Recently, my poem 'Canada' appeared in the new Wales-based micropoem publication Black Bough Poetry (publishing poems of up to 10 lines). You can download the whole publication as a PDF here (it's Issue 1, Summer 2019): https://smithmatt1.wixsite.com/blackbough/publications
There's a fine variety of poems, by new and more established poets, in the first issue of Black Bough Poetry, and I recommend having a good browse through.
'Canada' is, in part, a poem about imagining how other people imagine. Being Canadian and having spent the first 23 years of my life there, I have a particularly intimate connection to the concept of Canada, and I know that often when others ask me about my country, they're picturing something quite different from what I see in my mind, and feel. I have to say that the poem is also partly about how big Canada is geographically, and how that adds to its "bigness" as a concept. I think it's too big to be understood, in a way that is different from most other countries. (I probably would think that, being Canadian...) So of course, I wrote a very short poem about it. The poem is also partly about night flying - something I find nerve-wracking, but sometimes beautiful in an elemental way. How this all came together, I am really not sure.
My other recent publication came a few days ago - a review of Gallop by Alison Brackenbury, for Magma Poetry. It's an excellent new collection (a Selected Poems from her whole career, actually) and I highly recommend it. You can read the review here: https://magmapoetry.com/review-clarissa-ackroyd-reviews-gallop-by-alison-brackenbury/
Photo by Robert Nelson. Used under Creative Commons license
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