Hamilton Arts & Letters (HAL) is a magazine that reflects the ethos of a particular place while reaching out to other places. Produced on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee peoples. We’re proudly Hamilton as we determinedly serve readers across Canada, and beyond.
With an attractive, accessible, and relevant digital presence, HAL offers the best in writing, fine art, film, and audio artistry to a discerning and growing subscriber base and broader readership. HAL builds infrastructure for artists and gives Hamilton artists and writers, emerging and established, opportunities to present new works alongside their peers from across Canada and around the world.
“I genuinely and sincerely love your magazine.”
John Degen, Executive Director, The Writers’ Union of Canada
HA&L:
- Resists ableism and supports dis/abled artists.
Affiliated with the Ontario D/deaf/HoH, Disabled, Mad, Sick and Neuroatypical Poetics Collective, (OD/d/HoH/DMSNPC), and facilitator of the OD/d/HoH/DMSNPC Poetry Festival, among the first dis/ability-focused poetry festivals in Canada. See issue 12.2 Canadian Dis/Ability Poetics issue.
- Believes Indigenous writers, artists, and thinkers are creating some of the most important work in Canada today.
Indigenous contributors have appeared in almost every issue of HAL. See 12.1 Re:Creation Stories, an issue described by Guest Editor Johannah Bird as being “born from the love, care, anger, and resistance of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, Lenape, and Métis writers featured in it and their passion for writing Indigenous life.”
- “We are surrounded by racial inequity, as visible as the law, as hidden as our private thoughts” – Ibram X. Kendi.
HAL stands with those acting to end systemic racism. Listening and learning are good steps, but public action and protest are legitimate and powerful interventions. Read “Utopia: Now in Colour” and “In 1000 Years” by Patrick De Belen in issue 10.2, “Slave Days in the Queen’s Bush” by Geoff Martin, issue 13.1, and “Metanarrating Dubpoetry as WorldWideWordsounds of Global Communal Soul” by Klyde Broox, 10.2.
- Recognizes and supports the history, creativity, and courage of sexually diverse communities.
Read for example “When Bravery is Fiction: Despair, Hope & Expectation in the Writing of Transsexuality” by Casey Plett in issue 13.2.
- Believes social progress is in part the weight of laws designed to alleviate human suffering. The Labour movement has been among the many fighting for such legislation.
“Hamilton workers have built a strong and vibrant labour movement. Yet, nothing the labour movement has achieved has come easily or quickly. What has been accomplished has been achieved through determination and struggle.” (Unionism In Hamilton, McMaster Social Sciences {https://bit.ly/2RmoYOi}) Read Earl Miller’s “Art is Labour: Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge” issue 9.1. Gary Geddes also expresses this aspect of HA&L’s mandate in his essay “Smoke Signals” issue 6.1.
- Supports the resistance of the world’s citizenry to the exploitation of the planet’s resources and the impact this has on the environment.
For this aspect of HAL’s mandate read Special Issue nine.2 and issue thirteen.1 Guest Edited by Alec Follett and Matthew Zantingh. Also see Jaime Yard’s essay “David Day’s THE COWICHAN 40 Years On” in issue seven.1 as well as Jeffery Donaldson’s “Paris Talks • Environmental Returns: Northrop Frye’s Axis Mundi Re-oriented” in issue 8.2.
- Advocates for a humane urban environment.
John Weaver, past editor of the Urban History Review, wrote a cornerstone piece signaling this advocacy in our very first issue. Read “Gore Park as Urban Artifact”. More recently, read “Daylighting Chedoke Part 1” and
“Part 2” by John Terpstra
HA&L:
- Is a free online magazine. SUBSCRIBE!!
- Needs your support. Become a MEMBER!!
- Maintains a free archive with all back issues available online.
Vik-Bib will assist you! - Provides a professional context for artists and writers in Hamilton,
connect them with the larger community of artists across Canada, and
presents their work to an international audience. - Provides a platform for a range of creative voices from different artistic
disciplines, different generations, and different cultural backgrounds. - Creates a vital meeting place for debate and the exchange of ideas.
HA&L magazine 