The Fiddlehead

If you haven’t discovered Matador yet, then it’s time. Lori Yates is an artist (singer and songwriter) who hales from Oshawa-Toronto-Nashville-Hamilton and recently Toronto again. According to her website, she is a “pioneer of Alternative-Country.” And Matador, her much-anticipated new release, is replete with songs reflecting on a life of experiences -- love, friendship, struggle, survival and mortality. It’s a very fine album, each song a small, polished gem.

Posted on March 27, 2025 I am drawn to music with lyrics in languages I don’t understand, which allows me to hear, unmediated by meaning, the emotional synthesis and counterpoint of sound. Two of my favorites are Trio Mediaeval from Norway, and Mariza from Portugal. Isn’t our work as writers similar? We choose our words, not just for meaning, but for what their sounds make us feel. — Jane C.

Every Cripple a Superhero by Christoph Keller is a great example of a hybrid memoir. There are photos, poems, flash prose, cultural criticism, and a Kafka-esque surrealist short story interspersed throughout the book. An earlier and slightly different version of the manuscript was first published in German in 2020. Keller weaves subjects in a masterful way. Each piece of short prose is complete by itself, a snapshot of memoir.

The Fiddlehead is pleased to announce the finalists of our 2024 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Contest, judged by D. M. Bradford, Colleen Coco Collins, and Meghan Kemp-Gee! The winner of the $2000 contest prize will be announced in April 2024 and the winning poem will appear in the Spring 2025 issue (304).

Editorial Assistant Yogesh Tak's Interview with 2024 Fiction Prize Winner Luanne Gauvreau whose story "Roses for Bodies" was published in Issue 302 (Winter 2025) Photo credit: Michel Dupuis Yogesh Tak: I was struck by how the story tackles serious artistic questions in the midst of major political and humanitarian circumstances. Twice in the story, and very significantly, Max questions his “aestheticizing” the plight of the people, unable to not see beauty in everything.

Lost in Translation (film by Sofia Coppola) and Interior Chinatown (novel by Charles Yu) by Francis Chang The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle posits that it is impossible to know the exact location or nature of a particle at any particular moment because the act of observation itself causes a slight shift in position of the observed subject. The resulting alteration in trajectory from the present moment will magnify over time, until the next act of observation and reflection.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I moved to Kelowna three years ago. I was coming from the rainforest. The Okanagan landscape seemed parched and barren. I was suspicious of the constant sunshine. I mourned the loss of my velvet forests full of ancient red cedars and Douglas firs, and set about trying to find a way to love this new land. Norah Bowman’s book of poetry Breath, Like Water: An Anticolonial Romance, served as a how-to guide of sorts.

Posted on March 13, 2025 Anjimile’s Giver Taker would do well to be filed under: a sovereign sibling to tUnE-yArDs and Sufjan; songs that make you feel possible; songs that make queerness feel possible; what I wish I had at-hand when I was coming out; the embodied voice of a late August day when the space between ending and beginning is dead-leaf-thin; for fans of a heart-breaking track one and a foot-shuffling track two; an ode and a promise, in track four’s 1978, to a lover, a god, or...

Lost in Translation (film by Sofia Coppola) and Interior Chinatown (novel by Charles Yu) by Francis Chang The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle posits that it is impossible to know the exact location or nature of a particle at any particular moment because the act of observation itself causes a slight shift in position of the observed subject. The resulting alteration in trajectory from the present moment will magnify over time, until the next act of observation and reflection.

Myth is on my mind. My partner and I recently tore through the first season of KAOS, a new Netflix series that plays fast and loose with classical Greek Mythology. In this retelling, Gods and humans live in a stylized world that somewhat resembles our own. Zeus, played to a tee by the ingenious Jeff Goldblum, lives in a gaudy mansion on Mount Olympus and wears velour tracksuits and gold-rimmed glasses.