Yoko’s Dogs was formed in 2006 around a small tin table at La Maison Verte, a co-op grocery and café in Montreal, when poets Susan Gillis, Mary di Michele, Jan Conn and Jane Munro decided to engage in writing Japanese-style linked verse as a way of expanding their individual practice and exploring new forms. Over the first few months, they wrote and revised and wrote some more, read and studied and discussed the traditions, all via email. They quickly settled on a system of composition, and decided that for readers the mechanics of this system should disappear, as the forms for molded concrete are knocked away after the concrete object is set. The result is this book’s standard four-verse poem, occasionally expanded into longer sequences. In 2008, all four poets met for a three-day renku party in rural Ontario. Here the Doggies composed their first site-specific sequence and substantially revised earlier work. At this meeting too they found their name, in one of their earliest and most haunting images, “Yoko’s house is dark, her dogs/tied in front too cold to bark.” Since then they have continued to work from distant places, meeting once a year to compose and revise. Meanwhile, each of the Doggies remains actively engaged in her own work. Susan Gillis teaches literature and creative writing in Montreal; her most recent books are The Rapids (Brick, 2012) and Twenty Views of the Lachine Rapids (Gaspereau Press, 2012). Mary di Michele, poet and novelist, teaches at Concordia University. Her latest poetry collection is The Flower of Youth, Pier Paolo Pasolini Poems. Jan Conn is a research scientist in Albany, New York, and her latest book of poems is Edge Effects, Brick Books, 2012. Jane Munro lives in Vancouver; her most recent poetry book is Active Pass (Pedlar Press, 2010).