Train : a journal of social distance

Issue #10 : Kim Fahner Joel Robert Ferguson Patrick Grace Dan MacIsaac Jeff Parent Cale Plett

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Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. She was the fourth poet laureate of Sudbury (2016-18), and was the first woman appointed to the role. Kim's latest book of poems is These Wings (Pedlar Press, 2019). She is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, as well as a supporting member of the Playwrights' Guild of Canada. Currently, she is Ontario representative for the Writers' Union of Canada. Kim has recently had poems published in Room, Riddle Fence, and Prairie Fire. She may be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com

Joel Robert Ferguson is the author of The Lost Cafeteria (2020, Signature Editions) and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Concordia University in Montreal. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Arc, The Columbia Review, The Honest Ulsterman, The Malahat Review, Orbis, and Southword Journal. He lives in Winnipeg, Treaty 1 territory, with his partner and their three cats.

Patrick Grace is a queer writer from Vancouver. His work has been published in Canadian journals such as Prairie Fire, EVENT, Arc Poetry Magazine, and recently, Grain’s Queer Writers issue. His poetry has been longlisted for CV2’s Young Buck Poetry Prize and twice for PRISM international’s Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize, and his poem “A Violence” won The Malahat Review’s Open Season Award for poetry in 2020. He is the managing editor of Plenitude Magazine.

Dan MacIsaac served for ten years as a director on UVIC’s Environmental Law Centre board. Brick Books published his collection of poetry, Cries from the Ark. His poetry has been published in a wide variety of literary magazines, including filling station, Stand, The Malahat Review, and Arc. Dan MacIsaac’s work has been short-listed for the Walrus Poetry Prize and the CBC Short Story Prize. His website is www.danmacisaac.com. 

Jeff Parent is a poet and stay-home dad from Québec’s Eastern Townships. He has an MA in Creative Writing and English Literature from Concordia University and his poems have been published by The Fiddlehead, Montréal Writes, The/tƐmz/Review, FreeFall Magazine, Shrapnel Magazine, and The Quarantine Review amongst others. Jeff’s first chapbook, This Bygone Route, is now available from 845 Press.

Cale Plett (he/they) is a nonbinary writer who lives in Winnipeg, where they are watching and listening for stories. Some they remember, some they forget, and some they turn into poetry, prose, and lyrics. Cale’s poetry and fiction are published in Grain, CV2, The Anti-Languorous Project, and Riddle Fence.

An interview with Joel Robert Ferguson

Joel Robert Ferguson is the author of The Lost Cafeteria (2020, Signature Editions) and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Concordia University in Montreal. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Arc, The Columbia Review, The Honest Ulsterman, The Malahat Review, Orbis, and Southword Journal. He lives in Winnipeg, Treaty 1 territory, with his partner and their three cats.

How did you begin writing, and what keeps you going?

I had a few false starts with writing. My mother is a published poet and a former English teacher, and though I didn’t take an active, consistent interest in poetry until I was well into my 20s, there was still a groundwork there from growing up in a home where literature was valued.

I started to get “serious” about poetry after reading poets from the Kootenay School of Writing (or influenced by the KSW) like Donato Mancini, Colin Smith, Jeff Derksen and Rachel Zolf, writers whose work is politically committed without being didactic and whose use of language is shot through with this immense sense of play. Though my poetry is usually more of a personal-lyric these days, reading experimental writers like these felt very liberating and instilled in me the sense that I was “allowed” to write poetry. I think that’s what keeps me going with my writing practice, feeling allowed to have a relationship with literature as something much, much larger than and beyond myself. It’s a relation that’s given me a lot and I hope to maintain for the rest of my life.

What poets have influenced the ways in which you write?

Beyond the aforementioned poets there are quite a few. I learned a lot from the writings of Roberto Bolano and Sina Queyras (who I had the good fortune to have as my thesis advisor), specifically how effective it can be to interlink metatextual references with personal narratives in poetry. Seamus Heaney has been another big influence on me, as well as Frank O’Hara and his evil twin Frederick Seidel.

Have you noticed a difference in the ways in which you approach the individual poem, now that you’ve published a full-length collection?

I find that now it’s a bit more of a struggle not to overthink any individual poem I’m working on; it’s easy to start thinking of each new poem as needing to be contributing towards some new manuscript, which can really stifle spontaneity in structure, language, motifs and the like. I often have to remind myself to just let poetry be what it wants to be, that the joy of exploring thought and feeling through language is a good of its own, not necessarily underwritten by the goal of publication.

How important has mentorship been to your work? Is there anyone who specifically assisted your development as a writer?

Mentorship has been really important for me, both in helping me improve my craft, pointing me in the direction of collections and poets I should be reading, and teaching me how to edit (and edit, and edit, etc.). In particular, I was most fortunate to have a year in undergrad at the University of Winnipeg where I was taking creative writing courses with Catherine Hunter and Margaret Sweatman; I think that their classes were invaluable for me as a young writer, as Catherine really pushed me to work on my lyric voice, while Margaret encouraged me to try more and more experimental forms.

Can you name a poet you think should be recieving more attention?

So far as living poets go, I think that my fellow Winnipegger Jason Stefanik is doing some incredible work; his 2018 collection Night Became Years is well worth checking out. I’d also mention Ian Kinney, whose debut book Air Salt I’m reading right now and which I’m enjoying a lot, as it threads the needle between found text and personal narrative in a very cool and exciting way.

The Harvest Dumpster

Joel Robert Ferguson




O Manitoban cold-storage beneath 
lot lights, snow-night, ornamental fence
and unmanned cameras; open-maw dumpster 
behind the food bank, twixt tracks, 
the old cracker factory, warehouses
and grain elevator, filled with bounty.

How far the food comes to wind up

here; Prince Edward Island potatoes, occasional
Alberta beef b-cuts saved by Winnipeg's February,
cans labeled in Thai or Hindi,

for whatever reason not parceled out

out front, but still good in natural stasis.

And at the call of gleaning precision, gloved hands

shovel food into bags, and there's always some 

                     bigmouth who, making note 

                     of the waste of the West 

          blurts out starving children 

a world away as though 

we weren’t picking through trash at midnight.

Joel Robert Ferguson is the author of The Lost Cafeteria (2020, Signature Editions) and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Concordia University in Montreal. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Arc, The Columbia Review, The Honest Ulsterman, The Malahat Review, Orbis, and Southword Journal. He lives in Winnipeg, Treaty 1 territory, with his partner and their three cats.