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In Forecasts for Flying the author sketches the history of the Meteorological Service of Canada in the two decades following the Great War.
Foreign Homes, Joan Crate’s second book of poems, explores domesticity and dislocation, where what was thought to be home becomes alien, and where the alien is, piece by piece, made into home — often in such simple, physical acts as laying a table, or driving a highway, or reassembling a tom photograph. In Crate’s careful hands, the knife that cuts the vegetables for dinner can transform the blade-edge of a distant war. Her migratory poems slip from voice to voice, from love to landscape to language, present to past, exile to return, illuminating the boundary that is also a border crossing between one person, one place, and another:
Dowries
We have crossed borders to reach
each other and lost land
chafes our touch. I carry
snowshoes, winter wheat, raven call, winter pocked by arsenic flakes from the mines.
You bring donkey sweat and spent bullets,
voices that shriek out, tear bright.
We offer them to each other-
gift and sacrifice.
Domestic images and personal narrative surround a burning, incantatory sequence at the centre of the book, where poems circle Shawnandithit, a Beothuk who died in exile in Newfoundland in the nineteenth century, the last of her people. In giving voice to what is unknown, feared, lost, and silent, Crate’s playful language is itself powerfully involved in this act-often violent-of breaking and making anew. And whether these homes are stolen or lost or stumblingly found, Crate is unflinching even as her own homes are made and un-made, watching those “who wait on the porch steps/ eager to move into our youth,/ to reassemble our bones.”
Finalist, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Prizes), 2016
Foreign Park situates itself in an epoch where prior assurances of the natural world’s solidity begin to slip. Poisons enter the Fraser River Basin. An oil slick approaches by night engulfing a fishing vessel, leaving its captain in open waters. Page after page, Foreign Park makes strange with its inhabitants. As it unfolds, it plots itself along the Fraser River overlaying myth and historicity with present day. These calm poems detail the effects of destruction on land and simultaneously explore family and community in Vancouver’s coastal cityscape. Foreign Park guides through subtle shifts in temperature and elevation in order to engage with questions on death, ageing, family and fidelity.
Praise for Foreign Park:
“Jeff Steudel’s Foreign Park measures an immediate world through the palpable juxtapositions of the local, what’s close to hand, organic flashes of the day’s objects that can be touched. The ‘foreignicity’ of his poetic park reveals the paradox of where and how we live, that in-between margin in the world where we ‘don’t need to know everything’ and ‘Every five minutes together [is] a new world.’ These poems shimmer in their aliveness.” (Fred Wah, former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate and recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry)
“Steudel so easily displays his unique poetic genius of invocation, innovation and juxtaposition again and again as the reader journeys through his Foreign Park. The journey is exciting at its best and still seemingly delightful at every twist and turn. This is a fine first offering from Vancouver poet Jeff Steudel and worthy indeed of reading cover to cover.” (Candice James, Poet Laureate, New Westminster, BC)
Most Anticipated Poetry selection, 49th Shelf
Excerpt from the book featured on the véhicule press blog
From Odette to Hélène, then to Léonie, Ludivine, Sarah, Luce and finally to Aimée, Loup’s mother.
It would seem that a curse of tragedy and death decimated this family in the heart of the Ardennes Forest. But Loup is courageous, she wants to end the bitter legacy of fate and break the chain of abandoned childhoods.
Following Littoral (Tideline) and Incendies (Scorched), Forests is the third part of Wajdi Mouawad’s critically acclaimed dramatic quartet set in the painful wake of the past century.
In a Jewish ghetto at the height of the Second World War, a group of youths organize what will become known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Izzy, Eden, Joshua and Christian are young socialist revolutionaries from different backgrounds who are trapped in a room under hopeless circumstances. Their task is clear: they must form a new military organization against the Nazis and convince their elders that the Ghetto must fight. The cadre of brilliant, brave and often hilarious characters express their passions and desires as fiercely as they fight for their right to exist in the face of annihilation. This story of youth, revolution, and betrayal in Poland, 1943, is written for today, with a clear message about how to fight for the changes we need.
This second revised edition of Forever Yours, Marie-Lou, which played at the 1990 Stratford Festival, is John Van Burek and Bill Glassco’s new translation of Michel Tremblay’s original French text.
Excessive. Melancholic. Absurd. Joyful. The experiments in this collection fuse conceptual, concrete, and lyric poetries to produce lines that prove counterfeit and precious, cynical and sanguine, real and realer.
This new collection from Jan Zwicky is a set of variations that employs a restricted, echoic vocabulary to explore themes of spiritual catastrophe, transformation and erotic love. Zwicky is a philosopher, musician and award-winning poet who lives on Quadra Island, British Columbia. Her most recent collection of poetry is Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences. Her critically acclaimed books of philosophy, Lyric Philosophy and Wisdom & Metaphor, have recently been reissued in hardcover by Gaspereau Press.
Finalist for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize.
Welcome to the New Now, a time in which written language has been forbidden and forgotten. Those who desire to have their love letters written and read must make a dangerous journey to the secret and illegal camp of She, the Keeper of the Lost Hand. Aided by the mysterious showman Me, She recounts how her past led her to be one of the last people able to read and write in cursive. The tandem tale of Zako Budaydos and His Dancing Bear illuminates the time of the Before, when the carnival performer had to rely on wit, love, and a secret coded language in order to survive.
Internationally renowned playwright and puppeteer Ronnie Burkett has once again created a fascinating and provocative world as a love letter for increasingly uncivilized times.
The sixth collection of poetry from the award-winning poet; Antony Di Nardo takes the reader on a journey into and through mortality, nostalgia, memories of home, lost love, forgetting, the cycle of loss and unexpected yet welcome discovery, with the resilient daylily as an ever present companion; the collection is told with Di Nardos customary grace, modesty, rhythm and precision; poems to learn from, be moved by, surprised by and encouraged by. COMP. TITLES: Skylight, Antony Di Nardo (2018, Ronsdale Press); It Doesnt Matter What We Meant, Rob Winger (2021, Penguin Random House); As Far as You Know, A.F. Mortiz (2020, House of Anansi)
Antony Di Nardo delves into mortality, memory, and the cycles of loss and discovery with a sublime precision that relies on the sonic and visual play of language. His poetry surprises as much as it illuminates.
The title for Di Nardo’s sixth collection comes from the Chinese ideogram for daylily, that tawny orange blossom, which bursts its borders in the summer and, in this book, finds its way into poetry that blurs the line between mysticism and lyricism.
Ask pro wrestling fans about Vince Russo and you’re sure to get a heated reaction: either the guy’s a genius, or he single-handedly ruined the sport. What’s weird about being “the most hated man” in an industry where public ire is money in the bank? Vince Russo wasn’t even a wrestler — he just wrote the stuff.
Forgiven is the book that every wrestling fan has been waiting for. As lead writer, he took WWF’s flagship show Monday Night Raw to unimaginable heights, making it the highest rated cable program in television history. The stories of Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, and the tragic death of Owen Hart are offered from Vince Russo’s perspective: he was part of it all, writing it all.
Here, Russo finally comes clean — to the fans, and more importantly, with himself. Russo offers his life, work, and very soul as a modern day parable about the price of success. In heartbreaking detail, he shows how a “godforsaken business” and the desire for acclaim led him, unwittingly, into a spiritual wasteland. Ultimately, Russo’s story is one of redemption as he finds guidance and forgiveness in God.
Mitsue Sakamoto and Ralph MacLean both suffered tremendous loss during WWII: Mitsue as a survivor of a Japanese Canadian internment camp, and Ralph as a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp. In order to rebuild their lives and their families after the war, Ralph and Mitsue must find the grace and generosity necessary to forgive those who have wronged them. Their paths eventually cross in 1968 when Mitsue’s son and Ralph’s daughter begin dating, and Ralph is invited to Mitsue’s home for dinner.
This soaring adaptation of Mark Sakamoto’s award-winning memoir affirms the power of forgiveness and shows us that in our challenging times characterized by political divisiveness, xenophobia, and race hatred, the story of Mitsue and Ralph’s personal triumphs over hatred, injustice, violence, and bigotry remains vitally relevant and urgently necessary.
Traversing the historic trails of the Rockies today is done in much the same manner as it was two centuries ago—primarily on foot with heavy packs, with little better defence against mosquitoes or the elements. Although accurate maps are available, and modern technology such as global positioning systems stand as a bulwark to a complete wilderness experience, in many cases it is as difficult and challenging to cross these mountain passes, or even more so, than it was two centuries ago. Routes such as Athabasca Pass are far less travelled today than they were in the golden era of the fur trade. If our society has become so rich that we continually seek out physical and mental challenges in the wilderness—adventure and eco-travel—perhaps it would be a sign of respect to follow at least for a while in the footsteps of those who in many ways paved the way for gernerations to come. We began to form the idea of hiking all the significant historical trails to see what we could learn from the early pathfinders, about the difficulty of wilderness life and travel. What window would be opened to times past in a land where the terrain has remained essentially unchanged?
A New York Times New & Noteworthy Book • “Strange and affectionate, like Almost Famous penned by Shakespeare. A love letter to music in all its myriad iterations.”—Kirkus Reviews • “This book has no business being as good as it is.”—Christian Wiman
In the year 2063, on the edge of the Crater formerly known as Montréal, a middle-aged man and his ex’s daughter search for a cult hero: the leader of a short-lived band named after a forgotten work of poetry and known to fans through a forgotten work of music criticism. In this exuberantly plotted verse novel, Guriel follows an obsessive cult-following through the twenty-first century. Some things change (there’s metamorphic smart print for music mags; the Web is called the “Zuck”). Some things don’t (poetry readings are still, mostly, terrible). But the characters, including a robot butler who stands with Ishiguro’s Stevens as one of the great literary domestics, are unforgettable.
Splicing William Gibson with Roberto Bolaño, Pale Fire with Thomas Pynchon, Forgotten Work is a time-tripping work of speculative fiction. It’s a love story about fandom, an ode to music snobs, a satire on the human need to value the possible over the actual—and a verse novel of Nabokovian virtuosity.