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Showing 1697–1712 of 9492 results
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Compulsory Figures
$20.00Who are the people who mark our lives? Must we know them personally or is influence also exerted from the distant past, the grave, or even from the pages of a book? Devastated by the sudden death of one of his sisters in 2015, award-winning poet John Barton, over the decade since, felt moved to answer these and other questions for himself in Compulsory Figures, his thirteenth collection of poems.
Born in the 1950s to parents who moved to Edmonton during the early years of the oil boom, Barton roots many of his poems in the prairie, foothills, mountain, and urban landscapes of his Alberta childhood—the land itself a formative influence—to ground his memories of his sister and of his parents, who divorced just as he was entering his twenties.
Barton broadens his inquiry to wrestle with larger societal forces, including settler colonialism and the role his ancestors played in Ontario and the Canadian West after their arrival in the nineteenth century. As a gay man who came to a full acceptance of himself during the AIDS pandemic, he also explores the stigmatizing impact of homophobia and how the courage of figures like Christopher Isherwood, Frank O’Hara, Paul Monette, and Robert Mapplethorpe continues to provide him solace and strength.
Lyrical and thought-provoking, Compulsory Figures plunges into the depths of history, grief, and the unshakable power of everyone and everything that shapes us.
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Conception (Shame #1)
$9.99Part 2 in the Shame trilogy. The second book Shame: Pursuit follows Shame’s development after escaping her prison and embracing her father’s evil nature. Virtue, reborn into the body of Shame’s child, has spent 16 years trapped in Cradle, originally created to contain and nurture her daughter. Now it has been corrupted and become a dangerous jungle populated by the twisted torturers that once were dryads and sprites. Outside, Shame’s evil power has spread. Many people fall victim to her influence or are put to the sword or flame. Some of the survivors band together and fight back. Of these rebels there is a young man, Merritt. He searches the heart of the Great Swamp to find the one person who might save them from Shame’s evil rule, Virtue.
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Concrete and Wild Carrot
$15.00Winner of the 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize and of the 2003 CAA Jack Chalmers Poetry Award and Globe 100 book for 2003
In Margaret Avison’s new poems, little pleasures are bound up with larger ones. Her slightest subjects — beloved Toronto parks with their population of oaks, firs, squirrels, dogs, kids, even ants, and the minutest sighs of her contemporary urban soundscape — all have their being within an immense composition that calls and hauls us to a largeness, a category-breaking “always unthinkable” beyond.
“Words have their life too, won’t/ compact into a theorem,” Avison says, and this is certainly true of hers.
To myself everywhere:
Cry out, “Break!” Break
all our securities, and break out!
Explore only the ranges
beyond our mastering. Take on
the inexorable demands made by
a norm of unpremeditated excellence!from “Alternatives to Riots but all Citizens Must Play”
Concrete and Wild Carrot is Margaret Avison’s sixth book of poems, her first with Brick Books — though we now distribute her Lancelot Press books. She is one of Canada’s most respected writers, still at the top of her form in a career that stretches back to the 1940s, and during which she has gained three honorary degrees and two Governor General’s Awards for Poetry (for Winter Sun and No Time).
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Concrete Toronto
$29.95Toronto is a concrete city. From international landmarks to civic buildings to cultural institutions to metropolitan infrastructure and the single-family home, reminders of the era of ‘brutalist’ architecture surround Torontonians. But for how long? As architectural fashion has shifted to the glass-and-steel neomodernism of today, these concrete structures have been increasingly ignored – and in some cases, demolished.
Concrete Toronto takes readers on a guided tour of Toronto’s concrete architecture. Editors Michael McClelland and Graeme Stewart have assembled a diverse group of industry experts – architects, university faculty, local practitioners, city planners, historians and journalists – to examine the unique and important qualities and the past and future of Toronto’s concrete buildings in interviews, articles, archival photos, drawings and case studies.
Appealing to both the average reader and the enthusiast, Concrete Toronto provides a refreshing look not only at the neglected buildings, but also at the trends that produced them and the impact and consequences that resulted from their construction.
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Concrete Women
$39.95People who live in South Asian cities re-shape politics and actualize constitutional rights, in
parks, on playgrounds, and in city streets. Each chapter in this book discusses feminist,
Transgender, and queer movements in urban India and Pakistan. The author has interviewed
those who are part of a generation of unabashedly courageous, intersectional feminists who
are living and working in South Asia and share their first-hand stories. These activists stage
protests and artistic interventions in a time-period of legal reforms regarding queer rights,
public debates regarding sex, the rise of urbanization, and growing forms of Internet literacy
and accessibility. Concrete Women is a rumination on the distances between life and death,
between unremitting violence and the possibility of justice.
Firsthand accounts of feminist, Transgender, and queer movements in urban India and
Pakistan -
Condemned to Repeat
$16.00For anyone other than Randy Craig, a contract to do archival research and web development for Alberta’s famed Rutherford House should have been a quiet gig. But when she discovers an unsolved mystery linked to Rutherford House in the Alberta Archives and the bodies begin to pile up, Randy can’t help but wonder if her modern-day troubles are linked to the intrigues of the past.
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Confessions
$22.95Why do we keep secrets and why do we confess them? The nine tales in this collection, all told in the first person, are each spun around a well-kept secret, willingly or inadvertently confessed. Sometimes the secrets are at the core of the narrator’s life, other times they appear tangential. Regardless of the magnitude of its burden, the confession finds its way to the reader, through a story told perhaps over a cup of tea, in the pages of a journal or within the intimacy of the narrator’s mind. Would stories mean as much to us if they did not remind us of our own secrets and regrets, our stolen moments, our ecstatic failures and sad joys? The stories are confessions of intimate events or desires: marital infidelities, betrayal of friendship, crimes including murderous thoughts and actual acts of murder as well as the painful words of those who consider themselves superior directed at those of lesser financial means who perform necessary tasks for them. The narrators are women and men. They all remain active in their own lives dealing with what has been dealt to them. Most of the stories are set outside of North America, particularly in Turkey, so they have a fresh cultural aspect at the same time as they convey the commonality of human greed, betrayal and heartbreak. The author keeps a dark current running through the stories while at the same time relaying the ordinary, even a matter-of-factness, sometimes with a touch of humour or self-conscious irony. The reader is compelled to find out how a situation is resolved. Sometimes the results are tragic. Other times the events become an undercurrent or a road not taken in what is otherwise a satisfying life.
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Confidence
$19.95Nominated for the 2015 Giller Prize.
Nominated for the 2015 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
In Russell Smith?s darkly brilliant new collection of short stories Confidence, the reader will be introduced to ecstasy-taking PhD students; financial traders desperate for husbands; owners of failing sex stores; violent and unremovable tenants; aggressive raccoons; seedy massage parlours; experimental filmmakers who record every second of their day; wives who blog insults directed at their husbands. There are cheating husbands. There are private clubs, crowded restaurants, psychiatric wards. Every character has a secret of some kind.
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Configurations At Midnight
$12.00”Gustafson is one of those rare poets whose every book is better than the last.” (Quill & Quire). “A learned mind in the best sense of the term, teeming with an allusive awareness of history, art, music and literature wittily defining a world always dying.” (Toronto Star). “An exquisitely gracious sensibility.” (Books in Canada). “Resoundingly upbeat… Witty and erudite, full of allusions to music, art, history and literature, this collection crackles with energy.” (Montreal Gazette).
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Conflict
$18.00SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 OTTAWA BOOK AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 RELIT AWARDConflict interweaves ghosts, bad communication, the uncanny and the archival, to create a collection of poems that break down remembrance into abandoned historic markers, jet fuel, keening, or teeth. What you are given (this is a gift) is an insistent refusal to silence or shift. In exchange, the reader must face the impossibility of erasure, a gritty resistance to mourn a fight. Conflict is a collection of red balloons that intersplices and interweaves through various forms of conflict that occur in language, motion, architecture, emotions; between individuals, systems, and mechanical silences.
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Conflict Is Not Abuse
$24.95Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Non-Fiction winner
From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman illuminates the ways in which cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behaviour and Traumatized behaviour resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference.
This important and sure to be controversial book brings insight into contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial and geo-political difference, as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, African Americans at the hands of police, people with HIV, and Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, revealing how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the “other” to avoid facing themselves.
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Conflicted Scars
$22.95An indispensable guide to parents of hockey hopefuls
At a time of great change in hockey, Justin Davis exposes the dark underbelly of the journey from the minors to the big leagues
Hockey culture: it’s a commonly used phrase inside the game, glorifying sacrifice, toughness, loyalty, and a sense of identity. Justin Davis viewed this culture as something he was lucky enough to experience. After all, he’d won a Memorial Cup after leading the tournament in scoring, and he’d been drafted by the Washington Capitals. “In my mind,” he says, “I was the normal one.” Unfortunately, after stepping outside the game, he began to recognize the racism, sexual abuse and bullying that was so deeply ingrained in the sport. And then, as his own children grew into teenagers, the curtain was pulled back, the memories came rushing forward, and he was horrified: “Why was I naked in a bus bathroom for four hours with seven teammates? What happened to my brain, and why can’t I remember the simplest things? How did I end up living in a basement where the strangers upstairs were clearly engaged in domestic abuse?”
As it navigates the sport’s darkest corridors, Conflicted Scars shares the story of the common Canadian player and offers a guide for parents who need to know how and why a typical teenager with NHL dreams, from a small town, now lives anxiously, introvertedly, and battling emotional detachment.
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Confluences 1
$24.95These essays by accomplished literary critics begin an examination of some of the most exciting new writing to emerge in Canada in the last four decades, following the postcolonial wave of immigration of the 1960s and 70s. Employing a variety of approaches and bringing together multiple concerns–ranging from the aesthetics of postmodernism to a re-examination of European colonialism; from the establishment and celebration of memory to a confrontation with racism; from the acceptance of exile to the uncovering of identities–this new body of writing collectively has redefined the idea of Canadian Literature, prompting the nation to look at itself anew.
Included in this volume are:
“Fielding Ondaatje: A Brief Look at the ‘Canadian’ Response’” –Aparna Halpé
“Caliban’s Voice: Marlene Nourbese Philip’s Poetic Response to Western Hegemonic Discourse” –H Nigel Thomas
“‘Beggaring the Nation’: Bodily Inscription and the Body Politic in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance” –James W Johnson
“Diasporic Violences, Uneasy Friendships, and Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child” –Christine Kim
“Austin Clarke’s Poetic Turn” –Leslie Sanders
“Balancing in Silence: On Rienzi Crusz’s Engagement with Myth” –Aparna Halpé
“Postcolonial Mothering in Anita Rau Badami’s Tamarind Mem” –Asma Sayed
“Trauma and Melancholia in H Nigel Thomas’s Behind the Face of Winter and No Safeguards” –Dannabang Kuwabong
“Cyril Dabydeen’s Amazing Corpus” –Frank Birbalsingh
“In Times of Upheaval: Cheran’s Poetic Trajectory” –Chelva Kanaganayakam
“South Asian Poetry in Canada: In Search of a Place” –Arun Prabha Mukherjee -
Confluences 2
$24.95The essays in this volume continue the examination, begun in Confluences 1, of the exciting new writing that has emerged in Canada in the past few decades. Employing a variety of approaches and addressing the many concerns engaging their author-subjects–memory, history, and concentric identities; the subordination of Indian women; the exploitation of Afro-Caribbean immigrants; the “nowarianism” of Indo-Caribbean Canadians; the legacy of Japanese internment during World War II; historical Black experience and meaningful aesthetics; Chinatown as geography, repository, and inspiration–this new body of writing collectively redefines and challenges the idea of Canadian Literature.
Included in this volume are:
“‘This dock is my dock’: Dionne Brand’s Room of Light” –Franca Bernabei
“Between (Hi)Story and Space: Wayson Choy’s Postmodern Chinatown” –Jason Wang
“Landscape and Diasporic Citizenship(s) in Ramabai Espinet’s The Swinging Bridge and Nuclear Seasons” –Dannabang Kuwabong
“Cecil Foster’s Sleep on, Beloved: Reflections on Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Existence in Toronto” –H Nigel Thomas
“Dismantled Domestics, Loneliness, and Creative Coping in Rabindranath Maharaj’s The Amazing Absorbing Boy” –Shoilee Khan
“‘The Multinational’s Song’: M G Vassanji’s Work in Canadian Context” –Laura Moss
“A Long Journey to Mercy: Joy Kogawa’s Gently to Nagasaki” –Irene Sywenky
“Gendered Violence and Feminist Interventions in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s The Selector of Souls” –Asma Sayed -
Confluences 3
$24.95The essays in this volume continue the examination, begun in Confluences 1 and continued in Confluences 2, of the exciting new writing that has emerged in Canada in the past few decades. Employing a variety of approaches and addressing the many concerns engaging their author-subjects–memory, history, and concentric identities; the subordination of women; and racism–this new body of writing collectively redefines and challenges the traditional idea of Canadian Literature.
Included in this volume are:
“W H Hudson’s English Argentina and Pablo Urbanyi’s Argentine Canada.” –Hugh Hazelton
“Racial Re/Profiling: The Plays of Andrew Moodie.” –Leslie Sanders
“Dannabang Kuwabong’s Caribbean Blues & Love’s Genealogy and Voices from Kibuli Country.” –Horace Goddard
“Haunting the Human: M. NourbeSe Philip’s Poetics of Un.” –Kate Siklosi
“Male Monstrosity or Failed Masculinities? Shani Mootoo’s Literary Oeuvre” –Juan M Salomé Villarini
“Pamela Mordecai’s Literary Transcultural Eschatology” –Dannabang Kuwabong
“Witnesses from the Silentiaries: Claire Harris’s Poetics of En(Dis)abling in dipped in shadow” –Dannabang Kuwabong
“Postcolonial Ecologies and Sustainable Living: Reading Jenna Butler’s Nonfiction” –Asma Sayed -
Confronting the Cuts
$13.95Confronting the Cuts: A Sourcebook for Women in Ontario examines the impacts of the 1990s’ dramatic spending cuts on women and their families across the province, as well as explores some of the ways women and women’s organizations have responded to the challenges presented by the economic climate of Mike Harris’s Ontario and its toll on lives of women and children in particular. For anyone seeking to understand current social policy reform and its impact on the lives of people everywhere, this book is a crucial sourcebook of policy critique, strategies, and personal narratives.