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Siren, Kateri Lanthier’s astonishing second book, calls us to attention. In her search for what she calls “compelling melancholy,” Lanthier’s new poems not only draw on the ghazal’s history as love poetry but remind readers of the dangerous and alluring quality of the ancient form itself. The siren was a lethal yet seductive figure, and that sense of power–and as well as her fast-taking bemusement at her own reputation–is present in lines that marry unnerving dream logic to emotional fearlessness. Siren is an uncompromising achievement: an original style at once mysterious, witty and musical that refines and clarifies the world in consistently surprising ways.” Call it playing with fire. Call it connect-the-dots lightning.”
Power and sex take centre stage in Robin Richardson‘s formidable third collection, Sit How You Want. Plane crashes and automobile mishaps are the backdrop for female narrators who grapple with terror, anxiety, and powerlessness: “When I say I’m fine I mean the sky has opened / like an old wound under scurvy.” In their grim wit, sinister straight talk, and sometimes violent bawdiness, Richardson’s poems work as counter-charms against the lingering trauma of abusive relationships, both familial and romantic. The book embodies a belief in poetry as an instrument of change, a tool for transforming pain into exuberant verbal energy: “It is the thrill of ruination / makes us innovate.”
In Skin Like Mine, Garry Gottfriedson offers a suite of poems that peel away the skin of contemporary first nations society to reveal an inside view of individual experience. Gottfriedson speaks of “minds full of anticipation” yet with “tongues pointing arrowheads.” Today’s youth, he says, are “afraid of themselves.” He finds that both individuals and bands end in “tangles,” that they write “nonsense words in the sand” or exploit images painted on rocks, those “the postmodern Indian calls / visual poetic expression.” As the collection continues, however, Gottfriedson’s love for the land emerges. He draws attention to the rape of the natural environment, the skin of Mother Earth, through clear-cut logging. He speaks of the damage caused by the pine beetle, of “forests being / eaten from the inside out.” And here it is that Gottfriedson introduces the mysterious Horsechild, who is to prepare the drying racks for the returning salmon “so that beneath your skin / the mountains will be forever abundant”: a prayer for us to protect the migrating salmon on their multi-year cycles, to protect the bears and eagles that feast upon them, so as to assure that the transformations will continue, that there will be abundance for both humans and the earth itself.
Songs for Relinquishing the Earth contains many poems of praise and grief for the imperilled earth drawing frequently on Jan Zwicky’s experience as a musician and philosopher and on the landscapes of the prairies and rural Ontario.
Songs for Relinquishing the Earth was first published by the author in 1996 as a hand-made book, each copy individually sewn for its reader in response to a request. It appeared between plain covers on recycled stock, with a small photo (of lavender fields) pasted into each copy. The only publicity was word of mouth.
Part of Jan Zwicky’s reason for having the author be the maker and distributor of the book was a desire to connect the acts of publication and publicity with the initial act of composition, to have a book whose public gestures were in keeping with the intimacy of the art. She also believed the potential audience was small enough that she could easily sew enough copies to fill requests as they came in. While succeeding in recalling poetry’s public life to its roots, she was wrong about the size of that audience and her ability to keep up with demand as word spread, Hence, this facsimile edition. In publishing it, Brick Books has attempted to remain as faithful as possible to the spirit of those original gestures, while making it possible for more readers to have access to this remarkable book.
How do the words we use shape our thoughts and actions? Can poems disrupt passivity, or is art one of its conduits? Spit on the Devil is a lyrical evocation of these questions and a searing interrogation of progressive sentiments during a time of regressive politics. Combining outrage and robust hope, this collection breathes new life into classic poetic styles and deftly explores the tensions between repetition and change, past and present. Shaped by love and ancestors in many forms, by lost homes, city spaces, and motherhood, Bernstein’s poems embrace the whirl of life and sing insurrection against apathy and fear.
When Carol Rose GoldenEagle was a child, attending Easter church services, she recalls the annual ritual of the priest presenting plaques depicting the stages of Christ’s persecution to his resurrection, referred to as the “stations of the cross”. Using these early teachings as a springboard for critical reflections, poems look back, but more importantly, look forward to reclaiming the gifts given by Creator within Indigenous culture. GoldenEagle’s searing new poetry collection examines the dark legacy of the residential school system, church and government doctrine, and the ongoing impacts on Indigenous peoples’ lives across Turtle Island.
EGALE Canada Human Rights Trust OUT IN PRINT Literary Award Winner! Shannon Webb-Campbell’s Still No Word seeks the appearance of the self in others and the recognition of others within the self. Patient, searching, questioning, and at times heartbreaking—these poems reveal the deep past within the present tense and the interrelations that make our lives somehow both whole and unfinished. And though Webb-Campbell is political at times, this is not politics for the sake of politics: here, it’s a matter of the human heart. Ranging from reflective to angry, from sensual to humourous, her poetry inhabits that mercurial space between the public and the private, making Still No Word a remarkably accomplished debut collection.
Still Point examines North America as unified whole and disrupted centre
The poems in Still Point contrast the calm and tumult of Hurricane Katrina, the deconstruction of Detroit, the financial crisis of 2008, and the BP Gulf oil spill, weaving lyrical sequences and individual pieces into a coherent whole focused on humanity’s relationship to itself and to nature. Still Point tells a story of beauty and horror, and how normalcy stubbornly persists amid history’s arc.
“E Martin Nolan’s Still Point is [a] debut of remarkable talent.”—Canadian Literature
“When a book is this good, what to say? Without rhetoric, in intimate detail, Nolan nails it.”—Rosemary Sullivan, Stalin’s Daughter
In Stranger, Nyla Matuk’s provocative, unabashedly sensual voice leads us to revelations about how our lives are increasingly disembodied by social media’s flattened, outward identity markers. In place of this contested sense of self, Stranger reckons with a range of possible states of unknowing. Have we over-determined our identities, and thus diminished our appetites? “I fell asleep between two cold rivers,” Matuk reports, “while the blue shadows of uncomplicated / conifers leaned into their own.” Bold and spontaneous, piling images and ideas on top of each other to create opulent sound patterns, these poems reawaken the reader’s sense of wonder.
Carnal, flamboyant, visceral and bold, Table Manners is a rich meal. Catriona Wright’s debut introduces us to the image of the poet as “gastronaut,” a figure who seems to live entirely between table and a stove and who steeps her surroundings and relationships in complex emotional flavours. “My life,” she writes, “is now tuned to bone marrow donuts and chef gossip. I’m useless at any other frequency.” Wright’s wild narratives are sometimes funny, sometimes frightening and always ravishingly observed. Table Manners is what might have emerged had Julia Child written like Sharon Olds, or if Anthony Bourdain knew his way around a line-break.
In a career that has spanned more than a quarter century, Lee Maracle has earned the reputation as one of Canada’s most ardent and celebrated writers. Talking to the Diaspora, Maracle’s second book of poetry, is at once personal and profound. From the revolutionary “Where Is that Odd Dandelion-Looking-Flower” to the tender poem “Salmon Dance,” from the biting “Language” to the elegiac “Boy in the Archives,” these poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which Lee Maracle is beloved and revered.
Shortlisted for the 2019 Raymond Souster Award!
Finalist for the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize!
Tar Swan is a multi-voiced reckoning that surveys the mythos of the Alberta oil sands with an approach that is both lyrical and experimental. The poems feature four voices: an oil sands developer, his plant mechanic, an archaeologist excavating the remains of the operation in the present day, and a mythical swan. David Martin’s debut collection is comprised of expansive and richly written poems, built on a lore-laden language, which explore the human and environmental cost of drawing too much from the land. As the three humans come into contact with the otherworldly swan, the voices bubble and churn together, and what is distilled is a psychological breakdown paralleling the toll taken on the earth.
Longlisted for the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize • Longlisted for the 2023 Raymond Souster Poetry Prize • A CBC Best Poetry Book of 2022 • Nominated for the 2023 ReLit Award for Poetry
Saturated with locutions lifted from the late 19th century, The Day-Breakers deeply conceives of what African Canadian soldiers experienced before, during, and in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War.
“It is not wise to waste the life / Against a stubborn will. / Yet would we die as some have done. / Beating a way for the rising sun wrote Arna Bontemps. In The Day-Breakers, poet Michael Fraser imagines the selflessness of Black soldiers who fought for the Union during the American Civil War, of whom hundreds were African-Canadian, fighting for the freedom of their brethren and the dawning of a new day. Brilliantly capturing the rhythms of their voices and the era in which they lived and fought, Fraser’s The Day-Breakers is an homage to their sacrifice and an unforgettable act of reclamation: the restoration of a language, and a powerful new perspective on Black history and experience.