Pinhole Poetry

@pinholepoetry

Digital journal and chapbook press. We love the upside-down view and the fact that some art can only happen in the dark. Journal submissions always open! pinholepoetry.ca

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Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· 14d

The search has officially begun! We’re so excited to read your manuscripts, so head on over to pinholepoetry.ca/chapbook-contest/ to check out the guidelines and find out how to submit.

OPENS
TODAY!
ANNOUNCING OUR
FOURTH PINHOLE POETRY
CHAPBOOK SEARCH
AUGUST 1 - AUGUST 31

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· 19d

Lynn Tait joins us today to share thoughts about her writing process along with two poems: the first, ‘I Know You are Somewhere,’ an erasure of a letter written by Georgia O’Keefe, and the second, ‘Afternoon on the Back Deck.’ Thanks, Lynn! www.facebook.com/share/p/1CpK...

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· 24d

can’t make it to the in-person launch for ‘A Mudlarker’s Diary?’ Don’t worry! The zoom launch is coming soon… Aug 12, 6 pm CDT email pinholepoetry@gmail.com by Aug 11 for the zoom link

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· 26d

Mairin Catriona Landis shares her poem ‘Jonah Doubts the Plan,’ along with something that’s inspired her and a little bit about her writing process. www.facebook.com/share/1DAp29...

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· 27d

Please come out and celebrate the launch of ‘A Mudlarker’s Diary’ Ariel Gordon will read from her new chapbook, joined by Hannah Godfrey, Talia Syrie & Anucyia Victor Kitching with host John Toews Thursday, August 6, 7-9 pm at Public Domain, 633 Portage Ave, Winnipeg Hope to see you there!

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· 29d

Today, Cristalle Smith shares her poem ‘Icarus Makes a Stop Outside a Grain Elevator in Balzac & Meets the Three Fates on His Way Down to Hades.’ She also tells us how she first began engaging with poetry & a question she’s been trying to find an answer to. www.facebook.com/share/1Et5Hc...

- Couldn't that blue beater truck
be made to ferry six kids, fallen, for a day & a half? Wouldn't ashtrays, full of cigarette butts, catch coughs in charcoal filters?
Hephaestus strikes an anvil, a cadence for Daedalus to cast off.
Hera, molten & gold, pounds the dash: I didn't mean to forget this story,
but glory
my hands. I did cast you down.

Icarus Makes a Stop Outside a Grain Elevator in Balzac & Meets the Three Fates on His Way Down to Hades
Bleary-eyed Hephaestus steals away a blue knit Value Village cap, packs matchstick experiments in Mom's old blue Ford truck full of kids. Says a prayer for grouse mince girls. At the River Acheron,
Mom ignites Okotos Newport slims & the cab fills with minty smoke. Under railway tracks outside Airdrie, grey clouds smell like grey cat piss & straight sprinkled kitty litter hand-me-down
wicker furniture. That's when the truck hood erupts in flames & a clapboard trailer house on Springdale Circle breathes a vacant Cocytus wail. Coppersmiths pan for gold & penny
pinch horsey teeth to pay the Boatman's price. Mom'll throw spaghetti on a mirror she can't afford & one summer those kids from Delburne will drink Guinness & punch glass boiling water.
Burn knuckle clear to bone. Hephaestus watches glass crack, hammers open & alone. Boxed mac & cheese, cut up hotdogs on a paper plate that bends under too much weight. Barcoded library books lament
mold kitty-corner in a tent just off the road. & what does Hera feel upon her gold throne? Icarus'll crush smokes in Mom's closet until his nailbeds smell like tobacco & peppermint he never meant
to try. So, Icarus dips up fistfuls of hot cement under mid-April sun & holds a trip-twisted to Vulcan, Alberta, a stop at Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump. Hephaestus buries the lede & tunnels the River
Acheron to Styx to Cocytus. Couldn't that blue beater truck be made to ferry six kids, fallen, for a day & a half? Wouldn't
ashtrays, full of cigarette butts, catch coughs in charcoal filters?
Hephaestus strikes an anvil, a cadence for Daedalus to cast off.
Hera, molten & gold, pounds the dash: / didn't mean to forget this story,
but glory
my hands. I did cast you down.

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Jul 16

Poets, get ready! Our chapbook search starts on August 1 and will continue until August 31. Check out the details here: pinholepoetry.ca/chapbook-con...

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Jul 15

@jessicaleemcmillan.com joins us today to share her poem ‘Relative Distance,’ along with something she’s been inspired by lately. Thanks Jessica! www.facebook.com/share/p/198e...

In the gaps you appear. An afterimage,
your smile, the first to light my eyes. Then inherited migraines.
Outbursts.
Meteor showers that come and go.

Relative Distance
I survived the mother of storms,
those holes that smashed
Your mind stashed away our livelihood buried strayed
and merge
not understood
the rifts in your reality, until your centre caved.
no longer able to house me
in Earth's grip
and you
while continents continue to migrate in a tectonic rhythm over durations
by the span of our lives.
At tether end, I feel you-
another continent inching closer
each year. I wait
as planets line up, slow to the naked eye.
In the meantime, there is calm in duration, between push-pull.
I feel for the centre. Ponder the meaning of continental drift and cosmic alignment. In the gaps you appear. An afterimage, your smile, the first to light my eyes. Then inherited migraines.
Outbursts.
Meteor showers that come and go.
Planets vanish,
roving the Milky Way,
then bead the sky in gems on a line, set to one gravity.
And the ocean deepens
and spreads
new floor-all the while tightening its shores. As the core
gathers rocks to gravitate Earth
smashes us into wholes.
Concatenate stones, our bodies shared heat and parted ways and the planet inhales and
exhales atmospheres,
switches poles, with you at the other end. How could I not find calm in duration, between still
and quake?
You stand at the paradox of continental drift and hugging shores, of conjoining and opposing planets.
You, the first
ocean and singular gravity that reunion in my loving eye.
How can I not help but think, even though you're lost,
that one day, in this lifetime,
you'll return?

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Jul 13

David Anson Lee shares his poem ‘The River Buried Beneath Everything’ with us today, and tells a bit about his r vision process and some good writing advice he once received. Thanks, David!

My grandfather said there was a river under everything.
Under the cottonwoods. Under the prairie dogs. Under the rusted trucks sleeping in grass.
Even beneath grief, he said, water keeps moving.

DAVID LEE
The River Buried Beneath Everything
My grandfather said there was a river under everything.
Under the cottonwoods. Under the prairie dogs. Under the rusted trucks sleeping in grass.
Even beneath grief, he said, water keeps moving.
At night, the reservation wind pressed against our trailer walls like someone searching for entrance.
I used to lie awake listening to pipes tremble, hearing hidden currents inside the house itself.
Years later, in another state, another life, I stand in a subway tunnel while strangers study their phones like portable moons.
Somewhere overhead, a city drifts through rain. Somewhere below us, black water keeps its old agreements.
The train arrives with sparks along its ribs.
For an instant, the tunnel becomes all throat, all hunger, all migration.
I remember my grandfather's hands, river-veined, opening tobacco toward the dark.
Movement was always sacred to him. Even sorrow had current.

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Jul 9

Our first feature from issue 5.2 is for Shannon Lintott’s poem, ‘open the mouth for light’ Shannon shares what inspired their poem and tells us what they’ve been reading and wondering about lately. Thanks, Shannon!

...each and every passing thing reaches out with tendrils and hollows
such creatures, such creatures we become
and then suddenly a cave and then finally rest
as the wings of the earth fold over us
and we say thank you, thank you for letting us return

SHANNON LINTOTT
open the mouth for light
after Carol Krause
close for darkness
close it tightly to keep yourself in safely snapped shut, we begin
and down we go
into the roots and the foundations of sticks and petals and liquid jaws
scooping up the morsels of mold and decay and the eyes close over and the hands grow claws the clay becomes our flesh and the muscles learn to push
there will be slime but also silence and release
as our ears bend and seal and our bones become loose, liquid and we shiver and reverberate in delight
each and every passing thing reaches out with tendrils and hollows such creatures, such creatures we become
and then suddenly a cave and then finally rest
as the wings of the earth fold over us
and we say thank you, thank you for letting us return

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Jul 3

We're pleased to present our 18th issue, a collection of poems around themes of subways, subtext, undercurrents & all that lives underneath. It features the work of 23 poets and one pinhole photographer, & a chapbook love letter. Many thx to contributors! pinholepoetry.ca/current-issu...

Alligatoring: A Love Song
Daniel Bourne
Lunar Reflection
Catherine Graham
Is it true our civilization is on the brink of collapse?
Carol Alexander
Gives Way
Raoul Fernandes
Inherited Current
Attri Dey
Two Pinhole Photographs
Alex Skorochid
Eight Weeks
DJ Bennett
The Fort
Marc Perez
Your Sonar
Laurie Koensgen
Jonah Doubts the Plan
Mairin Catriona Landis
The River Buried Beneath Everything
David Lee
Colour Theory
Jody Baltessen
Retro Gaming
Gavin Foster

you, you, you: an erasure
Y S Lee
growth hormone by puncture
Alessandro Merendino
open the mouth for light
Shannon Lintott
Elegy for I Know Not What...
Susan Robertson
Relative Distance
Jessica Lee McMillan
Icarus Makes a Stop...
Cristalle Smith
Residue
Elowen Dovren
I Know You Are Somewhere: an erasure
Afternoon on the Back Deck
Lynn Tait
Teratology Underground
Paul Moorehead
Mobile
Frances Boyle
Central Air
Binoy Zuzarte
Notes from the Chapbook Love Letter Club From Kim Fahner to Hollay Ghadery's the blades of grass are dreaming

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Jun 5

Very excited to announce that two poems from our last year of publication have been selected for inclusion in Best Canadian Poetry 2027! Congratulations to Wren Jones and Terry Trowbridge! Snippets of their poems are included here!

pinhole_poetry Very excited to share that two poems from our last year of publication have been chosen for Best Canadian Poetry 2027!! Big congratulations to Wren Jones and Terry Trowbridge! Flip through to see a snippet of each of their selected poems.
And so happy they'll share space with Ronna Bloom, Antony Di Nardo, Maria Giesbrecht and YS Lee - all of whom are past Pinhole Poetry contributors!
So excited for all of you and absolutely thrilled that Pinhole has been lucky enough to publish such amazing talent.

TERRY TROWBRIDGE
Fortify the Islands with Flowers
Raspberry brambles spike the creek bank.
Three fulsome thistle thickets prickle my orchard clearings.
The crop is dismal. Instead, I make concessions, to pollinators and rabbits and mice.
This year I rewrite myself as a coyote myth.
Islands of herbaceous copses a third the height of trees are an archipelago architecture amidst the tree lines.
Tufts of ragweed and aster are still greening.
The coyotes will have to be inventive to explain me.
I am a creature among creative pleasures.
The real farmers, and the retirees who fake-farm for tax purposes, do not read next to unshy rabbits.
The birds fly but do not flee.

WREN JONES
At dinner out to celebrate our daughter's 20th birthday my ex offers me soup
ladles a small bowl of ramen passes it down the table-our children cup it along.
These small acts of kindness have always gutted me, forget about the bigger losses.
I stretched my arms out to him for a decade, asked him to suture my heart, too much blood, he said, too messy.
Took myself to the forest and laid down
on a mound of soft pine needles.

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Jun 5

Nancy Huggett shares her poem ‘For Better or For Worse’ with us today.

I married the ocean, now life is a daily drowning. When the tide retreats, I lie beached, until I can push myself up to comb the wrack zone for treasure.

For Better or for Worse
I married the ocean, now life is a daily drowning. When the tide retreats, I lie beached, until I can push myself up to comb the wrack zone for treasure. Sun-bleached sand dollars-only the dead, periwinkle blues, orbicular moon snails, shafts of razor clams spiking the sand-cracked carapaces of the once-alive creeping beneath the benthic foam. Also, a rusted shovel, bottles leaching micro-poisons, plastic soldiers done with defending all the borders we have built, lying half-buried, half-bent, rifles flaccid in their hands like old penises or dowsing rods. Damned if I'll let them capture and contain what flows fluid over earth's rough, tumbled body-wild veins of salmon feeding Sitka spruce, holy wells and chalk springs long past weeping, incantations I hear from our bedroom window at night. Lately, the roar of rebellion rages through hollers and hills, uncontested uprisings sweep bungalows and babies downstream, stranding safe havens in wastelands of mud while I watch from the edge, reaching out my one sweaty hand to rake what I can from the current. But there's no catching hold of the chaos. No wrenching control of tides or turn. Just this diurnal drowning, my vows, water remembering where she once flowed.

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Jun 4

Announcing the contributors for PINHOLE POETRY’S SUMMER ISSUE Look for it July 3!

PINHOLE POETRY'S
SUMMER ISSUE
Carol Alexander
Jody Baltessen
DJ Bennett
Daniel Bourne
Frances Boyle
Attri Dey
Elowen Dovren
Kim Fahner
Raoul Fernandes
Gavin Foster
Catherine Graham
Laurie Koensgen
Mairin Caitriona Landis
David Lee
Y S Lee
Shannon Lintott
Jessica Lee McMillan
Alessandro Merendino
Paul Moorehead
Marc Perez
Susan Robertson
Alex Skorochid
Cristalle Smith
Lynn Tait
Binoy Zuzarte

JULY 3

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Jun 1

Melissa Thorne shares her poem ‘[Albatross] Still Waiting’ with us today.

new horizons brush against flat water, a boundless calm
bird silhouettes contain a waiting

MELISSA THORNE
[Albatross] Still Waters
new horizons brush against flat water, a boundless calm
bird silhouettes contain a waiting
there is movement in time, pause in shale rock, threat in an absent sun a haze drenched shoreline
still
the sea birds preen, coat beak in oil waterproof feathers into sheen
as they sense incoming clouds, the pull of earth's magnetic field
urging them
to slip into open sky
return to nested home let barren rock cradle new yolk

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· May 25

Kerrie Penney shares her poem ‘Stirring’ with us today.

lam angry, impatient, just as she said. I am that Daughter lacking patience. Daughter mourning mother,
Daughter adding salt and pepper to a pot taught to stir by her.

KERRIE PENNEY
Stirring
after Kirsten Luckins
That must be the spark that once was my mother.
Whispers butter, then onion, no garlic. Curious-there was always garlic. Slice celery, dice carrots pluck tomatoes from south facing ledges, overripe to bursting or hard, mean and green.
All of them I roughly chop in the way she did not, my thudding counterpoint to her exacting cubes, unparalleled squares, a precision I cannot match.
I am angry, impatient, just as she said. I am that Daughter lacking patience. Daughter mourning mother,
Daughter adding salt and pepper to a pot taught to stir by her. Daughter falling short, craving sin, a cigarette shot of gin, outside the clouds are high and scant, a promise of heat that must be swallowed for life to keep on.

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· May 20

Jerrod Schwarz shares his poem ‘In the Chamber of Sickness, I Turn My Heart Heavenward’ with us today. Thanks, Jerrod!

My mother is here; My grandmother's here; my wife and my twin daughters are here too and they cover me with their death spices.

JERROD SCHWARZ
In the Chamber of Sickness,
I Turn My Heart Heavenward

My mother is here; My grandmother's here; my wife and my twin daughters are here too and they cover me with their death spices.
Every doctor that I have ever met is in the adjacent, bleating hallway.
So I lift my garnished body and limp
from love to the blood atrophy of love: ambush lungs, fist over fist over fist over flailing myself at whatever feels like
skin. Are you ready for the violence to let up? Can you stomach my footsteps from a bathroom to a front door? Do you
see why the hymns make more sense if you stand?

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· May 14

Today, August C. Bourré shares three short poems from issue 5.1 of Pinhole Poetry.

)whistling(the
cat)through
the house(is
an/ electric
kettle

Three Short Poems
[fog]
seen through fog: snow
on yellow leaves, concrete
apartment towers

Zoomies
)whistling(the cat) through the house(is an/ electric kettle

On Arguing with an Ex
everything said to an ex
is said
in public

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· May 13

Submissions for our themed issue closes soon! Here’s what we’re still hoping for! We've enjoyed reading your poems about subways & undercurrents. Before submissions close, we'd love to read more about subtext & palimpsests & things deeply felt but left unsaid. pinholepoetry.ca/poetry-pinho...

We're enjoying all the submissions we're receiving about subways and things submerged. In these last few days before we close up our themed issue call, we'd love to read more poems about subtext and palimpsests and things deeply felt but left unsaid.

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· May 12

@robin-susanto.bsky.social shares his poem ‘In Telegraph Cove’ with us today, along with some of his thoughts on silence and what it means to him. Thanks, Robin!

Over the dirt road and the boathouse the boardwalk that succumbs slat by slat sinks its shadow to thicken the sea, the sleep of orcas you can scoop in your hand the foetal curl of shrimp, the eyeless anemones.

ROBIN SUSANTO
In Telegraph Cove
When you yourself are no one thought, when evening pours as if from a drain board, and the trees with lowered eyes...
Somewhere is sunset.
Over the dirt road and the boathouse the boardwalk that succumbs slat by slat sinks its shadow to thicken the sea, the sleep of orcas you can scoop in your hand the foetal curl of shrimp, the eyeless anemones.
It's almost betrayal that you don't dive in blindly to where summer is waiting asleep for next year's sun.
And you
between the cabin lights, the crackling speech of men
and the depth you have released back into the depth.

Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
I wrote "Telegraph Cove" a while back. It was inspired during a solo bicycle tour through Vancouver Island. It was pre-google map, pre-social media. I bought a paper map from a gas station, pointed my front wheel toward the ferry, and then started pedalling. The cove found me a couple days later. It was arrestingly gorgeous. I had to stop and stayed the night. I don't have a visual memory of the place, what the cliffs looked like, the fjords, the sky, the ocean. But I there is a certain density in the water. It was as if it was thickened with silence, and the this silence was speaking. My poem was an attempt to word that speech.

How do you revise your work?
I am a long-game writer. I would "finish" a poem, leave it for a long time, sometimes years, and then return to it. If it still "rings" then it's a good one. Sometimes, even if it has lost the sheen of that first encounter, I could feel a something under the surtace, and I would polish it to bring it to light: editing.
In terms of poetic style or craft, is there a big question you are trying to find an answer for?
Silence. There is a Douglas fir across the street, standing taller than my six-storey condo building. What is it saying, every time I see it outside my window? The face of my cat, even when it is aggressively meowing "feed me." There is a silence under that sound, a presence. I am most at peace when I am listening to nature.
There is a silence I am happy to keep failing at wording.

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· May 8

Lana Crossman shares her poem ‘Gem Lake’ from Pinhole Poetry issue 5.1

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· May 6

Sending out some bundles and parts of subscriptions today! Still time to order yours … pinholepoetry.ca/product-cate...

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Apr 30

Sarah Orman shares her poem ‘Recent Events’ with us today. You can read the full poem in issue 5.1 of Pinhole Poetry. pinholepoetry.ca/19410-2/

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Apr 28

Steve Hickoff shares his poem ‘Catch & Release’ from Issue 5.1 of Pinhole Poetry. Read the full poem here: pinholepoetry.ca/19344-2/

Image of a hand placing a small fish back into the water with the following text overwritten:

And I watch you cough back
as a child is born,
aware of the morning light with red gills flaring...

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Apr 27

We are so excited to share the covers of our upcoming Summer 2026 titles: Andrew French, ‘Fists You’ve Called Home’ Ariel Gordon, ‘A Mudlarker’s Diary’ & LM Rochefort, ‘Living With The Animals’ (cover illustrated by artist Lucy Zou) Head over to the pinholepoetry.ca web shop to pre-order yours!

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Apr 25

Special thanks to all who came out to support this chapbook—guest readers Janet, Winston, Dale and Aidan, all the people who bought copies & everyone else who filled the room with warmth & love for poetry.

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Apr 25

So much beautiful light in the room last night as Jessica Lee McMillan’s ‘shine like a dime in the dirt under the moon’ launched into the world.

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Apr 24

A lovely summary of @jessicaleemcmillan.com chapbook which she will be launching tonight at the Anvil Centre. Come out and celebrate with if you are in the area - you can pick up a copy of your own! And if you aren’t in the area, we have an online shop for that: pinholepoetry.ca/shoppoetry/

$In Jessica Lee McMillan's Shine Like a Dime in the Dirt Under the Moon, light is a messenger. It catches and illuminates, scatters and constellates, pools in quiet moments, reflects and refracts.$

And in this light, poems weave memory and music in the galaxies of dust and ash that accumulate in the overlooked, everyday details of our lives.
Bewildering, surprising, and looped with the immeasurable hope at work in its attentiveness, McMillan's chapbook showcases the transformative power of her observations by inviting readers to be an integral part of this universe.
Another hand-crafted original designed by @erin_bedford for Pinhole Poetry, this book will be launched tomorrow from 6:30-8pm PST at the Anvil Centre, Studio
417, 4th Floor, 777 Columbia St, in New Westminster, BC.
Come on out and support this amazing writer or buy it in the pinhole_poetry shop!

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Apr 23

Vikki C. shares her poem ‘Portrait of a Heart in Love, At World’s End’ from Pinhole Poetry issue 5.1. Read the full poem here pinholepoetry.ca/19347-2/

Pinhole Poetry@pinholepoetry· Apr 21

Today, Justine Berezintsev shares her poem ‘Priority to Cargo’ Read the full poem in issue 5.1! pinholepoetry.ca/19355-2/