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In “Izzy”, two writers of different generations form, break, and attempt to rebuild an unlikely connection forged in craft. Questioning our response to crisis and conflict, the piece dives into themes of vulnerability, opposition, and the art of editing. This timely work marks a welcome return to yolk for Alex Leslie, who first featured in our Solastalgia-themed volume 3.2.
After participating in a protest in solidarity with Palestine, our speaker sips a ginger tea at Café Aunja. Inspired by the protest, Frank O’Hara, and the Sa’di they recently read in class, the speaker attempts to write a poem of their own that captures how they feel at this moment, “somehow pretending of something.”
Lisa Baird’s tribute to Tori Amos is an emotional epic, at once drawing the reader into experiences of grief, becoming, admiration, desire, and more. “Still Breathing” manages to balance these happenings in beautiful—and almost musical—ways.
The codes of suburban life impose secrecy on those who don’t conform. In “Basement,” Mo David searches for a space to speak hidden truths.
A speaker sits in his closet, pondering the functions of shoes—where they take us, where they leave us. In “Idling,” Brian Builta takes the reader through an out-of-body experience, all while their feet remain firmly planted on the ground.
"Notes from the Montreal Underground" consists of snapshots of life. Spanning decades, the vignettes are at once lyrical, deeply personal, and outward-facing, with a mix of humor, tenderness, and the subtle epiphany that can only occur in a fast-moving place.
In a story made for a new year, Sophie yearns to be reborn as someone else. Crowdsourcing her resolutions leads to a year of increasingly extreme experiments in self-improvement. Sabina Willmott takes us on a fraught yet hopeful journey of reinvention.
In "Vis Sans Fin", Benjamin Bouvet-Boisclair shocks both the sonnet and the traditional pastoral poem. Presenting both youth and language as having the potential to be violent, this poem shows its teeth as it challenges you to define it.
In an effort to make the work housed in our print issues available to a wider audience, yolk digitizes a select few pieces from each print issue! “Machines” by Irena Datcu-Romano first appeared in the Vol. 4.1, Summer 2024 Issue.
In an effort to make the work housed in our print issues available to a wider audience, yolk digitizes a select few pieces from each print issue! “Everyone Sees a Different Blue by Kristinja Banks: A Guide for Reading Groups” by Ian Cockfield first appeared in the Vol. 4.1, Summer 2024 Issue.
In an effort to make the work housed in our print issues available to a wider audience, yolk digitizes a select few pieces from each print issue! “Inbox Subject Line Cento” by Sadie McCarney first appeared in the Vol. 4.1, Summer 2024 Issue.
In an effort to make the work housed in our print issues available to a wider audience, yolk digitizes a select few pieces from each print issue! "Too big, the perfect size" by Zoe Lubetkin first appeared in the Vol. 4.1, Summer 2024 Issue.
A child’s obsession persists into adult life, souring family ties in the process. Dissociative and musical interludes set the tone in K.R. Lai’s darkly off-kilter tale about a delayed end of innocence.
“Spirit Foul” explores conflicting ideas of masculinity in professional sports. Noah Cain captures the raw voice of a young athlete caught in a crisis of confidence when learned norms of dominance and aggression fail to win over the one person he truly cares about.
A poem made up of perhaps more questions than answers, in “Babel,” Gospel Chinedu manages to interweave language, attempts at litany, and Louise Glück together in an effort to find glimpses of solace within.
An unhappy marriage hangs in suspended animation. Spouses drift apart, each in pursuit of their preferred means of distraction. Franz Jørgen Neumann’s “Trail Running” conveys the shock of not recognizing the person your partner has become, and seeks human connection in the age of the algorithm.
How is one expected to go about their day when the world has erupted into flames? Through the manipulation of familiar language and the questioning of higher powers, Shana Ross’s poetry presents the impossibilities with maneuvering through everyday life now that horror is the new normal.
Sue Murtagh’s work paints a picture of searching for connection in midlife that is at once subtle and bristling with unspoken desires. Her characters are rendered with a wry honesty that offsets their reserve and defies the reader to rethink what it means to belong.
In Kat Mulligan’s “Sorry About Your Soup,” the recognizable simplicity of Williams’ plums meets nighttime in Montreal. A drunken hunger informs both the speaker and the city—be it for a salty broth, or perhaps, something more sinister.
Diana Reed’s work speaks of close familial ties. When bonds are severed without warning, how do those left behind reshape their lives? These contrasting pieces offer a tender portrayal of grief, exploring the hard space between holding on and moving forward.
In what could be considered the most haunting addition to our In Transit series, Rebecca Lawrence Lynch’s “august” demonstrates the ways in which memory never leaves us. In this poem, souvenirs transform into ghosts which follow closely behind a speaker as they spiral through Montreal.
In addition to gracing the cover of yolk Volume 3.2, Peter Jones’ arresting paintings, L’Hôtel-Dieu, Garlic, Dishes, The Red Couch, Interior, and Windowsill (Smoking) are featured in Vol. 3.2 and, now, in our Digital Publication.
In an effort to make the work housed in our print issues available to a wider audience, yolk digitizes a select few pieces from each print issue! “Sicilian Blue” by Suparna Choudhury first appeared in the Vol. 3.2, Winter 2023 Issue.
In an effort to make the work housed in our print issues available to a wider audience, yolk digitizes a select few pieces from each print issue! “the avian idol panic of my 20s” by Ksenia Shulyarenko first appeared in the Vol. 3.2, Winter 2023 Issue.
Through compelling and decades-spanning vignettes coupled with a fascinating veneration of art, Dian Parker writes about the complications of entangling family with purpose.
In an effort to make the work housed in our print issues available to a wider audience, yolk digitizes a select few pieces from each print issue! “Age of the Machine” by Genie MacLeod first appeared in the Vol. 3.2, Winter 2023 Issue.
In an effort to make the work housed in our print issues available to a wider audience, yolk digitizes a select few pieces from each print issue! “The Other Water: A Story from Parcel B” by Nat Kishchuk first appeared in the Vol. 3.2, Winter 2023 Issue.
Where is the dividing line between love and horror? Is it clearly defined, or nebulous and shifting? In "This is a Horror Story," Elena Sichrovsky attempts to lay out that question, with an inventive prose and a cathartic narrative that, through the masterful use of the second-person "you" and other tricks, sticks with the reader, haunting.
In “Mussels, Manhood, and a Line from The Flaming Lips,” boy meets man over a meal of mussels. In this poem sprayed with sea-breeze, Marceline White manages to weave together images and themes that originally seem so foreign to each other, but by the poem’s end, become inseparable.
Jane Harris' wide, meditative piece is a conversation with her recently deceased son, Christopher, who passed away in British Columbia of a fentanyl overdose after seven years of struggling with mental illness. Harris' text is vital: while carefully personal, many readers will undoubtedly relate with its earnest content.
In “Sugar-Sick,” Matty Kok reflects on how gender is a performance that begins in childhood. A reflection of youth from a speaker who feels themselves nearly being ripped away from it, melancholy is paired with 4th of July fireworks.
Like an octopus' tentacles, Madeleine Leznoff's short story "Mollusk," originally published in vol. 3.1, seems to move in multiple directions at once. But all comes together swimmingly at its core: a moving story about childhood wonder and fear.
How many ants are there in the world per person? If your coffee is missing something, is it possible that something is a trip to the opera? In Bob Hicok’s two poems, the domestic is skewed and forced to confront the absurdities of its own strange nature.
De Rosa’s photographs, originally published in yolk Volume 3.1, are striking reminders of entropy. Characterized by uncanny atmospheres and an inviting warmth, the film shots capture a world moving so slowly one might forget it is moving at all.
Originally published in Volume 3.1, "Sinkholes" is a moving and funny snapshot of a time reliant on the relationships we nurture through monumental changes. Impactful beyond its length, Braedan Houtman's piece is rooted in power meeting presence.
A waiting room is more than a liminal space. Caitlin Stall-Paquet explores selfhood through the challenges of illness, grief, and legacy through the reflections offered by a space of waiting. And do we ever finish waiting? "The Waiting Room" is a tour-de-force of the memoir genre.
As featured in Vol. 3.1, "Living With the Atom" is an eerie poem loaded with contemporary concern and a century of tension. With irony and wittiness, O'Reilly's brief piece will have you contemplating the absurd. / Image: Max Côté-Fortin, Sketches for a school project I never submitted, 2019, Digital. Vol. 3.1
How does urban design contribute to the preying on of bodies? How could one feel safe in the male-owned night and city? Ladd grapples with these questions with respect to Montreal's Plateau neighborhood in "My Right to the City", at once bringing to light the structures of oppression and reclaiming a voice too-often set aside and silenced.
Is a yearling a perfect metaphor for a poem? What is to be said about the doppelganger in your reflection? How does one break the spell of all that is left unspoken? Although Derek Webster’s three poems may differ in style, they are unified in the way they gently ask the reader to pause, take a breath, and, with this, a moment to consider questions larger than oneself.
Nostalgia is palpable in this series of poems by Mary Kelly, where a speaker reminisces on their girlish youth, eventually leading to what can only be considered inevitable realizations: trying to understand one’s body, the discomfort of one’s own existence, and musings about one’s mother.
Few young writers grasp the visceral mundaneness of illness the way Eleanor Mota does in "Vivente". Recounting the story of her father's liver disease and the nuanced ideas of home and family with honesty and care, Mota offers a touching narrative ripe with humour and hope.
Salvatore Difalco’s “The Beach at Trouville” immediately sends the reader into both a literal and metaphorical whirlwind; while attempting to traverse a windy beach, sand and umbrellas flying amok, the poem’s speaker attempts to come to terms with a lack of inner stability. In his poem, Difalco utilizes both sand and surrealism to amplify an all-too-familiar sense of uneasiness.
AC Tagubar's series "In-Between" holds still the necessary balance of the metro system's architecture, at times resting in symmetry, at times in chaos reminiscent of chemical compounds or anthesis. Tagubar's black-and-white images capture the industrial, murky skin of the underground while nonetheless saying "See? There's an organic order here, too."
“Dialogue learned through dictation” takes the reader by the hand and navigates a neighbourhood that the speaker considers home. Through airtight images and succinct storytelling, Ren Pike analyzes how a heightened security state only makes neighbours feel less secure. Revealed through unwelcome presences and interrupted tranquility is a deeply unsettling question: are we ever safe?
How odd, to visit at once physically and imaginatively the city you used to call home – and were still meant to. What is more foreign: the place in person, in the novel . . . or you, now? Written as a tribute to Javier Marias, “Miriam” by Deniz Ezgi Avcı Vile is a metafictional exploration of time, place, and memory.
Casey Harloe’s “A Summer Thing” is a rumination on how the return of summer and its sensations can suddenly transport a person back to a memory from the same time. As long summer days pass, the speaker mourns what was once, reflecting on the sentiments that once coloured her past.
When we begin to disappear – fingers, legs, taste, smell, relationships – what remains to render us . . . us? As an extension of yolk’s partnership with ILS, we have the privilege of publishing “Ways to be Immortal” by Amanda Dennis, shortlisted for the ILS 2022 Fiction Contest. Set in Paris and Normandy, this story explores the sensorial amalgamations of memory, and is marked by the author’s sharp, attentive, and witty prose.
Elana Wolff’s “Throwback” is an encounter with the experience of becoming. Through eerie comparisons and strange images, Wolff’s poem succeeds in revealing how childhood memories can become deeply unsettling as we come to understand them.
With the help of roadkill, Karen Zheng’s “Deer in Headlights” reveals the complicated subject of human compassion. Zheng’s poem carefully exposes the multifaceted experience of shock, the equation of caring, and how in a capitalist society, it has become our own nature to never be entirely present.
“Yes, Thank You. I’m Okay” is a reflection on family, tradition, memory, and the beauty embedded within the languages of the world. At once a review of James Dunnigan’s Windchime Concerto poetry collection and an interview with the author himself, Willow Loveday Little’s writing offers both a technical examination of Dunnigan’s prose as well as an intimate glimpse into his life and philosophy.
"Women Talking" by Imola Eva Zsitva is a series of three poems addressing possible relationships between women and their own voices. Considering conflicts of age and language amongst other themes, Zsitva both amplifies the female voice while bringing stark awareness to its constant silencing.
Chad Norman's "DOVES IN THE FEEDER" explores the relationship between distance and tragedy and the ways one can maneuver this space. While attempting to make sense of disaster inflicted by humankind, the speaker finds solace in the natural world.
Gracing the cover of issue 2.1, Emily Kreuckl’s paintings distort and exaggerate the sights around us. You will find that in the Young Women series, each portrait offers a uniquely rendered character, in all their personhood and ordinariness.
Emily Tristan Jones’ In Transit poem “A Nature God on the STM” invites the reader into the anatomy of a moment where youth and yearning meet. Montreal’s metro line not only functions as the setting of this poem, but becomes a muse inspiring nostalgia, romance, and surrealism.
Sophie Edell’s paintings give us a peek into the practice of painting in Quebec townships by collecting rooms and landscapes as symbols of a quieter life. Edell chats with us about transitioning from urban to rural, developing a personal style, and the intersection of illustration and painting.
Finding beauty in public spaces, Dean Garlick’s photography serves as a reminder to allow yourself the joy of looking. The striking architectural compositions find rhythm in geometric forms, with dark recesses patterned by radiating light. (SP)
Margaret Sullivan’s two poems "Hurricane Betsey" and "Our Cottage" present a nostalgic look at haunting memories, reminding us of why certain moments never leave us.
Cole Henry Forster's In Transit piece "ADAGIO FOR THE BLUE LINE" may be relatively short, similarly to its muse. Nevertheless, through poignant images and existential questions, it encapsulates the eccentric energy that the metro lines carries from Snowdon to St-Michel.
Bjornerud and Jerezano’s series speaks to collaboration, communication, observation, reflection, and human responsibility. The work is a poetic approach to art-making that depicts a conversation spoken slowly and solely through drawing. Two pieces (not pictured here) from the Nosotros Injertáremos (We are Grafters) series have found a home in our 2.2 print issue.
Yanita Georgieva was introduced to Yolk during her first trip to Montreal. In her poem "Boarding", Georgieva presents her beautiful understanding of Montreal through the sweet sentiment of the warmth brought by snow days.
Michoacán, Mexico; barren, secretive, Holy. There is a volcano, Paritucín, with a church bell half-buried in the porous rock; there is memory, myth and cosmology, but what else is there for a French-Canadian to discover—to relate to?
The work's intention is to represent psychedelic visionary states both with abstract and symbolic images. Each piece is based on a particular substance and environment, and named accordingly. I am in general inspired by the contrast between the awe and horror that can both occur in those altered states. The drawings themselves are done in sharpie, and further altered digitally.
Our Managing Editor, Curtis John McRae, had the chance to sit down with Montreal-based author Ceilidh Michelle to discuss her latest book, Vagabond, as well as her experiences in creative writing programs and residencies, her early inspirations, and the writing advice she received from Denis Johnson shortly before his passing.
Arundhathi Anil's poems "Stains" and "Moony" are an exploration of human intimacy and all that feels unexplainable. While the two poems differ greatly in subject matter, they unite with the common theme of temporality.
Kayla Penteliuk's In Transit poem "Friction" captures the essence of Montreal's metro system. Although she details certain stations and draws upon how each resonate with her in a specific way, Penteliuk comes to the final conclusion that it is through the metro system as a whole that she feels not only close to the city, but the people within it.
Thomas Elson’s two works of flash fiction demonstrate a circular narrative forbearance that contains lifetimes. In “Among the Licence Plates,” we move from one seat to another—the State Capitol Building, on stage with Johnny Cash, on a mother’s lap, in the crowd amongst prisoners—to contemplate the various perspectives of one historical event. By juxtaposing these insights, we are asked to consider our own actions and the impressions we leave on people.
William Doreski’s poems “Photoshopped” and “SX-70 Redux” discuss the concept of our personal image of the world versus reality through the metaphor of photography. In “Photoshopped”, a narrator finds himself incapable of removing himself from tampered photographs, and thus legacies, of various writers. In “SX-70 Redux”, memory becomes altered and in a constant state of flux when Poaroid pictures are exposed to the elements.
Some dogs hover beneath tables for scraps of meat, while others wag their tails at the sound of an opening cabinet. For Buick, a red and white Greyhound, hardly any coaxing can stir his sickening body–that is, until one day, he hears someone purloin his pills.
“VENDÔME” is an ekphrastic poem that explores temporality and the relationship between the internal world of self and the external world. Through Marcelle Ferron’s sculpture, located at Vendome station, the poem investigates what it means to be in constant flux.
Chloe's Gallagher-Smylie's collection "interiority, otherwhere" celebrates the intimate moments which create meaning in daily life. Here, community and comfort are demonstrated to be the foundation of the home, reflecting the lived experience of those who occupy the space.
Sasha Manoli’s poems abruptly confront topics such as identity, sex, relationships, and society. The play on form and language creates a poetic landscape that is dynamic and full of momentum.
What do rocks and fame have in common? Well, other than being a rock 'n roll star who may perform at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado - nothing, really. However, Glad thinks there is more.
A conversation on translation featuring Edem Awumey, author of "Mina Among the Shadows", and the work's translators Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott.
Both poems by Alana Dunlop are propelled inwards by speakers that are not afraid to delve into the disturbing, uncanny, and sometimes gross parts of the world and the self. The poems unapologetically investigate both the body's vulnerability and its strength as a barrier between these external and internal ecosystems.
This travel photography series documents how Lucinda Everist, and us as viewers, occupy and observe foreign spaces. With a focus on bold structure and unfamiliar color palettes, we visit Mexico City along with the artist.
Light, and sometimes humorous, these poems invite us into small risks we sometimes take. In their individual worlds, everything becomes familiar, even the serial killers in the woods.
This mixed media project couples together Madison Phyper's poetry with Adrienne Gantenberg's visual art. Together, their work exposes quotidian dangers to a painfully surreal perspective.
What does it mean to be Canadian? What part does it play in our identity? These questions, alongside familial tension, guardianship, and division are brought to the forefront in Ben von Jagow’s poems.
A “sundog,” or parhelion, is defined as an “atmospheric optical phenomenon that consists of a bright spot to one or both sides of the sun”; or, as Aristotle and our narrator put it: “accidents of matter, a.k.a fuck-ups off-script.”
Here are the winners of Flash-Fried 2.0, yolk's short form poetry contest.
While weaving underground on the city’s great pulmonary track from one metro station to the next, Mathieu pauses at Papineau to capture both the stillness and the frenzied rush of being alone, together.
In part two of Labrosse's story, Oriana's two pursuits become one. Discover the space with her.
From Cartagena, Colombia, to Montreal, Canada, follow Oriana underground, as she discovers the architectural history of Montreal’s metro stations and embarks on a journey that takes her back to the 1976 Olympic games.
If the plate came back around anyway I might pinch my quarter back, or at least take some change for it, a dime and a nickel, say. That would still be a sin but less of one.
But they still had a few minutes. And so Millie mooed. Cate mooed with her. The cow stared at them.
The lights on the ceiling look like the blue cars and mimic our movements; snaking through tunnels, bending at curves, and eventually, bifurcating in opposite directions.
"Nothing really bad happened, no one got hurt, but that night I was eaten by a huge, red-eyed, big fanged, foamy-mouthed python."
Denbeigh Whitmarsh's work serves as a cultural milieu between the rural and the urban.
Yolk stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.
“She would fill herself up one night at a time on the Love Train towards Place-Saint-Henri metro station. She watched herself in the window for four stops and listened to the boots tread around her heart for another.”
“Come on,” Jim said, and he held out his hand in a high-five. “I know you love the handshake.”
A familiar setting turned unfamiliar by poet Drew Coble.
A conceptual poem documenting a trip through Montreal's underground.
When asked about his series, Fabrizio said, “Being a student at Dawson College made me take the metro everyday of the week. Traveling from Cartier to Atwater became a routine for me, so much so that I found the people looked more and more like strange shapes….I think the routine transformed them into shadows.”
We're happy to present the winners of Flash-Fried, our first short form poetry contest. Crafting a poem comprised of less than 140 characters is difficult, but the poets who submitted these selected works found the formula to achieve just that.
Perhaps every city has its peculiarities, but we have our metro lines, our buskers, our pedestrians, and all those familiar faces we pass by every day in transit, or purgatory, or simply in the morning, before we take this very same line back home. Perhaps, you wrote it down and submitted it to yolk.
'Keep a prayer on your lips and a good deed in your back pocket.' He pulls a smoke without a filter from a Ziploc and bites it like a toothpick. 'Funerals,' he announces. 'Get used to ’em.'
Behind the palazzos, he went on to explain, is an interconnected series of corridors that lead to various courtyards where the real pulse of the city lives, where you find the sordid pith of St. Petersburg.
Yolk told the Montreal literary community to show up, and show up it did.
As conceptual concrete poems, these pieces balance the weightlessness of information with the weight of the material from which that information has been gathered.
Learn more about our upcoming literary journals and events by joining our mailing list.
Yolk acknowledges that our work in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal takes place on the unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka/Mohawk Nation. Kanien’kehá:ka is known as a gathering place for many First Nations, and we recognize the Kanien’kehá:ka as custodians of the lands on which we gather.
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