Here: Knife | Fork | Book • by Kirby • 1

Hamilton Arts & Letters       Knife Fork Book (KFB), the all-poetry bookshop I founded late 2016, was born of both fluke and necessity. Though welcome, Toronto didn’t need another used bookstore, it needed a poetry shop. A place to champion poets and poetry, a place to call home. I’d been working for a small press at the time, mostly handling promotion and social media marketing. I didn’t like the way poets/poetry were being more or less dismissed from the start. Poetry simply wasn’t expected to sell. At most, lucky poets were given a “launch” i.e. a date, and would sink or swim on their own thereafter. There were all sorts of stock answers as to why, all “nos,” “that won’t work,” “we’ve tried that,” one adamant blokade after another. The press clearly wasn’t seeing queerly enough. That, and you never tell a Taurus what she can’t do. As it turns out, it was Canada that needed a poetry shop.    [  >>>>>   FORWARD ]   + [Distillate © HA&L + Kirby {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]