Lady Godiva and Me by Liam Guilar

Reviewed by Joanna M. Weston These poems are not about Lady Godiva’s ride, but rather about those who lived, or live, in Coventry. The poems are like the voices heard...

Penny Dreadful by Shannon Stewart

Reviewed by Michelle Miller Murder is horrifying. And the serial murders of a specific demographic of vulnerable people—like aboriginal women living in Canada’s poorest neighbourhood and making a living from...

Near Cooper Marsh by Jesse Ferguson

Near Cooper Marsh by Jesse Ferguson

By Skoopchap
Review by Rob Taylor The simple fact that this review is written for an online audience greatly increases the chances that you will have already heard of Fredericton (formerly Ottawa)-based poet Jesse Ferguson. Amongst the plethora of poets whose work has found a strong footing in online and small-press publications, Ferguson is near the top of the list in both quantity and quality. To attest to this one need look no further than the acknowledgements page of his chapbook Near Cooper Marsh, which notes that the fifteen poems in the collection have been published in no fewer than ten small-press magazines. It is therefore in keeping that Near Cooper Marsh itself has been published online (http://www.fridaycircle.uottawa.ca/ferguson/ii-6-main.html) as part of the
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Transversals for Orpheus & the untitled 1-13 by Garry Thomas Morse

By Skoopchap
Review by Rob Mclennan. One of the first series of LINEbooks produced through Vancouver’s West Coast Line magazine, Garry Thomas Morse’s Transversals for Orpheus & the untitled 1-13 works from what Erin Mouré called “transelation,” working poems by Pessoa into her own Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person (Toronto ON: House of Anansi Press, 2001). In the back of his first collection of poetry, writing “for a case of textual influenza (antidote included): Sielger, Spicer, Blaser, okay Rilke too…” into his acknowledgments, he references a number of source materials for his pieces, including Talonbooks publisher Karl Sielger’s own translation of Rilke’s complete Sonnets to Orpheus (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 1977), recently included in the first publication of this same series, companions
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Sporatic Growth by Jay MillAr

Sporatic Growth by Jay MillAr

By Skoopchap
Review by Rob Mclennan. B ebb uterus larvae gesture in it is an alley in it is alive laying redistributed i shed great by dared kinetic relish old low street change in gifts think converting excrement larvae gestures dead is how even if their content varies exam in ate a thread distance health inside part ice culinary lying oval void continues vexed the inside holds lower could never express holy low wing After years of producing work in books and chapbooks, it seems as though Toronto poet and publisher Jay MillAr is coming into his own, much the way Prince George poet Rob Budde has over the past few publications out of his own British Columbia north, both working in
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Merrybegot by Mary Dalton

Merrybegot by Mary Dalton

By Skoopchap
Review by Melanie Maddix. When I first read Mary Dalton’s Merrybegot (Audio Book | Print Version), I was immediately taken in by its musicality. This book loves language. The idioms of Newfoundland take some getting used to, and I must confess that I still don’t know what they all mean. For the most part it can be guessed at by the context, or if you are the studious type, Dalton provides a web link for The Dictionary of Newfoundland English. A few poems are taken directly from the dictionary. Dalton formed “She” from a usage example for saucy: Was as good a gun As ever was put to your face, And she could kill anywhere. All you had to do
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Headframe: 2 by Birk Sproxton

Headframe: 2 by Birk Sproxton

By Skoopchap
Review by Rob Mclennan. I haven’t read any of Sproxton’s work before, but it would be difficult to not know that he has been publishing for years, including the long poem Headframe: (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1985), the novels The Red-Headed Woman with the Black Black Heart (Turnstone Press, 1997) and The Hockey Fan Came Riding (Turnstone Press, 1990), and the collection Phantom Lake: North of 54 (Edmonton AB: University of Alberta Press, 2005). His newest collection is a follow-up to his long poem, the collection Headframe: 2 (Turnstone Press, 2006). A prolific editor, he is also responsible for the collections The Winnipeg Connection: Writing Lives at Mid-Century (Winnipeg MB: Prairie Fire Press, 2006), Trace: Prairie Writers on Writing (Turnstone
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Ricochet by Seymour Mayne

Ricochet by Seymour Mayne

By Skoopchap
Reviewed by Liam Ford Ricochet is a slim but impressive volume of word sonnets by the form’s pioneer, Seymour Mayne. A word sonnet is a fourteen line poem, where each line contains a single word: the process of reading becomes a meditation, an expansion. Its reader quickly grasps the similarity to haiku, where the beauty of the poem lies in simplicity and succinctness. But where a haiku creates a scene, universal and eternal, like cycles of life and death, or of the seasons, these word sonnets choose different themes and lack an inherent, comforting circularity. Furthermore, constricted by rigid formal rules, the syllabic structure of haiku ensures that no word is used superfluously. Here, the universality of the haiku is
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Ricochet by Seymour Mayne

By Skoopchap
Title: Ricochet Author: Seymour Mayne Publisher: Mosaic Press Year: 2004 Pages: n/a     Ricochet is a slim but impressive volume of word sonnets by the form’s pioneer, Seymour Mayne. A word sonnet is a fourteen line poem, where each line contains a single word: the process of reading becomes a meditation, an expansion. Its reader quickly grasps the similarity to haiku, where the beauty of the poem lies in simplicity and succinctness. But where a haiku creates a scene, universal and eternal, like cycles of life and death, or of the seasons, these word sonnets choose different themes and lack an inherent, comforting circularity. Furthermore, constricted by rigid formal rules, the syllabic structure of haiku ensures that no word is used superfluously. Here, the universality
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Decreation Poetry, Essays, Opera by Anne Carson

Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera by Anne Carson

By Skoopchap
Reviewed by James Pollock Anne Carson is often called avant-garde because of her generic innovations and her experiments with prosody and form. The label clearly makes some sense, at least superficially: think of her genre-bending book Short Talks, for example, or the arbitrarily end-stopped lines in her early sequence The Life of Towns. What is less commonly acknowledged is that Carson is also a radically traditional writer; she is a professor of classics, a superb translator from ancient Greek, and in her own writing she returns again and again to the ancient roots, the classical and biblical origins of Western literature. These facts, combined with her interest in certain great innovators of the twentieth century like Paul Celan and Samuel
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