Author Archives: emmross

Hello Toronto

Ascribing writerly identity to a city implies more than physically occupying a 700 square foot portion of it. Continue reading

Posted in Health, Life, Poetry | 3 Comments

Conversation

I mean, Toronto? Like, Margaret Atwood lives there. (Embarrassingly yes, I actually did say that at one point.) I didn’t have any solid preconceptions about what or where I was moving. Continue reading

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Empathy, compassion, and fear

I envisioned a room full of passionate and bad writers, a room reeking of false hope and four-syllable adjectives and word-droppings like “semiotics” and “post-post-modernism.” I pictured cardigans and moleskines and mary janes. Continue reading

Posted in Learning, Teaching | 1 Comment

What’s it like to take a writing workshop?

What was it like to take a writing workshop if you’d never taken one before? Did it help or hinder writing? Both? Continue reading

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Karen Solie and “I”

One of the things I liked most about the Griffin Prize nominations this year was rooting for Karen Solie and that made for some fun suspense. I wasn’t the only one – Zoe Whittall wrote for Quill & Quire that … Continue reading

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The risks of I-ness

The last few weeks of Occupational Hazards have dwelled on the physicality of writing and I’d like to shift the focus now to the art itself, or, although I resist this concept, the final product. I find myself increasingly intrigued … Continue reading

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Portable solitude

The cart rolled less smoothly than I imagined it would. The typewriter and my body shivered and bounced with the smallest imperfections in the sidewalk, out of time with one another, making my hands fumble for the home row. Continue reading

Posted in Criticism, Poetry | 2 Comments

Writer in residence

Want to know what this is? I sure did. It’s the Nomadesk — a project by artist J.P. King and endowed by writer extraordinaire Kim Fu. Stay tuned for Kim’s post about her body- and poetry-building journey through the streets … Continue reading

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Ray Hsu interviews Betsy Warland about the ergonomics of writing

Ergonomics is crucial to our health and resilience and thus our ability to write as well as we can. Continue reading

Posted in Health, Life, Reading, Teaching | 1 Comment

Karen Shklanka on occupational hazards: Stand, walk, and lie down

Writing can be fatal. Humans are not designed to sit. With sitting, there’s more pressure on the shock-absorbing discs in our necks and backs than during a slow jog. Sitting too much eventually gives us assassin fat (sneaks up on … Continue reading

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