reviewed by Allan Briesmaster Locked in Different Alphabets by Doris Fiszer (Silver Bow Press, 2020) Books of poetry that combine family history with autobiography have been appearing often enough in recent years to form a notable sub-genre. Locked in Different Alphabets is an excellent instance of such “memoir poetry.” … [click for more]
Review
NEW Review Page posts
Review: Wind on the Heath: new and selected poems by Naomi Beth Wakan
Wind on the Heath: new and selected poems by Naomi Beth Wakan Shanti Arts Publishing, Brunswick, Maine 2020 Softcover, 219 pages, ISBN 978-1-951651-55-8 $18.95 USD www.shantiarts.com Plato said, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. The poems in Wind on the Heath are all about the examined life. Naomi … [click for more]
Review: China Suite by Julie de Belle
Reviewed by Sandra Stephenson Here is a little book I read with a haiku mind. A haiga mind, really, as the pages are accompanied liberally with photos by the author, of her near-year in China teaching English. Stationed in Jiaxing, The longer poems at the beginning of the book … [click for more]
Review: This White Nest by Frances Boyle
Reviewed by Kim Fahner This review was originally published by Prairie Fire, Jan 28, 2020. In the title poem of her newest collection, This White Nest, Frances Boyle poses the question “What shines?” This is the question that sits with the reader as they make their way through the poems, but others … [click for more]
Thursday’s Child: Review of The Marta Poems by Susan J. Atkinson
Reviewed by John Vardon Originally published by The New Quarterly As a poetry editor for The New Quarterly, I first encountered Susan J. Atkinson’s work when reviewing forty applications for an Ontario Arts Council grant about two years ago. Among the poems carefully excerpted from in-progress manuscripts by writers both … [click for more]
Review of Serve the Sorrowing World with Joy by Meg Freer and Chantel Lavoie
Reviewed by Frances Boyle Serve the Sorrowing World With Joy by Meg Freer and Chantel Lavoie (Woodpecker Lane Press, 2020). This lovely short book by Kingston authors Meg Freer and Chantel Lavoie was written to honour an order of nuns who have been carrying out community service in their … [click for more]
Time Will Tell: a Review of The Eleventh Hour by Carolyn Marie Souaid
Reviewed by Josh Quirion My grandmother’s got two vertical freezers so full of food, it’s her house I’m running to when the four horsemen of the apocalypse descend. Nothing she does is accidental. If she makes a hundred eggrolls, she knows exactly how many she’s giving away, and how many … [click for more]
Review of To the Men Who Write Goodbye Letters by Gianna Patriarca
Reviewed by Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni Toronto poet Gianna Patriarca’s new book, To the Men Who Write Goodbye Letters, has arrived at a propitious moment. The world is going through a terrible pandemic causing sickness and death across wide populations, requiring officials to impose lockdowns, mask-wearing and isolation. No one … [click for more]
One Poem – A Review of A Beautiful Stone: Poems and Ululations by Lynda Monahan and Rod Thompson
Reviewed by Louise Carson After reading A Beautiful Stone, and then the poem on the back cover – ‘Following the Way’ – four stanzas, eight lines – it occurred to me that I could have just read that one poem then written this review. I’m not being cruel or facetious. … [click for more]
Review of Parramisha by Frances Roberts Reilly
reviewed by Bob MacKenzie. In firmly holding onto the desire to love and cherish one another we keep faith with many who have gone before us, by honouring those we have lost. —“Forged in Fire” Many poems are written to be engraved into the texture of paper, inked … [click for more]
Accessible, a review of The Vivian Poems: Street Photographer Vivian Maier, by Bruce Rice
Reviewed by Louise Carson. I’d seen a documentary about this woman, a Chicago nanny, born 1926, died 2009, who never seemed to want to display her work, but who saved much of it. It was found after her death. But I’d forgotten about her until reading the preface to Bruce … [click for more]
Sageing, Wider and Deeper: Penn Kemp in Conversation with Jane Munro
by Penn Kemp. The Words Festival has been one of London ON’s liveliest cultural events, presented annually since 2014. But this year, “WordsFest.ca 2020 was presented online in the belief communities need the transformative power of the literary and creative arts now more than ever.” Through Zoom, the event reached … [click for more]
Review of DREAM FRAGMENTS by Mirabel
Reviewed by Catherine Morrison DREAM FRAGMENTS is an incredible collection of poems that bring readers into her mind, experiencing the vibrant and intimate thoughts she experiences in her sleep. A reflection of self, of history, and future, Mirabel’s poems are extremely approachable, allowing readers to connect to a thought or … [click for more]
Book Review: Glass Float by Jane Munro
Reviewed by Marguerite Pigeon. In her last collection, Blue Sonoma (Brick Books, 2014), Jane Munro used dreamscapes and reportage as paper and pen to trace jagged contours of meaning during her husband’s dementia and death. Those poems were sober, plainspoken—and won Munro a Griffin Poetry Prize. Six years later, Munro … [click for more]
Review: Swoon by Elana Wolff
Reviewed by Kate Marshall Flaherty Swoon by Elana Wolff. Guernica Editions, 2020, 94 pp, ISBN 978-1-77183-507-7 Elana Wolff explores the many layers of ecstasy and everyday-ness in her powerful collection of poems, Swoon. In her epigraphs, Wolff depicts swooning as the physical manifestation of an emotional moment in time, as … [click for more]
Straddling the Third Wall: A review of footlights by Pearl Pirie
Reviewed by Louise Carson. Straddling the Third Wall: A review of footlights by Pearl Pirie, Radiant Press, Regina, 2020. Hide-dingle. (Word marriage.) Dictionary, dictionary. Hide’s nuances I’m pretty well up on – a poet hiding in a poem; skin as hide; a place from which to observe others – dingle’s, … [click for more]
Apples and Oranges, Plastic and Screens, Crows on Utility Poles: a review of Fiona Tinwei Lam’s Odes and Laments
Reviewed by Crystal Hurdle Lam’s third poetry collection, Odes and Laments, surprisingly sweet, offers an equal measure of elegies and odes, sometimes in the same poem. The opener, “Libation,” concludes, “What’s held within/this cup, this poem, this juice/I offer you.” The poem could be container or contents, and what does it matter? Everything … [click for more]
Meditations on Steffler’s Forty-One Pages
Review of Forty-One Pages: On Poetry, Language and Wilderness by John Steffler Reviewed by Antony Di Nardo In his latest book, Forty-One Pages: On Poetry, Language and Wilderness, a collection of forty-one anecdotal essays and a handful of poems, John Steffler defies you to draw a dividing line between … [click for more]
Review of Understan by Gavin Barrett
Reviewed by Patrick Connors Gavin Barrett lives a life with many layers of creativity. Much of his service to poetry is organizational, such as in curating the Tartan Turban Secret Readings, a series which prides itself on diversity and providing opportunity to visible minorities. However, his writing has also garnered … [click for more]
An Expectation of Enlightenment: walking the Camino
Review of The Way History Dries by Keith Inman Reviewed by John B. Lee “Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmers for to seken straunge stronds, To ferne halwes koweth in sondre londes …” Lines from ‘The General Prologue” to Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer … [click for more]
Unhappy, Women Write Poems: A review of Folding Laundry on Judgment Day by Miller Adams
Reviewed by Louise Carson This was a difficult book to read. Not because the poems are inaccessible, or boring, or ugly, but because they are so sad. It’s a book length elegy for a life, all lives – for life itself. It was exhausting to read. (Or did I bring … [click for more]
Review of Devolution by Kim Goldberg
reviewed by Carole Mertz. Kim Goldberg writes surrealistic poetry that sometimes incorporates formal poetic forms. Many of the 60 poems in this collection use animals or anthropomorphic beings to convey their frequently apocalyptic messages. Shifts from the concrete to the abstract often startle the reader. You will not find cliches … [click for more]
Music, Art, Mortality – A Review of Sue Chenette’s Clavier, Paris, Alyssum
Reviewed by Louise Carson. I must have been feeling a bit rebellious the morning I picked up Sue Chenette’s recent collection Clavier, Paris, Alyssum, and, reading out of order (shocking!), began with the central section: Paris. Mainly because I saw it was the shortest of the book’s three sections, a … [click for more]
What the walrus said: a review of Claudia Coutu Radmore’s rabbit
Reviewed by Louise Carson. While Claudia Coutu Radmore may not talk “Of shoes and ships – and sealing wax – of cabbages and kings”, she does, in rabbit, her latest collection of poetry, cover parrots, Elizabeth Bishop’s childhood, Fogo Island, Montreal history in the 1950s, anatomy, geology, folk art – … [click for more]
In the 4 a.m.: A Review of Arleen Paré’s Earle Street
Reviewed by Clayton Longstaff two women together alone in the luminous house When you look out your window, what do you see? Are there trees? (how many?) Birds? (ever-fretting pigeons, circling the feet of passing pedestrians? Or are they predatory where you live—a turkey-vulture, perhaps, solitary, perched on … [click for more]
That Sinking Feeling: in the broken boat with Daniela Elza
Reviewed by Louise Carson. It was with a sinking feeling in my gut that I started to read Daniela Elza’s the broken boat. Oh no. The end of a marriage. The loss of a husband, intimacy. The breaking of something that the poet had thought would last forever. My own … [click for more]
Up North with Gillian Harding-Russell, a book review of In Another Air
Reviewed by Louise Carson Geography. Do we want poems of a geographical nature? Sure we do, especially in Canada, where we grapple with so much of the stuff. And I love geography. One of my fondest memories is of the whole of my Grade 4 class, under the benign … [click for more]
Of Light: A Review of Jude Neale’s Impromptu
Reviewed by Cynthia Sharp First Published by The Miramichi Reader Jude Neale encouraged me to write with her through National Poetry Month and I caught the fever, her own original prompts the ones that flowed most easily. Like the collage of hearts and stars on the cover, Impromptu is an explosion … [click for more]
Review: Common Brown House Moths by Laura Zacharin
Reviewed by Marguerite Pigeon Pests lurk through the pages of Laura Zacharin’s assured first collection, including lice and the titular moths. Nagging, unsettling, preoccupying to the point of distraction, these domestic nuisances are symptomatic—but of what? An unnamed woman in the poem “Common Brown House Moths” can’t shake a dread … [click for more]
A Tender Timeless Space: a review of Bruce Kauffman’s an evening absence still waiting for moon
Reviewed by Louise Carson You know a book of poetry has possibilities when the opening epigraph is seven lines from W.S. Merwin’s ‘Ancient World’, which function as a kind of extended haiku, beginning, “Orange sunset/In the deep shell of summer” and ending with “…the sound of a door closing/And at … [click for more]
Review: Love’s Lighthouse by Anna Yin
Reviewed by Susan McMaster May 2020 Anna Yin’s new book of poetry has exactly five English words on the cover – her name, the title, Love’s Lighthouse, and the ISBN if you count that as a word. It is, however, covered in Chinese characters in red and black placed in … [click for more]
Review: Salt Bride by Ilona Martonfi
Reviewed by Vanessa Shields Martonfi’s fourth book, Salt Bride (Inanna Publications, 2019) is a collection of poetry that begs for companionship. This is not a collection for the faint of heart nor for the reader who doesn’t know her human atrocities his[her]story. The Salt Bride is a deep dive into … [click for more]
Review: heft by Doyali Islam
reviewed by Carole Mertz This review appeared June 2019 at Dreamers Creative Writing. A prolific history lies behind Doyali Islam and her approach to writing poetry. While we may not fully understand the method she applies, we can appreciate the resultant strength of her compositions and respect the idiosyncrasies of … [click for more]
Scotland Forever: a review of The Walk She Takes by Neile Graham
reviewed by Louise Carson Full disclosure. I don’t know Neile Graham, creator of the poems in The Walk She Takes, but I do know Scotland, the subject of the thirty eight poems in this book. I don’t know it as well as Graham, who has visited multiple times to … [click for more]
Review: Undiscovered Country by Al Rempel
Reviewed by Adrienne Fitzpatrick This review was first published in Thimbleberry (Volume 4, Summer 2019) Rempel’s book arrived in the mail in late August, in the still bright summer. I was still slow with the heat. It was deep into October when I first read through it and it was … [click for more]
Review: Treaty # by Armand Garnet Ruffo
Reviewed by Marguerite Pigeon Treaty # opens with a prose poem, “Impetus Ungainly,” in which Armand Garnet Ruffo manipulates language from a 1905 treaty between the British Crown and Ojibwe, Cree and members of other Indigenous groups in Ontario. The poem’s title hints, bitingly, at the treaty’s function. It was … [click for more]
Review: Ego of a Nation by Janet Rogers
Reviewed by Miles Morrisseau Janet Marie Rogers’ 7th book of poetry is her double album and it may become her classic. Rogers, who is Mohawk and Tuscarora, is a gifted poet and she has written the book that Canada needs to read in 2020. The year we see clearly: if … [click for more]
Review: We Are Malala: poems and art by Katerina Vaughan Fretwell
Review by Penn Kemp A Canadian artist muses on Malala Yousafzai in poetic dialogue Katerina Vaughan Fretwell, We Are Malala: poems and art. Inanna Press “We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.” —Malala Yousafzai On the day I read Katerina Vaughan Fretwell’s We Are Malala, … [click for more]
Review: Cold Metal Stairs by Su Croll
Reviewed by Marguerite Pigeon Dementia might seem like the anti-muse: not creative inspiration, but its sapping. Yet, in her new collection, Cold Metal Stairs, Su Croll follows dementia—her father’s—as it pulls her vicariously, clanging and spiralling downwards, through grief, fragmentation, and fear. The poems in this collection enact the repetitive, … [click for more]
Review: A Poet’s Journey: on poetry and what it means to be a poet by Stephen Morrissey
Reviewed by Cynthia Coristine Poetry is the voice of the human soul, speaking across time and distance – Stephen Morrissey In A Poet’s Journey Montreal native Stephen Morrissey shares four decades of insight about what it means to be a poet and the process by which a poet can discover … [click for more]
Review: Pretty Time Machine: ekphrastic prose poems by Lorette C. Luzajic
Reviewed by Bill Arnott The whole ekphrastic thing’s morphed somewhat since Greeks coined the term, describing art based on other art – adding creative layers, facilitating praise to enrich the overall experience. Like bacon. The addition simply makes things better. This artistic endeavour, however, represents life. Everything has a facet … [click for more]
Learning from Pier Giorgio Di Cicco (1949-2019)
Introduction by Diana Manole Pier Giorgio Di Cicco’s poems have always brought me the enjoyment of spiritual grace strongly grounded in sociopolitical and cultural activism. I’ve taught his work in all my Canadian Literature courses, while also emphasizing his contribution to helping Canadians become aware of the very existence … [click for more]
Review: Against Forgetting by Keith Garebian
Reviewed by Elana Wolff “A poem can hold more mysteries more easily than any factual timeline,” writes Naomi Shihab Nye — 2019-2020 Young People’s Poet Laureate of the Poetry Foundation of Chicago. Nye’s line aptly describes the holding-effect of Keith Garebian’s intricate documentary voice in Against Forgetting — a collection … [click for more]
Review: River Revery by Penn Kemp
Reviewed by Bill Arnott London Ontario’s my home. In part. Lived there two years. Important years. Growth years. It’s why I feel kinship, connection with the community and the meandering multi-named river that sews it together. I feel the same for the Laureate Emerita that truly calls this place her … [click for more]
Review: Joe Batt’s Arm and Other Islands by Shayne Coffin
Reviewed by C.S. O’Cinneide Location. Location. Location. Joe Batt’s Arm and Other Islands follows the poet Shayne Coffin on a US-Canadian road trip where he uses destination as lyrical inspiration, be they as culturally significant as the house of Ralph Waldo Emerson in Massachusetts or as comically crass as a highway … [click for more]
Review: Local Heroes by Penn Kemp
Reviewed by Jennifer Wenn Local Heroes by Penn Kemp is an “eclectic collection” (from the introduction) of pieces celebrating a range of fascinating people from London, Ontario, and the wider Southwestern Ontario region (or Souwesto, a term popularized by James Reaney, one of those honoured in the Tributes section). A … [click for more]
Review of Sunrise Over Lake Ontario by Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews
Reviewed by Joyce Wayne Di Sciascio-Andrews’ poetry reminds me of the Canadian nature poets who created the bedrock of the poetic tradition in this country. Archibald Lampman comes to mind and the way he commented on late nineteenth century social pretensions and manners by writing poetry about nature. In Sunrise … [click for more]
Review: Radiant by Kate Marshall Flaherty
From The Trinity Review By Grace Ma Edited by Antonia Facciponte Read the review on The Trinity Review here The first poem of Kate Marshall Flaherty’s Radiant, “Welcoming Angels,” begins with: “I will not see cancer as an enemy / nor foreign intruder, / but a passenger pigeon, (not extinct), / … [click for more]
Review: These Wings by Kim Fahner
Pedlar Press| 2019 | 80 Page | $22.00 | Purchase online Reviewed by Vera Constantineau First, let’s talk about the physical aspects of this poetry collection. These Wings is as light as a feather—no pun intended. Inside the smooth cover the feel of the pages is surprisingly substantial, like a … [click for more]
Review: Radiant | By Kate Marshall Flaherty
Inanna Publications | 2019 | $18.95 | Purchase online Reviewed by Lesley Strutt Kate Flaherty’s collection of poems in Radiant is an uplifting treatment of one of life’s most excruciating experiences – cancer. Rather than drifting into self-pity, Flaherty finds a moment in almost every poem to celebrate being alive. When … [click for more]
REVIEWING THE SHORTLIST: Welcome to the Anthropocene | By Alice Major
University of Alberta Press | 2018 | 136 Page | $19.95 | Purchase online Reviewed by Jenny Haysom Reviewing the Shortlist is a weekly series in which poets shortlisted for our 2019 Book Awards review books written by their peers. Join us for this series until the award winners are announced on June 8, … [click for more]
REVIEWING THE SHORTLIST: Ledi | By Kim Trainor
Book*hug | 2018 | 108 Page | $18.00 | Purchase online Reviewed by Jennifer Zilm Reviewing the Shortlist is a weekly series in which poets shortlisted for our 2019 Book Awards review books written by their peers. Join us for this series until the award winners are announced on June 8, … [click for more]
REVIEWING THE SHORTLIST: Unstable Neighbourhood Rabbit | By Mikko Harvey
House of Anansi Press | 2018 | 72 Page | $19.95 | Purchase online Reviewed by Jim Nason Reviewing the Shortlist is a weekly series in which poets shortlisted for our 2019 Book Awards review books written by their peers. Join us for this series until the award winners are announced … [click for more]
REVIEWING THE SHORTLIST: Listen Before Transmit | By Dani Couture
Wolsak & Wynn | 2018 | 90 Page | $18.00 | Purchase online Reviewed by Klara du Plessis Reviewing the Shortlist is a weekly series in which poets shortlisted for our 2019 Book Awards review books written by their peers. Join us for this series until the award winners are announced on June 8, … [click for more]
REVIEWING THE SHORTLIST: The Missing Field | By Jennifer Zilm
Guernica Editions | 2018 | 80 Page | $20.00 | Purchase online Reviewed by Kim Trainor Reviewing the Shortlist is a weekly series in which poets shortlisted for our 2019 Book Awards review books written by their peers. Join us for this series until the award winners are announced on June 8, 2019! In … [click for more]
Review: Little Red | By Kerry Gilbert
Mother Tongue Publishing | 2019 | $19.95 | Purchase online Reviewed by Bill Arnott Grey. That was the day. Like most November days in Vernon, BC. Bundling against cold, I made my way from Sveva Caetani’s pleasantly haunted mansion across a downtown where I lived, worked, and grew up … [click for more]
Review: The Way of Haiku | By Naomi Beth Wakan
Shanti Arts | 2019 | 110 Page | $15.95 | Purchase online Review by Janet Vickers, author of Infinite Power (Ekstasis Editions, 2016) “Outside of truth there is no poetry” Uejima Onitsura” This quote, by Onitsura, is one that Naomi Beth Wakan uses to begin her introduction to haiku-writing and … [click for more]
Review: This Kind of Thinking Does No Good | By Alison Smith
Gaspereau Press | 2018 | 64 Page | $18.95 | Purchase online Review by Annick MacAskill Cerebral, funny, and insightful, Alison Smith’s third full-length poetry collection, This Kind of Thinking Does No Good, reads as an extended response to the feminist maxim “the personal is political.” Picking up on … [click for more]
Review: Homeless Memorial: Poems from the Streets of Vernon | By John La Greca
Ekstasis Editions | 2018 | $23.95 | Purchase online Reviewed by Bill Arnott The first twenty years of my life I lived in Vernon, BC. I had a home. Which I usually took for granted. It was where I returned most nights, save for sleepovers and one night in … [click for more]
Review: Insomnia Bird by Kelly Shepherd & Fox Haunts by Penn Kemp
Insomnia Bird by Kelly Shepherd Thistledown Press | 2018 | 112 Page | $20.00 | Purchase online Fox Haunts by Penn Kemp Aeolus House | 2018 | 98 Page | $20.00 | Purchase online Review by Alice Major In two recent collections, urban wildlife becomes a context for … [click for more]
Review: Shards of Crystal | By Fern G. Z. Carr
Silver Bow Publishing | 2018 | 98 Page | $23.95 | Purchase online The Musicality of Stars: Shards of Crystal Reviewed by Cynthia Sharp. Originally published on Canadian Poetry Review’s Facebook page. I’ve been a fan of Fern G. Z. Carr’s work for years, whether it’s orbiting Mars or … [click for more]
Review: Practical Anxiety | By Heidi Greco
Inanna Publications | 2018 | 104 Page| $18.95 | Purchase online Double the Pleasure: Heidi Greco’s Practical Anxiety Review by Susan Ioannou When Inanna Publications announced Heidi Greco’s newest collection Practical Anxiety, it blurbed that the poems “dwell in the hearth of domesticity.” I was intrigued by the title, especially … [click for more]
Review: Checking In | By Adeena Karasick
Talonbooks | 2018 | 96 Page | $16.95 | Purchase online Reviewed by Jake Marmer for Tablet Poetry, at its core, is a mystical endeavor: an encounter with the web of language that holds our consciousness. This is true even if the poem, on the surface, seems like a series … [click for more]
Review: The Heart of All Music: Poems about Music and Musicians | By Stanley Fefferman
Aeolus House | 2018 | 52 Page | $20.00 | Purchase online Reviewed by Penn Kemp for Bywords Convergence is a word often used to describe the reshaping of our world by such forces as the Internet. This concept also applies to Stanley Fefferman’s latest collection, The Heart of All Music, … [click for more]
Review: Writers North of 54° Chapbooks
Snow Feathers and Skunk Cabbage anthologies from Writers North of 54° 2016 | Contact Harold Fedderson at haroldfeddersen@gmail.com to purchase these chapbooks poems of winter and renewal Review by Lesley Strutt Whatever else we are, Canadians are a nordic people. Our psyche is shaped by our geography. No matter whether we hail … [click for more]
Review: Auguries | By Clea Roberts
Brick Books | 2017 | 104 Page | $20.00 | Purchase online Signs, Signals, Divinations: Clea Roberts’ Auguries Review by Susan McCaslin Clea Roberts’ spare, finely-crafted Auguries (Brick Books, 2017) is, as the title suggests, a scanning of the Yukon sky and landscape for signs and portents of mysteries both hidden … [click for more]
REVIEW: SISYPHUS: HAIKU WORK OF ANNA VAKAR | ED. VICKI MCCULLOUGH
Catkin Press | 2017 | 85 Page | $18.95 | Available for purchase through editor – inquire at sisyphus@telus.net. Review by kj munro (appeared first in Haiku Canada Review Vol. 11 No. 2, October 2017) – In Greek mythology, Sisyphus is punished for eternity – he must repeatedly push a boulder … [click for more]
REVIEW: FOX HAUNTS | BY PENN KEMP
Aeolus House | 2018 | 97 Page | $20.00 | Purchase online Review by Stanley Fefferman, also found on Opus One Review The way suburban garden fences are a line the fox crosses from the countryside to steal our chickens, is like the line fox, since time immemorial, has crossed … [click for more]
REVIEW: A GENEROUS LATITUDE | BY LENEA GRACE
ECW Press | 2018 | 88 Page | $18.95 | Purchase online Review by M.A. Mahadeo – Lenea Grace’s debut poetry collection A Generous Latitude is an intertwined tale of human interaction, love, loss, and the need for connection. Language transcends literal meaning to reflect today’s dating culture, I found … [click for more]
REVIEW: THE PANIC ROOM | BY REBECCA PAPUCARU
Nightwood Editions | 2017 | 96 Page | $18.95 | Purchase online The Prodigal Daughter’s Return to Memory: Review by Diana Manole Our shared Romanian cultural background has instantly attracted me to The Panic Room (Nightwood Editions, 2017), Rebecca Păpucaru’s debut collection of poems. I was keen to find out … [click for more]
REVIEW: THIS WOUND IS A WORLD | BY BILLY-RAY BELCOURT
Frontenac House | 2017 | 64 Page | $19.95 | Purchase online Reviewed by Hannah Karpinski on Lemonhound 3.0: Belcourt’s body, which has been subject to marginalizing inscriptions against both queerness and Indigeneity, tethers him to a world in which “native means lonely and lonely feels a lot like dying.” He … [click for more]
REVIEW: POETRY THAT HEALS | BY NAOMI BETH WAKAN
Shanti Arts Publishing | 2017 | 104 Page | $18.95 | Purchase online Review by Terry Ann Carter Naomi Wakan’s poetry journey Poetry That Heals begins in her “middle years” with a two year stay in Japan. As she began to translate a Japanese friend’s book of haiku into English (with … [click for more]
REVIEW: OUT OF PLACE | BY KATE ROGERS
Aeolus House | 2017 | 65 Page | $20.00 | Purchase online Review by Lisa Richter “How I Was Invented”: Belonging and (Dis)placement in Kate Rogers’ Out of Place Place is a difficult subject to write about. With more obscure or esoteric subjects, poets can maintain a safe emotional distance, … [click for more]
REVIEW: TABLE MANNERS | BY CATRIONA WRIGHT
Signal Editions | 2017 | 88 Page | $17.95 | Purchase online Reviewed by Julie Mannell on Vallum: Contemporary Poetry: It might be a stretch to call Wright’s poetry anti-Whitman because it seems both poets are driven by the urge to connect the body with the external world to show the … [click for more]
REVIEW: SIREN | BY KATERI LANTHIER
Signal Editions | 2017 | 80 Page | $17.95 | Purchase online Reviewed by Hannah Brown on Toronto Review of Books: In this collection, the poet delivers rich combinations of imagery, much of it urban, and often at night, as in one of the most startling poems, “Guanyin Lamp.” Here … [click for more]
REVIEW: MAUNDER | BY CLAIRE KELLY
Palimpsest Press | 2017 | 72 Page | $18.95 | Purchase online Reviewed by Karen Hofmann on Prairie Fire: “Maunder” is a pejorative term for meandering speech. In this grudging landscape, where everything should have a pragmatic, immediate purpose, to maunder is to go against the grain or flow, at … [click for more]
REVIEW: TRAILER PARK ELEGY | BY CORNELIA HOOGLAND
Harbour Publishing | 2017 | 88 Page | $18.95 | Purchase online Review by Vanessa Shields – Hoogland’s Trailer Park Elegy, a long poem, is a lament that skids down literal and metaphorical roads of memory and grief, shock and love, and pain and forgiveness. It moves jarringly between the present and … [click for more]
REVIEW: VOODOO HYPOTHESIS | BY CANISIA LUBRIN
Reviewed by Geoffrey Morrison on Debutantes: Lubrin’s book is about the dislocated psychogeography wrought by that history, working through the displacements of the African-Caribbean diaspora from her birthplace of St. Lucia in the Windward Antilles to the United States and “that cold Victorian country” of Canada to the outermost fringes … [click for more]
REVIEW: WINNOWS | BY MAXIANNE BERGER
Imago Press | 2016 Review by kjmunro — To winnow is to separate the wheat from the chaff, & in Winnows we find a series of erasure poems mined from Melville’s Moby Dick. These poems come from the novel, but do not tell the same story. At the beginning of … [click for more]
REVIEW: FRIENDLY + FIRE | BY DANIELLE LAFRANCE
Talonbooks | 2017 | 128 Page | $18.95 | Purchase online Review by Cam Scott — Friendly + Fire is a capella pornography, a multi-vocal argument concerning the collateral damages attendant upon military aggression, where the exceptional conditions definitive of combat suffuse an everyday civic. “Honey, it’s not your ginch, … [click for more]
REVIEW: THE CHEMICAL LIFE | BY JIM JOHNSTONE
Reviewed by Chad Campbell in The Manchester Review: …In the corridors of these nested worlds we glimpse, like the wheel on the wall, the slow crash and delayed impact of addiction and mental illness across the sections of The Chemical Life. Divided into 5 sections of 6 poems each (the … [click for more]
REVIEW: SEVEN SUNS/SEVEN MOONS | BY MICHAEL DYLAN WELCH & TANYA MCDONALD
NeoPoiesis Press | 68 pages | $14.95 | Purchase online Review by kjmunro — This unique collection includes two sections – suns written by Welch & moons written by McDonald – followed by several collaborations on the same themes where the poets work together. A brief but helpful explanation at … [click for more]
REVIEW: COMMA | BY JENNIFER STILL
BookThug | May 2017 | 164 pages | $20.00 | Purchase online Review by Cam Scott — Jennifer Still’s latest is a tender document of writing-through: through a traumatic family episode, and through the text of another, foregrounding the bodily saliency of each. In the meticulous title sequence, ‘comma’ denoting … [click for more]
REVIEW: PETALS IN THE DARK | ED. MARSHALL HRYCIUK
Catkin Press | 76 pages Review by kjmunro — Renku is a form of collaborative linked verse poetry, with the emphasis on collaboration. Fifteen from renku master Marshall Hryciuk are included here. What was the selection process for this book? How were these poems chosen? How many more poems are … [click for more]
REVIEW: VIOLET ENERGY INGOTS | BY HOA NGUYEN
Wave Books | September 2016 | $18.00 | Purchase online Review by Cam Scott — Opaquely personal, spare but social, Hoa Nguyen’s writing more than most fulfills Louis Zukofsky’s mandate of a poetry arranging “minor units of sincerity” into shaped apprehension. Nguyen’s verse flits and fidgets by the phrase, conveying … [click for more]
REVIEW: HUE: A DAY AT BUTCHART GARDENS | BY TERRY ANN CARTER
Leaf Press | 2014 | 51 pages | $12.00 | Purchase online Review by kjmunro — Another success from Leaf Press – from the cover photo of the Dancing Fountain & the bright orange endpapers to the signature emblem framing the poems on each small page – Hue: a Day … [click for more]
REVIEW: BECOMING A HAIKU POET | BY MICHAEL DYLAN WELCH
Press Here | 2015 | $9.00 | See more Review by kjmunro — On the first page of Becoming a Haiku Poet, author Michael Dylan Welch states, “While too much information can also impede the poetic impulse, with haiku, as with other genres of poetry, it’s worthwhile to move beyond … [click for more]
REVIEW: INTO THE OPEN: POEMS NEW AND SELECTED | BY SUSAN MCCASLIN
Inanna Publications | September 2017 | 384 pages | $22.95 | Purchase online Review by J.S. Porter — For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and things. You must know the animals, you must feel how the birds fly …. You must be … [click for more]
REVIEW: I HAVE TO LIVE | BY AISHA SASHA JOHN
McClelland & Stewart | April 2017 | 160 pages | $16.95 | Purchase online Review by Cam Scott — Aisha Sasha’s John’s third full-length book of poems begins at the beginning, as it were, with a salutation: The first knowledge is of our ignorance. Hi. (3) What follows is a … [click for more]
REVIEW: SILENT SISTER | BY BETH EVEREST
Frontenac House | 2016 | 116 page | $15.95 | Purchase online Review by Sue Bracken — silent sister: the mastectomy poems is a poetic journal of one woman’s particular detour in life, and it is an act of bravery in the telling. True to her moniker, Beth Everest has … [click for more]
REVIEW: THE FACE OF THE OTHER | BY CLARA A.B. JOSEPH
Interactive Press | 2016 | 78 pages | $18.00 | Purchase online Review by Sarah-Jean Krahn — Glimpsing the Face of the Poet through The Face of the Other As a scholar in post-colonial theory and literature, Clara A. B. Joseph is fiercely aware of the forced foreignness of the … [click for more]
REVIEW: BARBARIC CULTURAL PRACTICE | BY PENN KEMP
Quattro Books | October 2016 | $18.00 | Purchase online Review by Kate Rogers — The title of Penn Kemp’s most recent poetry collection reflects her urgent activist response to government announcements she thought could undermine Canadian diversity. As they campaigned to hold onto power in 2015, the Harper Conservatives … [click for more]
REVIEW: BIG MEDICINE COMES TO ERIE | BY D.A. LOCKHART
Black Moss Press | 84 pages | $17.00 | October 2016 | Purchase online Review by Kim Fahner — D.A. Lockhart’s first collection of poems, published under the umbrella of Black Moss’s “First Lines” poetry series, evokes a sense of place and history that reflects the landscape of southwestern Ontario. … [click for more]
REVIEW: LOOKING FOR LIGHT | BY SUSAN IOANNOU
Hidden Brook Press | 83 pages | April 2016 | $19.95 | Purchase online Review by John B. Lee __ Riddle Me This: Hypophora and the question as a device is the poetry of Susan Ioannou For his part, People’s Poet Chris Faiers writes in praise of Susan Ioannou in … [click for more]
REVIEW: THE STONE MASON’S NOTEBOOK | BY CARMELO MILITANO
Ekstasis Editions | 66 pages | 2016 | $23.95 | Purchase online Review by Bianca Lakoseljac — If Carmelo Militano fans have been longing for a new book of poems, The Stone Mason’s Notebook, Militano’s fifth collection, is a welcome gift of thoughtful lyrical exploration of love, of human existence, … [click for more]
REVIEW: ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS | BY PHOEBE WANG
>>From The Wilds, week 18; review by Terry Abrahams Bodies are difficult. Bodies of work often more so. Phoebe Wang’s debut collection of poetry follows several bodies—her own, her family members’, plants, animals, rivers, lakes, buildings—and asks them all a pertinent question: what does it mean to be admitted? Welcomed? … [click for more]
REVIEW: THE WITCH OF THE INNER WOOD | BY M. TRAVIS LANE
Edited by Shane Neilson | icehouse poetry / Goose Lane Editions | 377 pages | October 2016 | $40.00 | Purchase online Review by Susan Ioannou — To do justice to this 377-page collection of M. Travis Lane’s long poems would take a PhD thesis. As simply a poet, not … [click for more]
REVIEW: THE WAKING COMES LATE | BY STEVEN HEIGHTON
>>From Arc Poetry Magazine, Chris Doda reviews Steven Heighton’s The Waking Comes Late (shortlisted for the 2017 Raymond Souster Award) House of Anansi Press | $19.95 | 128 pages | purchase online In these excellent poems, Heighton shows how technical mastery can merge with acutely relevant subject matter to great … [click for more]
REVIEW: OTOLITH | BY EMILY NILSEN
>>From the Hamilton Review of Books, Canisia Lubrin reviews Emily Nilsen’s Otolith Icehouse Poetry / Goose Lane Editions | $19.95 | 96 pages | purchase online Otolith, Emily Nilsen’s new pastoral, wakes deep in the ear and channels the reader through the speaker’s multifarious experiences of grief, loss, the burden … [click for more]
REVIEW: BAD IDEAS | BY MICHAEL V. SMITH
>>From a review published in The Province: Mark Abbot reviews Michael V. Smith’s new poetry collection, Bad Ideas. Nightwood Editions | $18.95 | 96 pages | purchase online Michael V. Smith is a multi-talented novelist, poet and performance artist whose work has always been expressive and honest. His first poetry … [click for more]