I thought I had Nicholas (Nick) Canada all figured out, but I was wrong. Nick is a colleague of mine at UNC Charlotte where he primarily teaches courses in the American Studies Program, a program that I once ran for ten years. He has stopped by my office many times, and we have often talked about our shared interests in American popular culture, film studies, and other related topics. We both earned our doctoral degrees from the American Culture Ph.D. Program at Bowling Green State University, so this connection has sometimes figured in our conversations. As a result of our ongoing interactions, I know something about his classes and his research interests, but until recently, I did not know that Nick is also a poet.
I learned about Nick’s interest in writing poetry when I heard that he had just published a poetry chapbook titled Limerence in Black and White. Right off the bat, I was intrigued by the title of his chapbook. The word limerence was coined in 1979, so it is a pretty new word. It refers to an obsessive passion or an intense infatuation with another person. The phrase black and white brings to mind older photographs and films. By putting these words together in the title of his chapbook, Nick tips off the reader that the poems in this chapbook are about his past obsessions. There is a haunting, confessional quality to these poems. They remind me of the sort of memories that sometimes come flooding back when we look at old photographs of loved ones from years gone by.
I reached out to Nick and asked him for more information about how he came to write Limerence in Black in White. Here is what he sent to me:
There’s no catharsis quite like writing, though it can be uncomfortable to confront the troubling corners of our past. I wrote Limerence in Black and White over about four months, but the chapbook’s “story” is my attempt to make sense of the unsettling chapters from my twenties and early thirties. The boundary between poetry and prose sometimes blurs here, and I allowed myself to put whatever I felt onto the page, disregarding strict rules or disciplinary boundaries. These words lived in my head for years, and it finally felt necessary to do something with them—to confront the persistent echoes of a difficult time. Some pieces are poems; others are more like prose, and a few are simply my attempts to speak to old experiences, what I call “print therapy.” This collection is unconventional, but I didn’t write it for credentials. I just wanted to feel better.
While living in Ohio for grad school, I became obsessed with Bruce Springsteen’s folk album, Nebraska. I couldn’t stop listening to it, and it’s been in heavy rotation ever since. In my second-year teaching at UNC Charlotte, I signed a contract with McFarland and Company for my first academic manuscript and had already written several chapters of my debut novel. When I learned that Scott Cooper had written and directed Deliver Me from Nowhere, a film about Springsteen recording Nebraska, I knew I had to see it. On a chilly October night in Charlotte, I went to a local cinema. Watching the film, I was struck by how similar our upbringings had been, and that Springsteen only wanted to record the album because he needed to cope with the thoughts that had haunted him for years. I was the last to leave the theater that night, and as I walked out, I realized it might finally be time to turn inward and have an honest conversation with myself about the failures and abrupt endings in my life—especially those I had little control over.
At the start of 2026, I stopped working on both my manuscript and novel so that I could start putting together what eventually became Limerence in Black and White. For the next several months, I would write a poem or a prose piece a week. When I wasn’t on campus, I would lock myself away in my apartment to write. I even spent spring break driving to Lumberton alone to reconnect with an old friend and revisit familiar places. When I came back, I finished the chapbook and started sending it out to whatever publisher I could find. Most said no, which I expected. I wrote this chapbook, and I did my best. I finally said what I needed to say, and if no one ever cared to publish it, I decided I could live with that.
The day my daughter was born, Bottlecap Press, a millennial-focused publisher that truly understood the project’s vision, offered me a deal. I accepted, and we worked together on everything from the blurb to the cover art. It was a great collaboration, and I am grateful that they were willing to give an unpublished writer like me a chance. I am deeply thankful to have this piece published and out in the world, but more importantly, I’m happy to be free and move on with my life.
For more information about Limerence in Black and White, please click on the following link: https://bottlecap.press/products/limenc
I thank Nick not only for sharing the story behind his poetry chapbook but also for showing that some writers cannot be easily pigeonholed. Nick is an example of a Storied Charlotte scholar and poet who can move from writing scholarly prose to penning personal poems and succeed in both endeavors.
