“From the sexual imagery of butterflies, to the confused and chaotic state of mind brought on by natural landscape and creatures found in them, to the exploration of potential structure shown in consequential panels, Shadbolt appears to have been an artist who not only absorbed the natural world in the place called British Columbia but also attempted to describe the state of mind it created within him.” Trevor Marc Hughes reviews Jack Shadbolt: In His Words by Susan M. Mertens (ed.) (Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2024) $40 / 9781773272559
“This is what one of our master poets wants to give us now that he is an elder—this ordinariness of poetry, its roots in people, and the role of a poet as the defender of human connection, even with seemingly non-human things.”
—Harold Rhenisch reviews Out of the Ordinary: New Poems, by Tom Wayman (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025) $22.95 / 9781998526123
“Between the Bell Struck and the Silence contains poems of immense beauty while the speaker seeks redemption for psychological injuries of the past and finds it in nature. Porter’s deft handling of ‘a music of imagery’ (to borrow T.S. Eliot’s term), and her pitch-perfect tone makes this collection a poignant and rewarding read.” —gillian harding-russell reviews Between the Bell Struck and the Silence, by Pamela Porter (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $20.00 /9781773861418
Referencing “graphic novels, pop-up books, make-your-own-adventures, fairy tales, Christian bedtime prayers, kids’ illustrated books, television, movies, werewolf stories, and the Internet,” an audacious, eclectic volume of poems explores and responds to binarisms. —Harold Rhenisch reviews In Your Nature, by Estlin McPhee (Kingston: Brick Books, 2025) $23.95 / 9781771316439
Admirable for the “profound hymn it presents of childhood,” a book of prose poems celebrates “the trickster energy of boyhood, it’s inimitable curiosity and acceptance,” even as it acknowledges “the poverty of a hard farming life.” —Harold Rhenisch reviews Sprocket, by Al Rempel (Qualicum Beach, Caitlin Press, 2025) $20.00 / 9781773861654
In a “brilliant work,” poems “attest in every moment to the strength that new ancestors, new techniques, and new understandings brought to British Columbia by migration.” —Harold Rhenisch reviews Tabako on the Windowsill, by Hari Alluri (Kingston: Brick Books, 2025) $23.95 / 9781771316491
One “long poem that weaves anecdotal vignettes—snapshots of life in the Kootenays—with agonistic and nostalgic introspection,” the elliptical volume examines the social fabric, gendered identity, and nature. —Joe Enns reviews Country Music, by Zane Koss (Fredericton: Invisible Publishing, 2025) $22.95 / 9781778430633
Early poems of an established poet aren’t without their charms, even though they reveal an apprentice writer still finding her voice. —Carellin Brooks reviews Untamed: Lyrics and Erotics. by Eva Kolacz (Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2024) $23.95 / 9781771715621
In their wide-ranging interview Lorna Crozier and Laurence Hutchman discuss the grasslands of southwest Saskatchewan, Carl Jung, the poet’s early inspirations (and later ones), Adrienne Rich, a feminist “vow to to live differently,” and Sinclair Ross.
Career retrospective of Okanagan poet is an “elegant and marvellous book to read and to hold” as it maps the emergence of a singular, formally idiosyncratic style. —Sharon Thesen reviews Molecular Cathedral: The Poetry of John Lent, Selected With an Introduction by Jake Kennedy (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2024) $21.99 / 9781771126373
A poet’s playful, “intellectually vigorous” pastiche “left me inquisitive, sometimes to the point of being bewildered, but this bewilderment is a good thing. It provides us with existential insights that, for one thing, are a counter-language to the blithe and frenetic thoughtlessness of our own profoundly unpoetic administered world,” writes Peter Babiak in his review of Recombinant Theory, by Joel Katelnikoff (Calgary: U Calgary Press, 2024) $26.99 / 9781773855790
In a wide-ranging and eclectic debut volume of poems, themes range from personal growth and transformation to motherhood and ancestry. —Mary Ann Moore reviews Soft Shelters, by Marie Metaphor Specht (Norfolk County, ON: Write Bloody North, 2023) $20.00 / 9781778162619
Elegant, careful, sparse, and yet complex verse that is “a dense, rich reflection on the natural world and the human impact” presents a poet who is “a walker, a watcher, a muser, a recorder.” —Steven Ross Smith reviews The Middle, by Stephen Collis (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2024) $18.95 / 9781772016420
In “Poets’ Pastime Paradise,” an “essay in play format about poetry” that’s set in a cemetery at midnight, author Sarah Freel corrals modernist poets, an American rapper, and a poetess named Reiko to versify while they debate over literary politics.
A poignant and intricate collection of evocative poems “demonstrates a virtuoso poetic sensibility.” —gillian harding-russell reviews Nucleus: A Poet’s Lyrical Journey from Ukraine to Canada, by Svetlana Ischenko (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2024) $18.95 / 9781553807070
A striking, immersive sophomore collection of poems: “The end result is an impressive, well-considered, coherent, and powerful book whose emotional and linguistic subtleties reward frequent re-reading.” —Christopher Levenson reviews Water Quality, by Cynthia Woodman Kerkham (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024) $19.95 / 9780228022978
“She loves the idea of motherhood, unconditional love, but the journey is harrowing, the gynecological/psychological equivalent of fingernails on blackboards, tearing the night sky apart. But, in the end, the blackboard embraces as it informs us that we are one in the many, stars burning bright.” Linda Rogers reviews Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes: essays on motherhood, by Adrienne Gruber (Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2024) $23 / 9781771669030
“It is the story of her survival expressed through her art, her poetry, and especially through the letters she writes to her grandson telling him stories of where his ancestors came from while hoping for a brighter future for him.” Valerie Green reviews Dear Arlo: letters to my grandson
by Olga Campbell (Vancouver: Jubaji Press, 2024) $21 / 9789981291130)
The selection of 50 poems highlights “sites of feeling,” which is to say “sites of inquiry, resistance, resilience, regret, provocation, play, grief, desire, glee.” —Mary Ann Moore reviews Best Canadian Poetry 2025, selected by Aislinn Hunter (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2024) $23.95 / 9781771966320
