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’
the trick of staying and leaving by David Zieroth Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2023 $22.95 / 9781990776021 watching for life by David Zieroth Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022 $19.95 / 9780228014744 Reviewed by Heidi Greco * I can’t help but think that in a past life David Zieroth may well have been an…
Read more 1836 Tender poetic ruminations
Sixty-Seven Ontological Studies: 49 Poems & 18 Photographs by Jan Zwicky & Robert V. Moody Calgary: Freehand Books, 2022 $24.95 / 9781990601095 Reviewed by Ron Dart * Poetry and photography, when at their compressed, suggestive and congealed best, speak a speech that evokes and summons forth depths within the longing soul. Such is the poetry…
Read more 1822 The mixing of textual & visual
The Ridge by Robert Bringhurst Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2023 $22.95 / 9781990776250 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * When poetry flows through Robert Bringhurst, it sounds of wind, trees, waves, stones knocking in surf, and scraps of birds flashing past. It even sounds like a philosopher talking to those things. Bringhurst is a gardener who…
Read more 1814 At home on Quadra Island
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
Love, Pamela by Pamela Anderson Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers [Dey Street Books], 2023 $30.00 / 9780063226562 Reviewed by Susan Sanford Blades * The 1990s were not kind to their female icons. Female stars were instantly worshipped and just as quickly scorned for the very attributes that led to their fame. Kate Moss for her gamine thinness,…
Read more 1809 Beyond the red swimsuit
Min Hayati by Rayya Liebich Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2021 $18.95 / 9781771338714 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * In Arabic, Rayya Liebich explains, Hayat means life, Hayati playfully means “my beloved” or “darling,” and Min Hayati means “Who is my life?” and “Who is my darling?” With these two words, we are introduced into the love and…
Read more 1800 A mother’s love
Poetry omnibus: Linda Rogers reviews ten new books by BC poets: * When archetypes have flesh by Linda Rogers Every Chinese Emperor/ Empress chose a note to indicate the tone of his or her time. The sound of now would seem to be rust or dislocation, the squeaking doors signified by books in this omnibus…
Read more 1793 When archetypes have flesh
Lot by Sarah de Leeuw Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $20.00 / 9781773860763 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * This book is a walk in an intertidal zone between peoples, logs, rocks and languages. It is at once a map and a woman turned to salt, looking back. In Lot, Sarah de Leeuw looks back to…
Read more 1787 A Lot of Haida Gwaii
Ghosthawk by Matt Rader Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021 $18.95 / 9780889714045 Reviewed by Kelly Shepherd * In what is probably one of the earliest examples of ecopoetry (“Smokey the Bear Sutra,” 1969) the American poet and environmental philosopher Gary Snyder describes the presence of several “great centers of power” throughout the North American continent. The…
Read more 1771 Specific to the Okanagan
Black Umbrella by Katherine Lawrence Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 2022 $18.00 / 9780888017475 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * How much do readers of poetry want, let alone need, to know about other people’s intimate family lives? Fiction has always explored the domestic world, but poetry…? Whereas in English language poetry it was fine for male writers…
Read more 1769 Filtering adult stratagems
Home is where the street is: Commercial Drive photos and poems by Rodney De Croo * I’ve lived in East Vancouver for thirty-five years. East Van is where I rented my first basement suite apartment after living on the streets as a young man struggling with addiction. It was in the basements of churches and…
Read more 1767 Home is where the street is