A Lover’s Grimoire by Linda Quibell Grimoire: a book of magic devised to invoke supernatural entities such as angels, deities or demons * The Plague The first year of the plague we knew nothing being neither doctors nor priests nor midwives we did not know that eyes were infectious that mouths were a vector and…
Read more 1517 A lover’s grimoire
On Broughton and Davie: The Burying and Recovering of Cultural Identity by Bahar Sadeghieh * I. Backstory Beloved friends, cherished family Their before then pictures Carefree and weightless In flesh fast forward A rare sighting Now the rooms, they gathered Exude sorrow Harrowing moments In the rearview mirror Closer than they appear Never approached, nor…
Read more On Broughton and Davie
Bog Treasure by Eileen Casey and Jeanne Cannizzo Dublin: Arlen House, 2022, distributed by Syracuse University Press $19.95 / 9781851322695 Reviewed by Jane Frankish * Editor’s note: readers might also like to hear Eileen Casey read a selection of her bog poems in Treasure, a short film commissioned by Offaly Arts for Culture Night, 2021,…
Read more 1493 Holding fast
Afterlight: In Search of Poetry, History, and Home by Isa Milman Victoria: Heritage House, 2021 $24.95 / 9781772033830 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * What do we expect of a memoir? Henry James famously referred to the novel as “a great baggy monster,” but the memoir, unconstrained by the exigencies of plot and character development, can…
Read more 1487 The uncomfortable in-between
A Killing at Easter Hill: A Season of Fragments by Alex Rose Vancouver: Walhachin Press, 2021 $16.00 / 9781777582319 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski A Killing at Easter Hill is available for sale at People’s Co-Op Bookstore on Commercial Drive, Vancouver * One of the advantages of a novel over a book of poems and other…
Read more 1478 Coastal flux and depth
Speaking in Tongues: Selected Poems by H.C. (Hans) ten Berge, translated by Pleuke Boyce with an Afterword by Breyten Breytenbach Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2021 $24.95 / 9781771714167 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * Preconceptions are comforting: most Anglophone readers probably still think of the Netherlands’ cultural contribution solely in terms of the visual arts and maybe…
Read more 1475 Translating from the Dutch
The Quiet in Me by Patrick Lane, edited by Lorna Crozier Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2021 $18.95 / 9781550179811 Reviewed by gillian harding-russell * In The Quiet In Me, Patrick Lane writes from the perspective of old age with its inward vision of the paradoxes inherent in first and last events: of death in birth…
Read more 1474 Kinds of birth
Mother, the Verb, Swan Sister Treasure Book by Linda Rogers and friends Victoria: FriesenPress, 2022 $25.00 / 9781039124530 Reviewed Cathy Ford * Upon a time (note dear reader, not “once”), there arrived a beautifully dense green book on my desk. For me, it arrived just in time. As said more often than anyone ever wanted…
Read more 1470 Piecework and peace work
The Denman Island Readers & Writers Festival is back — and it will be good by Howard Macdonald Stewart * The Denman Island Readers & Writers Festival is on again this year from July 15-17, with related events beginning July 11. Festival organisers improvised in 2020 and 2021 but now it’s back to our traditional…
Read more 1461 Denman Island calling
Atlas of Roots by Beth Kope Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2021 $18.00 / 9781773860510 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * What are the roots of an identity for the adopted? In a series of sensitive poems, Beth Kope explores the world of the adopted, from her own quest to find her birth parents to an imagined…
Read more 1448 Unwed mothers & redacted files
The Last Show on Earth by Yvonne Blomer Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $20.00 / 139781773860770 Reviewed by gillian harding-russell * Against a backdrop of an environmental crisis, Yvonne Blomer in The Last Show on Earth writes poems that let us listen in on personal sorrow inseparable from love for a son with his unique…
Read more 1443 How to live in history
I Want to Tell You Love: A Critical Edition by Milton Acorn and bill bissett, edited by Eric Schmaltz and Christopher Doody Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2021 $29.99 / 9781773852294 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * Early in the 1960s, that fabled age, two poets from the Maritimes encountered each other in Vancouver and planned…
Read more 1442 a carriage that were green
Social media update by Richard Mackie * As most of you will know, we changed our name to The British Columbia Review from The Ormsby Review less than two months ago, on February 10th, and since then we’ve never been busier: we’ve posted 52 book reviews, two essays, one photo essay, and one docuseries review….
Read more 1433 Social media update
Artful Flight by Susan Glickman Erin, Ontario: Porcupine’s Quill, 2022 $24.95 / 9780889848795 Reviewed by Gary Geddes * I’ve been poring over Susan Glickman’s Artful Flight, a series of essays and reviews, with delight and a certain sadness, delight at her intelligence and close attention to the craft and contributions of a wide range of…
Read more 1422 Essays and bootless poetry
All the Broken Things by Geoff Inverarity Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2021 $18.00 / 9781772141757 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * A sense of playfulness is immediately established in Geoff Inverarity’s debut poetry collection with an Author’s Preface in the form of a letter to his publisher in which he includes diary entries. The time is June…
Read more 1410 Breaking, haunting, mending
blue gait by Shauna Paull Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2021 $19.95 / 9781896949888 Reviewed by Yvonne Blomer * Another word for gait is stride or way of walking, and Shauna Paull’s new poetry collection blue gait parallels the ways of walking through and on the land, with the natural world, beauty, women, and…
Read more 1407 Soft bells of beauty and blue
Duct-taped Roses by Billeh Nickerson Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2021 $20.00 / 9781771666909 Reviewed by Grace Lau * Lovers, friends, family: We are all we have Duct-taped Roses, Billeh Nickerson’s sixth book (note to self: must read the other five) is divided into five parts, each one a vivid meditation on a theme in his life….
Read more 1402 Lovers, friends, family
I Will Be Corrupted by Joseph A. Dandurand Montréal: Guernica Editions, 2020 $20.00 / 9781771835060 * The East Side of It All by Joseph Dandurand Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2020 $18.95 / 9780889713802 Both books reviewed by Paul Falardeau * Joseph Dandurand has been busy lately. Since the Covid pandemic began, he has written three books…
Read more 1400 There is always laughter
Iron Goddess of Mercy by Larissa Lai Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021 $19.95 / 9781551528441 Reviewed by Michael Turner * There is celebration at the gates of Larissa Lai’s recent poetry book, Iron Goddess of Mercy. On the back flap, Fred Wah comps on the book’s multiple epistolary addresses (“Dear Reader, Dear Deer in the…
Read more 1398 Who let the furies out?
Black Bears in the Carrot Field by Linda K. Thompson Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2021 $19.95 / 9781896949840 Reviewed by Wendy Donawa * Pygmy owls, rusted-out Fords, and thimble babies that never quite took: humour, nostalgia, and pathos in Black Bears in the Carrot Field Linda K. Thompson handles her poems’ pitch-perfect narrative…
Read more 1382 Humour, nostalgia, and pathos