Sennah Yee’s “Internet Safety” contains other dangers, where an online avatar is a means of assuming an identity outside of her racialized one.

For US poet Raymond Antrobus, reading about the killing of a deaf man on his phone brings the acts of police brutality closer, not further from his present. Ariana Reines describes her flickering thoughts while tweeting, “wavering/Pieces of consciousness eloquently/ Describing to me giving up on the thought/ Of ever reaching you.” These poems may not ever reach their intended recipients, but they reach us across time and space with their wishes for authentic connections. These poems are a reminder that even in times of social isolation, someone’s always listening.

About Phoebe

Phoebe Wang (she/her) is a first-generation Chinese Canadian writer and educator. Her collection of poetry, Admission Requirements, published with McClelland & Stewart in 2017 and was nominated for the Trillium Book Award. Waking Occupation, her second collection, is forthcoming in Spring 2022. She works at OCAD University as a Writing and Learning... More

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Platforms and Sites

A Poetry Mixtape Edited by Phoebe Wang

The Poems

My Grandmother’s Love Letters

Letters

Dear Diaspora Child

Spacetime

Dear Updike

Internet Safety

An Online Friend Dies Somewhere Outside the Internet

Livejournal.com/lonelyradio

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris

Inner Life

Where There’s a Wall

The Playlist

Recommended Reading

Teaching Epistolary Poems:

Historical Epistolary Poems:

Contemporary Epistolary Poems:

Phoebe‘s Liner Notes

About Phoebe