April was Poetry Month, and May is Short Story Month. Is there a literary category for every month of the year? No, but perhaps there ought to be.

This Saturday isn’t just Star Wars Day (“May the fourth be with you”), this year it’s also Free Comic Book Day, which is always held the first Saturday in May. So, head on over to your local comic book store and pick up some freebies, and maybe buy a few things while you’re there.

Things you should read this week:

• Zoe Whittall’s poem, “Unequal to Me,” and the sexism and the silence.
• Congratulations to Cassie Stocks on winning the Leacock medal. She is the 6th women to have won the award in its 66 year history.
• Are we entering the twilight of the patriarchy? Lynn Coady this so, and I hope she’s right.
• Claire Messud is asked some very stupid and clearly gender questions, and hits back with intelligence and force.
• For more on this theme, see VIDA’s “Women Writers and Bad Interviews.”
• And “My So-Called ‘Post-Feminist’ Life in Arts and Letters.”
• Nathalie Atkinson makes me think I should read The Torontonians.
• Why you shouldn’t tell that random woman she’s hot. It’s spring, and this is very topical. Please read it, share it, and enforce it.
• Susanna Kearsley on curating CanLit.
• August C. Bourré on writing poetry.
• Lydia’s random spine chewing is a part of a long tradition of cats wrecking books dating back to at least the 15th century. Who knew?
• Tyler Harper on what Bioshock Infinite gets right about racism.
• And, for the record, it’s not gamers who have a problem with female protagonists.

Have a good weekend, kids.

In February I attended Stuart Ross‘ excellent Poetry Boot Camp. I’d never attended a poetry workshop before, but it sounded fun, and it was — even if it was also a lot of pressure. A dozen poems, written in the space of a few hours, in front of other people…not how I usually work, but my discomfort proved motivating.

Stuart handed out copies of “Study 19,” a single poem on a folded piece of paper, and suggested we could do the same as a cheap and easy way to get our poems out there. It’s a cool idea, so when I did my first reading, I printed up 50 copies of “Dumb Supper,” a poem I wrote during Stuart’s workshop (and later refined a little) to hand out.

I think he called them chapbook singles, or I may have misheard that, taking inspiration from Kraft singles, poems as individually packaged slices of cheese, each perfectly identical. Whatever the case, only a few people took them at the reading, so I’ve been leaving copies around on the subway, in coffee shops and generally passing them about, but I still have a few left. If anyone wants one, let me know.

I like the idea of handing them out during Poetry Month. I may make this an annual tradition.

CWILA, Canadian Women in the Literary Arts, is gearing up for it’s 2012 count, and it could use your help.

Women continue to be under represented in review media. Though women publish roughly half the books, and statistically buy more books then men, the number of reviews published in major news outlets don’t reflect this. In 2011, almost half the books reviewed written and reviewed by men (44%). The remaining numbers: 18% men reviewing women, 15% women reviewing men, and 23% women reviewing women. It gets even worse when you drill down publication by publication.

That’s 62% of reviews published in Canada, were written by men, most of them of men’s books. CWILA has already taken steps to counter that, in creating a Critic-in-Residence program, which encourages women “foster vital criticism that promotes public awareness of women’s literary and critical presence in Canadian letters,” and comes with a stipend of $3000.

CWILA has interviewed editors from many major publications, shares essays, posts writing calls, maintains an active mailing list, and fosters community among women writers across a wide variety of disciplines. It’s a fantastic organization, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

If you’re not already a member, you can join here. If you are, but want to help even more (bless your heart), you can find out more about CWILA and what your donation will help fund.

There are a few projects on the go, and it’s important to keep track of what’s happening, and celebrating progress. Many of the editors interviewed were surprised to see how poorly they faired at gender parity, and, hopefully, have made adjustments to counter this, which should be reflected in the 2012 count.

I volunteer on the admin team as a webmaster, and I’ll be helping with the count for 2012. I hope you can help too.