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…
by Skylar Kay TreeTalk by Ariel Gordon At Bay Press (2020) ISBN: 9781988168272 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 creating this collection…
by Tony King Impact Statement by Bob Stallworthy Frontenac House Poetry (2020) ISBN: 978-1-989466-05-6 Imagine life interrupted. Your whole world upended in an afternoon. The future is not just derailed, but in question. November 19, 2013 Marilyn Stallworthy collapsed in a Calgary parking lot. A pulmonary embolism nearly ended her life. It did end life…
by Joan Shillington To float, to drown, to close up, to open E. Alex Pierce University of Alberta Press (2020) ISBN 978-1-77212-453-8 In the last poem of her second collection of poetry, Nova Scotian E. Alex Pierce writes: …What drives the heart – to view a life lived backwards, unspooling. (Page 71) which is what…