ditch,

ditch, the poetry that matters

ditch, n., where you are when you are off the main road.

ditch, is a Canadian online poetry magazine celebrating the innovative, the non-conforming, the radical, the alternative, the surreal, the avant-garde, the non-linear, the abstract, the experimental.

(click on the highlighted poets' names to read their work) 

Erín Moure is one of Canada's most eminent and respected poets, and a translator from French, Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese. Winner of the Governor General's Award for Furious, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Domestic Fuel, and the AM Klein Poetry Prize for Little Theatres (which has also been published in Spain in Galician translation as Teatriños), Moure has published twelve books of poetry, including A Frame of the Book, co-published in the U.S. by Sun and Moon Press, and five books of poetry in translation, including Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person by Fernando Pessoa, shortlisted for the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2002 City of Toronto Book Prize. Moure lives in Montreal.

Nathalie Stephens (Nathanaël) writes l’entre-genre in English and French. She is the author of a dozen books including, The Sorrow And The Fast Of It (Nightboat (US), 2007), its French counterpart, …s’arrête? Je (L’Hexagone, 2007), Touch to Affliction (Coach House, 2006), Je Nathanaël (l’Hexagone, 2003) and L'Injure (l'Hexagone, 2004), a finalist for the 2005 Prix Alain-Grandbois and Prix Trillium. Je Nathanaël exists in English self-translation with BookThug (2006). Other work exists in Basque and Slovene with book-length translations in Bulgarian (Paradox, 2007). With Nota bene (Montréal, 2007), there is an essay of correspondence entitled L’absence au lieu (Claude Cahun et le livre inouvert), the self-translation of which is forthcoming with Nightboat (US), as Absence Where As (Claude Cahun and the Unopened Book). Stephens has guest lectured and performed her work internationally, notably in Sofia, Barcelona, Ljubljana, New York and Norwich. The recipient of a Chalmers Arts Fellowship and a British Centre for Literary Translation Residential Bursary, she was the keynote speaker at the 2006 edition of the University of Alberta's Annual Translation Conference. Literaturen vestnik (Literary Gazette, Bulgaria) has written of Stephens’s work that “If we are to speak of modern prose today, it is, in all probability, of this kind: situated nowhere as a genre, but intentionally omnipresent.”

Daniel f. Bradley is the author of several books of poems including T=I=D=Y Language (Outland 2008), The Amazing Phobic Subway Phantasmagoria (tapt 2008), A Boy's First Book of Chlamydia - which includes the poem from which BookThug Press takes its name (BookThug 2005), and Before The Golden Dawn By David UU  (curvd h&z 2005).
He also has produced numerous volumes of visual poetry including Return To The Valley Of The Chrome Plated Megaphone (Produce Press 2008) and Maybe You Could Please Return My City Now (Live Matter 2007).
He has written and published in the Toronto small press scene for the last 20 plus years and remains an uncompromising spanner in the works of local litterati agendas. Recently, his magazine, fhole concluded a run of 15 issues in 4 years.

Natalie Simpson's first collection of poetry, accrete or crumble, was published by LINEbooks in 2006. above/ground press recently reissued her chapbook Dirty Work as part of its Alberta Series. More of her poetry can be found in Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press) and Post-Prairie: An Anthology of New Poetry (Talonbooks). Natalie is a former managing editor of filling Station magazine, and intermittently publishes limited edition chapbooks through her press, edits all over. She lives in Calgary.

Shannon Maguire is a Northern Ontario grrrl who has long made Toronto home. She studied playwrighting at the National Theatre School of Canada, holds a degree in English and Drama from York University (Glendon College) and is working on her MFA in Creative Writing through the University of Guelph. She also co-cultivates AvantGarden, a new reading series which foregrounds innovative text and sound based performance by women. Her poetry and work for theatre has appeared in various places including: Nightwood Theatre's 4x4 Off Road Festival and Write-From-The-Hip, Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, Gulch: An Assemblage of Poetry and Prose (Tightrope, 2009) and is forthcoming online in EOAGH: A Journal Of The Arts. She won the FuitLupz Award (Supporting Our Youth) for emerging queer playwright in 1999.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan presently resides in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada.  He is the author of three books of poetry, the most recent entitled Pigeon Theatre (JTI Press).  His work has recently appeared in The New York Quarterly, Vallum, Precipice, Ascent Aspirations, Quills, and The Antigonish Review.

Michelle Couture is from Smooth Rock Falls, a small town in Northern Ontario. She now resides in Toronto after having lived in Ottawa for three years.

Jake David lives near Cornwall, ON. His work has appeared on the webmags Writers' Bloc, The Beat, Heavy Hands Ink, and Sillymess. 

Robert Chrysler is an inspired subway-ranter from Toronto, Canada. He enjoys challenging capitalist property relations, trying to figure out what the post-structuralists are going on about, and dreams of someday living in a tree. His work has appeared in: Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, Venereal Kittens, The Concelebratory ShoeHorn Review, The Guild of Outsider Writers, and The City Poetry.

Dr. Kane X. Faucher currently lives and works in London, Ontario. His activities span academic and creative enterprises, most notably in writing, continental theory, visual art, and music. He currently holds two degrees in philosophy and a doctorate in Theory and Criticism from the University of Western Ontario.
Dr. Kane X. Faucher is an FIMS/MIT Instructor; a freelance writer for Scene Magazine; co-editor of The Raging Face; co-editor of The Drill Press; and serves on the Editorial Board of Mad Hatter's Review.
He is the author of Urdoxa (2004) Codex Obscura (2005) Fort & Da (2006), Calqueform, Astrozoica, De Incunabliad (2007) and Jonkil Dies, The Vicious Circulation of Dr Catastrope (2008).

a.rawlings is a Canadian poet and multidisciplinary artist. The recipient of the bpNichol Award for Distinction in Writing (2001), angela has worked with many arts organizations, including The Mercury Press, Lexiconjury Reading Series, Theatre Gargantua, and the TV series Heart of a Poet. She also instructs text and sound workshops for the Toronto Public Library, Learning through the Arts, and Ryerson University.
Working with derek beaulieu and Jason Christie, angela co-edited Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury, 2005). Her first book, Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), was featured in The Globe and Mail’s top 100 books of 2006; it went on to receive an Alcuin Award for Design and was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Wide slumber was recently translated from page to stage for Harbourfront Centre’s Hatch: Emerging Performance Projects in Toronto.
angela is currently researching sound, text, and movement, with special emphases on vocal/contact improvisation and acoustic ecology. She lives in Toronto.

Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, and performer. His music and writing have been published and presented in Canada, the US, and overseas. He received a PhD in Music Composition and was the recipient of the KM Hunter Foundation Artist Award for his writing. Seeing Stars, a YA novel, was a finalist for both Canadian Library Association YA book of the year, and an Arthur Ellis Award. His poetry includes Outside the Hat and Raising Eyebrows (both Coach House) and, with derek beaulieu, frogments from the frag pool (Mercury) His fiction includes Doctor Weep and other strange teeth and Big Red Baby. The Briefcase Hand, a new poetry collection, is forthcoming from Coach House. His latest chapbooks are Inverting the Deer  (serif of nottingham) and, with Gregory Betts, Chora Sea (Emergency Response Unit). He lives in Hamilton, Ontario and teaches music at Hillfield Strathallan College. He can be found at garybarwin.com and serifofnottingham.blogspot.com

Jamie Bradley is an instructor and doctoral candidate in English at the University of Ottawa. His work appears most recently in The Puritan, the Moose and Pussy, Experiment-O.com, and in the collaborative chapbooks Dalhousie Blues (Ex-Hubris 2009) and The Visi Cue-Cue Reader (Canteen 2009). His first solo chapbook Compositions appeared in 2008 from AngelHouse Press.

Elana Wolff's poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in the US, UK, and Canada, including The Malahat Review, Canadian Literature, Event, CV2, Grain, Descant, Carousel, Taddle Creek Magazine, Vallum: contemporary poetry, Qwerty, and The Fiddlehead. Her poems have garnered various awards and her third collection, You Speark to Me in Trees, (Guernica, 2006), won the 2008 F.G. Bressani Prize for Poetry. Elana divides hertime between writing, editing, and facilitating therapeutic art. A collection of short essays on poems by GTA poets, titled Implicate Me, is forthcoming with Guernica this summer.

Angela Hibbs has two collections of poetry, Passport and Wanton. She has read at Harbourfront and Mitzi's Sister in Toronto as well as at The Sparrow in Montreal for the Pilot reading series. She has recently been published in the online journal, the Puritan, as well as in the New Feminisms issue of Matrix.

Maxine Gadd is the author of numerous books of poetry, among them Lost Language (Coach House, 1982), Fire in the Cove (m(O)ther Tongue, 2001), and most recently, Backup to Babylon (New Star, 2006), which was a poetry finalist in the 2007 BC Book Prize. 

Trisia Eddy is a writer, editor and publisher of red nettle press, based in Edmonton, Alberta.  Her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including CV2, ::stonestone::, Misunderstandings Magazine, and Wicked Alice.  Current obsessions include Victorian-era taxidermists, abandoned psychiatric hospitals, and printmaking.

Melissa Bull 's writing has appeared in such publications as Matrix, Headlight, Carte Blanche, Pistol, Swamp, Snafu and Maisonneuve. Her chapbook, Eating Out, was published last year by WithWords. She lives in Montreal, where she works as a magazine editor.

Camille Martin, a Toronto poet, is the author of Sonnets (Shearsman Books, forthcoming in 2010) and Codes of Public Sleep (BookThug, 2007). Her work has been widely published in journals in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Her current work in progress is a collection of double sonnets. She is also engaged in a project funded by the Ontario Arts Council: a long poem (working title: “The Evangeline Papers”) based on her Cajun/Acadian heritage and her recent visit to Nova Scotia to participate in an archaeological dig at Beaubassin and to research Acadian and Mik’maq history and culture. She earned an MFA in Poetry at the University of New Orleans and a Ph.D. in English at Louisiana State University. Currently she teaches writing and literature at Ryerson University. Her website is http://www.camillemartin.ca and her blog is http://rogueembryo.wordpress.com

Geoffrey Hlibchuk recently graduated from SUNY Buffalo where he studied poetics, and currently lives in Toronto, Canada. His work has appeared in PRICIPICe, Queen Street Quarterly, and Shift and Switch: New Canadian Poetry; and critical articles have recently been published in Studies in Canadian Literature, and Open Letter. His new collection of poems—Variations on Hölderlin—recently won the 2008 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry.

rob mclennan lives in Ottawa, even though he was born there. The author of over a dozen trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he spent the 2007-8 academic year as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. The editor/publisher of Chaudiere Books, Poetics.ca (with Stephen Brockwell), above/ground press, and ottawater, his online home is robmclennan.blogspot.com

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Cheyenne Nimes graduated from the nonfiction writing program at Iowa and was a 2009 writer in residence at the Iowa Art Museum. She was the 2009 winner of DIAGRAM’s hybrid essay contest. An e-chap Coming Apocalypse Attractions has just come out on Gold Wake.
Prose poems- though labeled “fiction”- have appeared in Ninth Letter, Cannot Exist, Green Mountains Review, Hamilton Stone Review, First Intensity, Generator, Tinfish, Santa Clara Review, Red Rock Review, No Roses Review, Five Finger’s Review, A.bacus, Poethia, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, 580 Split, Xantippe, etc. and cnf is in the current issue of J Journal, Diagram, and the Sonora Review and forthcoming in Kenyon Review Online and Calamity Jane.

Alexander Jorgensen has lived and worked in such disparate places as the Czech Republic, the Galapagos Archipelago, China, and Kazakhstan. His visual poetry and writings have appeared in such publications as Van Gogh's Ear, Noon: Journal of the Short Poem, Moria, Drunken Boat, The Return of Kral Majales: Prague's International Literary Renaissance 1990-2010, The Last Vispo Anthology, and "Letters to a Younger Poet," correspondences with the late Robert Creeley, appears in Jacket#31. 
Additionally, his visual poems have been exhibited in such cities as Toronto, Atlanta, Moscow, and Prague. He currently resides in Ibri, Oman.

bruno neiva. Portuguese. Experimental writer, visual poet and mail artist. Portuguese and English teacher. Lectures in A Coruña, Spain, where he lives now. Novel and translation in a near future. Several books of experimental poetry and prose. Publisher, designer and distributor of his own work – umaestruturaassimsempudorreedições. Participates world widely in visual poetry and mail art exhibitions. All his work is available online at:
http://umaestruturaassimsempudor.blogspot.com/ ; http://umaestruturaassimsempudor.tumblr.com/  ;
http://issuu.com/umaestruturaassimsempudor ; http://www.behance.net/brunoneiva

Rebecca Anne Renner 's work has been featured or is upcoming in Mothering Magazine,Pedestal Magazine, Underground Voices, Liquid Imagination, Gutter Eloquence, The Bloody Bridge Review, The Stray Branch,  Blinking Cursor, Everyday Poets, Short Fast and Deadly,Anastomoo, and an anthology from Silver Boomer Books. A selection of her poetry is available in the book "Sex with Neptune." She is a recipient of the American Academy of Poets University Prize, and she is the Editor-in-Chief of Barrier Islands Review. She is currently attending Stetson University for her BA in English with plans to further her education with an MA in English Literature.

Christopher Crawford was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He studied Mechanical Engineering and has worked on various seismic exploration vessels.
His poetry, fiction and translations have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Evergreen Review, The Cortland Review, Envoi, Rakish Angel, Ekleksographia and the anthology The Return of Král Majáles: Prague's International Literary Renaissance 1990-2010.
He lives in Ho Chi Minh City.

R.A. Riekki has poems and fiction forthcoming or recently published in Loch Raven Review, Emprise Review, Haiku Ramblings, Flutter Poetry Journal, Tower Journal, Salit Magazine, Fossil Record, Word Slaw, and The Smoking Poet.  He has a B.S. from Central Michigan University (where he cross-registered at l'Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi) and a Ph.D. in Literature & Creative Writing from Western Michigan University (where he cross-registered at l'Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi and Charles University in Prague).
His novel U.P., set in Ishpeming and Negaunee, was Ghost Road Press's bestselling novel for 35 weeks and has been one of their top ten bestselling books for 67 weeks and counting,  http://www.amazon.com/u-p-R-Riekki/dp/0979625564. 

Vernon Frazer has published twelve books of poetry, including the longpoem IMPROVISATIONS, and three books of fiction. His work has appeared in Aught, Big Bridge, Drunken Boat, Exquisite Corpse, First Intensity, Golden Handcuffs Review, Jack Magazine, Lost and Found Times, Moria, Otoliths and many other literary magazines. His most recent books are the longpoems EMBLEMATIC MOON, RANDOM AXIS, and the visual poetry collection, Panels from IMPROVISATIONS (Series B). Frazer is married and lives in South Florida.

Heller Levinson lives in NYC where he studies animal behavior. He has published in over a hundred journals and magazines including Sulfur, Hunger, Talisman, First Intensity, Laurel Review, Omega, The Wandering Hermit, Jacket, The Jivin' Ladybug, etc. His most recent publication, Smelling Mary, is newly out from Howling Dog Press and has been nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Griffin Prize. He is the creator, originator, and founding father of Hinge, and Hinge Theory. Please visit www.hellerlevinson for more information.

Marcia Arrieta lives in Pasadena, CA where she is a mother, educator, poet/artist. Her work has appeared in Otoliths, Blueprint Review, Dusie, Poetry Salzburg Review, MiPoesias, Argotistonline, and others. She edits and publishes Indefinite Space, a poetry journal.

Matina L. Stamatakis resides in a frightfully quiet village in upstate New York, where there is virtually no creative or artistic movement. To compensate for the lack of local creative outlets, Matina turns to the internet, where she manipulates and displays digital artwork, poetry, and the occasional noise track from her one-woman wrecking machine, Viscera[e]. Her most recent poetic/art works can be found in Intercapillary Space, La Petite Zine, Crash Test, The Starfish Journal, PFS Post and others. She is the author of ek-ae: a journey into ekphrastic aesthetics (Dusie, 2007), Harmonious Hogwash (VUGG, 2007) with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Phos (Vugg, 2007), Sensoria (2008), a forthcoming chapbook, Metempsychose (Ypolita, 2008), and forthcoming noise album Tissue Arabesques (Artless Intent, 2008). She believes sleep is overrated.

Crag Hill until recently edited SCORE, one of only two journals in North America dedicated exclusively to concrete/visual poetry. In the last three decades his work has appeared in over 100 journals and anthologies, including several available on-line. His creative and critical works in progress can be found at http://scorecard.typepad.com. Hill currently teaches English Education at Washington State University.

Julius Kalamarz received his MFA from Columbia University in New York. His work has appeared in zimZalla (UK), Ninth Letter, The Los Angeles Review, Counterexample Poetics and others.
He won Opium's 7-Line Story Contest (2008) and was a finalist for both the Juked Poetry Prize (2008) and The Poetry Center of Chicago's 16th annual juried reading (2010). He is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Gillian Prew lives in Scotland. She has a philosophy degree and a succession of low-paid, menial jobs to her credit. Some of her poems can be found at Eviscerator Heaven, Up the Staircase, The Glasgow Review, Eleutheria, The Recusant, Heavy Bear, Counterexample Poetics, Full of Crow and The Plebian Rag.  She is responsible for three collections of poems.

John C Sweet, aka beingjohnsweet, lives in Dallas, Georgia. John is a graduate of Central Michigan University with multiple Bachelor of Arts degrees, including: Special Education, Pyschology, Sociology and Amercian History. Now a practicing Buddhist, John is a recovered alcoholic and drug addict.

John C. Sweet is the managing editor of The Plebian Rag.

J. D. Nelson 's poems and experimental texts have appeared in many small press and underground publications, including Zygote in my Coffee, Otoliths, Starfish Poetry, Cherry Bleeds, Word Riot, Lit Chaos and The Dream People. Spiders in my Beard, his collection of 25 poems is included in the second volume of The Virtual Chemists series. (http://www.lulu.com/content/818354) Visit http://www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. Since 1990, Nelson's audio recordings, interviews, poetry readings, live performances and culture hacking experiments have been broadcast on several radio stations in the United States. His audio experiments (recorded under the name OWL BRAIN ATLAS) are online at http://www.OwlNoise.com. OWL NOISE 0, his album of experimental spoken word is available as a free download at http://www.mediafire.com/owlnoise. J. D. lives in Colorado, USA.

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