As part of our ongoing efforts to promote and engage poets and poetry across Canada, the League of Canadian Poets is hoping to create a reviews series hosted here on our Community page. In time, we would like to develop a dedicated network of writers and reviewers who want to support and discuss the cool new projects coming to life every day in CanLit. We all know poetry doesn’t get a lot of space (or love) in mainstream review outlets, although literary magazines, blogs, and lots of online platforms are going to great lengths to keep poetry criticism alive and well. We figure it’s about time we contribute!

It’s a small, small poetry world out there, and we know there’s a large chance reviewers have met the poet they’re reviewing at least once. So we want to embrace that: friends, review friends! Publishers, review your own books! Discuss, discuss, discuss–as long as you disclose your connections and keep your writing transparent. We’re looking for reviews that speak to the reviewer’s personal experience with the book, but we’re also looking for reviews that can connect a book with other legacies, initiatives, and creators in CanLit.

The reviews we’re looking for do not need to be previously unpublished.

Reviewers do not need to be members of the League. As it stands, we are currently looking for volunteer reviewers, and we are unable to provide review copies of books; however, if you are interested in reviewing a book you do not already have, we are happy to try to help you get a review copy. We would like reviews to be of books published approximately within one year of the review date. Please email [email protected] with questions, queries, or submissions! Our first review in the series is of Jimmy McInnes’s 2015 book A More Perfect [ (BookThug), reviewed by William Kemp and originally published in (parenthetical) issue 7. Read it here!

Here are some recent books by new members that we would love to see reviewed:

• serpentine loop by Elee Kralkjii Gardiner (Anvil Press 2016)
• Could You Please, Please Stop Singing by Sabyasachi Nag (Mosaic Press 2016)
• Happy You Are Here by Ayaz Pirani (The Word Works 2016)
• Myrmurs: An Exploded Sestina by Shannon Maguire (BookThug 2015)
• Leaving the Island by Talya Rubin (Signal Editions 2015)
• Black Cat in the Shadows by Blaine Greenwood (Ekstasis Editions 2015)
• Observing the Moon by Sneha Madhavan Reese (Hagios Press 2015)
• There Will Be Blood and I Will Tell You, Put Your Hand Down Here by Beth Everest (Black Moss Press)

League members with new books should e-mail [email protected] with a link to the publisher’s website.