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
If It Gets Quiet Later On, I Will Make a Display by Nick Thran Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2023 $22.95 / 9780889714489 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * What a quiet charming title, If It Gets Quiet Later On … And Nick Thran, the poet and bookseller, uses it more than once to open sections of this…
Read more 1766 Trees, books, meditations
After Villon by Roger Farr Vancouver: New Star Books, 2022 $16.00 / 9781554201877 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * After Villon is a delight. These shape-shifting poems are playful and challenging and a bit like dealing cards from the bottom of a deck with a knowing wink. The Villon of the title was a poet of…
Read more 1763 A street kiosk of masks
oems by Matthew Tomkinson Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2022 $20.00 / 9781771837637 Reviewed by Matt Rader * Turned one way, words are never enough, never able to capture fully what they point to. As Robert Hass puts it, “because there is in this world no one thing / to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds, a…
Read more 1759 The bell of the artificial
Good Morning Poems: A start to the day from famous English-language poems by George Bowering Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2023 $20.95 / 9781774390658 Reviewed by Karl Siegler * George Bowering’s outstanding literary reputation is based on his over 100 published books of poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction over the past sixty years, which have earned him…
Read more 1758 Poems traditional and modern
Announcing the BC Review interview series by Richard Mackie * In November 2022, at the most recent board meeting of the Ormsby Literary Society, the chair, Byron Sheardown, suggested that we open a YouTube channel and start an interview series. Board member Trevor Marc Hughes jumped at the suggestion. “I’ve got filmmaking experience,” he said,…
Read more 1757 Announcing interview series
Time Out of Time by Arleen Paré Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $20.00 / 9781773860794 Reviewed by Marguerite Pigeon * Victoria poet Arleen Paré opens her slim volume, Time out of Time, with a note explaining the genesis of her project: the collection is a tribute to the Lebanese-American poet Etel Adnan. But we might…
Read more 1756 Slender and chiselled lines