by Susan McCaslin This short essay written by Wood Lake author Susan McCaslin first appeared in Dialogue Magazine: “Haunting the Stacks” in the column “Resonance” in Dialogue, Winter 2017, p. 41.   http://www.dialogue2.ca/susan-mccaslin-haunting-the-stacks.html Many writers I most love were avid readers as children or became so at some point in their lives. For me as a […]

 by Susan McCaslin This short essay written by Wood Lake author Susan McCaslin first appeared in Dialogue Magazine: “Femmes Fatales & the Female Muse: John Keats and the Feminine,” in Dialogue, Nanaimo, BC, Winter 2016-17, Vol. 30, No. 2, 5-6.   http://tinyurl.com/dialogueV30-N2 I first discovered the poetry of the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) in […]

  Each week, we bring you interesting stories from around the web. Here’s what caught our eye this week! ELECTION Trump Confounds The Pros, Connects With Just The Right Voters When American voters must choose a new president, reaction tends to rule. Given a choice between continuity and contrast, we favor contrast — even when […]

 by Susan McCaslin “What is this Joy? That no animal falters, but knows what it must do?” from Come into animal presence, Denise Levertov (Poems: 1960-1967) On Dec. 27, 2015 our five-year old mini-Australian shepherd Penny was brutally and instantly killed by a truck before my husband’s and my eyes. The incident was an accident, […]

 by Susan McCaslin This posting originally appeared on the Cascadia Poetry Festival’s website. “You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us and the world will be as one.” – John Lennon from “Imagine” The Cascadia Poetry Festival in Nanaimo, British Columbia (April 30-May 3, 2015) […]

by Susan McCaslin I have in my head an image of people gathered around a table to dine and converse about the state of the world. Plato’s Symposium (or The Banquet), is a classical Greek dialogue depicting philosophers gathered to discuss the nature of love. The big paradigm in the west for a small group […]

by Susan McCaslin Writing is a mysterious process. Nothing you have to say is final, as there are always new nuances to explore. The next rush of words may just coalesce in surprising, unanticipated configurations. Being present to this kind of process is kind of unsettling and even dangerous, because as a writer you might […]

by Susan McCaslin As an alternative to watching “Sex in the City” or reading a Harlequin romance on your summer vacation, why not try this ancient of ancient texts – the Song of Solomon, better known as the Song of Songs? It belongs right up there with the Kama Sutra and Ovid’s The Art of […]

by Susan McCaslin If the Song of Songs can be called “the sexiest book in the Bible,” the book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament might be called “the most violent book in the Bible.” You may recall the imagery of Christ as a sword-wielding warrior, horses with blood up to their […]

by Susan McCaslin In Chapter 5 of Arousing the Spirit, “Countering War with Wonder,” I wrote about my favourite mystical poet of all time, William Blake. Blake and I have had a long and fruitful association, and he always keeps me on my toes. Currently I’ve been thinking about how Blake was what you might […]