Volume Seven: Chapter Seven - Our Conversation with Jennifer LoveGrove

 In Volume Seven: Chapter Seven of the podcast, we welcome Dunnville, Ontario-born and Toronto-based Writer, Author, and Poet Jennifer LoveGrove. Jennifer is the author of four full-length poetry collections and the novel Watch How We Walk, which was long-listed for the Giller Prize. Her poetry collection Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes was long-listed for the Raymond Souster Award, and her newest collection, The Tinder Sonnets, is available now via Bookhug Press. In our conversation, we discuss Jennifer's creative history—from childhood creativity and growing up with a typewriter and lamp-chair writing setup, to the lasting influence of religion and the sense of outsiderhood that shaped both her worldview and artistic voice. We discuss her movement between fiction and poetry, whether those creative instincts originate from the same creative space, and the realities of maintaining a writing practice beyond romantic ideas of inspiration. Jennifer speaks candidly about discipline, resistance, self-doubt, and the emotional terrain of writing—why first drafts can feel exhausting, what revision gives back, and whether satisfaction comes from the act of writing itself or from seeing something new brought into existence. We also spend time discussing The Tinder Sonnets—a collection based on Jennifer’s experiences navigating dating apps and modern relationships in middle age. Our conversation touches on vulnerability, confession, female desire, misogyny in contemporary dating culture, and the expectations society places on women as they age. Jennifer reflects on writing openly about intimacy and emotional complexity, what it means to transform personal experience into poetry, and whether the collection brought clarity, confrontation, or simply another way of living alongside difficult truthsContact Jennifer:Purchase The Tinder Sonnets: bookhugpress.ca          Instagram: @jenlg52   Recorded Spoken Word Performances Featured Include: Prentice Powell – True LoveInstagram: @prenticepowell1906          Website: prenticepowell.comAsia Samson – EnoughInstagram: @theasiaproject         Website: theasiaproject.com Alysia Harris – Death PoemInstagram: @poppyinthewheat          Website: alysiaharris.comKyla Janee Lacey – I Pulled Out A Knife On HimInstagram: @kylajlacey         Website: thatswritekyla.com Emi Mahmoud – Window GamesInstagram: @emibatuta         Website: emi-mahmoud.com Support the show