Issue 141

Benoit Jutras

‘Our nation is a spell of nerves and gas. We say yes to monsters, to elegies etched in our palms.’ Translated by Daniel Canty.

Issue 141

Johanna Skibsrud

‘The history of human thought, she would sigh despairingly, was nothing more, after all, than an arduous dream.’

Issue 141

Armand Garnet Ruffo

‘It was / a line that signaled absolute forgetting / and it made me want to weep into my drink’

Alexander MacLeod

‘It is important to establish, before this begins, that I never thought of myself as an animal person.’

Catherine Leroux & Madeleine Thien

Issue 141

Alex Leslie

‘There was no inquiry and no report either because we all have new names now.’

Issue 141

Fanny Britt

‘Just as it can spur me on, worry is adept at stifling and silencing.’

Dominique Fortier

‘For years, you have been passing through my life; like a comet, disappearing as quickly as you come.’ Translated by Rhonda Mullins.

Rawi Hage

‘Circuses have the capacity to transform those rejected by society – the acrobats, rope-walkers, puppeteers and expelled demons – into wonders and celebrities.’

Margaret Atwood

‘Mushrooms have long memories. Some of them are thousands of years old. However, they are not always very talkative.’

Karen Solie

‘The Paying Guest rises in the middle of the night / to turn off the radio where no radio exists’

Larry Tremblay

‘I dreamed of dictionaries. I crammed myself with liquorice, honeymoons, caramels.’

Anosh Irani

‘He was at home in the water, and it was from here that he would find ways to live, reasons to live.’

Chloé Savoie-Bernard

‘The insects dissect the layers of my father’s life, our lives and my mother’s life that have collected in this sad house.’ Translated from the French by Neil Smith.