introducing our new poetry editor: Veronique Synnott!

An introduction post is not exactly the place to admit how much I love punctuation—or maybe it is!—but it is the perfect opportunity to say I am a reader first. I am delighted to join the carte blanche team and excited to take part in this project of curation. As the new Poetry Editor, I aim to amplify emerging voices and writers from underrepresented groups. Poetry to me is an invitation to redefine our relationship to time, a way to hold and share space, and a means to consider cultural norms and behaviours. I am interested in writing that lives at the intersection of aesthetic experimentation and what is urgent & necessary. Accidents, inquiries, observations—I want to read it all. What is underlined and what is left in the margins? What do you proclaim and what do you whisper? I welcome specificity and pieces that defy classification. Writing is in part execution, and so I ask: How do you articulate your way out of conventions and expectations?

Veronique Synnott is a queer writer and artist from Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). She lives with invisible disabilities and is interested in the relationships between gender, age, mental health, and power structures. An MFA candidate in creative writing at the University of Guelph, Veronique has work published in carte blanche, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry and forthcoming in Contemporary Verse 2.