Thank You for the Poetry
For our autumn issue of Pulp Literature, Mel Anastasiou reflects on the journeys of poetry editors Daniel Cowper and Emily Osborne as they brought poetry to the pages of Pulp Literature. Enjoy this look at our latest editorial from Issue 48, Autumn 2025.
From the Pulp Lit Pulpit: Thank You for the Poetry
by Mel Anastasiou
On a summer’s day in 2013, founding editors Jen, Mel, and Sue had drained our glasses when the alliterative question arose: Should Pulp Literature publish poetry? We knew we’d need a brilliant published poet with a gift for editing, and Mel said, What if I ask Daniel?
Daniel Cowper is a beautiful poet who spent seasons in Toronto with the iconic Algonquin Square Table. He said yes, thank goodness, and began to create a superb poetry collection for the quarterly. He supported Canadian and international poetry communities, and also conceived of the Magpie Award for Poetry.
A few years in, when Daniel was much published and winning prizes for his work, he met Dr Emily Osborne helping out at a soup kitchen. Emily’s specialty at Cambridge was ancient Norse literature, and by the time they married, she was publishing translations and writing poetry that won awards as well. She joined Daniel as editor and brought her own brilliance to Pulp Literature. Their bibliographies grew, as did their family, and throughout they continued to make time somehow to edit Pulp Literature’s poetry and to long- and shortlist our poetry contests. Frankly, with their own careers and busy family life, we don’t know how they did it.
Talent shines, we know. We will miss their work on Pulp’s poetry. We’re excited for their new directions in family life, working life, and publishing across Canada and internationally.
See what else Pulp Literature Issue 48, Autumn 2025 has in store!
Mel Anastasiou writes the Fairmount Manor Mysteries, the Monument Studios Mysteries, and the Hertfordshire Pub Mysteries, available at pulpliterature.com. She won a Literary Titan Gold Book Award and was longlisted for the Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for her novel Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries. Look for The Labours of Mrs Stella Ryman, available through online booksellers and at Pulp Literature Press.
Daniel Cowper is from Bowen Island, BC. After studying medieval literature, philosophy, and law in Vancouver, Manhattan, and Toronto, Daniel is building a cabin on Bowen Island. Daniel’s poetry has appeared in Arc Poetry, Literary Review of Canada, Prairie Fire, Vallum, and other reviews and anthologies in Canada, the US, and Ireland. Daniel is the author of The God of Doors, published in 2017 as co-winner of Frog Hollow Press’s Chapbook Contest, and Grotesque Tenderness, published in 2019 by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Emily Osborne is the author of the poetry chapbook Biometrical (Anstruther Press, 2018) and the book of Old Norse to English verse translations, Quarrel of Arrows (Junction Books, 2020). She is the winner of The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry 2018, and her poetry has been published in CV2, The Malahat Review, Barren Magazine, Canthius, The Literary Review of Canada and elsewhere. She earned a PhD in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature from the University of Cambridge and held a postdoctoral fellowship in medieval literature and linguistics at The University of British Columbia.
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