First, a preface, which by the end will very nearly be maudlin.

This was sort of a funny year for me when it came to having work published. It was a relatively light year in some ways because the major focus was on MA|DE’s debut full-length poetry collection, ZZOO, and touring that to 10 cities, and starting newsletters, and doing interviews, and etc., all of which was enormously exciting since MA|DE had been diligently working together for 7 years before our first book came to fruition.

Among all that, though, there were still various journal publications, including a few of perhaps the proudest moments of my career, both in terms of the pieces feeling like work that reflects some of my deepest-held artistic aspirations, and in terms of finding venues that were a seamless fit. It was also a surprise to me that a quarter of my publications were essays (I do not consider myself an essayist). It was ironic, too, that for a year in which I got my first Canada Council grant for fiction, and when most of the drafting work I did was fiction-related, I managed to avoid publishing a single word of fiction.

It’s no joke trying to be a professional artist while holding down a full-time day job and maintaining a semblance of a life outside of work. (For me, “life” is Mark, and two dogs, and my parents, and a couple of chronic illnesses, and, if I’m lucky, doing something for purely social reasons every few weeks.) I know this is a common experience for many of us, and if it’s not a full-time job occupying you then maybe it’s full-time management of disability, or full-time caring for children and loved ones, or any number of the million other tasks survival in our society demands of us.

On this last day of the year, I’m feeling sentimental about everyone who makes art despite the utter lack of time and energy you probably have most days, and despite the myriad consumable distractions available, and despite the fact that probably no one is asking you to continue. In the moments, far and few between, when I manage to believe the world is not lost, I am often thinking of artists I love who have persisted in making art, and others who persevere in doing whatever is most important and necessary to create pockets of refuge in a sometimes brutal and often banal existence.

I look forward, as much as any cynic can, to another year of working alongside you.

Anyhow, here’s the list.

BOOKS

• ZZOO by MA|DE (Palimpsest Press)

POEMS

• “Villiform” in Midnight Sun, from The Work Is Done When We Are Dead, forthcoming in 2026 from Guernica Editions
• “Word Problems” in The Book of Jobs (anthology), ONE ART, also from Work
• “Desert Fauna” and “Grape” in The Malahat Review, from my manuscript in progress LIVE FROM THE S—IDE —LINE
• “We Go Down to the Sea of Myrrh” in CV2, from the same manuscript
• “Sky Bird” in The League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause, from MA|DE’s ZZOO

ESSAYS & REVIEWS

• “Anatomy of a Post-True Crime Novel” in Hamilton Review of Books, which I truly think may have been my most important piece of writing this year. It’s a work of literary criticism that uses 5 novels to theorize a way forward for writing about violence in the wake of very deserved criticisms of the true crime genre.
• “How to Love a Book Blurb” in Writer’s Digest
• Review of Hollay Ghadery’s Widow Fantasies in The Miramichi Reader