Tanis MacDonald on Kathryn Mockler’s Onion Man
Onion Man, Kathryn Mockler. Tightrope Books, 2011. by Tanis MacDonald The individual poems of Kathryn Mockler’s Onion Man, which hover between a novel in verse and a long poem sequence, appear on the page in vertical chunks of text, rarely taking up a whole page or even venturing out into a long poetic line. One reviewer has...
Alex Porco on Victor Coleman’s ivH: An Alphamath Serial
Victor Coleman, ivH: An Alphamath Serial, BookThug 2012 I can explain my meaning best by mathematics.– Ezra Pound Since the late 1960s, Victor Coleman has been committed to innovative poetic practices—from the serial poem to performance poetry (e.g., in 1978, under the name Vic d’Or, he released the album 33/3); from projective verse to acrostics...
Please, No More Poetry: The Poetry of derek beaulieu
Please, No More Poetry: The Poetry of derek beaulieu, derek beaulieu, ed. Kit Dobson. WLUP, 2013. by Eric Schmaltz With the release of Please, No More Poetry: The Poetry of derek beaulieu (edited by Kit Dobson), beaulieu has become the youngest author to have a collection published as part of the Laurier Poetry Series to...
Jacqueline Valencia: Two Short Takes, Upstream Color and Sound Of My Voice
Film: Upstream Color Director: Shane Carruth Writer: Shane Carruth Cast: Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig, Country: USA Year: 2013 Upstream Color is the latest sci-fi offering by Primer director Shane Carruth. After Kris (played seamlessly by Amy Semeteiz) endures an abuse, she must learn how to rebuild her life and ultimately her identity. She...
The Line Has Shattered: Vancouver, 1963
It was open…everything, all of a sudden, was open… This looks fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. Must have.
Ken Babstock on John Degen
HOW POEMS WORK KEN BABSTOCK Reluctance BY JOHN DEGEN from the air, the city cloaks itself in nature, patchy, black-green forests and empty roads beyond the runway fence, the blood-brown metal capsules of abandoned turbo-props; curious long-limbed dogs watch us from a fuselage, bowing noses to their feet, eyes shifting to each other and back...
Adam Sol: Short Take on Lists
Short Take on Lists, Adam Sol Nicholas Papaxanthos’ short piece on Dean Young made me think of another user of lists, Don McKay. Young and McKay are very different poets, but they both have a tendency to “pile on.” As Papaxanthos observes, Young’s triplets are “purposely leaving something out,” to force us to make connections...
Shannon Maguire’s furl(l) parachute
fur(l) parachute, Shannon Maguire. BookThug, 2013. by Eric Schmaltz Following up on her shortlist nomination for the 2011 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Writing, Shannon Maguire–proving herself to be a stunning new voice in Canadian letters–has released her first trade collection fur(l) parachute. Prior to this release, Maguire has proven to be most industrious, producing...
Julie Bruck’s Monkey Ranch and Steven Price’s Omens in the Year of the Ox
Monkey Ranch, Julie Bruck. Brick Books, 2012. Omens in the Year of the Ox, Steven Price. Brick Books, 2012. by Myna Wallin Monkey Ranch is Julie Bruck’s third collection of poetry published by Brick Books, following The End of Travel (1999), and The Woman Downstairs (1993), which won the A.M. Klein Award for Poetry. Perhaps you...
Adam Dickinson’s The Polymers
The Polymers, Adam Dickinson. Anansi, 2013. by Rachael Wyatt This book attracted me, initially, with its use of polymer plastics as a conceit for drawing a collection together. Even before opening the book, possibilities abound: chemical structures are a beautiful, alien language and polymers are ubiquitous in everyday plastics as well as biologically, right down...
Amber Dawn’s How Poetry Saved My Life
How Poetry Saved My Life, Amber Dawn. Arsenal Pulp, 2013. by Heather Cromarty TO WRITE Given the task of writing a lecture on women and fiction in 1928, Virginia Woolf, while searching for first-hand historical documentation of women’s lives, found herself “looking about the shelves for books that were not there” (A Room of One’s...
Nicholas Papaxanthos on Dean Young
Dean Young’s Word Triplets We could say that there is a narrative to these three words: brick, blood-drop, red feather, which entails the passage from inert material to mortal flesh to a sort of avian/angelic possibility, or we could say that what holds those things together is their redness. I try to be alert to...
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