By Skylar Kay TreeTalk by Ariel Gordon At Bay Press (2020) ISBN-10: 1988168279 ISBN-13: 978-1988168272 First of all, TreeTalk is an innovative poetry collection. While most entries are from Gordon, many others come from quotes or members of the community, as poems were attached to and later collected from an elm tree in Winnipeg. In…
By Angeline Schellenberg Nautilus and Bone by Lisa Richter Frontenac House (2020) ISBN: 9781989466124 I’m usually drawn to poetry books that feel like old friends: collections that put music to my own experiences of domestic prairie life. Especially during a pandemic, when my concentration is faltering, it takes a strong lyric to pull me into…
By Bret Crowle Riven: Poems by Catherine Owen ECWPress (2020) ISBN: 9781770415249 Catherine Owen’s Riven is a collection of poems woven together to blend the feeling of loss with the introspection of life offered by the river. Captivating imagery engulfs the reader, allowing them to be transported to the banks of the Fraser River; to…
by Josephine LoRe Caponata Carla Scarano D’Antonio Dempsey & Windle (2020) ISBN 9781913329228 Carla Scarano D’Antonio’s Caponata arrived late last year and I devoured it in one sitting. Enough time has passed now for the unique flavours to blend as they would in the caponata my mother prepared at the end of every season from…
by Anne Burke Let This Lake Remember Joan Shillington Frontenac House (2020) ISBN: 9781989466117 In “Truth” the persona of the poet acknowledges the ironic veracity of illusion, based on childhood memories of her father at Lake Wabamun Provincial Park in Alberta. A subsequent nightmarish prose poem deals with the PTSD she suffers even fifty years later. With bated…
by Al Rempel I Will Be Corruptedby Joseph A. DandurandGuernica Editions (2020)ISBN: 9781771835060 Joseph A Dandurand’s thirteenth book of poetry, I Will Be Corrupted, is a powerful work in its depth and craft and beautiful in its simplicity and form. With raw, relentless energy, Dandurand, a member of Kwantlen First Nation on the Fraser River…
by Keith Garebian Swoon Elana Wolff Guernica Editions (2020) ISBN: 9781771835077 Elana Wolff’s sixth poetry collection uses epigraphs that connote various meanings of “swoon:” The Living Torah’s example of Rebecca’s falling off a camel in a shock of elation at seeing Isaac; Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s slow swoon of life creeping back; Robert Walser’s example of…
by Carla Scarano In her career as a writer and award-winning poet, Josephine LoRe, who is based in Calgary, Alberta, is a remarkable example of an independent and committed author. She has published two poetry collections, Unity and The Cowichan Series, where poetry and photography merge, as well as a short story, Cornflower. Her work…
by Marshall Gu The Gospel of Breaking Jillian Christmas Arsenal Pulp Press (2020) ISBN: 978-1551527970 The poems of Ontario- born, Vancouver-based Jillian Christmas’ The Gospel of Breaking range in length, with a few as short as only three lines and others spanning several parts across several pages. Meanwhile, the styles within these poems range from…
by Micheline Maylor Glass Float by Jane Munro Brick Books (2020) ISBN: 9781771315241 Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, claimed Ginsberg, the skin is holy, the soul is holy. In Glass Float, Jane Munro explores the interiority and exteriority of the holy. What is holy when a woman finds herself widowed and suddenly solely responsible for…