Dressed in Only a Cardigan, She Picks up Her Tracks in the Snow by Cornelia Hoogland London, ON: baseline press, 2021 $13.50 / 9781928066606 Reviewed by Daniela Elza * The very act of opening this carefully crafted artefact of a chapbook from baseline press is already an experience of immersion, a tease, a please, of…
Read more 1633 Snapshots from the shadows
Heart Work by Susan McCaslin Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2021 $24.95 / 9781771714020 Reviewed by gillian harding-russell * In Heart Work, Susan McCaslin embraces a way of seeing that centres on the heart, both as an image and an idea, and as it shapes consciousness. Just as the cover artist, Betty Spackman, divides her art installation…
Read more 1626 The justice imagination
If I Tell You the Truth by Jasmin Kaur Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2021 $21.99 / 9780062912640 Reviewed by Hanako Masutani * Jasmin Kaur’s If I Tell You the Truth begins with a list of eight trigger warnings. I opened the book, read the list, and considered putting the book back down. Yet while Truth deals…
Read more 1623 The many truths of good fiction
Here at the Crux by Leanne Boschman New Westminster: Silver Bow Publishing, 2022 $23.95 / 9781774032312 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * Though only her second book of poetry, Boschman’s work is by now well known, especially in BC, and deservedly so. The persona that emerges from these poems is an attractive one, low-key, and without…
Read more 1622 Out of memory’s pocket
You Might Be Sorry You Read This by Michelle Poirier Brown Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2022 $19.99 / 9781772126037 Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore * In many cases, the titles for books of poetry come from the poems themselves, whether a title of one or a line from within one. In Michelle Poirier Brown’s…
Read more 1619 The thing about snow
Bent Back Tongue by Garry Gottfriedson Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 20.00 / 9781773860961 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * Garry Gottfriedson is a Secwépemc rancher and teacher. He got started in poetry by performing at pow-wows many decades ago. In Bent Back Tongue, he moves in a space that is anger and love joined in…
Read more 1615 Laying down a trickster beat
When We Are Broken: The Lake Elegy by Luanne Armstrong New Denver: Maa Press, 2020 $30.00 / 9780987838414 Reviewed by Diana Hayes * Luanne Armstrong, a prolific writer who has published twenty-five books of fiction, memoir, and poetry, has crafted a soulful and meditative narrative in her book, When We Are Broken – The Lake…
Read more 1612 Bigger than adolescence
Standing in a River of Time by Jónína Kirton Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2022 $19.95 / 9781772013795 Reviewed by Cathy Ford * If, when you begin reading, and then rereading, a book by this author, soon after the second anniversary of National Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada, perhaps you should know already your life will change….
Read more 1603 Writing to shape one’s future
Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry by David Ly and Daniel Zomparelli (editors) Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022 $21.95 / 9781551529011 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * Everybody is afraid of something. David Ly and Daniel Zomparelli’s Queer Little Nightmares: An Antholgy of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry offers a chilling seasonal collection…
Read more 1601 Timely monstrosities
Séjour Saint-Louis by Reed Stirling Airdrie, Alberta: BWL [Books We Love] Publishing, 2021 $22.00 / 9780228617488 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Cowichan Bay painter and writer Reed Stirling has published three works in as many years, following up a literary mystery and a “fictional memoir” with an atmospheric novel that is heavily and overtly influenced…
Read more 1599 Pilgrimage to the bust of Nelligan
Small Talk by Christopher Levenson New Westminster: Silver Bow Publishing, 2022 $23.95 / 9781774032152 Reviewed by Al Rempel * Christopher Levenson’s latest book, Small Talk, is a collection of short poems that is poignant, insightful, or humorous, and filled with observations that resonate with lived experience. Levenson has decided to showcase his small poems —…
Read more 1591 Short poems, deep pauses
Hesitating Once to Feel Glory by Maleea Acker Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2022 $19.95 / 9780889714144 Reviewed by Theresa Kishkan * This is how the title poem in Maleea Acker’s new poetry collection, Hesitating Once To Feel Glory, begins: Sometimes I think we can see the world before it began, and that’s what makes us so…
Read more 1590 The art of looking
Dearly by Margaret Atwood Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (McClelland & Stewart), 2020 $24.00 / 9780771000799 Reviewed by gillian harding-russell * In Dearly, Margaret Atwood returns with a poetry collection after nearly two decades since Morning in the Burned House (1995). The poems do not disappoint. Here the unexpected angles of perception with their edge…
Read more 1588 Wit, irony, and blackberries
Larder by Rhona McAdam Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $20.00 / 9781773860831 Reviewed by Heidi Greco * Although Canada may be a very big country, its literary community is relatively small. And if you narrow that group further to the community of poets – or, further yet, to BC poets – as a reviewer (and…
Read more 1572 Food for the soul
Skookum Raven by Heather Haley Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2021 $23.95 / 9781771713900 Reviewed by Peter Babiak * I always start my first-year literature class by writing “Poetry” on the whiteboard and asking students what words or phrases the word evokes in them. Typically, their responses are in line with the prevailing public opinion of poetry,…
Read more 1571 Stoking the word engine
Test Piece by Sheryda Warrener Toronto: Coach House Books, 2022 $22.95 / 9781552454497 Reviewed by Michael Turner * Back in the 1990s there existed a tension in Vancouver poetry between language-oriented writers, mostly those associated with the Kootenay School of Writing (KSW), and practitioners of spoken word, some of whom could be found sharing stages…
Read more 1570 A rare and necessary book
Allow Me: Poems, 2000-2020 by Rhonda Batchelor Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2022 $23.95 / 9781771714488 Reviewed by Doug Beardsley * A deep sense of longing permeates between the lines of Rhonda Batchelor’s latest book. With longing we can lose sight of what is so close — until it is suddenly taken away and love becomes something…
Read more 1562 Red is still listening
Blue Portugal and Other Essays by Theresa Kishkan Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2022 $24.99 / 9781772125993 Reviewed by Michael Hayward * For forty-some-odd years, Theresa Kishkan and her husband, poet John Pass, have been living in a home that they built themselves early in their marriage, on a piece of land half-way up BC’s…
Read more 1533 On the edge of memoir
New Delhi & Lahiri & Strang & Carson by Thomas K. Girard * Ghandi Airport Night was day when I arrived in Delhi, at Ghandi. I packed safely, but quickly found my water bottle missing as I pushed through the crowd and approached a Delhi walla. My eyes adjusted. I tried to get a read…
Read more Notes from a year in Delhi
Intertidal: Poems from the Littoral Zone by Zoe Dickinson Salt Spring Island: Raven Chapbooks, 2022 $20.00 / 9780973440898 Reviewed by Brian Day * Zoe Dickinson’s Intertidal, the winner of this year’s Raven Chapbooks Poetry Contest, speaks from the verges of the Juan de Fuca Strait. The voice of these poems patiently and reverently attends to…
Read more 1520 To move as the kelp moves