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Tim has recently passed away and left Lori with piles of expensive recording equipment and mountains of debt. Tim’s family wants to move on from the loss but Lori can’t let go, not while she can still hear Tim’s laugh as though he’s still there beside her. That is, until she begins to hear his laugh in odd places, like old recordings Tim never worked on.
Can love transcend to keep us connected through death? Or do we just create our own reality when we’re not ready to let go?
Against the backdrop of the changing seasons, Shirley Camia’s The Significance of Moths is a graceful exploration of home and memory through the eyes of the migrant and the migrant child. As lives are displaced by new landscapes, where does home exist? In the land or in the mind? For new Canadians and their children there is no easy answer. In the journey to form identity, The Significance of Moths confronts the ghosts of “what was” with the here and now.
This language primer begins with a suitably esoteric-looking chapter called “The Language of Time.” It isn’t until the second paragraph that the unsuspecting reader realizes Hughes is talking about the language of Time magazine, which he analyzes as a piece of fiction. Indeed, for Hughes, there is no such thing as a substantive distinction between fiction and non-fiction—there are only texts that do things with structural techniques of syntax and signs. Some of these texts we have commonly agreed to believe are fiction; others we have commonly agreed to believe are fact. None of these texts, however, has anything to do with truth, much less Truth with a capital “T”. In an amazing brief and headlong rush through the history of language from classical Greece to the 20th century, Hughes demonstrates convincingly that neither the empirical world, nor the metaphysical world, has ever informed language. Rather, it is always language which informs the world.
Hughes’s careful analysis of the techniques of the English language, from Anglo-Saxon verse to the latest post-modern text, constantly reminds us that language is always a made thing, and that the empirical objects captured by language are never immediate, but always mediated by the perception and the craft of the speaker or the author. This book is a must for every serious student of language and literature: because it introduces the reader so effortlessly to the latest vocabulary and techniques of structuralist criticism, it is a basic tool for anyone wishing to communicate his or her ideas to anyone else, and in any discipline. The surprise of the book for the lay reader is that it is so richly entertaining. Its constant demystification of the technique of communication we most take for granted—common speech—offers the reader surprise and delight from the first page to the last.
Signs of Subversive Innocents travels the depth of human experience from the celebratory to the delusional. This debut collection by Cora Siré tells of characters and realms, both distant and familiar, with vibrant intensity and lyricism. The poems speak of physical and metaphysical signs—omens, gestures, creations, and other markings or traces of human existence—and the impulse to subvert destiny, the tension between actuality and desire that underlies beauty, terror, desperation, and triumph. Uniquely structured around a quartet set in an abandoned marble quarry, the poems resonate for their ingenuity and range while evoking the search for connection in a complex world.
Alcuin Society Citation for Excellence in Design
Signs of the Times reunites the poetry of Bud Osborn and the woodprints of Vancouver printmaker and painter Richard Tetrault. As with their first collaboration, Oppenheimer Park, Signs of the Times is both an unflinching look at Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and a beautiful object in its own right.
Praise for Signs of the Times:
“The greatest barriers we face are cynicism on the part of those who have the resources and power to make change happen, and hopelessness on the part of those who have had everything stripped from them. Signs of the Times meets these barriers head-on and shows us a way through, together.” (Libby Davies, from the Preface)
“Osborn reclaims the role of poet as social catalyst… Osborn challenges us to not turn away as he presents his characters in the harshness and brutality that result from the economic and social oppression they experience… These poems and prints are a revelation to those who live in the downtown eastside and to those who observe and are perplexed by the complexities and contradictions of this community. These two remarkable artists have offered themselves and their experience with generosity, openness, and compassion.” (Kim Elliott, rabble.ca)
“… a timeless marriage of ardent words in the tradition of Pablo Neruda and Walt Whitman, on behalf of those whose voices aren’t often heard, with striking woodcuts and linocuts reminiscent of the works of Lynd Ward and Clifford Harper. Osborn’s poems about the dehumanizing experience of being homeless in a city express a generic sense of outrage and compassion even as they describe specifically the lives of suffering junkies, prostitutes, and ‘binners’ in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” (Chris Dodge, The UTNE Reader)
Silence Made Visible: Howard O’Hagan and Tay John collects essays about Howard O’Hagan’s best-known novel, as well as providing a chronology of his life, an annotated bibliography of his works, an interview with Keith Maillard, and two short memoirs, one by Lovat Dickson, the other by E.W. Strong. Essays by Margery Fee, Ronald Granofsky, W.J. Keith, and Ralph Maud deal with the novel’s anthropological sources, its publishing history, its canonization, its treatment of women in the context of its major symbolic patterns, and its connections with O’Hagan’s other works. This collection also includes short pieces by O’Hagan himself, some previously unpublished: his first published story, some autobiographical sketches, and his odd, witty chronicles of several meetings of the Berkeley Arts Club.
“The Silence of the North” is a poetic reflection of Canadian least known and most enigmatic Arctic region. Alan Butcher challenges our notions of landscape and wilderness, culture and perception, the limits of experience, and the nature of being. This is a poetry collection that investigates the human understanding, parting the veil of the mundane to reveal passion, beauty, myth, and mystery of Canadian Arctic. At once atmospheric, with a surreal blend of emotion and memory, “The Silence of the North” is a fluid and ever-shifting landscape of possibilities. These poems are restless and inquisitive. They echo a desire to forge a voice that is as curious as it is distinctive. This poetry collection will appeal to all lovers of poetry, particularly those who enjoy striking imagery linking the quotidian to the universal.
From the 1960s through the 1980s the Canadian Children’s Aid Society engaged in a large-scale program of removing First Nations children from their families and communities and adopting them out to non-Indigenous families. This systemic abduction of untold thousands of children came to be known as the Sixties Scoop. The lasting disruption from the loss of family and culture is only now starting to be spoken of publicly, as are stories of strength and survivance.
In Silence to Strength: Writings and Reflections on the 60s Scoop, editor Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith gathers together contributions from twenty Sixties Scoop survivors from across the territories of Canada. This anthology includes poems, stories and personal essays from contributors such as Alice McKay, D.B. McLeod, David Montgomery, Doreen Parenteau, Tylor Pennock, Terry Swan, Lisa Wilder, and many more. Courageous writings and reflections that prove there is strength in telling a story, and power in ending the silence of the past.
In the early 1900s a young and newly wed Leona Merrigan sets out from the Newfoundland community of Three Brooks to find a better life in Knock Harbour on the island’s Cape Shore. After some happy years, tragedy strikes when she unwittingly brings disaster upon her home. Years later, William Cantwell, a politician tormented by regret, finds Leona in Knock Harbour, virtually alone but for her only child, a deaf girl named Dulcie. Both William and Leona come to focus on Dulcie’s education as a way to mend their shattered lives. Meanwhile, a vindictive civil servant, Arthur Duke, lurks in the background. Soon, political events unfold which threaten the promising new future that Dulcie, William and Leona are shaping for themselves. In the end, Leona must face her troubled past and unearth the long-held secret which might keep her own and Dulcie’s dreams alive. A redemptive tale of ruined lives righted again through love, grace, and good fortune, The Silent Time contains memorable characters, compelling narrative and passages of lyrical beauty.
On a visit to Gabon, an American sociologist couple purchase an infant ape in order to study its development in an “enriched environment” — taking it back to California and raising it as a human being — and gain insight into human behaviour. The ape, named Silver, displays a remarkable aptitude for human skills, like using a toilet and brushing his teeth. Most shockingly, the ape can also speak — and after a long, eventful life among the humans, he has plenty to say.
Scathing and poignant, Silver is a no-holds-barred critique of modern life, told from the tragic perspective of a civilized animal stranded in the wilderness of Western society.
Steve Marsh is a mystery writer, the protagonist of David French’s gripping thriller, Silver Dagger. Soon after his third novel is published, Marsh’s wife receives a series of phone calls and letters that threaten to destroy their marriage. Adultery, blackmail, murder, a figure lurking in the rain. All these classic elements of Marsh’s fiction soon become part of his life.
Thaddeus Holownia travelled to the many salmon rivers of eastern Canada, in all seasons, to capture their essential qualities. Harry Thurston’s accompanying essay explores the elemental nature of these rivers that both nurture Atlantic salmon and inspire the salmon fisher. This 1,000-copy edition includes 50 full-size stochastic duotone reproductions of Holownia’s 17 × 7-inch contact prints, casebound in quarter cloth with a printed card slipcase.