Feuilles: April 2026 Newsletter
Special guest Jesse Keith Butler writes from Dawson City, Yukon
Dear readers,
I’m writing to you today, as a guest writer of Feuilles, from Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon. For two months I am the writer in residence in Pierre Berton’s childhood home. It’s March 20, but winter is stubbornly hanging on here. It has in fact warmed up from when we arrived three weeks ago to 40 below. But the mornings are still briskly cold, and the afternoons rarely warm above minus 10.
This is a bit of a homecoming for me, as I grew up in the Yukon and spent my first four years in Dawson. The town has been incredibly welcoming to me and my family. We’ve been invited to countless community events since we arrived. In spite of the weather, the community has decided that it should be spring, and is acting accordingly. This weekend is the community’s spring festival, and we’re looking forward to more cold-fingered, warm-hearted fun.
Traces News
New Issue Coming Soon!
Our Spring 2026 issue launches in just one month. Be sure to subscribe to receive the issue straight to your inbox.
The Order of Love
Community Events & Opportunities
Orion Arts residency: Open for Applications
Applications are OPEN until midnight, Sunday, April 12th, 2026.
Launch of Optic Heart: A Biography of Margaret Avison. Volume 1: 1918-1977 by David A. Kent
The St. Thomas Poetry Series is hosting a launch for David A. Kent’s new biography of esteemed Canadian poet Margaret Avison. The launch will be held atS t Thomas’s Church, 383 Huron Street, on Saturday, April 25 at 2:30 pm. Reception to follow.
Poems for Persons of Interest: Poetry Submissions Open
PFPOI will be open to poetry submissions for their June issue, April 1 through April 30.
2026 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award
The 2026 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award is now open for submissions. The winning poet will receive a two-thousand-dollar award, and the winning poem will be published in Plough Quarterly. Deadline to submit: April 30th.
Vallum Chapbook Award
Enter Vallum's annual Chapbook Contest for a chance to win $300, publication, and 25 complimentary copies of your chapbook! Open to Canadian, U.S., and international entrants. Deadline: April 30, 2026
The Understory: A Comment Festival
Save the Date for THE UNDERSTORY, Comment’s inaugural festival to be held at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, from Thursday, May 28 to Saturday, May 30, 2026.
2026 Jane Greer Memorial Poetry Contest
Dappled Things has announced the Jane Greer Memorial Poetry Contest in honour of beloved poet Jane Greer. Submissions are open now until May 31st!
Cultivate 2026 Retreat: ROOTED (Greenville, SC, June 19-21)
Come join faithful creatives and leaders from all over the world during this inspired and equipping retreat, taking place June 19th-21st in Greenville, South Carolina, at First Presbyterian Church. Tickets are now on sale and selling fast!
Do you have a publication, event, or milestone you’d like to share with the Traces community? Submit your news to be featured in a future edition of “Contributor Sightings.”
Second Reading
Berton House is right across the road from Robert Service’s old cabin. I stare at it every day.
I’ve always had a conflicted relationship with Robert Service. Growing up in the Yukon, you’re constantly force-fed his poetry. I developed a sense that it was somewhat gimmicky, something like the sour-toe cocktail that tourists flock to but that locals roll their eyes at.
Since I’ve been here, I’ve been reading Pierre Berton’s 1907 edition of Songs of a Sourdough, and I’ve developed a new respect for Service. Simply on the level of verse, he was a master of the ballad form. (Berton also had a collection of other poets who tried to imitate Service, and the difference in quality is glaring.) But is his work poetry?
We can perhaps set aside “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” which is clearly a masterpiece of genre writing. Beyond that, his Klondike poems are certainly uneven, but what has been impressing me (perhaps because I’m reading them on site) is their deep sense of place. When I read his later work, after he had left the Yukon, his facility with verse continues, but there is a raw energy and rootedness that is lost.
I find “The Spell of the Yukon” particularly striking. There’s a freshness to his phrasing, a particularity of vision, that I think elevates it to the level of true poetry. Look at that fourth stanza—“some mighty-mouthed hollow,” “the big, husky sun”—so many of these phrases still feel like a distinctive expression of a deeply-felt experience of place.
The Spell of the Yukon
By Robert W. Service
I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it—
Came out with a fortune last fall,—
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn’t all.
No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth—and I’m one.
You come to get rich (damned good reason);
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
It twists you from foe to a friend;
It seems it’s been since the beginning;
It seems it will be to the end.
I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o’ the world piled on top.
The summer—no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness—
O God! how I’m stuck on it all.
The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I’ve bade ’em good-by—but I can’t.
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back—and I will.
They’re making my money diminish;
I’m sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish
I’ll pike to the Yukon again.
I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight;
It’s hell!—but I’ve been there before;
And it’s better than this by a damsite—
So me for the Yukon once more.
There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.Off the Beaten Path
One of my favourite community sites in Dawson so far is the Dawson City Thrift Store, attached to Saint Paul’s Anglican Church. I’ve frequented many thrift stores all over Canada, and this one is my favourite. It’s located in a ramshackle old Dawson building and is bursting with absurdly affordable treasures.
The store has been running, in one form or another, since the 1940s. My aunt, Evelyn McDonald (pictured), has been involved since about the 1980s. The revenues from it fund a community dinner they serve every Wednesday (also cooked by Aunt Evelyn!) which is open to everyone from town. The food’s amazing, and you’re sure to meet interesting people.
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Hi Jesse:
When I high school I had a neatly-folded, hand-written copy of "The Cremation of Sam McGee" in the pocket of my jean jacket --- even though I had it memorized. Although, today, I would not call it great poetry, I still sense something great there. There's music, and delight, and a sense of the magical. Blessings to you and your family for your Yukon sojourn.
Don