The Way of Tanka by Naomi Beth Wakan Brunswick, Maine: Shanti Arts Publishing, 2017 $20.00 / 9781941830604 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve First published June 8, 2017 * Born in England in 1931, Naomi Deutsch come to Canada in 1954 and worked as a psychotherapist in Toronto. She and her second husband Elias, who married in…
Read more #136 It takes one to tanka
Making Room: Forty Years of Room Magazine by Meghan Bell (editor) and curated by the Growing Room Collective: Meghan Bell, Terri Brandmueller, Candace Fertile, Taryn Hubbard, Chelene Knight, Lindsay Glauser Kwan, Cara Lang, Alissa McArthur, Navneet Nagra, Bonnie Nish, Rachel Thompson, Kayi Wong, and Lisa Xing Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2017 $24.95 / 9781987915402 Reviewed…
Read more #130 The making of Making Room
Oscar of Between: A Memory of Identity and Ideas by Betsy Warland Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2016 $21.95 / 9781987915167 Reviewed by Catriona Sandilands First Published March 6, 2017 * In 2007, Betsy Warland took a birthday trip to London for a range of plays and events, including an exhibition on military camouflage at the…
Read more #99 Opening the Oscar envelope
The Hockey Scribbler by George Bowering Toronto: ECW Press, 2016 $19.95 / 9781770412897 Reviewed by Bruce McDougall First published November 16, 2016 * If a mere hockey player like Wayne Gretzky were to write a book in which he criticized poets for ripping the feet off their anapests and bludgeoning scansion into a bloody pulp,…
Read more #44 Freeze the book in the corner
by Ron Dart * “I want to catch some kind of Haig-Brown essence with the halo slightly askew.” — Al Purdy, 1974 Al Purdy was one of Canada’s most prolific poets and writers, but when his many published books are listed, one volume, Cougar Hunter: A Memoir of Roderick Haig-Brown, is often omitted. Cougar Hunter…
Read more #22 Haig-Brown & Al Purdy
Significant B.C. literature to 1997 by Alan Twigg First Published: September 16th, 2016 * There is no critical study of B.C. writing to date, no critical overview; no statistics. Here then, to mark the tenth anniversary at B.C. BookWorld in 1997, here is a checklist for 200 of the most significant B.C. books of the…
Read more #16 Significant B.C. literature to 1997
First Published: April 08th, 2015. — compiled by Allan Twigg * In 1902, when he was a nine-year old in Galt, Ontario, Hubert Reginald Evans began his career as a professional writer by composing a limerick in praise of Lipton’s tea for a contest. The now-forgotten verse earned him $1. Hubert Evans later became a…
Read more #4 Hubert Evans
Two of the unsung heroes of B.C. literature, Ernest Hekkanen and Margrith Schraner, began The New Orphic Review, a bi-annual journal of fiction, poetry, reviews and essays in 1998 when they had just turned fifty-one. “To create a product of no obvious practical value,” Hekkanen writes in the penultimate issue, “and for which there would be…
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