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Vallum Magazine

@vallummag

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Poetry and poetry workshops. Based in Tio'htiá:ke/Montreal.

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We are honoured to share a new chapbook titled WHAT'S IN A NAME? inspired by the late Blossom Thom. Contributors include: Blossom Thom, Jan Jorgensen, Brian Campbell, Sherine Elbanhawy, Mark Foss, Ethel Meilleur, and Claire Sherwood.

"The poems within this chapbook found their genesis in two separate sessions of a four week workshop called 'What’s in a Name?' held during the Covid lockdown.
Our guide was Blossom Thom—brilliant, articulate, witty, proudly Black, an advocate of racial equity, and a champion of the arts—especially literary and visual. She introduced us to poets who themselves had invoked 'names' with literary weight, sharing poetry that would spark our own work. Blossom was an incomparable teacher, stimulating and encouraging, joining us in the creative endeavour.

Reminiscing about the quality of the poetry we’d heard during the workshop, Blossom and I discussed the possibility of a chapbook and she invited the participants to submit their poems. But life’s interruption came and went. After Blossom’s death it became utmost important to publish this collection as a tribute to her. We are incredibly grateful to Eleni Zisimatos, Kateryna Kobylianska, and Vallum for co-creating and publishing this chapbook.

Above all, Blossom was kind and generous. In our wide-ranging marathon phone conversations, I had learned how deeply she loved her two nieces. I saw how much pleasure it brought her to buy them books. With this in mind, our chapbook is dedicated to Olivia and Mia, in loving memory of their aunt."
— Jan Jorgensen @revjjorgensen

In loving memory of Blossom Thom.

Credit for photograph on second slide: Quebec Writer's Federation, 2010 by @vallummag

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18 days ago

Vallum is so pleased to congratulate the winners of this year’s Chapbook Award!

Winner: Vivek Sharma – Dollar Store Poems

2nd place: Andrew Barter – Acolyte

3rd place: M. Brooke Wiese – Cormorants Prepare for the End Times

Congratulations to all three poets for their outstanding work. taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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4 months ago

We’re honoured to share the shortlist for the 2026 Vallum Chapbook Award.

Each manuscript: a world. Each poet: a force.

Thank you to all who submitted! taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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4 months ago

Poems from the Crowd 2026 is now available!

A digital issue of contemporary poetry.
Download it for free.

Happy reading! Link in bio :) taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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5 months ago

We are honored to share a new chapbook titled SHOOKY SESSION 2: FRANZ KAFKA, THE BLUE OCTAVO NOTEBOOKS, 12 MAY 2023, PARC TRENHOLME by Jason Camlot @camlot and Stuart Ross @mrrazovsky

Only 125 numbered print copies are available, so secure yours while you can.

…each creature carries a means of hearing that reflects the environment…one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

—Franz Kafka, from The Blue Octavo Notebooks

This chapbook presents poems written during the second of seven listening poetry sessions that Stuart Ross and Jason Camlot held between December 5, 2022, and December 18, 2024. It is “Shooky Session 2: Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks, 12 May 2023, Parc Trenholme” from the larger manuscript THE SHOOKY SESSIONS (A Litany).

Visit our website to order your copy. Link in bio.

For thoughtful reading and reflection. taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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6 months ago

Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem THE DAY I MADE IT TO HARVARD by Amlanjyoti Goswami taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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6 months ago

"Almost to the point of absurdity, What’s it all for? is the central question of our lives; it echoes deep in all other questions, catches us in the car as we realize we’ve been working too much and forgetting what we’re working for, whispers to us as we make our art."...

Visit our website vallummag.com to read a full Interview with Poets Daniel Cowper and Emily Osborne, and Reviews of Cowper’s Kingdom of the Clock (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025) and Osborne’s Safety Razor (Gordon Hill Press, 2023) by Bill Neumire @wjneumire taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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7 months ago

Check out our Poem in Re-view section featuring the great poem OAHU by Maureen Korp taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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7 months ago

THE MUSIC OF THINGS

Poetry Writing Wordshop with Partridge Boswell

Date: Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Time: 2:00 – 4:00 PM
Location: @theyellowdoororg, 3590 Jeanne Mance, Montreal

“No ideas but in things” William Carlos Williams famously proclaimed in his poem “Paterson” nearly a century ago, echoing a trend among poets of the time—including Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot—to focus their attention more intently on describing concrete images via the music of natural, everyday speech. In this generative wordshop, we’ll be reading and writing poems, exploring how tangible objects carry imaginary and emotional weight, and examining a few of the myriad ways poems “show, don’t tell” (Henry James)—enabling things to sing for themselves!

Writers of all ages (15+) and states of emergence are invited to please join us in the Yellow Door’s safe, creative space for this mutually supportive, engaging and nourishing gathering.

To attend, please email Caroline at activities@yellowdoor.org taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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8 months ago

Vallum’s 2026 Chapbook Award is now officially open!

Check out the contest guidelines in our bio and send us your best work. We look forward to reading it! taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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9 months ago

A conversation with Jason Camlot, interviewed by Rosie Long Decter and originally published in a past issue of Vallum, is now online. They explore poetry, music, and the unexpected connections between them.

Read the full interview: https://vallummag.com/a-conversation-with-jason-camlot/ taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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9 months ago

Another Longue Durée by Ian Cappelli @versiprose , winner of the 2025 Vallum Chapbook Award, is now available in both print and digital formats. We’re pleased to share this exceptional and unique work with the world. Only 125 numbered copies are available in print, so be sure to get yours soon.

What is a box garden, if not rooted rootlessness? And what else might a prose poem be, but a box for seeding the language of flowers? In this shorthand account of self-consciousness, in which lanky lines à la sestinas slalom a chain of chockablock text, the speaker is swathed in a Québécois troupe from whom he’s also excluded. As they tour a suite of foursquare spaces collapsing the edge between inside and out—aquarium, airport, museum, hotel—he’s foremost an interloper in the English he fancies his own (forget about French). A snowshoed flâneur of the “overneath,” for whom scaffolding is the site itself, the unheimlich the only home, he keeps tripping into tautologies and miniature mises-en-abíme, where satellite maps and translation apps only deepen the riddle of what our subjectivity is subject to.

– Andrew Zawacki @instazawacki

Ian Cappelli’s work has recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in Best New Poets, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Image Journal, The Iowa Review, Smartish Pace, Blackbird, The Florida Review, West Branch, RHINO, The Cincinnati Review, and Palette Poetry, among others. He is a creative writing (poetry) PhD student at the University of Denver and a Poetry / Translations editor at Denver Quarterly.

Visit our website to order your copy. Link in bio.

For thoughtful reading and reflection. taken in Montreal, Quebec by @vallummag

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a year ago