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Lawrence and Holloman, a hapless nerd and a loquacious salesman, meet by chance. From this fleetingly irritating and insignificant encounter, the viciously murderous and incredulously bizarre plot emerges into the full-blown twilight of what appear to be their insignificant and meaningless lives. And it is this very absence of significance and meaning in the lives of the characters which produces both the mindless evil and the greeting-card redemption that give them their shape. This is a universe in which Camus meets Dali, where Goya meets Disney, where gunshots and bathtub drownings, disillusion and dismemberment become the Seventh Seal of the Grey Flannel set.
Lawrencia’s Last Parang: A Memoir on Loss and Belonging as a Black Woman in Canada is a snapshot of the author’s life immediately after the passing of her grandmother Lawrencia, the woman who raised her. Written in the style of patchwork quilt that takes the reader back and forth between the present and the past, she examines her grief from the perspective of a Canadian-born Black woman of Caribbean descent, and she begins to question her identity and what it means to be a Black Canadian in new ways. This means exploring her childhood in Trinidad and her adult life in Kingston, Ontario, a predominantly white city, her experience of raising a mixed-raced child, and the meaning of her interracial marriage.
Given love and protection by the grandmother who raised her in Trinidad, she belongs to Trinidad, but she was born in Canada to biological parents who were either absent or inadequate. Thus, she occupies what she describes as a third space, needing both Trinidad and Canada, loving both, and belonging fully to neither. In Canada, in Kingston, she has a white husband from a famous family and a biracial daughter, and she struggles with issues of racism almost on a daily basis–everything from “where are you from?”, to nurses who come to see the Black woman who gave birth to a white baby, to resentful students at the university where she teaches. Within the academy she is again in a kind of third space as a “sometimes professor,” where archetypes of the Black body (mammy, jezebel, matriarch, and welfare mother) that her students read about, clash with the position of authority she holds in the classroom.
Simultaneously a memoir, a eulogy, and an academic analysis of race in Canada, the book offers an insightful exploration of race in Canada, one that complicates these issues through the lens of identity and loss, but also through a prism of privilege.
Beginning with the arrival of the Campbell clan in Canada in 1827– “pale scot farmers fording the river, / seated backwards in refusal”–Laws & Locks tracks the history of one family’s struggle with depression, madness and mental illness. Chad Campbell’s first book of poetry is a brilliant investigation, at once dazzling and unflinching, into the way our predecessors bear on our choices in the present, and how present-day consequences extend backwards in time. A skilled, self-possessed and clear-eyed poet, Campbell has produced a work of art that, while not quite confessional, transforms the private, dark, often stigmatized regions of his life into powerful poetry. It is a bracing debut. “Come now to the burning forest / not burning anymore and feel / safe enough.”
Laws of Rest invents a new form, the English prose sonnet � an intricate chamber of text enclosed within four quatrains of right-justified prose. In their box-like aesthetics, the poems conjure the weird, meticulous worlds of Joseph Cornell or Edmund Spenser. But anything can happen in these little rooms, in which the overheard conversation of taxi drivers, invented verses of Virgil, found text about Middle-Eastern geopolitics, and the music of extinct butterflies merge into unpredictable collage. Presiding over all is the gender-bending character Lucy, the subject of a failed love affair conducted in convenience stores and equestrian centers. The book ends with a series of poems a friend who died young, bringing to elegaic focus the poems’ quest to understand the laws of rest (a phrase taken from the Jewish laws of Sabbath observance): the stillness of loss, the mute repose at the end of speaking.
Lawson Roy’s Revelation
From Triumph superstar Rik Emmett comes the thrilling, inspiring story of a life of rock and rollWhile describing the impulse driving his life and work, Rik Emmett explains, “I was never in it for the sex and drugs — ah, but the rock and roll. Creativity was, and still is, my it — the truth I bet my life on. It was also, always, about play. The play’s the thing …”Merging memoir, anecdotes, and masterclasses on guitar, songwriting, and the artist’s mindset, Lay It On The Line offers insight and perspective into the many roles Rik Emmett took on. “It” was always a parboiling, psychological gumbo: and this book attempts to finally share the recipe.It also includes photos from Emmett’s own archives, plus the definitive, detailed reasons behind why he walked from Triumph — and came back two decades later.Rock star, it seems, was a character for Rik Emmett to inhabit … a great gig, a catalytic door-opener … it was a role that led to other adventures — and these are the stories he’s chosen to tell.
‘If grown-ups don’t read poetry’, writes poet and critic Carmine Starnino, ‘it’s not because they have a bone to pick with poets. The truth is even more intolerable: they prefer not to. . . They’re just not that into us.’ In his latest collection of critical essays, Starnino reports on the state of poetry with his usual sleeves-rolled-up approach to literary criticism which synthesizes broad observation with close reading. Engaging both icons (Atwood, Birney, McKay, Moritz, bpNichol) and lesser-knowns (James Denoon, Anne Szumigalski, Peter Trower), Starnino writes with the style, wit and intensity of a poet-critic, offering confident, intelligent candour where we have too often settled for ‘bland, much-recycled truisms’.
Growing up in a small Lebanese village, Bassim’s blindness limits his engagement with the materials taught in his schools. Despite his family’s love and support, his opportunities seem limited. At thirteen years old, Bassim leaves his village to join the Institute for the Blind in a Beirut suburb. There, he comes alive. He learns Braille and discovers talents he didn’t know he had. Bassim is empowered by his newfound abilities to read and write. Thanks to his newly developed self-confidence, Bassim decides to take a risk and submit a short story to a competition sponsored by the Ministry of Education. After winning the competition, he is hired to work at the Institute for the Blind. At the Institute, Bassim, a Sunni Muslim, forms a strong friendship with George, a Christian. Cooperation and collective support are central to the success of each student at the Institute, a principle that overcomes religious and cultural differences. In the book, the Institute comes to symbolize the positive changes that tolerance can bring to the country and society at large. The Boy Who Saw the Color of Air is an important contribution to a literature in which people with disabilities are underrepresented. In addition to offering a story of empowerment and friendship, this book also aims to educate readers about people with disabilities.
An Artist’s Journey emphasises the values of loyalty and belonging to one’s homeland, speaking to teens in an eloquent and beautiful language while raising contemporary issues of immigration and problems faced by expatriates, as well as the value of art and cultural integration. It is a captivating story told by an enlightened grandmother in the Hakawati style. She uses sound effects, masks and drawing tools while narrating the tale. Told from the perspective of small and colourful birds, the story is a miniature example of desired civic life in the Arab Islamic societies based on the values of justice, equality, respect for the supremacy of law, tolerance, love, cooperation, national identity, and defending the homeland. This book encourages educators to teach in different ways, such as using art to engage children to pursue knowledge, acquire life skills and develop their intelligence.
How do you change the world?
Meet Léa, polyglot, labour activist, farbrente feminist. Born to a large Jewish family and raised in a French Catholic town, Léa moves fluidly between languages and cultures. Her search for meaning and her instinct for justice place her at the centre of the great changes of the 20th century. From street fights in Berlin to protests in Montreal, she defies the expectations and limitations of women’s lives, wins historic victories for the union movement, and grapples with her own convictions. Based on the life of famed activist Léa Roback, this novel brings to life a heroine emboldened by political strugglea that resonate to this day.
The NASA way: lessons on leadership, teamwork, and corporate culture. How does NASA take on seemingly insurmountable challenges, recover from tragedy and continue to attract the best and brightest talent?
Space exploration is as much a story of leadership and teamwork as it is a story of exploration and discovery. Leadership Moments from NASA delves into the culture of the famed organization and examines the leadership styles and insights of NASA senior executives spanning five decades of human spaceflight to share the lessons they learned from critical moments. How did they prioritize? How did they resolve differences? How did they decide what to do when no one had done it before? How did they build highly competent teams? How did they build organizational resilience? How did they fight complacency and rebuild a culture of safety and innovation?
Through the use of NASA oral histories and interviews, this book shows how NASA recovered from tragedy and adversity, and how it developed a culture of competency that continues to attract the best and brightest.
“I absolutely flew through this novel.” — Books Etc.“Genuine, relatable, it’s a ride you’ll want to go on again.” — Sukasa ReadsAfter two drama-filled weeks at photography camp in Manhattan, Pippa Greene is back. Despite a super-swoony and über-romantic reunion with her boyfriend, Dylan, she can’t seem to shake the emotional aftermath of New York. As she navigates parental drama at home and her charged dynamic with Ben Baxter at school, Pippa finds that Dylan is more wrapped up in his new post-high-school life of bands, shows, and groupies than in their relationship. Will it survive?Written with the same humor and heart that made Chantel Guertin’s first two Pippa Greene novels — The Rule of Thirds and Depth of Field — instant favorites, Leading Lines offers a fresh and charming perspective on friendships, family, and first love.
This definitive history chronicles over fifty years of Sudbury Wolves history, incorporating both historical documents and interviews with players, staff and others closely involved with the franchise over the years. It covers the big wins, heartbreaking losses, rise of future National Hockey League stars, colourful personalities, and devoted fans who have played their part in shaping the history of the Sudbury Wolves. Illustrated with historical photos and modern images, Leading the Pack: 50 Years of Sudbury Wolves History celebrates one of North America’s most iconic junior hockey franchises.
At the dawn of the French revolution, masses of hungry peasants burn the chateaux of aristocrats throughout France. After the death of his estranged family, an 18 year-old nobleman, the Marquis Marcel de la Croix, is forced to raise the royalist banner, despite his own revolutionary leanings. The wreck of his family fortress becomes a bastion for newly disenfranchised aristocrats, and Marcel and his fiery associate, Pierre Lafont, lead a rebel group called the League of the Star. After a bitter falling out with Lafont, Marcel escapes to England incognito, hoping to put the past behind him. In England he encounters several French emigres: the large, brutish former soldier, M. Tolouse, the haughty Mlle. de Courteline, and the sheltered Mlle. Vallon. As these traveling exiles are forced together, a young boy in their company begins to intrigue them with a mysterious tale of love. Can a simple love story, begun merely to entertain the weary travellers, hold the key to Marcel’s fate?
Welcome to Kate Hargreaves’ Leak, where the relationship between language and the body lives in the bumps and bruises that in turn become new ways of understanding the borders and leaks of our everyday existence. In Leak, bodies lose pieces and fall apart, while words slip out of place and letters drop away. Emergency room signage becomes incomprehensible, the census requests bodily measurements, a cyclist confuses oil with her own blood. This visceral deconstruction of the body and its multiple representations tests the boundaries of body politics — pathologically, emotionally, and lyrically.
In her third book of poetry, Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen writes of places made home, navigating between fixed points of origin and the flotsam that encloses, between the longevity of marriage and parenthood, and the temporary of camping trips, renovations and hospital stays. Across the collection, the poet’s lyricism finds a lilt and repetition that firmly pegs while leaving one side open to the unlikely and unexpected.
“Where,” Gunvaldsen Klaassen asks, “are the leaps of logic and leaps of faith that come with the constant necessary distractions of life with little kids taking me? Things seem to be always at more than one place at a time. We’d moved from Saskatchewan to Nova Scotia and were lost. I needed some kind of returna long poem, repetitions, something sustaining although provisional. We bought an old house and moved in; we drove out to seaor were sometimes driven out by ghosts or neighbours, accidents, invitations, bad luck. I wrote in a tent, I wrote in the car. And thought about the generous, endlessly generative absurdity of marriage (one plus one equals two, and one plus one also equals one). And what if you live in a marriage plus kids? I guess living with mess and emptiness, with daily repetitions that comfort but also drive you crazy, with internal rhymes that unify and imply trouble, living ‘in the midst of’ is to glimpse home as a (changeable) state of mind and being.”
The collection opens with “August after August,” a series of fourteen poems based on traditional anniversary gifts (paper, cotton, leather, wood. . . ). The suite is a consideration of domesticity and permanence, sometimes literal in its representations of the gifts in question, more often allusive and abstract.
In a summer of camping trips to Nova Scotia’s South Shore, Kejimkujik National Park, and Five Islands, home is defined along more flexible terms of tent poles, clotheslines, tides and bonfires. In sight of galaxy and open ocean, the poet revisits realities too tenuous for the clamour of the householda lost child, vague uncertainties and moments of sheer directionlessness.
Lean-To concludes with “On Inlet Avenue,” a long poem that tells the story of a lengthy home renovation. It is a telling that combines the sounds of the everydaythe scramble of children’s voices, song lyrics and half-remembered lines from bookswith those of ad hoc repair and the poet’s internal frequency amid the sometimes troubling, often zany, preoccupations of creating home.
Winner of the 2010 Atlantic Poetry Prize.