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Under the covers of Where the Nights Are Twice as Long: Love Letters of Canadian Poets, David Eso and Jeanette Lynes collect letters and epistolary poems from more than 120 Canadian poets, including Pauline Johnson, Malcolm Lowry, Louis Riel, Alden Nowlan, Anne Szumigalski, Leonard Cohen, John Barton, and Di Brandt, and many others, encompassing the breadth of this country’s English literary history.
Presented in order not of the chronology of composition, but according to the poets’ ages at the time of writing, the poems in the book comprise a single lifeline. The reader follows an amalgam of the Poet from the passionate intensity of youth, through the regrets and satisfactions of adulthood and middle age, and into the reflective wisdom of old age.
All the writings are about love, but love in a dizzying array of colours, shapes, and sizes. Deep, enduring love, unrequited love, passionate love, violent love. Here are odes and lyric ecstasies, tirades and tantrums, pastoral comforts and abject horrors — all delivered with the vibrancy, wit, and erudition of our finest poets. Where the Nights Are Twice as Long is more than an anthology: it is an unforgettable journey into the long night of love.
Brenda Hasiuk’s debut novel details eight weeks in the lives of four teens in a hardcore mining town in northern Canada. Ally and Toby, life-long locals, Rina, a Sarajevo refugee, and Adam, the returning urban native warrior get lost in each others – individual and collective mythologies as they find love, friendship, violence and tragedy in one long, last summer. Unflinchingly honest, and disturbingly poignant, this story captures the displacement of “northerners”, the struggle for identity, and the restlessness of teens in isolated communities. In a place that makes them feel lonely, they try never to be alone; and in lives confounded by rituals and restraints, their search for meaning is illusive.
Lyrical realism meets family drama meets sparkling global folktale.
Joan, a half-Chinese English conversation teacher unmoored in Europe, flees Budapest for a fresh start. Stepping off the train in Bratislava, she meets Milan, a proud Roma teenager, and they strike up a friendship. Milan helps Joan settle into the city, and in turn, Joan introduces him to Adriana, who has travelled to lay the memory of her dead mother to rest. They form an unlikely trio, bound by love and luck into something like family.
At the crossroads of youthful hope and the startling magic of coincidence, Where the Silver River Ends delves deep into mixed-race identity, systemic oppression, family reconciliation, and what happens when we gather the courage to slip out of the current and make our own way in the world.
Praise for Where the Silver River Ends:
“A rich, engaging novel about the difficulties of being an outsider.”—Foreword Reviews
Praise for Anna Quon’s other novels:
“An empathetic coming-of-age story about the redemptive power of love.”–Globe and Mail on Low
“Quon writes with a great deal of humour, and she spins a good yarn.”—Quill & Quire on Migration Songs
“The problem with writer longevity can be a complicating, even contradictory oeuvre. Hopefully.”
Where The Truth Lies collects forty years of essays and speeches that Rudy Wiebe crafted over his many years as an author. In this illuminating and wide-ranging selection, Wiebe provides a look behind the curtain, revealing his thought processes as he worked on many of his great books. Throughout this selection, he dissects controversies that arose after publication of his early novels, meditates on words and their inherent power, explores the great Canadian North and the Canadian body politic, reckons with his family history and Mennonite faith, all while providing an engaging and enlightening commentary. Where The Truth Lies is a vital compilation of a writing life.
Where the Winds Dwell is a letter from a father to his daughter. It is Patricia’s inheritance; her family history, which takes root in Iceland, blossoms in North America, and spans more than a century. But a family myth is more than a shoebox of letters and papers. Patricia’s father, a world-class opera singer, has given melody to their family’s journey from Iceland.
In April, 2000, when the celebrated Canadian poet Al Purdy died, Alberta writer Tim Bowling decided that the best way to pay homage to Purdy would be to devote an entire book to the many fine poets still living and writing in Canada. Where the Words Come From is a comprehensive collection of eighteen interviews, in each of which a younger, less widely known poet questions an older, more established peer on a wide range of issues related to what Chaucer called “the craft so long to learn.” Why does a person become a poet? Where do the ideas for poems originate? How do poets feel about such matters as publication, reviews and prizes? What influences and interests drive a poet’s creativity? And what value does poetry have for the individual and for the community at large?Poets are rarely given such an opportunity to discuss what matters to them most in their art, and this alone makes Where the Words Come From an important contribution to Canadian culture. But, in addition, the bringing together of generations, from poets in their late twenties to those in their mid eighties, and including all the decades in between, makes this gathering of voices a unique representation of the past, present, and future of poetry in Canada.Among the poets interviewed are many of the most honoured who have ever published in this country: P.K. Page, Margaret Avison, Phyllis Webb, Don Coles, Don McKay, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and Patrick Lane. And the poets asking the questions form the nucleus of Canada’s poetry future, including Stephanie Bolster, Carmine Starnino, Ken Babstock, Helen Humphreys, David O’Meara and Julie Bruck.A highly readable treasure trove of talk and insight for affirmed fans of Canadian poetry, as well as for anyone interested in learning more about this most intriguing of art forms, Where the Words Come From celebrates over a half-century of wonderful writing while it looks ahead to a future that promises continued excitement and excellence.
“As a poet and writer, [Rosemary Sullivan] knows that life is lived not as theory but as practice, that . . . you can understand nothing about a place without listening to individual people and their stories.” — Margaret Atwood
Incomparable writer, activist, and world traveller Rosemary Sullivan has at long last written a book about herself, about her life quest to “meet the world, to celebrate its richness, to face its darkness.”
And what a fascinating book it is! Comprised of 21 essays spanning 5 decades and multiple continents, Where the World Was offers a vivid portrait of a writer who is instinctively drawn to other cultures and places.
Whether writing about a solo vacation inside the Iron Curtain, meeting the reclusive writer Elizabeth Smart in a dilapidated cottage in the English countryside, reflecting on how Chilean society responded to Pinochet’s coup, or tracking down the people who knew Svetlana Alliluyeva for Stalin’s Daughter, Sullivan delivers a master class in cultural studies, human rights advocacy, and empathy for the human condition.
Where There`s Life, There`s Lawsuits
One of the most iconic villains in the history of television, the enigmatic Cigarette Smoking Man fascinated legions of fans of the 1990s’ hit TV series, The X-Files. Best known as “Cancerman,” he was voted Television’s Favourite Villain by the readers of TV Guide. The man behind the villain, William B. Davis, is a Canadian actor and director, whose revelations in this memoir will entertain and intrigue the millions of X-Files aficionados
worldwide.
But there is more to Davis’s story than just The X-Files.
Davis’s extensive acting experience began when he was a child in Ontario in the 1950s, and grew to encompass radio, theatre, film, and television. At the University of Toronto, where he graduated with a degree in philosophy, he turned his hand to directing, a move that took him to theatre school in Britain and a directing career. There, he reconnected with his undergraduate colleague, Donald Sutherland, and worked at the National Theatre, with such notables as Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Maggie Smith, and Albert Finney.
Those who love the theatre will delight in his recollections of the Straw Hat Players in Ontario or the trials and tribulations of an artistic director of repertory theatre in Dundee, Scotland, or his valiant attempt to create a theatre in Quebec devoted to the Canadian repertoire. Those who love history will relive with Davis those “golden years” of Canadian radio drama and theatre, not to mention enjoying an inside look at the National Theatre School of Canada where he directed the English Acting Program in the ’60s. Those who love a bit of scandalous gossip will not be disappointed.
Written in an easy conversational style, this memoir truly is “The Musings of the Cigarette Smoking Man” – as William B. Davis reflects on his loves, his losses, his hopes, his fears, and his accomplishments in this unique and engaging autobiography.
The memoir of a young woman who, in 1951 at the age of 17, was arrested for her involvement with an underground organization demanding alternatives to Stalinist rule and, as a result, spent five years in the Soviet prison system.Tumanov belonged to group of young people who believed in freedom and equality, and were willing to stand up for their beliefs.
Where Words Like Monarchs Fly brings Mexican poetry to the fullness of its senses in English with all the music of the meaning, richness of metaphor and humour. It introduces Jose Emilio Pacheco, Gabriel Zaid, Homero Aridjis and Elsa Cross – born in the thirties and the forties – along with the fifties generation they have inspired. Covering twenty-five years of development and ten poets in full representation by each, this book is essential for understanding the immediacies of new Mexican verse. In translation by prize-winning Canadian poets Kate Braid, Sylvia Dorling, George McWhirter, Caroline Davis Goodwin, Karen Cooper, Arthur Lipman, Iona Whishaw and Raul Peschiera, the English versions have already attracted a wide readership in The New Republic, Modern Poetry in Translation, PRISM International, London Magazine and others.
Praise for Where Words Like Monarchs Fly:
“The most important assembly of Mexican poetry in translation in three decades.” (This Magazine)
“This earthly vision of potential and possibility spoken through a strongly committed social conscience makes Where Words Like Monarchs Fly a testament to the vitality of poetry and the poetic spirit needed to break free from the current global paradigm of domination and exploitation. While Canadians and Mexicans are pitted together and against each other in the economic battles provoked by NAFTA and free market trends in general, Canadians now have in this anthology another aperture on Mexican perspectives that will strike a resonant chord in many readers.” (Dr. Martha J. Nandorfy, Books in Canada)
“How rare and wonderful to read such exquisite translations of the new poetry of Mexico. This book is a gift just as the Monarch butterflies are a gift as they fly between our two countries, fragile wings, amazing distances to fly. My life was changed in the Sixties by the translations of poets like Neruda and Paz. Now we have these new voices and we are changed again.” (Patrick Lane)
The place is a porch in Little Current on Manitoulin Island, where city-transplants Glenda and Suzanne have lived together since Suzanne arrived single, penniless and pregnant thirty-three years previous, moving in with Glenda and her late husband, Mark. While one is warm and industrious and the other brash and prone to late mornings, the sisters are nevertheless devoted to one another and spend laughter-filled days swapping stories about the locals and roping their appealing veterinarian neighbour, Patrick into various chores. This summer, an imminent visit from Suzanne’s daughter, Beth, a doctor from Toronto, is about to complicate things. Not only do Suzanne and Beth clash over everything, starting with Beth’s choice of pants, the sisters have recently been harbouring a weighty secret. When Beth arrives, it becomes clear that they aren’t the only ones. Amid a busy reunion week that includes a wild wedding, medicinal experimentation and a budding romance between the two doctors, the women are eventually forced to confront truths that will change all four lives forever. Where You Are is a hilarious and honest exploration of family, forgiveness and falling in love.
Newly divorced, Lydia’s life is in a downward spiral. Looking for respite, she takes off on a vacation to Mexico with her formerly estranged mother. But instead of sun and sand, what she finds beyond the hotel’s miniature jungles and Mayan statuary and folk dancing is a country where the people, many of whom serve her and her mother at the resort, live in fear, their lives dominated by cartels and corruption, and where journalists and politicians are made to disappear for even poking around the truth. But it’s also where she finds Bob, a mysterious man from Detroit who works all the angles.
Peeling away the fantasy veneer of the tourists’ Mexico to reveal a real life underworld of money laundering, political intimidation, and murder, Where’s Bob? offers up a fast-paced tragicomic page-turner about mothers and daughters and the callous blindness of tourists, and how easy it is to slip from one world into the other.
A four-decade retrospective from the winner of the 2015 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry.
Spanning forty years and ten previously published collections, Wherever We Mean to Be is the first substantial selection of Robyn Sarah’s poems since 1992. Chosen by the author, the 97 poems in this new volume highlight the versatility of a poet who moves easily between free verse, traditional forms, and prose poems. Familiar favourites are here, along with lesser-known poems that collectively round out a retrospective of the themes and concerns that have characterized this poet’s work from the start.
Warm, direct, and intimate, accessible even at their most enigmatic, seemingly effortless in their musicality, the poems are a meditation on the passage of time, transience, and mortality. Natural and seasonal cycles are a backdrop to human hopes and longings, to the mystery and grace to be found in ordinary moments, and the pleasures, sorrows, and puzzlements of being human in the world.