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All Books in this Collection
Showing 6481–6496 of 9311 results
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South Side of a Kinless River
$23.95CBC Best Poetry Book 2024
A nuanced, relational, and community-minded new book from one of Canada’s preeminent poets.
South Side of a Kinless River wrestles with concepts of Métis identity in a nation and territory that would rather erase it. Métis identity, land loss, sexual relationships between Indigenous women and European men, and midwifery by Indigenous women of the nascent settler communities figure into these poems. They add up to a Métis woman’s prairie history, one that helps us feel the violence in how those contributions and wisdoms have been suppressed and denied.
“Each poem is an anthem, every page showcasing the talent and necessity of this incredible poetic voice. Dumont brings the Métis tone, cadence and intricate stitch-work into all she creates.”
– Cherie Dimaline, author of The Marrow Thieves and Empire of the Wild“The voice of this Métis woman is as loving, tender and humane, as it is powerful, satirical and political…”
– Rita Bouvier, author of a beautiful rebellion -
South Solo
$19.95 -
Southwest of Italy
$20.00Southwest of Italy is an ode to the deep value of the things that are out of our control—history, place, emotion, coincidence, the community of friendship. The title refers to one of the most apparent intents of the text, which is to trace the relationship between Sardinia and the American Southwest, particularly in the layering of time and culture. Though this relationship is subtly played, even understated, because the book also aims at tracing deeper themes, such as those of hope, illusion, and cultural mediation. It is densely composed in a hybrid style, merging lyrical prose and travel essay. Narrative, description, and reflection are found within a surprising structure, rich with sensory language
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Souwesto Home
$17.00The poems in Souwesto Home are fresh, youthful meditations on such diverse subjects as the Little Lakes near Stratford, Ontario, the flora of Elgin County, the Donnelly feud, lichens, a Department Store Jesus, and so on. The collection ranges widely in tone and technique, from the lyrical to the satirical, from the direct and straightforward to the linguistically playful. As ever, Reaney’s signature voice, his inimitable combination of sophistication and child-like simplicity, may be heard in every line. Like his contemporaries, P.K. Page, Margaret Avison and Colleen Thibaudeau (his wife), he has lost nothing of his poetic prowess to advancing years.
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Space and the Geographies of Theatre
$25.00Includes:The Regionalism of Canadian Drama by Diane Bessai (1980) Playwrights in a Landscape: The Changing Image of Rural Ontario by Alexander M. Leggatt (1980)“A Country of the Soul”: Herman Voaden, Lowrie Warrener and the Writing of Symphony by Anton Wagner (1983)Between Empires: Post-Imperialism and Canadian Theatre by Alan Filewod (1992)Reading Material: Transfers, Remounts, and the Production of Meaning in Contemporary Toronto Drama and Theatre by Ric Knowles (1993–94)Healing the Border Wound: Fronteras Americanas and the Future of Canadian Multiculturalism by Mayte Gómez (1995)Theorizing a Queer Theatre: Buddies in Bad Times by Robert Wallace (1995)Degrees of North: An Introduction (to Staging the North: Twelve Canadian Plays) by Sherrill Grace (1999)Urban National, Suburban Transnational: Civic Theatres and the Urban Development of Toronto’s Downtowns by Michael McKinnie (2001)“No, the Centre Should be Invisible”: Radical Revisioning of Chekhov in Floyd Favel Starr’s House of Sonya by Rob Appleford (2002)Theatre as National Export: On Being and Passing in the United States by Erin Hurley (2003)In the MT Space by Guillermo Verdecchia (2006)T.O. Live with Culture: Torontopia and the Urban Creativity Script by Laura Levin (2007)Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English sets out to make the best critical and scholarly work in the field readily available. The series publishes the work of scholars and critics who have traced the coming-into-prominence of a vibrant theatrical community in English Canada.
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Space That Connects Us, The
$20.95In The Space that Connects Us, Mansa Trotman treats her readers to an exquisite slice of heart renderings carefully crafted to create immediate empathy and spark a glow of feelings. The emotions run deep, the humour surfaces loud and clear, and soon one is over the hump of the rough road on which she drags your senses. At first, it may only be one hand clapping, but eventually, the joy at the capacity to speak life in the raw is contagious.
Excerpt:
my heart is breaking
when he sounds rushed, annoyed, disinterested
a rip tears down the centre
my heart is breaking
it is tired, overused, abused by others
unsoothed, neglected and malnourished by me
my heart is breaking
and I have no tools to fix it -
Spaced!
$22.95“Only fifty Earthlings remain in the galaxy, and I hate every one of them.”
Sha-ne, a Martian teen, finds herself floating in a tin can high above Mars on the day everything blew up-literally. She should be apprenticing to become a master engineer, a most coveted position only awarded to exceptional minds by the mysterious Board, who governs the colony on the red planet. Martians develop the technology that runs the colony, but Earthlings are kept separate, used only for manual labour. That’s how it’s always been.
Sha-ne was just getting settled on the engineering ship with her AI companion, about to meet her mentor and the only other Martian on board, when the colony on Mars burns to the ground, wiping out her entire civilization.
Now Sha-ne has no choice but to join a group of Earthlings who’ve taken command of the ship, for them to survive. Only, she’s not sure she can trust Earthlings to do anything right. Especially these rebels.
As Sha-ne and the rebels search other dead cryo ships for supplies, they learn more about the truth behind the disaster that befell the colony and come to realize.
.nothing is as it seems.
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Spanish Boy, The
$19.95Grief cannot abide a mystery. No one understands that better than the Clarey family of Halifax.
In 1937, the Clareys are a close and loving family until their lives are transformed the night Edie, their wilful daughter and sister, vanishes, leaving no trace, no clue, as to what happened to her.
The lingering questions of her disappearance will ricochet through the succeeding generations of Clareys.
As decades pass and lives unfold, the memories of Edie’s brothers and her parents, are haunted by the spectre of the missing girl. The misery of their grief is entangled with the only comfort they can find: a belief that one day the mystery of Edie’s disappearance will be solved.
Drawn into Edie’s young life, and into her story, are two young men who work at her father’s business: the bookkeeper Raymond Gillis and a stranger named Micah Gessen. The three form a triangle of jealousy and obsession. One of them knows what happened to the Clarey girl.
Just as Edie’s vanishing is a moment of transformation for the Clarey family, so are the times they live in. The story of The Spanish Boy is told against the backdrop of some of the momentous events of the twentieth and earliest part of the twenty-first centuries.
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Spar: Words in Place
$21.95Peter Sanger’s poetry has always demonstrated his extraordinary focus and vigorous engagement with the objects that surround him. These four essays find their basis in the everyday stuff of backwoods Nova Scotia, demonstrating how a road with two names, a crooked knife, an abandoned shipyard and a fragment of gypsum might hone our thoughts and shape our sense of words in place.
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Spare Parts Plus Two
$15.95A welfare cheque floats down the river, a cowboy spreads the Word of the Lord and crotches tick like clocks: the world of Spare Parts is unpredictable, evocative and vividly distorted. Its initial appearance, in 1981, caused a stir; at a time when linear narrative was the m.o. of feminist writing, Gail Scott had the nerve to fracture and dislocate her stories and her language.
Spare Parts is as vital as it was twenty years ago. Scott’s densely textured tales about the world of growing up female in a small town, where violence lurks just beneath the skin, recreate the uncertainty of life. Their incantatory language and tough imagery are as relevant and crucial now as they were then.
This edition adds two new pieces, including ‘Bottoms Up’, an essay on narrative which first appeared on the ‘Narrativity’ website Scott co-edits.
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Spat the Dummy
$20.00At forty, deeply iconoclastic Spat Ryan is recently divorced, unemployed, and frequently intoxicated. Inspired by the cliche “we’re only as sick as our secrets,” he decides to reveal himself a piece at a time for the “cure.” A deeply skeptical outsider, stunted by many adolescent appetites, Spat survived his often violent, terrifying past by keeping his darkest truths out of mind. A wholly unpopular student, he was christened “Big Dummy” by a nun teaching at his junior high. The name Spat the Dummy and an unearned bad reputation followed him to the end of his miserable school years. Raised by a bagman for the Irish mob, Spat has fictionalized or ignored chuinks of his life too painful to contemplate. When he meets an old friend of his father’s in a bar on the Main, they develop a camaraderie built on memories of the man they both revered. During a drinking session with his father’s old friend, it is revealed that she, too, has been keeping the same secret that ultimately shaped Spat’s tumultuous life. Her reaction to the recollection ends their friendship and begins his quest to understand how he became hiself. ‘Spat the Dummy’ is a brilliant debut novel that will have readers longing for more from this wildly original writer.
“This is a satisfying read from a talented author that manages to convey the rather hopeful message that each od Spat’s small successes mean moe than all of his spectacular failures combined.” – Montreal Gazette
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Spaz
$20.00‘Spaz’ introduces Walter Finch, an ungainly kid who survives his cloying suburban childhood to make it only as far as the local mall, where he rises through the ranks to become manager of a shoe store. Unlike his other childhood friends, who either flee suburbia or remain as resigned fixtures, Walter is content with his lot and finds the shoe store a perfect environment in which to pursue his grander ambitions. As he delves further into his passion for shoe design, alone in his apartment at night, Walter comes to believe that if he can design the perfect woman’s shoe, he will ultimately find the perfect foot to fit it. He becomes convinced that this path will lead him to his princess. His mission becomes all-consuming and plunges Walter into a separate reality: his own fairytale. As things spin out of , Walter’s eventual salvation arrives in an unlikely form, should he choose to recognize and accept it. ‘Spaz’ is a skewed spin on the tale of Cinderella, a complementary follow-up to Bonnie Bowman’s first novel, ‘Skin’, with its elements of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. Shoes figure prominently in this novel, and the protagonist views them as both his nemesis and his salvation. They begin his story, he believes they will end it, and they do. Shoes represent every step of his journey.
” ‘Spaz’ really is terrific. Bowman demystifies the aberrant. As in her debut novel, ‘Skin’ (which I loved when I read it a decade ago), her themes are ugliness and beauty and how the bodyis the engine for desire. If that makes ‘Spaz’ seem too serious, don’t worry. It’s jolly fun.” – Uptown Magazine (Winnipeg)
“In this sly story of a misfit visionary, Bowman assembles a beguiling cast of characters, striking a perfect balance between the completely outrageous and the completely true-to-life. This is a novel that never stops entertaining.” – Lynn Coady author of ‘The Antagonist’ and ‘Mean Boy’
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Speak to Me in Indian
$19.95Shane Bearskin, a young Cree man from James Bay, and Theresa Wawati, an Algonquin woman from northern Quebec, are united by a profound love for each other and a visceral attachment to their heritage. As children, both experienced the challenges that face so many young people from indigenous communities. They are now studying in universities in Montreal. Theresa is determined to become a lawyer to defend her Algonquin nation whose lands and way of life are constantly encroached upon. When Theresa is diagnosed with terminal leukemia and given a year to live, they decide to live out their dream of returning to live in the bush like their ancestors and also have a baby. With Speak to Me in Indian, David Gidmark has captured the aching beauty of life and the passionate longing for freedom that, despite all odds, breathe hope in human beings worldwide. -
Special Topics in Being a Human
$24.95S. Bear Bergman’s illustrated guide to practical advice for the modern age, filtered through a queer lens.
As an author, educator, and public speaker, S. Bear Bergman has documented his experience as, among other things, a trans parent, with wit and aplomb. He also writes the advice column “Asking Bear,” in which he answers crucial questions about how best to make our collective way through the world.
Featuring disarming illustrations by Saul Freedman-Lawson, Special Topics in Being a Human elaborates on “Asking Bear”‘s premise: a gentle, witty, and insightful book of practical advice for the modern age. It offers Dad advice and Jewish bubbe wisdom, all filtered through a queer lens, to help you navigate some of the complexities of life – from how to make big decisions or make a good apology, to how to get someone’s new name and pronouns right as quickly as possible, to how to gracefully navigate a breakup. With warmth and candor, Special Topics in Being a Human calls out social inequities and injustices in traditional advice-giving, validates your feelings, asks a lot of questions, and tries to help you be your best possible self with kindness, compassion, and humour.
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Specks
$16.95Widely noted for the popularity of his dynamic performances, Michael McClure has been celebrated since his first poetry event. At twenty-two years old, in San Francisco’s legendary Six Gallery, McClure, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg gave their first poetry reading—Ginsberg read “Howl” that night. McClure’s writing followed his deepening environmental awareness and biological studies, and he became an outspoken advocate, through his essays, music, theatre and novels, for the protection of all living beings.
When McClure’s Specks was first published in 1985 by Talonbooks, it was a revelation in terms of its transcending the proprioceptive poetic methodology of Charles Olson and entering an Aristotelian realm of metaphysical questions that alchemically combined matters both scientific and mystical. In this much-anticipated return, with incisive and bombastic projective verse, McClure’s stance in the face of futurity is even more topical, as the senses of the physical-poetic body explore its properties, powers and limitations, expanding forth as the benevolent love child of its own consciousness.
Specks assumes the form of a blastula, offering a poetic model of embryonic development that arises from the cellular division known as “cleavage.” Specks presents groupings of ideas that mimic and challenge one another in a deep biological state. With mind aglow in recognition of muscular imagination and the intelligence of the sensorium in all its unapologetic tonality, McClure’s luminous journey leaps with the grace of Muhammad Ali and Fred Astaire, and tempts the reader into the mysterious abyss of dark energy that Federico García Lorca calls duende.
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Spectacle of Empire
$21.952006 marked the 400th anniversary of a major theatrical event in the history of North American drama. The Theatre of Neptune in New France by lawyer, poet and historian Marc Lescarbot was a masque of welcome performed on the Bay of Fundy by members of the tiny French colony of Port Royal on November 14, 1606. It celebrated the return of the ship bearing the Sieur de Poutrincourt and navigator-explorer Samuel de Champlain from their travels along the coastline as far south as Cape Cod in search of a more temperate site for the colony.
It is a paean to empire, a thanksgiving for survival and an extraordinary theatrical spectacle in a “new” world peopled by Native inhabitants who are represented in it as both characters and audience. Arguably the first American play, it has also been called “a significant entry-point of Western cultural hegemony,” sparking political activists to disrupt the re-enactment planned for its four hundredth anniversary celebration.
This new edition includes the original French script along with its long out-of-print English translations by American historical preservationist Harriette Taber Richardson and Canadian scholars Eugene and Renate Benson, as well as Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Blackness (1605), an illustrative contemporary English imperial spectacle. The extensive historical and critical introduction and bibliography are provided by Jerry Wasserman, Professor of Theatre at the University of British Columbia.