experimental poetry communicates changing times while remaining timeless
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Book Review
TAKEWING a.m., written and Illustrated by Brenda J. Wilson. FriesenPress, 348 pages TAKEWING a.m. is Brenda J. Wilson’s first novel, although she has a long track record as a media producer, librarian, photographer and educator. She also wears […]
Run J Run, Sokol’s latest novel, was published in May this year by Renaissance Press, a publishing company whose roster features writing that doesn’t fit into a standard genre, niche or demographic and which hopes to uplift marginalized […]
Being Chinese in Canada: The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging by William Ging Wee Dere Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 (400 pages) A life of struggle for redress from Canada’s systemic racism From 1885 to 1947, some […]
My Undiscovered Country by Cyril Dabydeen, Mosaic Press (2018), 129 pages Cyril Dabydeen is a Canadian writer born in 1945 in Canje, Guyana, where he worked as a teacher. He came to Canada in 1970 to study at Lakehead […]
In Which, Being Book One of the Chronicles of Deasil Widdy by Louise Carson, Broken Rules Press (Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Québec), 2018, 152 pages “Their long horns drooped and they seemed half asleep, unable to feel his presence. Perhaps I am […]
Me Artsy, compiled and edited by Drew Hayden Taylor Douglas & McIntyre, 2015 (256 pages) The best way to enter into the spirit of this luminous collection of essays is to quote what Drew Hayden Taylor, its compiler and […]
Kingdom of Olives and Ash, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, 2017, HarperCollins Publishers, 448 pages The “land of milk and honey” generally refers to the promised land of Jewish tradition. As a notion, it denotes a […]
Hussey, Charlotte. Glossing the Spoils. Awen Publications: Stroud, England, 2017 (2nd edition), 72 pages. Montréal poet and scholar Charlotte Hussey’s most recent book of poetry, published by an Irish imprint, was sparked by a quest for reconnection to the […]
Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead, 2018, Arsenal Pulp Press (Vancouver), 223 pages Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree/nehiyaw, Two-Spirit /Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty). He is also the author of full metal-indigiqueer and winner of the […]
Maru and the Maple Leaf by Uma Parameswaran, Larkuma Publishing, 2016 (367 pages) Uma Parameswaran, a retired professor of English (University of Winnipeg) and well known author with a special interest in women’s literature and South Asian culture, has […]
“The walk is a journey of the spirit carried by the body like a good friend, and sitting is an important part of the walking.”
Nungak delivers an often humorous, in-your-face account of the history of Nunavik
In her personal life, her friendship with a Zimbabwean fellow doctor earns her a brutal “correction” from her fellow countrymen.
Pay heed to the final words of a profound thinker.
Days of Moonlight by Loren Edizel, Inanna Publications Inc., Toronto, Ontario, 205 pages The compelling, contradictory nature of cover blurbs! They excite and prod the reader on. Depending on the era – from Jane Austen to Grace Metalious, from […]
Radius Islamicus by Julian Samuel, Guernica Editions, 2018 “The radius islamicus is the farthest distance a camel part is thrown from the blast centre.” The narrator of Julian Samuel’s second novel is a “stateless” leader who supposedly spent more […]
“Nowhere in these treaties or court decisions does it say we grant you permission to take over management and control of our territory and our lives.”
Promises for compensation are made and broken as a matter of course.
“A poisonous, crucial element of this imposed expectation is that brown people and their books should look back, into a past and a place that may never have existed.”
November: Poems by Jaspreet Singh, Bayeux Arts, July 2017 Jaspreet Singh’s new anthology of poems, November, is about memories of pain, grief, migration and mourning, following the 1984 mass murder of Sikhs across India, and the loss – thirty years […]
Undoctored is an honest, well-researched, clearly written indictment of an unholy alliance that affects each and every one of us.
In this well-researched and incisive book written at breakneck speed (to match the speed of Donald Trump’s sharp turns in the White House), Klein makes it very clear that Trump’s rise to power is not an aberration, but rather the inevitable culmination of neoliberal politics in recent decades.
Who is (are?) the actual culprit(s?) in both books and in the film? Please do not consider my initial question as a provocation, but as something to be taken literally, although ironically so.
The precariat is growing because “there was a crude social compact in the globalisation era.”
Chew-Bose invites us to meander with her through her thoughts and live with her reflections on a wide variety of subjects touching on relationships, art, movies, music.
“War on drugs is hell,” announced Candide to his friend. “Someone’s always trying to rip off your grow-op. They better learn to cultivate their own garden if they know what’s good for them.”
The title of The Invention of Wings is inspired by ancient black folklore which maintains that Africans were able to fly before they lost their wings when trapped into slavery.
I opened Dean Steadman’s collection hoping for something rich and flavourful, and I was not disappointed.
Set in the near future and structured into two books, the novel tells the story of a family and their fraught journey from New York City to Montréal, or, in some respects, from the dangers of dystopia to the refuge of utopia.
