Editor and writer Alex Boyd has started up a new blog called The Lonely Offices after making the decision in February 2013 to bring his former website, the Northern Poetry Review, to a close. The Northern Poetry Review will remain online, but Alex has chosen to start this new blog due to the diminishing attention that gets paid to poetry.

Open Book: Ontario is thrilled to have spent the month of April in Prince Edward County, a region that daily inspires its writers, readers and curious passers-by. Janet Kellough launched us into Focus On: Prince Edward County with her wonderful article, "How I Discovered Prince Edward County Literature." Now she's back to close the month with her contribution to our WAR (Writers As Readers) Series.

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In case you missed it, here is an update of all the interviews and features on Open Book: Toronto this week.

As part of the Five Things Literary series, debut novelist Rebecca Silver Slayter, author of In The Land of Birdfishes (HarperCollins Canada), reveals five interesting things about Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She tells Open Book about literary feasts that happen one weekend a month at a 19th-century farmhouse in Middle River, the Cabot Trail Writers’ Festival and more in this interview.

On Canadian Poetries, Winnipeg poets Sally Ito and Jennifer Still discuss the workshops they facilitated that dealt with the topic of ekphrasis — “the poetic act of responding to a work of visual art through words.” Sally and Jennifer’s first workshop was based on the gallery exhibit Reconfiguring Abstraction, which featured work by artists Derek Dunlop, Dil Hildebrand, Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline and Holger Kalberg.

Celebrate National Poetry Month and find out what inspires, confounds and delights today's Canadian poets by following our Poets in Profile series. Today, Hamilton poet Marilyn Gear Pilling, also the president of the Hamilton Poetry Centre, tells us about the experience that led her to become a poet, the Robert Louis Stevenson poem that affected her as a child and the Toronto bathroom that unexpectedly inspired her poetry writing.

Marilyn’s newest poetry collection is A Bee Garden, which has just been released by Cormorant Books.

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By rob mclennan

On April 3, 2013, Toronto-based writer and editor Peter Norman performed with 18 other poets as part of the 5th annual Poetry NOW competition. The judges for the event were current Toronto Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke, and Authors at Harbourfront Centre Director Geoffrey Taylor and Artistic Associate Jen Tindall. The event was near-capacity, and Toronto publisher Mansfield Press was well-represented, with authors Jim Smith and Lillian Necakov on the bill alongside Peter Norman, and Mansfield Press Editor Stuart Ross had even made the trip in from Cobourg, Ontario. The following morning, it was announced that Norman had won the top slot of the evening, which includes an invitation to read this fall at the 34th annual International Festival of Authors (which runs from October 24 to November 3, 2013), as well as an ad for his book in NOW Magazine. Four runners-up were also selected to be invited to the festival: Warren Clements, Christine McNair, Beatriz Hausner and Mathew Henderson.

Each year, the Canadian Science Writers’ Association gives out annual book awards to the best books in science writing. The association has officially announced the winners of its general audience award, which is awarded to the best science book intended for the general public and published in 2012, and the youth book award, awarded to science writing that is intended for children between the ages of eight and twelve. Fatal Flaws (HarperCollins Canada) by Jay Ingram, the former host of Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet, is the winner of the general audience book award. The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea (Kids Can Press) by Helaine Becker is the winner of the youth book award.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Quill & Quire is offering reviews of ten poetry collections, which can all be read on the website.

Celebrate National Poetry Month and find out what inspires, confounds and delights today's Canadian poets by following our Poets in Profile series. Today, Hamilton poet Amanda Jernigan tells us how learning Thai turned her into a poet, how a bad poem is like a kangaroo and how a poem that seems too off the wall to fit just might find a home.

Amanda Jernigan's second book of poetry, All the Daylight Hours, has just been released with Cormorant Books.

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Samantha Haywood has been an agent with Transatlantic Literary Agency since 2004. The clients that she represents include award-winning and bestselling fiction and nonfiction writers. Samantha knows what matters in the Canadian literary landscape, and as today's Page Turner for Project Bookmark Canada's Page Turner Campaign, she offers some solid reasons why becoming a Page Turner is good for you and for CanLit.