Rudrapriya Rathore on Kayla Czaga: For Your Safety Please Hold On
For Your Safety Please Hold On, Kayla Czaga. Nightwood Editions (2014). Kayla Czaga’s debut collection of poetry, For Your Safety Please Hold On, manages a balance in voice and tone that is likeable, playful, domestic—but also unpredictable, full of precipices and turns. Poems such as “Gertrude Stein Loves a Girl,” “Some Girls” and “For Play” question...
Cornelia Barber in Conversation with Ana Božičević
What does it mean for the subject of a poem to embody selflessness; to face death with contemplation and elation; to strive to see our screwed up world objectively, but with care; and to rise to the occasion of an ethical poetics? Ana Božičević invited me to her lovely Lefferts Gardens apartment, made a superb...
Kailey Havelock on Karen Connelly: Come Cold River
Come Cold River. Karen Connelly. Quattro Books (2013). aaaaaaNot a door or a window left of that time aaaaaaNothing to walk back inside aaaaaaonly recollections of people scattered aaaaaaaaaaaaanameless or forgotten aaaaaaWhat is the use of a people’s history? (101) These lines appear in the second to last poem of Karen Connelly’s Come Cold River,...
Hannah Hackney on Suzannah Showler: Failure to Thrive
Failure to Thrive. Suzannah Showler. ECW Press (2014) There is a common thread running through these poems – fundamentally, the wry, desolate voice – but Showler’s dark debut collection reveals a range of talents. Her confidence and vision are equally felt in the mapping of a cerebral artifact, such as “A Short History of the...
Geneviève Robichaud on erica kaufman: INSTANT CLASSIC
INSTANT CLASSIC, erica kaufman (Roof Books, 2013) “we can’t all be ballerinas, ducks, or robots / and we can’t all heed the ventriloquist and live / in the apothecary’s store indulging in mercury, tobacco....” (17). In erica kaufman’s INSTANT CLASSIC the question of ‘why/how poetry?’ crescendos into several lines of inquiry: “Who owns language? Is...
Cornelia Barber in Conversation with Cecilia Corrigan
Cecilia and I talked about her explosively polyvocal book of poetry Titanic; poetic methodologies; abjection; intimacy; Epicurean balance; rebellion against the normal tired format of the poetry reading; her performance of the misconstrued ‘dumb blonde’; and the influence of all of it on developing a poetics, and a message. Cecilia is vivacious and blunt. Whether...
Jacob Wren on Leanne Simpson: Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back & Islands of Decolonial Love
Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence, Leanne Simpson (ARP Books, 2011) Islands of Decolonial Love: Stories and Songs, Leanne Simpson (ARP Books, 2013) There is a short sentence I keep coming back to, only seven words: how to live as if it...
David Walker on Craig Cotter: After Lunch with Frank O’Hara
After Lunch with Frank O’Hara, Craig Cotter (Chelsea Station Editions 2014) In 1959, Frank O’Hara published “Personism: A Manifesto”, a tongue-in-cheek essay that, for all its cynicism towards critical prose about poetry – the essay’s first line insists that “everything is in the poems” (247) – remains the clearest articulation of O’Hara’s casual, intimate poetics....
Sophie Seita on Bernadette Mayer: Sonnets
Sonnets, Bernadette Mayer. Tender Buttons Press, 2014 Grace Notes for Bernadette * I might sing forever with never a goal nor solution * Full of luxury, grace notes, prosperousness and charm * while singing of the pleasures of good gianthood * The commonality of all form is constraint and its bending: mine is length...
Mat Laporte on Katy Bohinc: Dear Alain
Dear Alain, Katy Bohinc. Tender Buttons Press, 2014 Dear Katy, I wrote you once to say I was afraid to review your book because I’m afraid to draw the wrath of Bro Marxists. But on second thought, I realized this epistolary form might be one way to circumvent that. For starters, a letter is not as...
Malcolm Sutton in Conversation with Alisha Piercy: Bunny and Shark
Malcolm Sutton (MS): Your new novel, Bunny and Shark (BookThug 2014), centres on a Playboy Bunny who is thrown out, in a most dramatic and violent gesture, by her long-time lover. This happens to her at a critical moment in her life: when her power over men is diminishing as her body becomes less desirable...
Trisha Low on Steven Zultanski’s Bribery and Brandon Brown’s Top 40
I guess there are certain things that one is obligated not to talk about in a book review, like one’s personal relationship to the authors of those books one is reviewing, or really, any personal details about oneself. But for the purposes of this review, honestly let’s just fuck it. I, Trisha Low, am friends...
