In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery interviews the artist collective MA|DE about their poetry collection, ZZOO (Anstruther Books, 2025).

At a time when binaristic and hierarchical relations are being readily interrogated, MA|DE — a unity of two voices fused into a single, poetic third — takes up a critique of the human-animal divide in their full-length debut, ZZOO. From the depths of the oceans to the outer reaches of the sky, a menagerie of species trade off time in the limelight, none of them solely occupying the central space on the global stage. MA|DE’s collaborative practice foregrounds interdependence, outward focus, shared spaces and non-hierarchical thinking, all of which emerge allegorically in interzonal poems that are as richly realized as they are formally eclectic. This wild-blooded collection turns conventional exhibitionism on its head, treating humans and animals as equal subjects of art, science and selfhood. ZZOO is a bestiary for the modern world.

About MA|DE:

MA|DE (est. 2018) is a collaborative writing entity, a unity of two voices fused into a single, poetic third. It is the name given to the joint authorship of Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace — artists whose active solo practices, while differing radically, serve to complement one another. MA|DE’s work together is often exploratory in nature, formulating a set of shared visions, symbols and ciphers that invite the reader into their complex, continually-expanding internal universe. MA|DE’s writing has appeared in numerous journals and chapbooks, and they have delivered workshops on collaborative writing at several festivals, including VerseFest Ottawa. With the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, they completed their debut full-length collection, ZZOO (Palimpsest Press, 2025), and have now completed their next two collections, Alphabeticals and Detourism. Meanwhile, they are currently hard at work on two new, creatively divergent manuscripts: Twin Visible and Waste Not the Marrow.

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