Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time by Tom Wayman Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2020 $18.95 / 9781550179125 Reviewed by Emma Rhodes * Award-winning Canadian author Tom Wayman has returned with another poetry collection in Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time. His audience, he…
Read more #820 Calgary and the world awry
INTERVIEW: Curtis LeBlanc with Nathaniel G. Moore * Curtis LeBlanc’s second poetry book is fresh off the printing press and on bookshelves across the country, in the middle of a global pandemic. Birding In The Glass Age of Isolation (Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, April 2020) confronts mental illness, masculinity, and humanity’s relationship with the nature world….
Read more #814 Anxiety and clunky plastics
Bounce House by Jennica Harper Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2019 $18.00 / 9781772141405 Reviewed by John Pass * There’s a lot to like in Jennica Harper’s new book of poems. I was struck first with how seamlessly she stitches straightforward colloquial language into fairly rigorous, but pleasingly transparent, form. My wife suggests the book-length sequence of…
Read more #811 Care, craft … couplets!
How She Read by Chantal Gibson Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $20.00 / 9781987915969 Reviewed by Renée Sarojini Saklikar * On March 12, 2020, Chantal Gibson’s How She Read was shortlisted for both the 2020 Dorothy Livesay and Jim Deva prizes of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. Winners will be announced on September 19th. As…
Read more #804 Gibson’s poetic pyrotechnics
Re-Origin of Species by Alessandra Naccarato Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2019 $18.00 / 9781771665421 Reviewed by John Swanson * What does poetry do to work its magic? It relates knowledge of the world as we acquire it from science and by other means, with ancient knowing of a more mysterious kind: the forces at work in…
Read more #803 Species survival and adaptation
Clinging to Bone by Garry Gottfriedson Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2019 $17.95 / 9781553805625 Reviewed by Heather Simeney MacLeod * Garry Gottfriedson is from the Secwépemc (previously Shuswap) Nation. He was born, raised and continues to reside in Kamloops. He studied under Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, and Marianne Faithful at the distinguished Naropa Institute in Boulder,…
Read more #797 Secwépemc land and language
Outside, America by Sarah de Leeuw Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2019 $18.95 / 9780889713543 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * Good poetry derives from the confluence of at least two abilities: a mastery of the full resources of the medium, language, and an unusual angle or perspective on the poem’s subject matter. All good poets achieve their…
Read more #795 Choosing a seat on a plane
INTERVIEW: Tom Wayman with Nathaniel G. Moore * In a future issue of The Ormsby Review, Emma Rhodes will review Tom Wayman’s new book of poems, Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time (Harbour: 2020), and as an appetizer we present an interview with Wayman by Nathaniel G. Moore –…
Read more #789 Protest, empathy, mourning
Dunk Tank by Kayla Czaga Toronto: House of Anansi, 2019 $19.95 / 9781487005962 Reviewed by Marion Quednau * Reading Kayla Czaga’s “Dunk Tank” is like taking a ride in a hot-wired car from Kitimat, seeing how far it will take you. She’s in the driver’s seat, taking all the risks in a mood of crazy-young,…
Read more #780 A hot-wired car from Kitimat
There Are Not Enough Sad Songs by Marita Dachsel Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2019 $19.99 / 9781772124521 * The Broken Face by Russell Thornton Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2018 $18.95 / 9781550178449 Both books reviewed by John Carroll …
Read more #775 Life’s transience and fragility
In Formless Circumstance: Poems from the Road and Home by Trevor Carolan Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2019 $23.95 / 9781771713306 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * “All busy in the sunlight/ the flecks did float and dance/ and I was tumbled up with them/ in formless circumstance.” So sings the late, great Leonard Cohen, Canada’s poet of…
Read more #766 Home truths and away truths
On the Arts by Naomi Beth Wakan Brunswick, Maine: Shanti Arts Publishing, 2020 $17.95 (U.S.) / 9781951651091 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * Every man is at liberty to understand nothing about anything. So said Montaigne. Or at least Naomi Wakan says that he said it, and I am not going to contradict her. He certainly…
Read more #763 Beach glass on a bed of seaweed
Near Miss: Poems by Laura Matwichuk Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2019 $18.95 / 9780889713536 Reviewed by Heidi Greco * Worrier that I am, opening to the first pages of Near Miss, I find myself right at home, greeted by a list of dates, from 1700 through to 2012. My paranoid side recognizes these immediately as dates…
Read more #755 Seismophobia and quicksilver
Gatecrasher by Susan Buis Picton, Ontario: Invisible Publishing, 2019 $17.95 / 9781988784267 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * We do not have to wait long with Susan Buis’s first volume, Gatecrasher, to realize that we are in the presence of a formidably original poetic talent. Take the first four lines of the first poem, “Arrowslit:” Quarry…
Read more #753 Pungency and plate glass
A Literary Biography of Robin Blaser: Mechanic of Splendor by Miriam Nichols New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019 $39.99 (U.S.) / 9783030183264 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * The most astonishing section of this book comes when author Miriam Nichols describes Robin Blaser’s time as a teacher at Simon Fraser University. Perhaps it is because…
Read more #749 Robin Blaser in retrospect
The Eyelash and the Monochrome by Tiziana La Melia Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2018 $19.95 / 9781772011975 * beholden: a poem as long as a river by Rita Wong and Fred Wah Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2018 $24.95 / 9781772012118 Both books reviewed by Candace Fertile * …
Read more #739 Consider the image and the word
Taking Measures: Selected Serial Poems by George Bowering, edited by Stephen Collis Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2019 $49.95 (hardcover) / 9781772012378 (softcover $29.95 due Fall 2020) * Ten Women: Stories by George Bowering Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2015 $20.00 / 9781772140316 * Writing and Reading: Essays by George Bowering Vancouver: New Star Books, 2019 $18.00 / 9781554201549 Three…
Read more #736 Bowering’s ashes and sparks
Odes and Laments by Fiona Tinwei Lam Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $18.00 / 9781773860152 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * Fiona Tinwei Lam has long been an important presence in the Vancouver literary scene, not only as a poet but also as the editor of an excellent anthology, The Bright Well (Leaf Press, 2011), contemporary…
Read more #735 A distant howl between covers
A Bed of Half Full: A Landscape by Judith Penner Vancouver: Nomados Press, 2018 $10.00 / 9781927751084 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * A casual search for the definition of a landscape brings this up from the databanks of the internet: “all the visible features of an area … often considered in terms of their aesthetic…
Read more #731 Chestnuts and wild city animals
Every Shameless Ray by Leslie Timmins Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2018 $18.95 / 9781771335775 Reviewed by P.W. Bridgman * As can be gathered from its enigmatic title, Vancouver poet Leslie Timmins’ first collection, Every Shameless Ray, is much concerned with matters of darkness, shadows and light. Oftentimes these conceits are introduced metaphorically in her poetry; at…
Read more #725 Tenebrous and illuminating