Sex, death, drugs, depression: the stuff of literature, the stuff of life, immortalized and romanticized, but what happens when the veneer of cinematic danger sloughs off to reveal a too-real vulnerability that is serious, sad, and sincere? Earlier this month, I launched my first book of poems, Port of Being (Invisible Publishing), in Vancouver, and its themes of loneliness, depression, recovery, and voyeurism, urged me to search for fellow writers who embrace the blues. I snuggled up with my Sultan Flokenes mattress to find poetry, fiction, and non-fiction that confronts us with the difficult complexities of mental illness, addiction, grief, and trauma.
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Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.4. The Grimoire of Kensington Market by Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn)The Grimoire of Kensington Market follows Maggie, a recovering addict who manages The Grimoire bookstore. Fantastical elements form the fabric of this novel that is part fairy tale, part junkie odyssey as the space of the bookstore transforms according to the stories that move through it. After receiving mysterious notes, Maggie decides to follow their trail and discovers that they’re from her brother, who has been using Elysium, an all-consuming drug that blurs the boundaries between worlds. The sense of adventure and local flair reminds us of Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill, making this one of the more inventive and genre-bending books this fall. The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a total trip.* * *Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.2. Paper Caskets by Emiia Danielewska (NeWest Press)Danielewska’s first book, Paper Caskets, takes the box as its conceit, offering prose poems about mortality and death through the objects of the coffin and the photograph. Her poems ask us to approach the threshold of the morbid and abject with reverence and curiosity. This is a book that makes the unfathomable real, and it shows us how to continue this grand existential journey we call life.3. The Suitcase and the Jar by Becky Livingston (Caitlin Press)Becky Livingston has lived her book: The Suitcase and the Jar: Travels with a Daughter’s Ashes. When a brain tumour took the life of her 23-year-old daughter, Livingston’s journey through grief transformed into a twenty-six month journey to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, India, England, Ireland, and North America, coast to coast, with her daughter’s ashes. The Suitcase and the Jar is a heartfelt memoir of a mother’s love and the surprising strength and resilience borne of grief. Livingston’s writing is resonant and moving, and it will definitely get us running to hug our beautiful moms.
4. The Grimoire of Kensington Market by Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn)The Grimoire of Kensington Market follows Maggie, a recovering addict who manages The Grimoire bookstore. Fantastical elements form the fabric of this novel that is part fairy tale, part junkie odyssey as the space of the bookstore transforms according to the stories that move through it. After receiving mysterious notes, Maggie decides to follow their trail and discovers that they’re from her brother, who has been using Elysium, an all-consuming drug that blurs the boundaries between worlds. The sense of adventure and local flair reminds us of Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill, making this one of the more inventive and genre-bending books this fall. The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a total trip.* * *
Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.1. Obits by Tess Liem (Coach House Books)I first fell in love with Tess Liem’s work when I read her chapbook, Tell everybody I say hi. Her personal and candid voice returns in Obits, a debut collection of poems written for those whose voices have been forgotten or neglected: a missing memorial, a statistic, a fictional character. Though the obituary is front and centre, the formal variation in these poems coupled with an intimate tone is striking. Consider the first poem, in which writing about the dead turns self-effacing:
I write the names of missing & murdered women
in a notebook.
I set up alerts.
I add up.
Each day a new sum.
What does that do
is the same as asking
What doesn’t that do.
I doubt they want to be poems.These poems move through you and touch that honest part of you that sometimes refuses to look at even itself.
2. Paper Caskets by Emiia Danielewska (NeWest Press)Danielewska’s first book, Paper Caskets, takes the box as its conceit, offering prose poems about mortality and death through the objects of the coffin and the photograph. Her poems ask us to approach the threshold of the morbid and abject with reverence and curiosity. This is a book that makes the unfathomable real, and it shows us how to continue this grand existential journey we call life.
3. The Suitcase and the Jar by Becky Livingston (Caitlin Press)Becky Livingston has lived her book: The Suitcase and the Jar: Travels with a Daughter’s Ashes. When a brain tumour took the life of her 23-year-old daughter, Livingston’s journey through grief transformed into a twenty-six month journey to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, India, England, Ireland, and North America, coast to coast, with her daughter’s ashes. The Suitcase and the Jar is a heartfelt memoir of a mother’s love and the surprising strength and resilience borne of grief. Livingston’s writing is resonant and moving, and it will definitely get us running to hug our beautiful moms.
4. The Grimoire of Kensington Market by Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn)The Grimoire of Kensington Market follows Maggie, a recovering addict who manages The Grimoire bookstore. Fantastical elements form the fabric of this novel that is part fairy tale, part junkie odyssey as the space of the bookstore transforms according to the stories that move through it. After receiving mysterious notes, Maggie decides to follow their trail and discovers that they’re from her brother, who has been using Elysium, an all-consuming drug that blurs the boundaries between worlds. The sense of adventure and local flair reminds us of Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill, making this one of the more inventive and genre-bending books this fall. The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a total trip.* * *
Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.4. The Grimoire of Kensington Market by Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn)The Grimoire of Kensington Market follows Maggie, a recovering addict who manages The Grimoire bookstore. Fantastical elements form the fabric of this novel that is part fairy tale, part junkie odyssey as the space of the bookstore transforms according to the stories that move through it. After receiving mysterious notes, Maggie decides to follow their trail and discovers that they’re from her brother, who has been using Elysium, an all-consuming drug that blurs the boundaries between worlds. The sense of adventure and local flair reminds us of Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill, making this one of the more inventive and genre-bending books this fall. The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a total trip.* * *Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.
1. Obits by Tess Liem (Coach House Books)I first fell in love with Tess Liem’s work when I read her chapbook, Tell everybody I say hi. Her personal and candid voice returns in Obits, a debut collection of poems written for those whose voices have been forgotten or neglected: a missing memorial, a statistic, a fictional character. Though the obituary is front and centre, the formal variation in these poems coupled with an intimate tone is striking. Consider the first poem, in which writing about the dead turns self-effacing:
I write the names of missing & murdered women
in a notebook.
I set up alerts.
I add up.
Each day a new sum.
What does that do
is the same as asking
What doesn’t that do.
I doubt they want to be poems.These poems move through you and touch that honest part of you that sometimes refuses to look at even itself.
2. Paper Caskets by Emiia Danielewska (NeWest Press)Danielewska’s first book, Paper Caskets, takes the box as its conceit, offering prose poems about mortality and death through the objects of the coffin and the photograph. Her poems ask us to approach the threshold of the morbid and abject with reverence and curiosity. This is a book that makes the unfathomable real, and it shows us how to continue this grand existential journey we call life.
3. The Suitcase and the Jar by Becky Livingston (Caitlin Press)Becky Livingston has lived her book: The Suitcase and the Jar: Travels with a Daughter’s Ashes. When a brain tumour took the life of her 23-year-old daughter, Livingston’s journey through grief transformed into a twenty-six month journey to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, India, England, Ireland, and North America, coast to coast, with her daughter’s ashes. The Suitcase and the Jar is a heartfelt memoir of a mother’s love and the surprising strength and resilience borne of grief. Livingston’s writing is resonant and moving, and it will definitely get us running to hug our beautiful moms.
4. The Grimoire of Kensington Market by Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn)The Grimoire of Kensington Market follows Maggie, a recovering addict who manages The Grimoire bookstore. Fantastical elements form the fabric of this novel that is part fairy tale, part junkie odyssey as the space of the bookstore transforms according to the stories that move through it. After receiving mysterious notes, Maggie decides to follow their trail and discovers that they’re from her brother, who has been using Elysium, an all-consuming drug that blurs the boundaries between worlds. The sense of adventure and local flair reminds us of Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill, making this one of the more inventive and genre-bending books this fall. The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a total trip.* * *
Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.2. Paper Caskets by Emiia Danielewska (NeWest Press)Danielewska’s first book, Paper Caskets, takes the box as its conceit, offering prose poems about mortality and death through the objects of the coffin and the photograph. Her poems ask us to approach the threshold of the morbid and abject with reverence and curiosity. This is a book that makes the unfathomable real, and it shows us how to continue this grand existential journey we call life.3. The Suitcase and the Jar by Becky Livingston (Caitlin Press)Becky Livingston has lived her book: The Suitcase and the Jar: Travels with a Daughter’s Ashes. When a brain tumour took the life of her 23-year-old daughter, Livingston’s journey through grief transformed into a twenty-six month journey to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, India, England, Ireland, and North America, coast to coast, with her daughter’s ashes. The Suitcase and the Jar is a heartfelt memoir of a mother’s love and the surprising strength and resilience borne of grief. Livingston’s writing is resonant and moving, and it will definitely get us running to hug our beautiful moms.
4. The Grimoire of Kensington Market by Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn)The Grimoire of Kensington Market follows Maggie, a recovering addict who manages The Grimoire bookstore. Fantastical elements form the fabric of this novel that is part fairy tale, part junkie odyssey as the space of the bookstore transforms according to the stories that move through it. After receiving mysterious notes, Maggie decides to follow their trail and discovers that they’re from her brother, who has been using Elysium, an all-consuming drug that blurs the boundaries between worlds. The sense of adventure and local flair reminds us of Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill, making this one of the more inventive and genre-bending books this fall. The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a total trip.* * *
Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.
1. Obits by Tess Liem (Coach House Books)I first fell in love with Tess Liem’s work when I read her chapbook, Tell everybody I say hi. Her personal and candid voice returns in Obits, a debut collection of poems written for those whose voices have been forgotten or neglected: a missing memorial, a statistic, a fictional character. Though the obituary is front and centre, the formal variation in these poems coupled with an intimate tone is striking. Consider the first poem, in which writing about the dead turns self-effacing:
I write the names of missing & murdered women
in a notebook.
I set up alerts.
I add up.
Each day a new sum.
What does that do
is the same as asking
What doesn’t that do.
I doubt they want to be poems.These poems move through you and touch that honest part of you that sometimes refuses to look at even itself.
2. Paper Caskets by Emiia Danielewska (NeWest Press)Danielewska’s first book, Paper Caskets, takes the box as its conceit, offering prose poems about mortality and death through the objects of the coffin and the photograph. Her poems ask us to approach the threshold of the morbid and abject with reverence and curiosity. This is a book that makes the unfathomable real, and it shows us how to continue this grand existential journey we call life.
3. The Suitcase and the Jar by Becky Livingston (Caitlin Press)Becky Livingston has lived her book: The Suitcase and the Jar: Travels with a Daughter’s Ashes. When a brain tumour took the life of her 23-year-old daughter, Livingston’s journey through grief transformed into a twenty-six month journey to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, India, England, Ireland, and North America, coast to coast, with her daughter’s ashes. The Suitcase and the Jar is a heartfelt memoir of a mother’s love and the surprising strength and resilience borne of grief. Livingston’s writing is resonant and moving, and it will definitely get us running to hug our beautiful moms.
4. The Grimoire of Kensington Market by Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn)The Grimoire of Kensington Market follows Maggie, a recovering addict who manages The Grimoire bookstore. Fantastical elements form the fabric of this novel that is part fairy tale, part junkie odyssey as the space of the bookstore transforms according to the stories that move through it. After receiving mysterious notes, Maggie decides to follow their trail and discovers that they’re from her brother, who has been using Elysium, an all-consuming drug that blurs the boundaries between worlds. The sense of adventure and local flair reminds us of Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill, making this one of the more inventive and genre-bending books this fall. The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a total trip.* * *
Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.4. The Grimoire of Kensington Market by Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn)The Grimoire of Kensington Market follows Maggie, a recovering addict who manages The Grimoire bookstore. Fantastical elements form the fabric of this novel that is part fairy tale, part junkie odyssey as the space of the bookstore transforms according to the stories that move through it. After receiving mysterious notes, Maggie decides to follow their trail and discovers that they’re from her brother, who has been using Elysium, an all-consuming drug that blurs the boundaries between worlds. The sense of adventure and local flair reminds us of Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill, making this one of the more inventive and genre-bending books this fall. The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a total trip.* * *Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.
2. Paper Caskets by Emiia Danielewska (NeWest Press)Danielewska’s first book, Paper Caskets, takes the box as its conceit, offering prose poems about mortality and death through the objects of the coffin and the photograph. Her poems ask us to approach the threshold of the morbid and abject with reverence and curiosity. This is a book that makes the unfathomable real, and it shows us how to continue this grand existential journey we call life.
3. The Suitcase and the Jar by Becky Livingston (Caitlin Press)Becky Livingston has lived her book: The Suitcase and the Jar: Travels with a Daughter’s Ashes. When a brain tumour took the life of her 23-year-old daughter, Livingston’s journey through grief transformed into a twenty-six month journey to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, India, England, Ireland, and North America, coast to coast, with her daughter’s ashes. The Suitcase and the Jar is a heartfelt memoir of a mother’s love and the surprising strength and resilience borne of grief. Livingston’s writing is resonant and moving, and it will definitely get us running to hug our beautiful moms.
4. The Grimoire of Kensington Market by Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn)The Grimoire of Kensington Market follows Maggie, a recovering addict who manages The Grimoire bookstore. Fantastical elements form the fabric of this novel that is part fairy tale, part junkie odyssey as the space of the bookstore transforms according to the stories that move through it. After receiving mysterious notes, Maggie decides to follow their trail and discovers that they’re from her brother, who has been using Elysium, an all-consuming drug that blurs the boundaries between worlds. The sense of adventure and local flair reminds us of Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill, making this one of the more inventive and genre-bending books this fall. The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a total trip.* * *
Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.
1. Obits by Tess Liem (Coach House Books)I first fell in love with Tess Liem’s work when I read her chapbook, Tell everybody I say hi. Her personal and candid voice returns in Obits, a debut collection of poems written for those whose voices have been forgotten or neglected: a missing memorial, a statistic, a fictional character. Though the obituary is front and centre, the formal variation in these poems coupled with an intimate tone is striking. Consider the first poem, in which writing about the dead turns self-effacing:
I write the names of missing & murdered women
in a notebook.
I set up alerts.
I add up.
Each day a new sum.
What does that do
is the same as asking
What doesn’t that do.
I doubt they want to be poems.These poems move through you and touch that honest part of you that sometimes refuses to look at even itself.
2. Paper Caskets by Emiia Danielewska (NeWest Press)Danielewska’s first book, Paper Caskets, takes the box as its conceit, offering prose poems about mortality and death through the objects of the coffin and the photograph. Her poems ask us to approach the threshold of the morbid and abject with reverence and curiosity. This is a book that makes the unfathomable real, and it shows us how to continue this grand existential journey we call life.
3. The Suitcase and the Jar by Becky Livingston (Caitlin Press)Becky Livingston has lived her book: The Suitcase and the Jar: Travels with a Daughter’s Ashes. When a brain tumour took the life of her 23-year-old daughter, Livingston’s journey through grief transformed into a twenty-six month journey to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, India, England, Ireland, and North America, coast to coast, with her daughter’s ashes. The Suitcase and the Jar is a heartfelt memoir of a mother’s love and the surprising strength and resilience borne of grief. Livingston’s writing is resonant and moving, and it will definitely get us running to hug our beautiful moms.
4. The Grimoire of Kensington Market by Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn)The Grimoire of Kensington Market follows Maggie, a recovering addict who manages The Grimoire bookstore. Fantastical elements form the fabric of this novel that is part fairy tale, part junkie odyssey as the space of the bookstore transforms according to the stories that move through it. After receiving mysterious notes, Maggie decides to follow their trail and discovers that they’re from her brother, who has been using Elysium, an all-consuming drug that blurs the boundaries between worlds. The sense of adventure and local flair reminds us of Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill, making this one of the more inventive and genre-bending books this fall. The Grimoire of Kensington Market is a total trip.* * *
Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards, received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, Canadian Literature, the Puritan, and Metatron’s ALPHA and OMEGA. She lives in Vancouver where she works as an editor and teaches creative writing. She is at work on a book of stories and a second book of poems.
