Reviewed by Vanessa Shields footsteps in the garden by Bob MacKenzie (cyberwit.net, 2021)   Bob MacKenzie’s latest collection of poetry, footsteps in the garden is for settling in. This is a collection that wants your time and attention for its spirographic dances with words in a plethora of gardens, both real and imagined. MacKenzie’s gift…

Reviewed by Padmaja Battani The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak by Grace Lau, Guernica Editions, 2021   The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak, debut poetry collection by Grace Lau is an intensive attempt in discovering concealed elements of immigrant inheritances. It also depicts the themes of  queer yearnings, multi-generational mysteries among…

Reviewed by Emma Odrach Metastasis by Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews (Mosaic Press, 2021) Insightful. thoughtful and timely Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews says in her preface poets are “the antennae of their times”. She is correct and her poems prove it. But they are not optimistic, rather, they come with an outcry against all that is wrong with…

Reviewed by Carol MacKay Wild Hope: Prayers and Poems by John Terpstra (St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2020) John Terpstra’s book of prayers takes its title from the final line of “The Kind of World We Live in,” the first poem in his collection. This Lenten poem was written pre-COVID-19 but was likely influenced by the…

Reviewed by Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews Thimbles by Vanessa Shields (Palimpsest Press, 2021)    In poetry, everything has a deeper meaning. A thimble as a mythopoetic symbol evokes a sense of immunity and self-protection against the pain and bloodletting of life’s allegorical needles. It is a shield against pain. Interestingly,  the poet’s last name is Shields,…

Reviewed by Philomene Kocher Haiku in Canada: History, Poetry, Memoir by Terry Ann Carter. Victoria, BC: Ekstasis Editions, 2020. 170 pp. Rarely do books appear that embody a decade’s worth of dedication. And perhaps it is also true, that each book that is published represents that author’s whole life. Haiku in Canada does both: it is…

Reviewed by Pearl Pirie Locked in Different Alphabets by Doris Fiszer (Silver Bow Publishing, 2020) I’ve had the privilege of seeing some of these poems as they developed since Fiszer and I overlapped for a time in the same writing group. I’ve read some iterations of the poems in her chapbooks The Binders (Tree Press,…

Reviewed by Pearl Pirie The Muse Sings by Dennis Cooley (At Bay Press, 2020) I’ve long admired the playfulness of Dennis Cooley. The Muse Sings is his 21st book. His abcedarium (University of Alberta Press, 2014) has a freewheeling sort of swirl of concrete poetry and it continues in this new collection; “is the letter…

Reviewed by Chantel Lavoie Nothing You Can Carry by Susan Alexander (Thistledown Press, 2020) The title hints at the spiritual grappling with the material in Susan Alexander’s new collection, Nothing You Can Carry. It also relies on the important verbs in that phrase: is that which cannot be carried valuable because it is beyond the…

Reviewed by Patricia Keeney Blood Rises by David Haskins (Guernica Editions. 2020) At the breathless top of the world along the arduous Inka trail, “Condor, oldest of all flying creatures” brought the sun on his back to banish darkness and fear. David Haskins’ transforming late life ascent into Machu Picchu takes us to where “[t]he…