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Reminiscent of Pablo Neruda's Elemental Odes, Small Arguments is a stunningly original debut by a gifted young poet. The language of Small Arguments is simple yet there is nothing simple in its ideas. The work touches on the structures of argument, orchestrating material around ... Read more
Reminiscent of Pablo Neruda's Elemental Odes, Small Arguments is a stunningly original debut by a gifted young poet. The language of Small Arguments is simple yet there is nothing simple in its ideas. The work touches on the structures of argument, orchestrating material around repetition, variation and contrast. Thammavongsa's approach is like that of a scientist/philosopher, delicately probing material for meaning and understanding. The poet collects small lives, and argues for a larger belonging: a grain of dirt, a crushed cockroach, the eyes of a dead dragonfly. It is a work that suggests we can create with what we know and with that alone. || "This is the voice of a pilgrim, the one who bends to see, leans to hear... Thammavongsa has distilled her meaning from her details so masterfully and with such confident wisdom that she seems to be reading nature. Through her eyes, we can believe we see the true meaning in things." - Anne Michaels"A formidable work." - George Elliot Clarke
Souvankham Thammavongsa's first story collection, How to Pronounce Knife, was published in April 2020, to critical acclaim, by Little, Brown (US), McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House (Canada), and Bloomsbury (UK). The collection has been shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada's most prestigious literary award. Thammavongsa's stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, NOON, The Believer, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018, and O. Henry Prize Stories 2019. She is the author of four books of poetry, Cluster (2019); Light (Pedlar, 2013), winner of the Trillium Book Award for Poetry; Found (Pedlar, 2007), now a short film; and Small Arguments (Pedlar, 2003), winner of the ReLit prize. She has been called "one of the most striking voices to emerge in Canadian poetry in a generation" (The Walrus). She is working on her first novel.
Beth Follett is the founder and publisher of Pedlar Press, a Canadian literary house. Her first novel, Tell It Slant (Coach House Books, 2001), a retelling of Djuna Barnes’s 1936 novel Nightwood, met with critical acclaim. Her poetry, prose and nonfiction work have appeared in Brick, Best Canadian Poetry 2019, and elsewhere. She lives in St John’s, NL.
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Poet Souvankham Thammavongsa has published all three of her award-winning collections with Newfoundland-based Pedlar Press, led by Beth Follett. For the third instalment of our CanLit Rewind series, Beth's chosen Thammavongsa's debut, Small Arguments, as a book that "didn't change ... Read more
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