Drawing Botany Home: A Rooted Life by Lyn Baldwin Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2023 $30.00 / 9781771605922 Reviewed by Nina Shoroplova * Lyn Baldwin, PhD, has lived a life at the “confluence of choice and change.” As have most of us. But as a botanist, an ecologist, and a philosopher, especially about her own life…
Read more 1892 ‘Plant aware, nature aware’
Catalogue d’oiseaux By Aaron Tucker Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2021 $20.00 / 9781771666947 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * Catalogue d’oiseaux is a long poem that portrays a pair of lovers in their forties remaking themselves into a couple, despite distance threatening to divide them. It is the rhythmic rocking of a body in isolation, two bodies…
Read more 1890 Love in the Quantum Age
False CreekBy Jane Munro Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2022$19.95 / 9781990776090 Reviewed by Jodi Lundgren * I happened to open False Creek after a few days’ immersion in Milton’s Renaissance epic, Paradise Lost, and was unexpectedly struck by continuities between the two works. No, Munro’s book is not a narrative poem, much less an…
Read more 1885 Poetic ‘intelligence, curiosity, wonderment, and humility’
Boy in the Blue Hammock By Darren Groth Gibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2022 $22.95 / 9780889714267 Reviewed by Jeff Stychin * If you’ve ever walked alone at sunset to a summit view of the place you reside and reminisced about your travels and experiences, imagine adding an ethereal mist with shimmering silvers and golds to…
Read more 1884 Dog and Boy
Troll By Logan Macnair Vancouver: Now Or Never Press, 2023 19.95 / 9781989689479 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * I used to work in an indie bookstore that would not stock Jordan Peterson’s books. At the time, I was miraculously ignorant about Peterson’s existence; life was 3.5% better. When I realized why my former boss staunchly…
Read more 1883 Like ‘signing a waiver to having your blood pressure raised’
The Malevolent Seven By Sebastien de Castell London: Jo Fletcher Books, 2023 $35.00 / 9781529422771 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * Full disclosure: Sebastien de Castell is a friend of mine. We met at a writer’s group several years ago just after he published his first novel, Traitor’s Blade, a swashbuckling, sword-fighting fantasy. I read it then,…
Read more 1882 Blood magic, rat mages, and righteousness
Reckoning By Patrick Friesen Vancouver, BC: Anvil Press, 2023 $18.00 / 9781772142167 Reviewed by Al Rempel * Patrick Friesen’s latest book, Reckoning, is a masterfully crafted, single long poem that ranges across all three senses of reckoning, weaving new themes together with familiar themes to those who have read his previous work. Reckoning: to calculate…
Read more 1879 What a wonder
Not Quite So Handsome By Danny Peart Vancouver: Milagro Press, 2022 $20.00 / 9780994932969 Reviewed by Patrick Connors * Vancouver’s Danny Peart begins Not Quite So Handsome with the poem “Intention,” which serves as sort of a prologue to the collection. The epigraph of the poem features lyrics from “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” by…
Read more 1873 Last words, famous and otherwise
Storylines: How Words Shape Our World by J. Edward Chamberlin Madeira Park, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 2023 $26.95 / 9781771623513 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * British novelist D.H. Lawrence once quipped that readers should trust the tale and not the teller. What did he mean? Prof emeritus J. Edward Chamberlin offers some possible answers in…
Read more 1853 Trust the tale not the teller?
Welcome Trevor and Brett by Richard Mackie * On behalf of the Board of the Ormsby Literary Society and our Advisory Board I’d like to welcome Trevor Marc Hughes and Brett Josef Grubisic as interim editors of The British Columbia Review for the year May 1, 2023 to May 1, 2024. The position was made possible…
Read more 1813 Welcome Trevor and Brett
Announcing the BC Review interview series by Richard Mackie * In November 2022, at the most recent board meeting of the Ormsby Literary Society, the chair, Byron Sheardown, suggested that we open a YouTube channel and start an interview series. Board member Trevor Marc Hughes jumped at the suggestion. “I’ve got filmmaking experience,” he said,…
Read more 1757 Announcing interview series
Jerry Zaslove: the summing up by Talonbooks editorial staff * Last summer, Talonbooks was delighted by the arrival of the long-awaited Untimely Passages: Dossiers from the Other Shore, a collection of essays by the late Jerry Zaslove, who taught at Simon Fraser University from 1965 until his retirement in 2000. He retained an office in…
Read more Jerry Zaslove: the summing up
The Growing Season by Nelson Boschman, with a foreword by Lois Cho Vancouver: Nelson Boschman, 2022 $23.99 / 9781778083105 Reviewed by Dennis Wilkinson * Nelson Boschman displays an orgasmic-like giddiness towards wine. He is the eight-year-old at Christmas time, and wine is the biggest present under the tree with his name on it. This book…
Read more 1729 Wine and spirits
Words from the Dead: Relevant Readings in the Covid Age by Sean Arthur (Art) Joyce Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2022 $25.95 / 9781771714587 Reviewed by Christopher A. Shaw * Capturing the “Landscape of the Imagination” in the Age of Covid No matter where one stands on the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccines, and who’s responsible, the events of…
Read more 1519 Reading the Covid landscape
Spectres of Fascism: Historical, Theoretical, and International Perspectives by Samir Gandesha (editor) Toronto: Between the Lines Books, 2020 $34.95 / 9781771135016 Reviewed by Stan Markotich * Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini … and Steve Bannon? When I was starting my undergraduate career at Simon Fraser University some 40 years ago, I often heard a joke that…
Read more 1416 Fascism now and then
Philosophers’ Walks by Bruce Baugh London and New York: Routledge, 2021 $35.96 (U.S.) / 9780367333133 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Growing up in North Vancouver, Bruce Baugh found himself drawn to taking “long, solitary walks” amongst its “ravines and forests.” During his later extensive studies, he was fascinated to discover that some of the philosophical…
Read more 1352 I walk, therefore I am
White Lie by Clint Burnham Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2021 $18.00 / 9781772141740 Reviewed by Peter Babiak * One of my favourite lines of literary theory is from the mystical German Jewish essayist, Walter Benjamin. A perspicacious man who recognized just how much literary works are indebted to the economic and technological conditions that form their…
Read more 1348 Baffling thrums of reasoning
ESSAY: Mourning and Burial Rites in Ancient China: A Grief Process by Dorothy Dittrich * Death is part of life, as are the feelings of grief, sorrow and anxiety that follow the loss of a loved one. While coming to terms with death and coping with loss may be part of living, the feelings that…
Read more Mourning rites in Ancient China
The Professor and the Plumber: Conversations About Equality and Inequality by Eric W. Sager, with illustrations by Hanna Melin Victoria: FriesenPress, 2021 $22.99 / 9781039105553 Reviewed by Jak King * Many would argue that inequality is a defining characteristic of life in the early 2000s. More specifically — since some form of inequality has been…
Read more 1246 Two cousins meet for dinner
Letters from the Pandemic 34: To Walter Benjamin by Linda Quibell * Walter Benjamin was a German philosopher, literary critic, translator, and cultural observer. He attempted to escape the Nazis, but in 1940 took his own life in Portbou, Spain — Ed. * February 20, 2021 My dear melancholic friend, Please, tell me about exile….
Read more Letters from the Pandemic 34: To Walter Benjamin