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In re-reading the interview now, it is clear that Gary Snyder was just an entry point for me to have a conversation with a true renaissance man of poetry. I’m reminded of the Pakistani proverb that says when you share the first cup of tea, you are a stranger. With the second cup, you are a friend, and with the third cup, you become family. Mr. Roggeman and I sipped coffee during our conversation, and it was clear that we quickly moved through the three cups from strangers to friends.
The contradictory images reflect themes throughout Stiefel’s verse, which oscillates between nihilism and contentment – or at least resignation and a sensual appreciation of the ephemera of the world. As he writes in the opening poem, “Lest”: “I devour everything I can, the mind defaced, a tattered gown, strawberry leaf, a statue, half-submerged.”
This ability to make us, as readers, ‘opener and unfamiliar’ is one the poet exploits deftly, peeling away any preconceptions we may have until we, too, see and feel his world anew. In part, this is down to his style. A novelist as well as a poet, Radmall’s poetry has many prose-like traits, in particular a freedom from rhyme or metre, heavily enjambed lines, and the hovering arc of a narrative.
A Tide Should be Able to Rise Despite Its Moon is Bell’s first book of poetry in over ten years, but regardless of where her extensive creative practice takes her, her work has always reflected a poetic sensibility, so it feels almost like this is her centrepoint. 
Adair is not afraid to bring up difficult issues such as the cruelty of online chats, sacrificed ecosystems and the greed and entitlement of First World multinationals. The poet is also very skilled in narration, and tells stories with a voice that is poetic beautiful and deliberate.
Not at all self conscious, these poems are quite deliberate, the made thing. Each has its note of authority, as in the first poem’s first image, “the common loon made a thumbprint on the lake.” Part elegy, part journal, part memoir, part love song, part accusation, part celebration, all in the voice a person with something to say, a poet with the ability to make a word—loon, cattails, meadow—all her own.
After reading and reviewing The Other Mother, I was given the fortunate opportunity to connect with Rachel through her agent, Anjali Singh (Pandeliterary). Due to busy schedules, we decided email was the best way to have a conversation about the novel, what inspired its story, and how it connects to her personal grief and challenges. 
Harper’s novel will engage fans of generational sagas and family dramas where long-buried family histories and secrets are unearthed, and where past choices explicitly affect the present and future of others in a snowball effect. The novel excels at revealing motherhood—or parenting––truly: falling in love with a person you’ve helped to create, and, in doing so, loving yourself in ways you couldn’t imagine; knowing you will sacrifice absolutely everything for them.