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| AFTER THE END [David Sobelman] 'After the End' is a sequence of linked narrative poems, revealing a philosophical encounter between various necessary polarities: eye and ear, faith and reason, mythos and logos, essence and existence, as well as the connecting bridge, the corpus callosum, between them. The bridge is the a priori medium of language or the crossing from silence to speech and writing, but it's also a metaphysical bridge between a poet's being and the life of his soul. { 96pp, 140x215mm, November 2006; PB, £8.99, 1550712462:9781550712469 , Guernica Editions } |
| ALCHEMY OF WORDS [Edward Francisco] In the tradition of alchemists in the Middle Ages, this poet searches for the precise words that will transmute common experience into the golden language that will shed light on why we live the way we do. He achieves this goal by casting his keen eye and ear over a broad palette -- from liter-ature to religion, philosophy, education and of course magic, so essential to the "art" and, yes, science of alchemy. His poems flow across the landscape of thought: from the terrifying kudzu vine to John the Baptist waiting for Christ to sit in the gaze of the Man of Tao, to reading Shelley with Gabriel to observing William Blake's chimney sweep to the wonderful irony inherent in sending a Valentine's "card" to Emily Dickinson. Francisco is both fascinated and confounded by the power of words. Without coming off as schol-arly, the poet manages to face the vital issues of language bravely, precisely. { 56pp, 140x215mm, April 2008; PB, £8.99, 0978997417:9780978997410 , Birch Brook Press } |
| ALL THAT LIES BETWEEN US [Maria Mazziotti Gillan] Here are presented a selection of poems where we find the geography of the heart's home -- not a physical but rather an emotional centre around which she constructs the story of her life. Her world is populated by memories of growing up in the 50s, her courtship and long marriage, husband's illness, and children. But at the centre is the woman she has become who struggles to deal with the complexities of love and the difficulties of achieving compassion and tenderness in the face of adversity. Brave, honest, beautiful, these poems help us to understand what it means to be human. { 87pp, 127x213mm, March 2007; PB, £8.99, 1550712616:9781550712612 , Guernica Editions } |
| ALL THINGS SAID & DONE [Marita Dachsel] Marita Dachsel's debut collection is a visceral exploration of the moments of life that stand out in the pages of a family album and the intervals of memory. She playfully and poignantly documents first crushes, first times, weddings and trips across town, across water, and across continents. Dachsel perceptively sprinkles these moments with the details photographs don't reveal, as in "Dispatches from an Impending Marriage": "Don't talk to me about photographers./ Nothing will capture this. A printed paper/ will only mock -- / a gaudy misrepresentation/ a plastic Jesus on the mantle -- / two dimensions of fabric, teeth and skin." { 80pp, 140x205mm, March 2007; PB, £10.99, 1894759222:9781894759229 , Harbour Publishing } |
| ANACHRONICLES [George McWhirter] This is a collection of unusually rich poems that are both proto- and post-colonial. The title itself -- melding the two words "anachronism" and "chronicle" -- points to how the poems explore events and exchanges in one place from two points in time. The place itself is La Audiencia Beach in Mexico. Instead of portraying history only from the present looking backwards, McWhirter also has the past looking forward to foresee and comment on what is to happen as a result of the early exploration. Here, Hernán Cortés and his Lieutenant-Conqueror of Colima, Sandoval, appraise the antics of Bo Derek and other stars as they make the movie 10 -- on the same beach where four hundred years earlier their crews built three brigantines to explore what is now called the Sea of Cortez. The verse-logs then follow explorer Don Caamaño and his successors up the Pacific Coast to where John McKay (aka Sean McKoy), an Irishman, was left to recuperate from a sickness among the Nootka/Nuu-chah-nulth on Vancouver Island. The final poem, "Hops," retells the Irish legend of the goddess Liadan and the poet Cuirithir, whose voices travel to one another from Canada and Ireland. The dialogue travels from the end of the last millennium to the 1950s, highlighting their present-day divided Christian-pagan roles as mortal man and woman in holy orders. { 100pp, 155x230mm, March 2008; PB, £9.50, 1553800540:9781553800545 , Ronsdale Press } |
| AND LIGHT REMAINS [Isabella Colalillo-Katz] "In this new book, And Light Remains, Isabella Colalillo-Katz mobilises a poignant poesis to probe the divinities of the heart and its mnemonic trajectories. These poems are stark meditations, imagistic, hopeful and lyrical, on the paradigmatic nature of love and truth. They report the evocative experiences of a searching metaphysic that seeks to reconcile and restore what is lost on the human journey while celebrating what remains -- the indelible imprint of the soul through the language of the heart." -- Pier Giorgio Di Cicco. { 76pp, 140x215mm, November 2006; PB, £8.99, 1550712381:9781550712384 , Guernica Editions } |
| BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR & HIS CONTEMPORARIES [K C Kanda] Though known as the ruler of the Moghul Empire during its time of decay and decline, Bahadur Shah Zafar and much of his court were poets of ample merit, as demonstrated by this compendium of Urdu masterpieces. Featuring the best ghazals and other works of Zafar and his contemporaries -- including Ghalib, Zauq, Momin, Shefta, and Azurda -- the anthology offers simple and appropriate English translations presented in eloquent rhymed verse, as well as transliterations of the original Urdu into the Roman script. { 425pp, 155x230mm, June 2007; PB, £14.99, 8120732863:9788120732865 , Sterling Publishers PVT Ltd } |
| BARRY CALLAGHAN -- ESSAYS ON HIS WORKS [Priscila Uppal (ed)] A great story teller, Barry Callaghan is one of the most distinctive man of letters Canada has ever produced. He is fascinated by the no-man's land that stands between fiction and journalism. Politically and culturally engaged, he is a public scholar and acute critic in the tradition of Edmund Wilson. Barry Callaghan's fiction and poetry have been translated into seven languages. Among the contributors are Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, Marie-Claire Blais, William Kennedy, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Dennis Lee, Hayden Carruth, Patrick Lane, Seán Virgo, Robert Marteau, James Hart, David Lampe, Joe Rosenblatt, Leon Rooke, Brunella Antomarini, John Montague, Ray Robertson, Ray Ellenwood, Kathleen McCracken, Alexender Amprimoz, Michel Deguy, Branko Gorjup, Michael Keefer, Gale Zoë Garnett, Joyce Carol Oates, and Noah Richler. { 524pp, 140x215mm, December 2006; PB, £11.99, 1550712535:9781550712537 , Guernica Editions } |
| BECAUSE OF THE RAIN : A Selection of Korean Zen Poems This selection of Korean Zen poems, spanning twelve centuries, distils the essence of Korean Buddhism. The poets range from Great Master Wonhyo (617-686), the founder of Korean Buddhism, to Choeui Eusoon (1786-1866), a hermit-monk whose poems address the monk's primary goal of seeking enlightenment. Although the age of traditional Buddhism ended in Korea by the early twentieth century when the country was exposed to the relentless flow of Western culture, the poets writing in Korea today have a deep respect for those who went before them and incorporate Buddhist lore into their work, thus enabling the Zen poets to continue to contribute to the development of Korean literature. { 96pp, 125x180mm, January 2006; PB, £9.50, 1893996441:9781893996441 , White Pine Press } |
| BINDERY [Shane Rhodes] This third collection from acclaimed poet Shane Rhodes is full of poems to be felt, to be underlined, to be whispered, to be dog-eared and talked about. Tracing themes of travel, love, personal and collective history, "The bindery" combines lyrical poetry with experimental verve. These poems were composed from hurried scribbles in Mexican bus stations, meditations on street corners in Buenos Aires, letters from friends in the Himalaya, and odes from the Canadian hinterland, and emphasise how "to be stained by what we see". REVIEW: "Before his first collection appeared, what I saw of Rhodes' work was made up of "great lines in good poems," and, with each new publication, has steadily improved. Rhodes has always managed to maintain a loosely-restrained lyric, pulling between that and the underlying (barely contained) energy that runs through his lines, but the pieces in The Bindery are far more refined, and fuse the two far better than anything he has accomplished previously." -- Rob McLennan, April 10, 2007. { 98pp, 135x225mm, February 2007; PB, £9.99, 189712614X:9781897126141 , NeWest Press } |
| BIRCH SPLIT BARK : Poems [Diane Guichon] In her debut collection of poems, Birch Split Bark, Diane Guichon uses a quintessentially Canadian image -- a birch bark canoe -- to speak of those private waters that make us universally human. By writing in the first person of a father, a mother, a son and a daughter, she bridges age to gender, myth to memory and hatred to reconciliation. These poems are brave and brilliantly voiced and her descriptions are as haunting as a loon's concerto on a silent summer lake. Guichon's characters speak to the plurality of Canadian identity; in four distinct voices, Guichon pulls apart the myths that have created us and continue to dictate who we must be. Birch Split Bark proves that canoes will always write history upon their waters just as poets will write humanity upon the page. { 100pp, 140x200mm, November 2007; PB, £11.50, 0889712158:9780889712157 , Harbour Publishing (Nightwood Editions) } |
| BUT TONIGHT [C J Martin] "CJ Martin writes with energy, confidence and precision in capturing the subtle interplay between individual and surroundings. She is fully committed to her craft and to advancing the role of poetry in our society -- for both these things, she is to be commended." -- Harold Heft, poet and author of "The Shape of This Dying: Remembering Alexander Bercovitch". { 92pp, 155x230mm, March 2007; PB, £8.00, 0889628793:9780889628793 , Mosaic Press } |
| BY WORD OF MOUTH : The Poetry of Dennis Cooley [Dennis Cooley; Edited by Nicole Markotic] Dennis Cooley, one of Canada's most prominent poets, says writing becomes political when you play with certain kinds of voices. His poetry has been influenced and inspired by the prairies and other Canadian poets, but he insists on disturbing the formal poetic inheritance he esteems. His engagement with a variety of speaking voices asks that readers question authority and challenge institutional privilege. In "By Word of Mouth", a collection from across his career, readers will discover how Cooley returns to the prairie vernacular and speaks to Canadian identity. Poetry, says Cooley, is about our time and our place. Nicole Markotic's introductory essay discusses how Dennis Cooley plays with poetic reference, inspires with syntactical surprises, parodies contemporary writing, and indulges in wild, celebratory puns. This book roams around Dennis Cooley's poetical world and invites the reader to play along. { 62pp, 155x230mm, July 2007; PB, £8.99, 1554580072:9781554580071 , Wilfrid Laurier University Press } |
| CITY OF THE SUN [Stanley Nelson] Stanley Nelson is considered by many to be the foremost avant-garde poet of his generation. In his third collection, Nelson once again demonstrates the validity of that claim with four new long poems, City of the Sun, Fragrances, Genesis Vibes and Heidegger. These poems deal with deep archetypes, science and religion in a manner that is simultaneously deconstructive yet formal. Stanley Nelson continues to present us with his unique vision of the possibilities of poetry in this latest offering. Who else could combine the courtesans and the old testament with jazzy music and quarks? { 126pp, 140x215mm, May 2008; PB, £10.99, 0980008123:9780980008128 , Presa Press } |
| COLD PANES OF SURFACES : A Junction Book [Chris Banks] The moving second collection of poems from award-winning author Chris Banks. Rooted in the pastoral tradition of Wordsworth, Frost and Wallace Stevens, 'The Cold Panes of Surfaces' describes the Southern Ontario landscape of trains, lakes, moose and pine with unflinchingly sharp image and metaphor. In so doing, he brings to it a distinctly modern edge, meditating on 'the rent we are paying to the planet for our waning lives'. Here, beetles become 'child kamikazes... a wallpaper of yellow-winged flames' and the planet is a 'Museum of Natural Beauty'. Banks takes imaginative leaps into the worlds of a magician's assistant, a fifteenth-century Japanese poet, and the Muse. Most of all, these poems eloquently describe childhood, loss in all its forms, the vagaries of relationships, and being 'a sullen young man / caught in the world's fist'. This is a remarkable collection, and a fitting follow-up to Banks' award-winning first book Bonfires. { 76pp, 105x205mm, November 2006; PB, £11.50, 0889712220:9780889712225 , Harbour Publishing (Nightwood Editions) } |
| COMMON SENSE : Poems [Carl G Ferrel] A collection of short, crisp, thought-provoking poems about a wide variety of subjects: from Geronimo to JFK; from the Mighty Mississippi to Alcatraz. Love, hate, life, and death all find their way into 'Common Sense'. Laugh, cry, learn, think, but most of all, sit back, relax, and enjoy the wit and wisdom. { 90pp, 140x215mm, May 2007; PB, £9.99, 0972968423:9780972968423 , AtlasBooks (Acheulean Publishing) } |
| COURAGE UNDERGROUND [Julie Roorda] The poems in 'Courage Underground' burrow beneath the skin to examine the relationship between consciousness and body. They penetrate hidden emotions contained by vital organs; they enter the sensibilities of lower order creatures and characters of the mythic underworld. The journey elicits new perspectives on loss and alienation that are both hilarious and startling. { 88pp, 140x215mm, November 2006; PB, £8.99, 1550712454:9781550712452 , Guernica Editions } |
| CURES INCLUDE TRAVEL [Susan Rich] This is a dynamic collection by the winner of the PEN West Poetry Award. Rich’s poetry tracks the globe, drawing us into the lives of ordinary people on nearly every continent. { 100pp, 155x230mm, June 2007; PB, £9.50, 1893996751:9781893996755 , White Pine Press } |
| DEFIANT MUSE : Vietnamese Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present [Nguyen thi Minh Ha, Nguyen thi Thanh Bình & Lady Borton (eds)] The only bilingual anthology of Vietnamese women's poetry available anywhere. This unique collection offers over one hundred poems from over one hundred poets in the only bilingual anthology of Vietnamese women's poetry available anywhere in the world. From the deeply personal to the dramatically political, "The Defiant Muse" gives a remarkable insight into the lives of women whose voices have long been consigned to history's margins. As diverse as Vietnam itself, this anthology ranges from the earliest oral poetry and the first written Buddhist spirituals to the angry poems of rebellious youth in Vietnam today. Native Vietnamese speakers and scholars carefully compiled, translated, and edited the texts to maintain the delicate authenticity of each work. Far-reaching in scope, this volume includes groundbreaking new Vietnamese translations of several ancient poems, a number of works from such canonic Vietnamese poets as Ho Xuân Huong, Anh Tho, and Xuân Quynh, as well as poems from contemporary writers from the Diaspora. Whether it is the legendary uprising of the Trung sisters against Chinese rule or the quiet cultivation of silkworms, this volume captures a staggering wealth of women's experiences. These extraordinary texts speak to exceptional moments in everyday realities of women in love and war, in the fields and cities, in their homeland and far abroad. { 286pp, 155x235mm, August 2007; HB, £23.50, 1558615504:9781558615502 , Feminist Press } |
| DEFIANT MUSE : Vietnamese Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present [Nguyen thi Minh Ha, Nguyen thi Thanh Bình & Lady Borton (eds)] The only bilingual anthology of Vietnamese women's poetry available anywhere. This unique collection offers over one hundred poems from over one hundred poets in the only bilingual anthology of Vietnamese women's poetry available anywhere in the world. From the deeply personal to the dramatically political, "The Defiant Muse" gives a remarkable insight into the lives of women whose voices have long been consigned to history's margins. As diverse as Vietnam itself, this anthology ranges from the earliest oral poetry and the first written Buddhist spirituals to the angry poems of rebellious youth in Vietnam today. Native Vietnamese speakers and scholars carefully compiled, translated, and edited the texts to maintain the delicate authenticity of each work. Far-reaching in scope, this volume includes groundbreaking new Vietnamese translations of several ancient poems, a number of works from such canonic Vietnamese poets as Ho Xuân Huong, Anh Tho, and Xuân Quynh, as well as poems from contemporary writers from the Diaspora. Whether it is the legendary uprising of the Trung sisters against Chinese rule or the quiet cultivation of silkworms, this volume captures a staggering wealth of women's experiences. These extraordinary texts speak to exceptional moments in everyday realities of women in love and war, in the fields and cities, in their homeland and far abroad. { 286pp, 155x235mm, August 2007; PB, £11.99, 1558615490:9781558615496 , Feminist Press } |
| EARTH'S CRUDE GRAVITIES : Poetry [Patrick Friesen] Earth's Crude Gravities is both a meditation and an argument, a compelling series of poems on the world of matter and the world of spirit. Acclaimed poet Patrick Friesen muses on the religion that has been such a key part of his own background -- but he also raises uncertainties. Whether he is discussing his love of the material world or the fictional creation of a narrative in religion, Friesen's poetry is elegant, eloquent and imagistic. { 102pp, 140x215mm, April 2007; PB, £11.50, 1550173995:9781550173994 , Harbour Publishing } |
| EARTHLY PAGES : The Poetry of Don Domanski [Don Domanski; Edited by Brian Bartlett] With "The Cape Breton Book of the Dead", Don Domanski emerged as a remarkable new voice in Canadian poetry, combining formal conciseness with broad cosmic allusions, constant surprise with brooding atmospherics, and innovative syntax with delicate phrasings. In subsequent collections, Domanski's poetry has deepened and expanded, with longer lines and more complex structures that journey into the far reaches of metaphor. Now, with "Earthly Pages", the long-awaited first selection from his books, readers have a chance to experience the full range of his work in one volume. Editor Brian Bartlett, in his introduction discusses Domanski's engagement with nature and the transformative power of his metaphors; his poetic bestiary and mythical underpinnings; and his kinship to poets like Stevens, Whitman, and Rumi. Like these poets, Domanski is drawn to borderlands between the physical and the spiritual, the unconscious and the conscious. His poetry finds a home for demons and angels, spiders and wolves -- and for kitchens and back alleys, forests and stars. In language both fluent and hypnotic, Domanski maintains an awareness of both the magnitudes and the minutiae that live beyond language. In "Flying Over Language", an essay written specifically for this volume, the poet explains that for him metaphor is one way to suggest the wealth of being that poetry can only point toward. { 60pp, 155x230mm, August 2007; PB, £8.99, 1554580080:9781554580088 , Wilfrid Laurier University Press } |
| EVERY INADEQUATE NAME : Poems [Nick Thran] In this, highly anticipated debut collection of poems, Nick Thran fuses a whimsical pop sensibility with an urgent poetic gravitas that refuses to sell the human heart short. The resultant poems are emblematic of the clash between our private enthusiasms and the cool diffidence of the world around us. Here, a private school student stashes a stolen sheep's brain inside the bookcase of a girl he thinks is beautiful; a mother bakes banana bread with sugar borrowed from a neighbour who beats his wife. With equal parts playfulness and tenacity, Nick Thran writes refreshingly substantial poems about the risks we take in our struggle to remain passionate about something (anything) in an age when an ingrained cynicism attempts to keep genuine passion at arm's length. { 72pp, 140x210mm, January 2006; PB, £5.99, 1897178271:9781897178270 , Insomniac Press } |
| EVIDENCE OF THE JOURNEY : Poems [Ralph Sneeden] This rich collection of poems explores family history, personal narrative, and man's relationship to the natural world with an exacting eye and curious, searching spirit. Ralph Sneeden's voice is accessible and honest, with a sense of wry wisdom that derives from his deep respect for the landscapes of New England and the shores of Long Island, New York-the terrain of his childhood, and the basis for his artistic vision. The book is the poet's attempt to understand, through song and speech, elegy and observation, the personal and historic wars of a uniquely examined life. { 65pp, 155x230mm, April 2007; PB, £9.99, 0979000513:9780979000515 , Midpoint Trade Books (Harmon Blunt Publishers) } |
| FINDING FT GEORGE [Rob Budde] The poetic record of Rob Budde's growing love of Prince George and the Cariboo north-central region of BC. The poems are an act of discovery and they describe the various social, political, historical and environmental systems that Budde encounters with the eye of a patient, astute observer. Engaging in the language of location, each poem explores a place, a time and the process of building a relationship between the two. Sometimes gritty, sometimes ironic, sometimes barely able to see the place at all, the poems are all love poems to a new home -- gifts of arrival. { 124pp, 140x205mm, December 2007; PB, £10.99, 1894759273:9781894759274 , Harbour Publishing (Caitlin) } |
| FIREFLIES [Rabindranath Tagore] Fireflies, or brief poems, originated in China and Japan and were often written on pieces of silk. This is a collection of proverbs, aphorisms and maxims. Collected by Rabindranath Tagore over many years, each firefly, rarely more than a sentence long, represents a luminous thought on love, life, beauty or God. REVIEW: "From the 1913 winner of the Nobel Prize in literature comes Fireflies, a collection of 200 proverbs, aphorisms, and maxims from India, China, and Japan. Collected by Rabindranath Tagore over many years, each epigrammatic 'firefly' represents a brief yet luminous thought on life, beauty, or God. "Tagore knew that the most profound subjects -- love, truth, compassion, birth, and death -- were his." -- Deepak Chopra. { 272pp, 125x190mm, June 2008; PB, £7.99, 1559213159:9781559213158 , Moyer Bell Ltd (Asphodel Press) } |
| FLUTTERTONGUE 4 : Adagio for the Pressured Surround [Steven Ross Smith] This book features poetry at its most eloquent. In this long poem, Smith imagistically evokes birds and plants, physical torture, and human relationships as he delves into the meaning of words and ponders language itself. In this sometimes personal, sometimes documentary, work Smith references a wide range of subjects, including science, fishing, and other poets and artists -- Canadian and international. Themes that run throughout the book include death, food, and Smith's relationships with his father and his son. This sometimes dark, sometimes humorous, poetic work explores the possibilities and nuances of language, and seeks to find a form of expression outside of free verse and prose, with a meditative pace. Smith's tendency to dart in and out of ideas and concepts is delicately balanced by echoes and recurrences, and his quest to explore and expand, for himself, the possibilities of poetry. REVIEW: "...so packed with detail, conjecture, allusion, beauty, worry, and fear -- the pressured surround -- that as one sentence invites recognition and even empathy, the next interrupts the reader from following the dark line Smith attempts to take on his family's mortality." -- Bill Robertson, The Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Saturday, May 26, 2007. "With fluttertongue 4, Ross Smith allows phrases to rub up against each other, fragments of conversations around a room, all building into a crescendo of illness and pain." -- Derek Beaulieu, Alberta View, June 2007. { 112pp, 135x225mm, February 2007; PB, £9.99, 1897126123:9781897126127 , Newest Press } |
| FORAGE : Poems [Rita Wong] Self-described as "impassioned rants against the abuses of power", Rita Wong's latest collection of poems is a vividly described, fierce commentary on our international political landscape and the injustices it breeds. All of the poems in "Forage" hold sharply modern and timely opinions that are aching to tear off the page and race down the street in a whirl of fury and Third World pride: "the time for business as usual is over. It died with the first colonial casualty". "Forage" is accompanied by marginalia, Chinese characters and photos that give depth to the political context in which most of Wong's poems are situated. Wong's ability to bridge cultures and contexts is clear; she is instructive without being pedantic, and thought-provoking while still calling forth humour and beauty. This is an important work written for an important time. { 85pp, 135x190mm, December 2007; PB, £11.50, 0889712131:9780889712133 , Harbour Publishing (Nightwood Editions) } |
| GIFT OF COUNTRY LIFE [Victor Carl Friesen] Memories of farming in the 1940s conjure up images of horse-drawn farm machinery, grain stooks in fields, hay meadows, free-range chickens and cords of wood strategically placed for fuelling the kitchen range -- all before farming became the highly technical, big-time operation it is now. Author Victor Carl Friesen was born and raised on a quarter section farm in Saskatchewan and still owns the 'home place'. It is there he still goes to renew his inner being. His poems, grouped into seasonal activities or observations, celebrate the rural world. Written in traditional blank verse, his poetry includes activities of yesteryear, his personal connections to rural life and his reverence for nature. Nature, as Henry David Thoreau said, is: one and continuous. { 112pp, 170x185mm, October 2005; PB, £12.99, 1897045077:9781897045077 , Dundurn Press (Natural Heritage Books) } |
| GRAPH OF ROADS : Selected Poems, 1968-1999 [Gilles Cyr; Translated by Patrick Williamson, Gerald Mangan, Patrick Boran, & Yann Lovelock] "Though Gilles Cyr's work is rooted in the act of seeing, it is not content merely to remain with what is seen; it is not nature poetry, but goes on to encompass the nature of seeing. While nature poetry exploits its material, Gilles Cyr's expresses wholeness, it makes the necessary connection between what is seen and what is seeing. Ultimately sight manifests itself, at the human level, in speech, and that is where the poetry comes from. Cyr, however, sees it as his job to send us back to where it all began." -- Yann Love-lock. { 104pp, 130x205mm, October 2007; PB, £8.99, 1550712373:9781550712377 , Guernica Editions } |
| GRAVITY SOUNDTRACK : Poems [Erin Keane] As entertaining as it is compelling, "The Gravity Soundtrack" will please both frequent and new readers of poetry. In this debut collection Erin Keane explores subjects ranging from classic myth, philosophy and religion to rock 'n' roll, pop culture and children's book characters. These poems are finely crafted, with a 'confident and alert use of language' (Greg Pape), and each one shows keen insight into what it means to be human. In "The Gravity Soundtrack", the poet is not a voice from above passing truths down to the reader, but rather is right there with us in the muck and mire of human experience -- all along showing great compassion for our questioning, our losses, our uncertainty. { 88pp, 155x230mm, October 2007; PB, £7.50, 1602260001:9781602260009 , Midpoint Trade Books (WordFarm Ltd) } |
| GREAT [Tony McNamara] This definitely won't be a history lesson... "The Great" is Tony McNamara's distinctive comic take on the rise and reign of Catherine the Great of Russia. The action spans the course of Catherine's adult life as she learns the ways of the world and takes on the challenge of political power with all of its attendant responsibilities, excesses and sorrows. It is at once a coming of age story, a family drama and a wild satire on power. With an attention to veracity that would make Monty Python squeal, history is well and truly damned. Leave the facts with your car keys and your towel on the Sands of Time, come, frolic in the Sea of Great Unlikelihood... { 86pp, 135x190mm, June 2008; PB, £7.99, 0868198390:9780868198392 , Currency Press } |
| HAIKU MASTER BUSON [Yuki Sawa & Edith Marcombe Shiffert] This is the only translation of the work of this important haiku poet in English. Buson (1716-1783), along with Basho and Issa, is recognised as one of the three Japanese masters of the haiku. In addition to a large selection of haiku, the book also includes a selection of Buson's prose and a critical introduction. { 256pp, 125x180mm, September 2007; PB, £10.99, 1893996816:9781893996816 , White Pine Press } |
| HENRY MOORE'S SHEEP [Susan Glickman] This third book of Susan Glickman extends and deepens the vision developed in her highly-successful Complicity and The Power to Move. A prolific critic as well as reviewer, Glickman is one of Canada's brightest poets. { 88pp, 155x230mm, January 1990; PB, £6.99, 1550650041:9781550650044 , IPG (Véhicule Press) } |
| HIGH SPEED THROUGH SHOALING WATER [Tom Wayman] This book incorporates the beauty of the rural landscape with the strangeness of living in today's world. These deceptively simple poems cover rural life, social issues, love's vicissitudes, ageing and the writing life. Throughout the book, Wayman interweaves reflections on the landscape of world and work with musings on personal and communal history. High Speed Through Shoaling Water is both celebratory and elegiac, personal and political -- recording the passage of time, the events that mark the years and the biological force that bears all living things forward, whether they want to travel that way or not. { 158pp, 140x215mm, April 2007; PB, £11.99, 1550174010:9781550174014 , Harbour Publishing } |
| HITCH [Matthew Holmes] This is the first collection from New Brunswick poet Matthew Holmes. With quiet wit, Holmes introduces us to a world of quirk: science is skewed, deer are hunted with alphabets, the Pope is a potato offered to a homeless woman, and a sailor comes to terms with tying the knot -- one that can't be untied. Opening with a series of poems based on historical figures such as Degas, Baer, Avogadro and Heisenberg, "Hitch" immerses the reader into a world of rich details--retelling past events and taking us in new directions. These poems revitalise the everyday, showing us the author's view from his window, his commute and even his major appliances. Readers will be drawn to Matthew Holmes' varied subject matter, colloquial language and captivating voice. Technically proficient, amusing and deeply moving, "Hitch" is an accomplished first collection. { 96pp, 135x220mm, March 2006; PB, £11.50, 088971214X:9780889712140 , Harbour Publishing (Nightwood Editions) } |
| HOMERIC HYMNS [Charles Boer, Translator] This translation was nominated for a National Book Award. 'The Homeric Hymns' are among the most important primary documents we have of Greek mythology. These poems treat the gods and goddesses individually, setting down the language by which they were known and addressed, telling the stories of their encounters with each other and with mortals. Composed after Homer -- in his style -- they offer a view of the Greek mythic world from the 7th century BC into the Alexandrian period. The hymns return what myth handbooks inevitably lose -- the gaiety and dread of people speaking of and to the countenances of the divine. The author's translation is literal, but his poetic form and his language are contemporary and idiomatic. Using a variety of open measures, he makes new for us the poetic wonder and excitement of the originals. Boer's extremely clear, unornamented style restores to the Greek formulas -- those habitual epithets which often seem odd to the modern reader -- the sense that they are necessary to shared wonder and reverent song. { 216pp, 140x215mm, May 2006; PB, £11.50, 1559213825:9781559213820 , Moyer Bell Ltd (Asphodel Press) } |
| HUMAN SHORE [Russell Thornton] An accomplished collection of poems both grittily real and spiritual. Whether describing a tidal wave, a train yard, or the ravaging effects of a wildfire, Thornton's work is arresting and masterful. The poet covers a wide variety of places and subjects, including a woman and her child in Thessaloniki, rats in a basement, a BC river 'grind(ing) mountains down to tears' and catacombs in Lima, where 'human corpses were bulldozed / tumbling over and under one another like adult rag dolls'. Barry Dempster has called Thornton's poems "expansive, exquisitely detailed, eloquently transformative" and Patrick Lane deems them "impeccable in their craft." By turns elegant and shocking -- and often both at once -- 'The Human Shore', promises to leave an indelible mark on Canadian poetry. { 72pp, 140x215mm, October 2006; PB, £11.50, 1550173855:9781550173857 , Harbour Publishing } |
| IMAGINATION IS FREE [Jimmy D Robinson] This collection of lyrical poems makes the imagination come alive. Many classic poems grace the pages of this book. { 50pp, 175x245mm, June 2007; HB, £13.50, 097601405X:9780976014058 , AtlasBooks (Jimmyland Corporation) } |
| IN THIS POEM I AM : Voyageur Classics [Robin Skelton; Edited by Harold Rhenish] In a country in which poetry has been largely private and apologetic, Robin Skelton played the part of poet with grand style: flowing beard, mane of white hair, rings on every finger, huge amulet around his neck, all topped off with a black hat that looked as if it came from a Venetian gondolier but was really picked up at the re-enactment of a Cariboo Gold Rush-era general store in Barkerville BC. In this selection of his best verse there are poems of 'high' and 'low' art, spells and prayers, meditations, shamanic maps, and, in the centre of the book, 'messages', those strange, inspired 'gifts' at the core of Skelton's art. In making the selection for this volume, editor Harold Rhenisch, himself an accomplished poet, has held to the image that Skelton's themes repeat like the ripples of water spreading out from a pebble dropped into a pool, and has attempted to bring together the best ripple from each dropped pebble. { 190pp, 140x215mm, October 2007; PB, £8.99, 1550027697:9781550027693 , Dundurn Press } |
| JIMMYLAND [Jimmy D Robinson] A collection of poems by lyricist and poet Jimmy D Robinson. It includes classics from ten of his books. { 88pp, 180x245mm, May 2007; HB, £13.50, 0979267234:9780979267239 , AtlasBooks (Jimmyland Corporation) } |
| LANDFALL 214 : Open House [Jack Ross (ed)] The book includes: a wide range of experimental and new poetry and fiction from across New Zealand, showcasing emerging talent; paintings by Emma Smith and a set of photographs of South Korea by Gabriel White; essays and commentary by Ted Jenner on Malawi, Stephen Turner on Cultural Plagiarism and the New Zealand Dream of home, Bronwyn Lloyd on doppelgänger suicide, Ouyang Yu on The Axis of Exiles; in-depth reviews of new poetry, fiction and cultural commentary from a wide range of publishers, by writers from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. Poetry by; Raewyn Alexander; Stu Bagby; Sarah Jane Barnett; Robert James Berry; Tony Beyer; Sarah Broom; Amy Brown; Jennifer Compton; Jen Crawford; Brett Cross; Hamish Dewe; Michael Harlow; Tourettes (aka Dominic Hoey); David Howard; Leonard Lambert; Katherine Liddy; Thérèse Lloyd; Olivia Macassey; Mary MacPherson; Sally Ann McIntyre; Andrew Slattery; Elizabeth Smither; Michael Steven; Claire Talbot; Richard Von Sturmer; Ouyang Yu; Kirsten Warner; Keith Westwater. Fiction by: Breton Dukes; Martin Edmond; Scott Hamilton; Kim McBreen; Paul Millar; Tracey Slaughter; Latika Vasil; Essays/Commentary; Ted Jenner; Bronwyn Lloyd; Stephen Turner; Ouyang Yu. Artwork by: Matthew Kelly; Emma Smith; Gabriel White. The Landfall Review by: Sarah Broom; Jen Crawford; Siobhan Harvey; Scott Hamilton; Jack Ross; Richard Reeve; Laurence Simmons; Tracey Slaughter. { 208pp, 165x215mm, November 2007; PB, £14.50, 1877372935:9781877372933 , University of Otago Press } |
| LAST WATER SONG [Patrick Lane] "Last Water Song", the first collection of new poetry from award-winning poet Patrick Lane is divided into two parts. The first part is a series of 16 long elegies on writer acquaintances who have died, including Adele Wiseman, Al Purdy, Earle Birney and Irving Layton. Prosey, relaxed and personal, these are some of the most moving poems Lane has written. The second section consists of 23 lyrics and narratives more typical of Lane's recent work, ranging from the humorous "Teaching Poetry" to the evocative title poem with its hint of finality. This is the work of a great Canadian poet, a collection to treasure. { 86pp, 155x230mm, August 2007; PB, £11.50, 1550174509:9781550174502 , Harbour Publishing } |
| LAST WOMAN : Selected Poems, 1991-2001 [Claudine Bertrand; Translated by Antonio D'Alfonso] "The Last Woman", a selection from twenty years of poetry, is a voyage into being and living, into the country where a woman reveals herself without fear. This lyricism of survival emerges directly from an intimacy of words spoken by one in search of roots, loving and spiritual. French critic, Jean-Pierre Faye, says: "Claudine Bertrand stands between Gaston Miron and Tristan Tzara: a Quebec poet who invents her own new language." This selection includes poems from La dernière femme (1991), L'amoureuse intérieure (1997), Tomber du jour (1999), Le corps en tête (2001), and Jardin des Vertiges (2002). { 72pp, 130x205mm, December 2006; PB, £8.99, 1550712365:9781550712360 , Guernica Editions } |
| LIVING THINGS [Matt Rader] Written in the year after the birth of Matt Rader's first daughter, "Living Things" honestly introduces the contradictions of the modern world: "how what we see in daylight is less than whole / and also more so". Using words in lieu of sonar, these poems bounce off the ecology of "shabby saturated grasses" and "panther-eyed armies salal" and locate both author and reader within a literary geneology, Matt Rader's poetry brings subtle slowness to a chaotic, fast-paced environment. It is both celebration and documentation of this world and its relationship to all living things. { 80pp, 135x190mm, April 2008; PB, £11.50, 0889712239:9780889712232 , Harbour Publishing (Nightwood Editions) } |
| LOVE SONG OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER [Sharon McCartney] An unusual collection of poems that combines craft, innovation, humour and down-to-earth insight in a focused and riveting read that will charm poetry buffs of every stripe. Peculiar, gripping and exquisitely crafted, 'The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder' is an unforgettable new collection. { 104pp, 135x190mm, April 2007; PB, £11.50, 0889712336:9780889712331 , Harbour Publishing } |
| MAGDALENA : Prose Poems [Maureen Gibbon] "Magdalena" is a finely drawn collection which, with sometimes painful honesty, examines the vagaries and vicissitudes of a heart in conflict with itself. The poems invoke the nature of an independent woman embracing her sexuality, travels, and being in the world. { 66pp, 155x230mm, June 2007; PB, £9.50, 1893996832:9781893996830 , White Pine Press } |
| MAN & BEAST [Eric Cole] For Irish-born poet and zookeeper Eric Cole the fourteen lines and rhythmic patterns of the sonnet echo the very building blocks of life. Within the basic structure of simple genetic material lies the limitless potential for the existence of all living things, be they man or beast. So, too, within the simple structure of the sonnet, there is a similar universe of untold possibilities. Now, in these robust and stylish poems, the mysteries of the animal kingdom are explored with genuine scientific curiosity and rendered with tenderness, stimulating language, and unmistakable Irish wit. From the reviled Portuguese man o’ war to the glorious hyacinth macaw, from the elusive snow leopard to the bizarre pangolin, and even to the human animal itself, Cole demonstrates how life exists in inexplicable but nonetheless indispensable variety, and this collection serves to remind us what we stand to lose if we fail to appreciate the small states of grace that befall us in the disappearing natural wonders of our world. { 106pp, 140x215mm, September 2006; PB, £5.99, 1897178042:9781897178041 , Insomniac Press } |
| MEMORIES & MILESTONES [Irwin E Thompson] This is a collection of deeply personal poems and paintings based on the origins of life on this planet, related natural phenomena, and the ecological impact of Homo sapiens. Included also are works derived from personal experiences of the vicissitudes of our own existence and how we react to them. { 55pp, 200x200mm, August 2007; PB, £13.50, 1933631635:9781933631639 , AtlasBooks (Acanthus Publishing) } |
| MILLIONAIRE'S SHORTBREAD [Mary-Jane Duffy, Mary Cresswell, Mary Macpherson, Kerry Hines] “Millionaire's Shortbread” is both book and cake. Meeting at a cafe table in downtown Wellington, sustained by their favourite treat and gathering in an illustrator along the way, the poets put together this selection of their work over three years. It seemed inevitable that the book should be named after the cake, and the distinctive voices of the poets become its flavoursome ingredients. { 96pp, February 2003; PB, £13.99, 187727643X:9781877276439 , University of Otago Press } |
| MINIATURE ROOM [Rebecca Dunham] With tender probing and tight, expressive language, 'The Miniature Room' explores the grace and power of the miniscule as it exists within an infinite universe. This 2006 T S Eliot Prize-winning collection utilises rich imagery and complex interlocking meanings as author Rebecca Durham builds off the classical themes of art, history, nature, love, life, religion, and motherhood to provide a sensual and inquisitive body of work. Author affiliation { 72pp, 155x230mm, October 2006; HB, £16.99, 1931112614:9781931112611 / PB, £10.99, 1931112622:9781931112628 , Truman State University Press } |
| MOON CASTLES [Jimmy D Robinson] A book of lyrical poetry by one of today's most prolific writers. This collection of poems will take the reader's soul and dance it on many clouds of fairytales. { 56pp, 175x245mm, June 2007; HB, £13.50, 0976014076:9780976014072 , AtlasBooks (Jimmyland Corporation) } |
| MOTHER TIME : Poems New & Selected [Joanne Arnott] After reading this collection, you will never look at mothers -- at the playground, at the elementary school, or across the kitchen table -- in quite the same way again. Beginning with a poem of pregnancy, written by her twenty-five year old self, Arnott leads us through a span of twenty years of inward- and outward-facing struggles, centred firmly in the ongoing work of becoming a mother. Living on the thresholds between races -- the poet is a prairie-born Métis -- and between the generations, Arnott articulates the challenges of mothering in heart, body, and mind. Her work involves sometimes abstract, sometimes visceral long and short poems, song and chant. Through visiting and revisiting pregnancy, childbirth, lullabies, and multi-generational rage, the poetry moves from the desperation of survival through to a tender place of clarity. The sexual, the spiritual, and the sociological weave together here to shock, cajole, and ultimately to transform our picture of the inner life of the mother. { 139pp, 155x230mm, March 2007; PB, £8.99, 155380046X:9781553800460 , Ronsdale Press } |
| NEW CANON : An Anthology of Canadian Poetry [Carmine Starnino] Collecting the works of 50 modern Canadian poets, this anthology of verse points to an emerging openness toward form in the nation's poetry. The book includes nearly 200 poems from more than 20 presses and an essay that describes and explains the innovations of form that distinguish the featured writers. { 326pp, 155x230mm, April 2006; PB, £10.99, 1550652087:9781550652086 , IPG (Véhicule Press) } |
| NEWER WILDERNESS [Roseanne Carrara] In Roseanne Carrara's "A Newer Wilderness", the world's rich and compelling past buckles and swells beneath our feet, and its abiding influence rises like geothermal steam into the present. Powerful voices from history and legend issue forth and mingle with our familiar, circadian surroundings. These poems serve to remind us that our future need not cost us our past, that our capacity for intellect need not diminish our basic humanity, and that civilisations need not be built at the expense of the natural environment in which they thrive. { 112pp, 140x210mm, August 2007; PB, £5.95, 1897178409:9781897178409 , Insomniac Press } |
| NOT JUST A PERSONAL AD [Vittoria Repetto] Vittoria repetto is a subtle poet who has preserved her working class sensibility and her taste for the actual language of daily life while maintaining an acute ear for literary echoes. From the first poem where she places her grandparents young and in love right in front of us, to 'she's doing the dishes' where in a tongue in cheek delivery she eroticises a simple household chore to the last poem 'not just a personal ad,' Vittoria repetto casts an unapologetically direct and witty eye on life's complexity. These are poems that paint unforgettable moments within unforgettable scenes. { 82pp, 140x215mm, June 2006; PB, £8.99, 1550712446:9781550712445 , Guernica Editions } |
| OF WHISKEY & WINTER : Prose Poems [Peter Connors] REVIEW: "Peter Conners' stunning prose poems are packed with keen sensitivity, dreaminess, and wit. I love his time travels, the vibrant layering of image and detail. This is language and vision I want to come home to again and again." -- Naomi Shihab Nye. "I don't know what's more remarkable about the poems in Of Whiskey and Winter, their exquisite music or their startling, acrobatic leaps. By turns manic and contemplative, zany and wise, his rollicking poems have the power to simultaneously challenge, illuminate and praise the illusive character of the world." -- Gary Young. { 82pp, 155x230mm, September 2007; PB, £9.99, 1893996891:9781893996892 , White Pine Press } |
| ONE MUDDY HAND : Selected Poems of Earle Birney [Sam Solecki (ed)] Earle Birney (1904-1995), the father of modern Canadian poetry, was one of Canada's finest writers and the author of 'David', arguably the most popular Canadian poem of all time. One Muddy Hand: Selected Poems features Birney's best work, spanning his entire writing career from 1926 to 1987. { 204pp, 155x230mm, October 2006; PB, £11.50, 1550173707:9781550173703 , Harbour Publishing } |
| OX [Christopher Patton] The poems in Christopher Patton's debut collection, "Ox", are about seeing clearly, and also about relinquishing the need to see with specific intent. Through this tension they find their idiosyncratic magic. Like the 12th-century Buddhist parable of the ox-herder, this collection begins with a search, and its open-ended journey establishes the form of its religious and philosophical reach. Moving across lucently rendered North American landscapes, Patton catches a glimpse of his own spiritual setting, and in the process suggests a new direction, perhaps an entirely new scale, for Canadian nature poetry. Brimming with beautifully-controlled descriptions and startlingly precise word-play, "Ox" is an image of vulnerability before the world's plenitude. It is an astonishing achievement. { 72pp, 140x200mm, September 2007; PB, £8.99, 1550652230:9781550652239 , IPG (Véhicule Press) } |
| PAPER PAVILION [Jennifer Kwon Dobbs] "Paper Pavilion" captures the theme of transnational adoption and a powerful search for a personal history and identity from Korea to America. { 107pp, 155x230mm, February 2008; PB, £9.99, 1893996905:9781893996908 , White Pine Press } |
| PEACE LOVE MUSIC [Jimmy D Robinson] A collection of poems from one of today's most prolific writers, Jimmy D Robinson, who shares his life experiences with readers and takes their soul to the land of the free... { 56pp, 175x245mm, April 2007; HB, £13.50, 097926720X:9780979267208 , AtlasBooks (Jimmyland Corporation) } |
| PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE [Jimmy D Robinson] The poems that grace the pages of this book will touch the chords of readers' souls. { 56pp, 175x245mm, June 2007; HB, £13.50, 0976014092:9780976014096 , AtlasBooks (Jimmyland Corporation) } |
| PRE-SOCRATIC POINTS : and Other New Poems [Stanley Nelson] Nelson explores the range of poetic form. He utilises a traditional sonnet format in one section and an open, non-linear format, in which he not only breaks up words, but separates syllables and letters in another. The poems expand across the page. This book offers a mix of visual and auditory imagery, creating an alternative universe. { 84pp, 140x215mm, May 2006; PB, £9.99, 0977252442:9780977252442 , Presa Press } |
| REPOSE [Adam Getty] "Repose" is an exploration of the definition of cultural freedom; it is a pointed look at an obsession with production, and a comparison of natural and urban environments that shape our lives. Getty argues that our lives are so tightly controlled by non-negotiable experiences of employment that for the majority of people employment is anything but a democratic process. Getty's attempt to find spontaneity and a modern idiom by writing in traditional poetic styles mirrors a cultural attempt to find freedom and vitality. By meticulously studying the poetic techniques of the past, Adam Getty has put new wine into old wineskins: he has found a voice that is erudite, disciplined and, ultimately, free. { 88pp, 140x235mm, April 2008; PB, £11.50, 0889712190:9780889712195 , Harbour Publishing (Nightwood Editions) } |
| RETURN TO OPEN WATER : Poems New & Selected [Harold Rhenisch] To Harold Rhenisch, poetry is a wisdom path equal to Zen, or a pilgrimage on the holy road from Seville to Minsk, and even to Stand Up Comedy. His poems are also scripts for performance, on a stage between dance and mathematics, honed through decades of public readings. Here is a breadth of musicality ranging from solo piano improvisations, to jazz quartets, klezmer music, musical hall, and even operatic arias. In this spirited celebration of the creative spirit, Rhenisch presents a vision of the world that places Canada, and poetry, at the crossroads of world culture. Included are a hymn for whales, a love poem for herring, black-comic stagings of Shakespeare (the women get the main parts), spells for love, tongue-in-cheek deconstructions and celebrations of philosophy and literature, laments for the missteps of history, enraged political blasts, deep ecological lyrics, Mozart riding the bulls into the Williams Lake Stampede, and a rhinestoned Jesus singing Elvis Lyrics on a car hoist at Canadian Tire. In "Return to Open Water "this award-winning poet, critic, and cultural critic fuses American, British and European verse traditions into a poetics able to reimagine literature and history and return them to us in illuminated form. Long-praised for his innovative creative non-fiction and his mastery of the long poem form, in this volume Rhenisch presents the roots of that intelligence and its furthest extensions, as he centres Canada on the world literary map. Previously printed in small editions from small presses across the country, this volume presents the best poems -- comical, elegiac, satiric and lyrical -- from the twelve volumes of verse of one of Canada's best, most original, and most mercurial poets. { 150pp, 155x230mm, September 2007; PB, £9.50, 1553800508:9781553800507 , Ronsdale Press } |
| RIVERS ... & OTHER BLACKNESS ... BETWEEN US : (Dub) Poems of Love [d'bi.young.anitafrika] "d'bi is a passionate word-warrior with originality and ingenuity to match her creative courage. In this collection, she gushes freely, blending contemporary currents with ancestral resonance to create a daring collection that demands attention. As it bends boundaries and defies definitions, d'bi's poetry courses along its own path. Surging and swirling, sometimes overflowing the banks, her lines are both delightful and disturbing. On the outside you see a book covered and bound, but on each page there’s raw power and boundless revelation." -- Blakka Ellis { 97pp, 155x230mm, December 2007; PB, £7.99, 0889614636:9780889614635 , Canadian Scholars' Press Inc (Women's Press) } |
| ROBERT SERVICE : Under the Spell of the Yukon [Enid Mallory; Foreword by Jack Whyte] Dressed in cowboy garb acquired in a Scottish auction room, a naive but committed young Robert Service stepped off the CPR train in Vancouver, sustained only by his sense of adventure. Sixteen years later, he would leave Canada as the author of the most commercially successful poems written in the 20th century. Service's time in the Yukon, at first as a transplanted bank clerk and later living off the royalties of poems like "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", is the core of a fascinating life. Starving in Mexico, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver were only preludes to his Yukon years and his first poems. Words were Robert Service's lifelong passion, and he set them on many stages. But it was his McGrew, McGee and other players of the Great White North who glittered with a golden glow and forever made him the "Bard of the Yukon" and the de facto poet laureate of Alaska. This book sheds light on aspects of Service's life that have been sketchily covered by other biographers, focusing on his years in Canada and the western U.S. 2006 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of "Songs of a Sourdough", which sold over three million copies and was the most successful poetry book of the 20th century. { 238pp, 155x230mm, October 2006; HB, £21.99, 1894384954:9781894384957 , Heritage House Publishing } |
| RUSH TO BE HERE [George Murray] George Murray proves once again he is one of his generation's most accomplished poets with The Rush to Here. Diverging from the excess and declamation of his highly praised previous collection, The Hunter, Murray breaks new poetic ground in poems that are dangerous, sharp and glistening in both language and style. Combining what the poet calls 'thought-rhyme' with the structured sonnet form, Murray's philosophical curiosity and hard nosed intelligence emerge to create an off-kilter eye that somehow manages to be dead on target. As though looking out a window by which the entire world is passing, The Rush to Here darts through the absurdity of daily life to organise the mess and contradictions of modern society. Relentlessly honest, elegant in form and language, The Rush to Here is an intimidating, eerie, but ultimately hopeful collection that sets George Murray apart as a voice for our time. { 80pp, 140x215mm, April 2007; PB, £11.50, 0889712298:9780889712294 , Harbour Publishing } |
| SEA-CROSSING OF SAINT BRENDAN : A Classic Irish Sea Adventure [Matthew Brennan] A classic of Irish literature: a sparkling new verse version of this great sea adventure which originally appeared in Latin prose. The tale centres around St Brendan the Navigator's seven-year search for the isle known as the "Land of Saints", and in the course of which a giant fish lifts his ship on its back. { 64pp, 140x215mm, April 2008; PB, £10.50, 0978997433:9780978997434 , Birch Brook Press } |
| SEASON IN HELL [Arthur Rimbaud] Using immediate vernacular that gives modern readers all the heady brilliance of Rimbaud's rebelliousness, this new translation contains the last poems written by one of the most influential poets before he abandoned poetry at the age of 20. Revell's essay, "Outrageous Innocence, Innocence Outraged," is offered as postscript, revealing the story of Rimbaud -- his wildly creative youth, his years of breaking with traditional morality and decorum, his fame as the genius of French letters, and his early death. Analysis places these poems in the larger historical narrative of the literature of rebellious youth that has moulded much of contemporary culture. Published with the original French version on facing pages, this translation will offer many the pleasure of reading this wild-child, long remembered as one of the masters of French poetry. { 103pp, 155x230mm, September 2007; PB, £9.99, 1890650307:9781890650308 , IPG (Omnidawn Publishing) } |
| SEMBLANCE : Selected Poems: 1975-2007 [Laura Moriarty] Drawn from 13 previous poetry collections, this selected compilation includes many poems from hard-to-find collections as well as new work from one of the most formally inventive and lyrically innovative poets writing today. Whether examining the historically gendered gaze of artistic and cultural narratives and their impact upon the individual, the symmetries that interlink to figure our social and political horizons, or the destructive forces that both expose and explode our meaning of self, these poems offer the expansive pleasure of revelation in each finely distilled articulation. This collection offers readers a range of work from the poet's long writing career and includes an introduction by poet Norma Cole. { 220pp, 155x230mm, September 2007; PB, £9.99, 1890650277:9781890650278 , IPG (Omnidawn Publishing) } |
| SEVENTEEN TREES [Marianne Micros] Marianne Micros, in Seventeen Trees, re-creates her deeply personal journeys to the land of her ancestors, a Greece where myth, spiritual sites, family folklore, and human encounters converge to intensify the poet's awareness of her origins, permitting her to mourn and celebrate, to reflect and dance. { 82pp, December 2006; PB, £8.99, 1550712438:9781550712438 , Guernica Editions } |
| SHAPE OF LIGHT [James Wright] The fruits of the season, James Wright's luminous prose captures eternal moments in his travels through Italy and France. REVIEW: "Wright's poems, with their grace and intelligence, not only stand as a rebuke to most of the glib work of his time, but remain among the finest examples of the midcentury American lyric." -- J D McClatchy, The New York Times Book Review. { 90pp, 130x180mm, June 2007; PB, £9.50, 1893996859:9781893996854 , White Pine Press } |
| SHELL [Olive Senior] In Shell, Olive Senior continues her ongoing investigation of the natural world, the nature of poetry and the power of her Caribbean heritage. She is our guide through realms of miniature elegance, those of shells in their abundant manifestations. With her grace, generosity and world-renowned lyricism, Senior gives us hen's eggs as hymns, molluscs as metaphors, shells of all kinds -- sometimes fragile, sometimes unyielding -- as home, as womb, as token and as totem. Ultimately, she places these shells, small and delicate, at the heart of the Jamaican cane fields, revealing a history rich with culture and haunted by slavery. These are Senior's most powerful and affirming poems to date. { 100pp, 140x215mm, November 2007; PB, £5.95, 1897178484:9781897178485 , Insomniac Press } |
| SIMMERING AWAY : Songs from the Kanginshu [Yasuhiko Moriguchi & David Jenkins] A lovely gift book of songs of love and wisdom drawn from the classic Japanese poetry collection, the "Kanginshu"; interspersed with sumie drawings. { 96pp, 130x180mm, June 2007; PB, £9.50, 1893996492:9781893996496 , White Pine Press } |
| SO THIS IS THE WORLD & HERE I AM IN IT [Di Brant] This is a stunning collection of creative essays by poet and critic Di Brandt. Written over a period of ten years, these essays circle around questions of exile and violence, eros and wildness, land and mentoring, home and language. They are experimental engagements with a lively array of personal and cultural memories, of places ranging from Winnipeg and Windsor to Berlin, Germany, of joyfully unruly characters in Canadian fiction, of the esoteric lives of Mennonites, honeybees, and twins. REVIEW: "Infuriating and enthralling, Di Brandt doesn’t let readers off easy. Brandt is immensely skillful in combining personal narrative with academic critique. In her beautifully written style - she is, after all, a poet - she is conversationally engaging yet wholly critical." -- Jay Smith in See Magazine (Edmonton), March 29th, 2007. "...best display[s] the combination of her literary voice with an intellectual argument drawn from personal experience." -- Quill & Quire, May 2007. { 246pp, 155x230mm, May 2007; PB, £14.99, 1897126093:9781897126097 , Newest Press } |
| SONG OF MERI-KHEM : A Pilgrim's Journey [Judith Page] In writing this poem I have attempted to cut through so much of what we now think of as Ancient Egypt, and only the bare bones will remain. Symbolic figureheads such as Osiris and Amon will be discussed, but not elevated, and favoured centres of apparent importance or popularity will be by-passed. This will not be a book for those who wish to play tourist, dropping off here for a quick sensation, or stopping there for an imagined photo-shoot, it will be an experience for all those who wish to embrace the origin and notion of Set, and Set's values. In recording the mythical life of Set, we have applauded him. The strength and warmth of his intellect demand similar warmth in his dramatic performance throughout ancient Egyptian history. To adopt an attitude of detachment, particularly towards the ancient and unknown, can bar from sight those many scenes glimpsed by the historian who approaches the role of reconstructing an era with sympathy, insight and understanding. Neither the truth nor the equilibrium of scholarship is disturbed by controlled imagination and honest praise of this much-maligned Egyptian god. We are portraying the mythological concept and personality of Set not in order to worship a hero, but to recognise him as a leader and a hero. Set strives to take his stand against 5,000 years of a 'drift of history' with the introduction of Osirion and Amonite tradition, and a preconditioning before being replaced by Christianity. { 186pp, 140x215mm, June 2007; £5.99, 1869928997:9781869928995 , Mandrake of Oxford } |
| STRENGTH OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT [Jade Bell] "Jade's poetry is an inspiration not only because of his perseverance and dedication in the face of such great odds but because he writes straight from the heart. Imprisoned in his suit of humanity, he finds hope and strength of the human spirit. He navigates through pain fishing for answers in this wind and liquidates our souls with desire and passion bound by wire explosions. Open these pages and dance with him in a world faded fast." -- R David Stephens. { 68pp, 155x230mm, March 2007; PB, £9.99, 1894694511:9781894694513 , Granville Island Publishing } |
| TENDRIL [Bin Ramke] By drawing the small instances of living to the forefront of meaning, this collection of elegant and lyrical poems reveals the value of simple events in our lives. Allowing the reader to follow the personal, cultural, and artistic threads that intertwine to create our conscious understanding, these poems explore how family, culture, class, gender, historical moment, landscape, and the language we use come together to impact reality. From inch worm moths to Gregg shorthand, from fishing on the bayou to the horrors of world war, from the impact of great art and literature to the profound devastation of natural disaster, these poems show us how the tendrils of meaning running through them are made of words, which weave together to form the fabric of our lives. { 117pp, 135x230mm, September 2007; PB, £9.99, 1890650269:9781890650261 , IPG (Omnidawn Publishing) } |
| THIS HEAVENLY WINE : Renditions from the Divan E-Jami [Nooreddin Abdurrahman Ibn-e Ahmad-e Jami] Heart-opening poetry of longing and love from the last great poet in the classical Persian tradition. Following in the footsteps of the Persian mystical poets Rumi, Hafez, Nizami and others, the timeless works in this collection express the poet's overwhelming devotion to and longing for the Divine Beloved. { 121pp, 140x215mm, May 2006; PB, £8.99, 1890772569:9781890772567 , Hohm Press } |
| TOTAL IMMERSION [Glenna Luschei] This is a landmark collection of poems by the legendary literary activist, poet/editor Glenna Luschei. In her mature later poems, Glenna Luschei joyfully celebrates the organic cycle of life. People and landscapes reflect and parallel each other in their birth, growth, decline and death, but the poet opts for a life-affirming, maternal world-view. It takes more than mere life to discourage her pioneer spirit. Glenna Luschei, Ph.D. has been active in the small press for 40 years as a past president of COSMEP (Committee of Small Magazine Editors & Publishers), the publisher of Solo Café, as a teacher, as a translator and as a philanthropist to American literature. { 96pp, 140x215mm, December 2007; PB, £9.99, 0980008107:9780980008104 , Presa Press } |
| TROUBLE WITH A SHORT HORSE IN MONTANA [Roy Bentley] "Roy Bentley’s exceptional collection of poetry peels back the soul of Middle America to reveal its idiosyncrasies and enigmas. No tricks, no formulas; just plenty of surprises -- poignant, human, picaresque -- told in the direct language of an accomplished storyteller." -- John Brandi { 96pp, 155x230mm, June 2007; PB, £9.50, 1893996778:9781893996779 , White Pine Press } |
| WE, THE WOMEN [Merle Nudelman] Merle Nudelman plumbs the nuances and vagaries which define our relationships and the shifting moments of lover, abuser, victim, and healer. The imagery in We, the Women is at once startling and evocative. Poems of layered scenes of domesticity and of the natural world border on the elegiac. In this richly textured collection, Nudelman celebrates the transformative power of love and spiritual awakening. { 64pp, 140x215mm, August 2006; PB, £8.99, 1550712489:9781550712483 , Guernica Editions } |
| WHAT BELONGS [F B Andre] In this new collection of stories, André explores what it means to 'belong'. Frequently his stories portray individuals involved in mixed relationships, of different cultures and races or backgrounds -- of people struggling to feel at home with themselves and their situations. André depicts characters newly arrived in Canada as well as those who have called Canada home for generations. With his wonderful ear for dialogue, André allows us to listen in on things that are deeply felt, and we are reminded that the unsaid often reveals more than that which is said. In 'What the Future Holds', the wife of a graduate student from Korea, would like to give her baby the gift of birthright: to grow up knowing that there is always the possibility of a door that opens out onto a new life. But in her new marriage that doorway is shrinking ever smaller, and she will have to find a way to widen it. Often André finds a sense of black humour in his situations as when a woman's dying request is that both her husband and ex-husband join together to spread her ashes. And in the title story, 'What Belongs', André depicts a contemporary researcher interviewing a descendant of one of the boatload of Afro-Americans that Governor James Douglas invited to settle in British Columbia in 1858. Moving backwards and forwards from the present to the past, André asks, When does a place become home? When can you stake your claim? When does it become automatic that we are from here, that we belong? { 160pp, 155x230mm, March 2007; PB, £12.99, 1553800443:9781553800446 , Ronsdale Press } |
| WHAT THE POSTCARD DIDN'T SAY [Shoshauna Shy] The combustible verses comprising this anthology examine the unsettling way people, places, and relationships affect everyday life. Exposing the baggage, detours, accommodations, and push and pull of the male/female dance, the verses reveal what the postcards really said from the backstage of the subconscious where the messages are throwing a now-or-never party. Full of turbulent encounters and startling discoveries -- a groom dancing with his ex at his wedding, a cashier in a hold-up by her former one-night-stand, something you hope you won't have to tell your daughter -- this collection is a tailbone toss across the continental divide in a jeep that dropped its muffler ten miles back. { 103pp, 155x230mm, April 2007; PB, £7.99, 0974172839:9780974172835 , IPG (Zelda Wilde Publishing) } |
| WHAT THE RAVEN SAID [Robert Alexander] "I think there is an Emersonian sensibility in his tightly written prose poems. If there is such a thing as a Midwestern prose poem, Alexander surely invented it, merging natural imagery and personal reflection, transforming what could have been mere picturism into profundity..." Peter Johnson { 61pp, 155x230mm, June 2007; PB, £9.50, 189399676X:9781893996762 , White Pine Press } |
| WHITE CRANE : Love Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama A poetry and life unique in the lineage of the Dalai Lama. The sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706), refused to take full monastic vows and returned to the world, loving alcohol, archery, and women with a passion that perhaps suggests he had a premonition of his early death at the age of twenty-four. { 80pp, 125x180mm, September 2007; PB, £9.50, 1893996824:9781893996823 , White Pine Press } |
| WHY ARE YOU SO SAD? : Selected Poems of David W McFadden [Stuart Ross (ed)] His life in Canadian poetry has spanned five decades, and David W McFadden is still going strong. This selection from his career to date brings back into print many of the greatest poems from nearly two dozen books. Chosen and introduced by fellow poet Stuart Ross, in full collaboration with the author, these poems reaffirm McFadden's status as one of Canada's most gratifying, ineffable, and necessary poets. { 328pp, 155x230mm, August 2007; PB, £9.95, 1897178417:9781897178416 , Insomniac Press } |
| WILD STRAWBERRIES [Eric Greinke] "Wild Strawberries" collects fifty-nine new poems previously published in three dozen plus literary journals such as Backwards City Review, The California Quarterly, the Iconoclast, The New York Quarterly and The Pedestal, from 2005 to 2008, by the critically acclaimed poet Eric Greinke. The book's central theme is man’s relationship to time and the natural (and unnatural) world. Greinke’s poems are imagistic, thought-provoking and evocative. He is a master of shifting moods and personae. Includes the 180-line major poem For The Living Dead, which has been nominated by Muses Review as Best Poem of 2007 and also for a Pushcart Prize. Eric Greinke is a major voice on the small press literary scene. A must-have for all poetry collections. { 96pp, 140x215mm, December 2007; PB, £9.99, 0980008115:9780980008111 , Presa Press } |
| WISDOM OF THE BODY [Judith Roche] This is a meditation in poetry on the 'bodiness' -- the physicality -- of all things: our bodies and how they change, the salmon and their life cycle, trees, flowers, the earth, everything caught in the mystery of time. The book contains a series of poems on the life cycle of Pacific Northwest salmon that was a City of Seattle public arts project, and poems from the libretto of a musical piece by noted composer Janice Gitech, 'Navigating the Light'. { 94pp, 140x215mm, April 2007; PB, £9.50, 0930773810:9780930773816 , Midpoint Trade Books (Black Heron Press) } |
| WOMAN ON THE TERRACE [Moon Chung-Hee] Moon Chung-hee's lyrical poems represent poignant self-examination, evoking moments of bewilderment and hopeful resignation to the passage of time and imprisoning conditions of her life. Her work explores the desire to escape the fetters of domesticity as a vehicle for understanding a woman's journey and her negotiations between the desire for freedom and domestic reality. { 117pp, 155x230mm, February 2008; PB, £9.99, 1893996867:9781893996861 , White Pine Press } |
| WOODSTOVES & RAVENS [Robert E Farmer] This book describes a wild-land sojourn with woodstoves and ravens in the boreal forest on the Canadian north shore of Lake Superior, near Thunder Bay. The author, a forest-ecologist, distils two decades of back-country living into tight, lyrical poems -- on wildness, the seasonal darkness of the mind, relation-ships with plants, animals and, occasionally, people. Strongly grounded in Tang Dynasty poetry and Buddhist philosophy, his work moves beyond description to focus on the iro-ny and agony of human self-awareness, which forever removes us from natural systems. Yet the poems reflect the author's deep fondness for northern wild lands and life in remote re-gions. Sometimes he is also funny. The narra-tive is complemented by the original art of Alanna Marohnic whose work has foundation in extensive northern experience. The book will be of special interest to people who "live on the edge", those who hope to do so some-day -- and people who live there vicariously. { 86pp, 140x215mm, April 2008; PB, £10.99, 0978997409:9780978997403 , Birch Brook Press } |
| WORD WENT ROUND [David Howard] Powerful historical poems about nineteenth-century Irish emigration to New Zealand, the colonial wars, Von Tempsky and Te Kooti, moving elegies for poet/painter Joanna Margaret Paul, the artist Reiko Kunimatsu and the poet's late father, love poems, and meditations on the nature of spiritual existence in the intellectual pressure-cooker of the twenty-first century. Howard's poems are accompanied by a selection of haunting images by the painter Garry Currin, produced to accompany the long title-poem which is the central feature of the book. { 64pp, 170x240mm, July 2006; PB, £13.99, 1877372315:9781877372315 , University of Otago Press } |
| WORLD FORGOTTEN : Selected Poems [Paul Bélanger; Translated by Antonio D'Alfonso] This is a selection of poems chosen from the first four books published by Paul Bélanger. With Projet de Pablo (1988, a finalist for the Émile Nelligan Award), Bélanger began to cultivate his memory using various kinds of tools. In this first collection Picas-so's works become the pretext for the poet to compare painting to poetry. In Retours (1991, a finalist for the Governor General Award), the poet chooses to travel within and face the strangeness of the world therein. L'oubli du monde (1993) brings us to the more personal realms of memory. Autobiography crosses history in a well-tempered lyricism. Fenêtres et ailleurs (1996) shows us a man tackling more existential issues. This selection was done by Antonio D'Alfonso. { 76pp, 140x215mm, November 2006; PB, £8.99, 1550712357:9781550712353 , Guernica Editions } |
| YOU SPEAK TO ME IN TREES [Elana Wolff] In these poems, told from the writer's home on the outskirts of the city, dreams recur, lore emerges, memory merges with imagination, artifice with nature, and the physical with other possibilities. { 84pp, June 2006; PB, £8.99, 1550712470:9781550712476 , Guernica Editions } |