A More Perfect [

By Jimmy McInnes

Iconic political speeches are some of the best remembered and most repeated passages in contemporary English language. Especially in the United States of America, what child doesn't know Abraham Lincoln's "Fourscore and seven years ago. .." or Roosevelt's "The only thing we ... Read more

After Beowulf

By Nicole Markotic

CBC BOOKS BEST CANADIAN POETRY BOOKS OF 2022
LONGLISTED FOR THE RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD

hwæt, another Beowulf translation? Not exactly…

Welcome to Denmark’s Heorot Hall, where King Hrothgar invites to his banquet table everyone but Grendel, Saxon’s cradle-made monster. Dissing ... Read more

Archer

By Carl Hare

Fictional epic: three years in the life of Ray Archer.

Archer portrays three years in the life of Ray Archer, a fictional Canadian actor/director dedicated to exploring performance styles with his diverse company. Following a Canada-wide tour of King Lear performed in mask, ... Read more

Bramah and the Beggar Boy

By Renée Sarojini Saklikar

One afternoon, in an old house in an abandoned village on the outskirts of Perimeter, in the place they call Pacifica, Bramah and the beggar boy find fragments of an ancient text in an oak box. Hunched over scraps of parchment and broken computer disks, they blow the dust off ... Read more

Bramah’s Quest

By Renée Sarojini Saklikar

The ambitious second instalment of Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s epic fantasy saga in verse, The Heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns (THOT J BAP).

This book-length poem features the time-travelling demigoddess Bramah, a locksmith and the saga’s hero. In Bramah’s Quest ... Read more

Canticles I: (MMXVI)

By George Elliott Clarke

Book I of The Canticles puts into dialogue -- as dramatic monologues -- those who fostered the transatlantic slave trade, or who demonized the image of the Negro in the Occident; as well as those who struggled for liberation and/or anti-racism. In this work, Dante can critique ... Read more

Canticles I: (MMXVII)

By George Elliott Clarke

The second part of Book I of “The Canticles” continues the dialogue -- as dramatic monologues -- of those who fostered the transatlantic slave trade, or who demonized the image of the Negro in the Occident; as well as those who struggled for liberation and/or anti-racism. ... Read more

Canticles II: (MMXIX)

By George Elliott Clarke

Canticles is a lyric-styled epic. This second testament--Canticles II (MMXIX) and Canticles II (MMXX)--issues re-readings--revisions, rewrites--of scriptures crucial to the emergent (Anglophone) African Diaspora in the Americas. Canticles II (MMXIX) follows Testament I (also ... Read more

Canticles II: (MMXX)

By George Elliott Clarke

Canticles is a lyric-styled epic. Clarke's visions of canonical and apocryphal scriptures are black in ink, but lightning in illumination. Testament II issues re-readings, revisions, rewrites of scriptures crucial to the emergent (Anglophone) African Diaspora in the Americas. ... Read more

Canticles III (MMXXII)

By George Elliott Clarke

In Zanzibar, in 2008, George Elliott Clarke began to write his "Canticles," an epic poem treating the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Imperial and colonial conquest, and the resistance to all these evils. That is the subject of Canticles I (MMXVI) and (MMXVII). In Canticles II (MMXIX) ... Read more