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 his introduction to her book…

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, of personal history and the…

>>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? Allowed space within spaces with…

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 an academic, to attempt such…

>>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 effect. In fact, when it…

>>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 of memory, us — the…

>>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 collection, What You Can’t Have…

Buckrider Books | 84 pages | $18.00 | Purchase online Review by Sharon Berg — Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.           –Spenser Johnson Richard Harrison has written an honest, poetic journal of his search for meaning during the aftermath from a) gradually releasing his father, who…

Aeolus House | 84 pages | $20.00 | Purchase online Review by John Oughton — This is Kate Rogers’ third book, preceded by City of Stairs and Painting the Borrowed House. In this collection, her double(d) identity as a Canadian teaching at a community college in Hong Kong informs the writing.  In a hectic, entrepreneurial metropolis  — a “high wire…

Anvil Press | 104 pages | 2016 | $18.00 | Purchase online “Remembered Symmetris” — review by Aaron Boothby, excerpted from original publication on Debutantes. — So much swings on the hinge of what is remembered without being often thought of. To encounter a book titled Serpentine Loop, icy – riverine forms drawn on the cover-becomes…