Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them. — Rainer Maria Rilke
I sat in a fluorescently lit makeshift office of an albergue with a woman in a cheetah-print dress, Gucci belt wrapped around her waist, and high heels that kept tap-tapping at the linoleum floor. Her face was steeled before me. . . .
I. The Drain
Vanishing Time (VT) = seventeen years
My father went to an art house cinema in Caracas that used to be teeming with young people. I wonder if that is what he sought there, the youth slipping from . . .
The wooden Chinese junk, with its carved crew, used to sit on a small table in Grandfather’s bedroom, before his death. It had been a gift from his friend Burlingame when they were both young. Burlingame had brought it back . . .
The following conversation took place at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto on September 15, 2025, presented by the Writer’s Trust of Canada in honour of Leslie Jamison’s receipt of the Weston International Award, supported by the Hilary and Galen . . .
My face is small, compared
to the rest of me,though maybeothers experience my face
as large compared to their
own faces or those
of their precious
brats, whose hats
are too big for their heads.
Small is good, it’s
been . . .
First Photograph of My Father, My Brothers and Sisters, and Me, with Migrants from Central America
My father is the man on the far left, at the top.
He peeks out between the sombrero of Nicolás,
a Honduran, and my . . .
Hongkong seems very quiet, but outsiders do not know whether the Chinese who live here are comfortable or not.Men communicate their thoughts and feelings through writing, yet most Chinese nowadays are still unable to express themselves this way. This . . .
I first came across the work of Colm Tóibín when I was doing a special series on Ireland for Writers & Company some thirty years ago, and I’ve admired him ever since. At the time, he was one of the . . .
For thirty-three years, Eleanor Wachtel hosted CBC’s Writers & Company. Each week, her hour-long conversations—generous, probing, serious, illuminating—opened windows from every corner in Canada into the worlds of artists, writers, photographers and filmmakers, among them Carol Shields, Mordecai Richler, . . .
great riot
makes
riot
riotous, disorderly, intimidating, provocative
encouraging
the courage prohibited by law
fluid assembly
so long as the riot
ebbs and flows
take body armour, googles, a respirator
a radio transceiver, plastic ties, laser pointers, and materials
to . . .
The shop’s sign was posted near the roof for maximum visibility from the parking lot and motorway, but because I walked on the strip mall’s sidewalk, under the overhang, I passed the door once, twice, three times before I saw . . .
Juan José ArreolaParis, 20 September 1954
Dear Arreola,
Several weeks ago Emma sent me your two books, and when I opened them I found a dedication that filled me with joy. But all that was nothing compared to the joy . . .
On May 14, 2024, at the Toronto Reference Library, I spoke to Claire Messud about her new novel, This Strange Eventful History. To prepare, I watched some of her interviews. I wondered what kinds of questions she asked when . . .
Joanna Biggs’s essay “Smarrimento,” featured in the winter 2025 issue of Brick, opens with a description of Monica Vitti’s sleepy eyes, her ruffling hands, her perfectly sculpted hair—hair so animate it literally “feels.” Visual enchantment is an entry point—for . . .
Say woodcutter, not tyrant. Repetition, not
apocalypse. Love, not disappearance.Melancholy, not depression. Derrida says that the
melancholic is one who refuses to forget. That
melancholy is necessary. I have learned to keep my . . .
A crescent moon in winter was a symbol of melancholy.
A man with shoulders like an owl’s was assumed to be cruel.
A woman’s eyebrows were commonly compared to hills in spring.
After a failed coup, the warlord Tung Chou . . .
The following conversation took place at the Toronto Reference Library on September 11, 2024, to celebrate the release of Dionne Brand’s Salvage: Readings from the Wreck.David Chariandy: You describe Salvage as a kind of forensics of how . . .
The girl is a reader, first and foremost. She lives in an apartment in a city that is not the city of her childhood. She waits tables and attends classes on English literature. Daniel Gluck, the elderly interlocutor in Ali . . .
Throughout his career, Paul Holdengräber has chronicled the times we live in by interviewing artists who broaden our sense of creative life. This work continued through the start of the pandemic with The Quarantine Tapes, which he hosted for . . .
In the summer of 2023, Amitava Kumar undertook a journey through small towns and cities beside the Ganges, from Devprayag, in the Himalayan foothills, to the Sundarbans, where the river empties into the Bay of Bengal.
Postmarked Haridwar
The water . . .