After That by Lorna Crozier Toronto, Ontario: McClelland & Stewart, 2023 $22.95 / 9780771004285 Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore * Language was Lorna Crozier’s consolation when her partner of forty years, Patrick Lane, was ill with “strange symptoms, which side-stepped any diagnosis.” The result was Through the Garden: A Memoir (with Cats). After Lane died…
Read more 1926 Bereavement, ‘impeccably expressed’
Stedfast by Ali Blythe Fredricton, NB: Goose Lane/ Icehouse Poetry, 2023 $19.95 / 9781773103051 Safety Razor by Emily Osborne Guelph, ON: Gordon Hill Press, 2023 $20.00 / 9781774220856 Reviewed by Joe Enns * Two BC poets use different poetic techniques to connect their lived experience to the ancient and eternal. Stedfast, Ali Blythe’s third poetry…
Read more 1924 The lived, the eternal, the ancient
Story Lines: How Words Shape Our World by J. Edward Chamberlin Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2023 $26.95 / 9781771623513 Reviewed by Gary Geddes * Stories not only keep us alive, but also help us make sense of the world and our place in it. From creation stories and cave drawings to the epic poems…
Read more 1920 A word for the wise
Before Combustion By Nicholas Bradley Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2023 $23.95 / 9871554472543 Reviewed by Marguerite Pigeon * The title of Nicholas Bradley’s new book, Before Combustion, is drawn from a line in his poem, “Self-portrait in Lycra Skinsuit,” where the poet considers a schism in his cyclist persona. There’s the familiar self who, enveloped in…
Read more 1912 Fire, ash, and regrowth
The Animal in the Room By Meghan Kemp-Gee Toronto: Coach House Press, 2023 $23.95 / 9781552454602 Reviewed by Jane Frankish * In The Animal in the Room, Meghan Kemp-Gee develops a poetics of the Anthropocene. In fact, this collection of poetry can be seen as a compendium of reflections on the age of human impact. …
Read more 1911 A ‘strange convergence of animal and human personas’
The White Light of Tomorrow By Russell Thornton Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2023. $22.95 / 9781990776533 Reviewed by Al Rempel * There’s a fire at the heart of Russell Thornton’s poetry, and it burns fiercely in his latest book, The White Light of Tomorrow. Thornton’s poems have a deep elemental underpinning and William Carlos William’s…
Read more 1908 Bright and invisible and true
Once upon a Time in the West: Essays on the Politics of Thought and Imagination by Jan Zwicky Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023 $29.95 / 9780228017097 Reviewed by Ron Dart * I lived for a couple of years in the young 1970s in northern Norway and Switzerland. I spent time in Norway with the mountain…
Read more 1897 Cultivating contemplation
The All + Flesh By Brandi Bird Toronto: House of Anansi, 2023 $16.99 / 9781487011826 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * We are all changed. Plague and pestilence have left many of us in a state of grief, our innocence lost, experience teaching us the perils of hubris. As usual, prayer translates to poetry as our…
Read more 1894 Notes on grief
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’
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
Derelict Bicycles By Dale Tracy Vancouver, BC: Anvil Press, 2022 $18.00 / 9781772141986 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * If you’ve been looking for a new book of poems that bends reality, your search is over. Derelict Bicycles is a perspective-bending book. Sometimes it’s like looking at consciousness inside out, such as in “Stomach End of…
Read more 1871 ‘Heralding the future’
Sentient Stones by Susan McCaslin Salt Spring Island, BC: Raven Chapbooks, 2023 $20.00 / 9781778160332 Wild Kin By Marlene Grand Maître Salt Spring Island, BC: Raven Chapbooks, 2023 $20.00 / 9781778160325 Green Islands: Poems from the Great Bear Rainforest By Ian Thomas Salt Spring Island, BC: Raven Chapbooks, 2023 $22.95 / 9781778160318 …
Read more 1864 Three takes on spirituality and nature
Harrowings By Cecily Nicholson Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2022 $19.95 / 9781772014051 Reviewed by Marguerite Pigeon * A bright red tractor churning Southern Ontario soil, BC orchards, waving prairie wheat fields. Christian uplift, and hardscrabble Euro-immigrant toil. All idealized scenes that participate in a specific farming imaginary that lets some Canadians eat our veggies without much bile—mostly…
Read more 1856 Connecting to ‘a vital abolitionist tradition’
Entre Rive and Shore By Dominique Bernier-Cormier Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 2023 $19.95 / 9781781773102870 Undoing Hours By Selina Boan Gibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2021 $18.95 / 9780889713963 The Punishment By Joseph Dandurand Gibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2022 $21.95 / 9780889714328 Shapeshifters By Délani Valin Gibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2022 $19.95 / 9780889714281 Reviewed…
Read more 1854 Gifts of reconciliation
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?
its th sailors life / still in treetment: meditaysyuns from gold mountain By bill bissett Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2022 $24.95 / 9781772013917 Reviewed by Cathy Ford * To begin at the beginning, first, I owe this book, its author, and the editorial review accompanying, apologies. I had hoped to review this book last November, then receiving…
Read more 1849 Poetic ‘meditaysyuns’
Cactus Gardens By Evelyn Lau Vancouver, BC: Anvil Press, 2022 $18 / 9781772141948 Reviewed by Joe Enns * Cactus Gardens, Evelyn Lau’s ninth poetry collection, drifts among seasons of lost relationships, green-grey geographies, and the eerie effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as though “beyond time, suspended / in transit, outcomes unclear.” The collection evokes vivid…
Read more 1843 ‘Bold lines and vivid imagery’
Exculpatory Lilies By Susan Musgrave Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2023 $22.95 / 9780771099007 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * How do we convert the pain of loss into poetry? Grief over the death of a friend or lover or a family member is a common enough theme throughout poetry of every era and has often, in Lycidas or In Memoriam, produced elegiac masterpieces. In one…
Read more 1840 ‘Provocatively brilliant for the right reader’