Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 40
with Phoebe Wang, Hollay Ghadery, Myna Wallin, Jérôme Melançon, and Kirby
Hello friends,
I’m excited to share Issue 40 with you which includes Phoebe Wang’s essay “Becoming Crew” from her new collection Relative to Wind: On Sailing, Craft, and Community; Hollay Ghadery “On Writing While Neurodiverging”; two poems from Myna Wallin’s latest collection, The Suicide Tourist; three poems from Kirby’s latest collection, she, translated into French by poet Jérôme Melançon; “A Young Boy on Whose Father a Tree Has Fallen,” an old story of mine from 2002, and ICYMI Issue 40’s Gatherings.
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xo
Kathryn
Phoebe Wang | Issue 40
Becoming Crew
Will I make it will I make it will I?
It’s a few minutes past five on a sharp spring afternoon. I gaze ahead at the dove-grey slice of lake. It’s not far, but there are so many crosswalks and intersections slowing me down. Every time a big red hand goes up, I’m forced to stop running. I suck in big breaths of air, check my phone, and wedge my body ahead of the other pedestrians. People—there are so many people in my way. Office workers power-walking to Union Station, tourists walking three or four abreast, couples arm in arm, Blue Jays fans clogging York Street near the stadium. I jog underneath the Gardiner Expressway and across streetcar tracks toward the waterfront. To anyone watching, I look like another irritable, impatient Torontonian. I feel like I’m fleeing and chasing something at the same time.
Hollay Ghadery | Issue 40
Only the Sock Speaks: On Writing While Neurodiverging
When my first book came out in 2021—Fuse, a memoir of mixed race identity and mental illness that dove into my long history of eating disorders, addiction, OCD, self-harm, and anxiety—many readers commented on its unusual structure. Unlike many memoirs, it’s not chronological. It's structured thematically. A veritable Jackson Pollock of feeling. Any loose chronological organization owes thanks to my editor, who convinced me that as a memoir, I needed to root the reader in some vague notion of time.
Which was fair enough.
Myna Wallin | Issue 40
Side Effects
Lithium—my saviour,
mummified me in cotton batting,
weightless.
I leave softer footprints.
The bloodhounds quiet,
curl up at my feet.
I feel blackness
peel off the walls,
and I am grateful.
3 poems from "she"
Poet, Jérôme Melançon and I met, quite by chance a couple of years ago. They were in town for a conference (“profs who always find ways to work more...”) and emailed he was sad to have missed knife | fork | book as a physical place, asking for bookshop recommendations, and, missing KFB as a place myself, I invited him over since my living room is the next best thing. We lunched on the balcony, I supplied him with poetry and he was kind enough to write about his engagement with Poetry is Queer (later posted in Carousel Magazine). We’ve been in touch sporadically since then.
Then, one morning, I woke up to these beauteous translations by Jérôme to three poems from my new collection, she. It’s the first time (I’m aware of) my work has ever been translated (here, from English to French) and we’re delighted to share them with you. Enjoy.
A Young Boy on Whose Father a Tree Had Fallen
“A Young Boy on Whose Father a Tree Had Fallen” is fictionalized account of a family story about the loss of a beloved pet.
I wrote this story many years ago, and it was one of the rare writing experiences I’ve had where I felt like I was channelling the story or rather the story was being channeled to me—not quite sure how channeling works, but that’s what it felt like.
Has that ever happened to you? It’s quite and experience, and I’m not sure I’d even believe it if it hadn’t happened to me.
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