April 2016 | Big Pond Rumours | 24 pages review by Bianca Lakoseljac — Brian Purdy’s Black Ink: Portraits is an eclectic collection of whimsical poems, each composition a moment in life. The poem “Goddess Sculpture, Greek, circa 540 BC” is a stirring contemplation of the liaison between the artist and the woman who inspired…

Guernica Editions | 106 pages | Fall 2015 | $20.00 | Purchase online Review by Vanessa Shields — What happens to a family when aging and disease become its main storyline? In an attempt to keep the heart and mind connected, memories become medicine and hope sews them together. Tina Biello’s A Housecoat Remains is the quilted result…

BookThug | 104 pages | April 2016 | $18.00 | Purchase online Review by rob mclennan, originally published in the Small Press Book Review — MUSE IN AUGUST Her muse for poetry is an old woman. She declares this on an island in the wilderness—it doesn’t matter where as long as it’s either Ontario or Québec. She says…

Nightwood Editions | 96 pages | March 2015 | $18.95 | Purchase online Review by Clay Everest — Raoul Fernandes’s debut collection Transmitter and Receiver by Nightwood Editions is an amazing collection that explores intimacy and interconnectedness. The poems are fragments, bits that are collected and re-purposed by Fernandes, like the friend from the poem “Mixtape” who…

Hagios Press | 88 pages | November 2015 | $17.95 | Purchase online Review by Ayaz Pirani — In Observing the Moon Sneha Madhavan-Reese offers plain-speech poems unruffled by pretence. Gratuitous poetic moves are at a minimum in this tender, accessible book that keeps getting warmer in your hands. The first stanza of the four-part title poem displays…

Mosaic Press | 108 pages | September 2015 | $15.95 | Purchase online Review by Debbie Okun Hill, originally published in Verse Afire and on Debbie Okun Hill’s blog. — Canadian poet Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews collects memories like she collects sea glass along the shore. It’s her quiet polishing of word gems that first drew me to…

BookThug | 124 pages | April 2015 | $18.00 | Purchase online Review by William Kemp, originally published in issue 7 of (parenthetical). — Jimmy McInnes’s A More Perfect [ is the type of book of poetry that I’m secretly jealous of. It’s the type of book of poetry I wish I could write, but fear…

Graywolf Press | November 2014 | $16.00 | Purchase online Review by Colin Morton — Don’t be misled by the title. Author Tony Hoagland doesn’t make unrealistic claims for the power of poetry to save, nor is it exclusively for or about Americans. Among the poems unpacked in these entertaining essays are ones by Yehuda…

Ekstasis Editions | October 2014 | 128 pages | $23.95 | Purchase online Review by Josie Di-Sciascio-Andrews — A child’s wide eyed beauty transforms into a woman’s gaze brimming with wonder. Innocence and artistic sensibility, tempered by life and the myriad waves of experience, chisel away at the superfluous skin of the soul, revealing the…