Posts Tagged ‘Louise Carson’
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. Let’s unpack the poem together.…
Read MoreAccessible, 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 Rice’s latest poetry collection. Oh,…
Read MoreStraddling 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, not so sure, though it’s…
Read MoreUnhappy, 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 exhaustion and self-recognition to the…
Read MoreMusic, 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 mere thirteen pages. Good, I…
Read MoreWhat 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 – I could go on but…
Read MoreThat 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 thirty-five year old trauma began…
Read MoreUp North with Gillian Harding-Russell
Book review of In Another Air by Gillian Harding Russell 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…
Read MoreUp 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 dictatorship of Mrs. Rhodes, mixing…
Read MoreA 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 once I am older”. And…
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