On September 1 2023, I shutter The Negative Review, the *world’s first!* Canadian poetry reviews substack that was born in September of 2020. Subject to online abuse by silly personalities who had never read the material they knew they must hate in advance, The Negative Review proved by real paying subscription numbers (44 at peak, but free subscriptions close to 200) that there is a market for witty, evaluative poetry criticism. In just three years of the site’s operation, I earned more than I had in my entire life as a critic.

I crow the metrics just as proof to a certain kind of (anticapitalist, of course) person (who would condemn my responsibility to house and feed by family. They are such good and virtuous social capitalists!) To the best kind of people, though, I say: poetry criticism can live, please write it, I’ve done so and you can do it too. Show your love and irritation and show why, but share it in a way you’re confortable with, that you feel safe doing.

For anyone interested in purchasing the entire series of unfit criticism books 1-6, the latter three of which are, respectively, collections of The Negative Review‘s three seasons, the price is $5000. Write me through this site if you like. Should you do so, you will have on your shelf what will prove to be, in twenty to thirty years, a samizdat history of Canadian poetry. Soon, I will provide a stand-alone wordpress entry offering a listing of the writers covered in each of the books, perhaps with TOCs provided for the first three entries in the uc series. I’ll close with but two pieces of commentary I’ve received over the years from readers. This, from a reader of the site: “I’m very grateful for having gotten to read TNR over the last couple years. It’s been enormously illuminating, opening my eyes and clarifying my thoughts around the stultifying state of Canadian poetry discourse and how we can go about creating alternatives. I really cannot overstate how meaningful it was to first encounter contemporary writing on poetry that was actually vital and not just meant to pad a cv or pay back a favour.”

And this, from George Elliott Clarke: “These tomes will become coveted items because the writing—sassy, smart, inquisitorial, sarcastic, comic, sly, and exact—is so searchingly aesthetic (seeking The Good in poets and poetry) and relentlessly belletristic. . . His unorthodoxy is irresistible, and his prose—rambunctious, obnoxious, witty, erudite, and philosophically wily—is, likely, imperishable.”