Book Review: tend by Kate Hargreaves

By Caprice Hogg

This small book of poems is thought provoking, with little moments of time captured in words. The poems were visceral. They evoked all the senses. The reader cannot help but to be transported when they read lines like this: “The shower coaxes the woodsmoke from your hair, macerates all that’s between your toes, softens callouses that forgot the feel of floors”.

I enjoyed sitting down to read this book from cover to cover but also found pleasure in picking it up at odd moments and opening to a random page to just read a poem or two. I have read the poems over and over. Each time my thoughts would skip a beat with a line in a poem that was completely unexpected. A poem about a pumpkin plant growing throughout the summer would end describing the cat’s new litter box. The poems made the synapses in my brain jump. The poet takes us to a different world—she takes us west. She shows examples of seeing life in a different way, a different lifestyle. Here is one of my favorite excerpts from her poem “Plans”:

I’m leaving town to felt shirts out of belly button lint

got big plans for the coast

where snow doesn’t harden

and you can leave keys in your door

making proposals to salt water

I’ll learn to weave long underwear

out of barbershop trimmings

melt acrylic nails down for windowpanes

and pulp utility bills into letter stock

Perhaps the reason these words resonate with me is because I too have moved west. In just a few words, Hargreaves has transported the reader to a wholly fresh life. I like to imagine that life even if I choose not to live it fully. And maybe as I read these poems more, I will be able to create more of that sweet life in my daily life? Isn’t that what poetry and art is all about? This book only has 84 pages and some pages contain only a few words, but they leave the reader wanting more. It felt like taking a trip and it is one I would highly recommend.

Thank you to Book*hug Press for the complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Healing Through Words by Rupi Kaur

By Kaylie Seed

Rupi Kaur is an extremely well-known poet. She has written a number of poetry collections and continues to be a favourite among poetry lovers around the world. In September 2022 Kaur published Healing Through Words, a collection of guided writing exercises meant to get you writing while also diving deep into your personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This guided tour is meant to be a journey back to oneself and a mindful exploration through writing. Part self-help experience, part writing exercise collection, Healing Through Words is meant to evoke creativity and a genuine sense of healing.

There are a number of themes that are explored throughout the book and a lot of them push writers to really dig deep and come face-to-face with topics that can be uncomfortable. Kaur notes that if any topic feels like too much or if the writer is not ready to address certain aspects of their life, experiences, or self, they can skip portions of the exercises. While writers are encouraged to explore trauma, loss, heartache, love, family, healing, and celebration of the self, Kaur also reminds writers to first take care of themselves and take breaks as needed or omit sections altogether and return to them if and when the writer feels comfortable to do so.

I personally love to both read and write poetry, so having the opportunity to work through these exercises was cathartic and helped to reignite my love of writing in general. Kaur put a lot of thought and care into the exercises that she created for Healing Through Words and what is so lovely is that you can continue to go back to these exercises whenever you are in need of some inspiration or really feel like digging into the uncomfortable parts of yourself. I recommend Healing Through Words not only to writers, but to those who are looking to know themselves better or address things in their life through writing.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Claimings and Other Wild Things by Noelle Schmidt

By Meredith Grace Thompson

Claimings and Other Wild Things, the debut poetry collection from queer, non-binary poet Noelle Schmidt, is filled with echoes, reverberations, becomings, and claimings. It is a gathered collection—a found collection. Schmidt is a poet on the rise, a poet in the making, crackling with self-effacement, and yet bounding with self-worth, learning and growing and finding and filling their place in the Canadian literary world.

The collection is lyrical, verging on confessional, dancing through the effervescence of thought, and landing for brief moments on memory, exploration, finding, and changing, before continuing to flow forward. Pushing against but never resting on structures of contemporary spoken-word poetry, Noelle Schmidt’s speaker loudly asks poignant questions of the world around them. In the titular poem, they exemplify the grandiosity attempted throughout the collection with the metaphoric claiming of self in a glory of the non-binary.

This collection explores the power of claiming, and subsequently the power of the label. The non-binary poet rises to meet me, the non-binary critic, and we both are seen by one another in a beautiful and encapsulating way. The strength and experimentation of the collection exists in the individual poems, rather than in the structure of the whole. What the larger collection does do is present an argumentation for the question and necessity of labels, of definition with the everyday for the non-binary speaker, and both the freedom and limit of those labels.

The authenticity of these poems, in the way that they cling together and yet stand apart, is something quite beautiful. This collection feels like a chrysalis, standing on the edge of its own becoming. The voice of these poems is in a state of agitation and of growing. The agitation comes from the need to shed the old and become what is new. There are many claimings in this collection and many wild things. I look forward to reading what Noelle Schmidt creates next.

Thank you to Latitude 46 Publishing for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Dissonance Engine by David Dowker

By Sara Hailstone

Dissonance Engine by David Dowker is a complex and intriguing book of poetry. The text is divided into four separate sections: 1) Time-Sensitive Material; 2) Chronotope, or Sorrow’s Echo; 3) Glossation; and 4) Orders of Multitudes. Dissonance Engine exists as an intersection between the physical body, language, machination of living, and life’s software programming of behaviour and social constructs. Understood as a “literary Necker cube,” the reader can view life from various two-dimensional cube-faces. Essentially, life in 3D shifts continuously and is not what it appears to be. Amongst this shifting, the reader can slowly glean a way of being: otherworldliness layered with engine and cog, and an ethereal ghostly fabric.

My reading of the text fluctuates between orienting to various schematics and matrices, to striving to find meaning of what Dowker is communicating with the mechanics of his text and message. What human meaning of existing can be extrapolated or achieved in facing the complexity of our lives and bodies functioning as engines of dissonance? Perhaps I can attempt, with this review, to move the conversation along into further acknowledging the meanings that are applied to this complexity and layered contemplation of the human condition.  

David Dowker is the author of three other texts as well as having been the editor of The Alterran Poetry Assemblage from 1996 to 2004. The titles and dates of his texts include Machine Language (2010); Virtualis: Topologies of the Unreal, co-written with Christine Stewart (2013); and Mantis (2018). He was born in Kingston, Ontario but lives in Toronto. I did locate two readings of his poetry that Dowker has done on YouTube and highly recommend viewing these clips to access the tone and breadth of his poetic style.

Overall, Dissonance Engine functions as individual components in a machine that make up a whole—these components being the individual parts of the body and sensorial perception, schematics and societal structures, as well as an exploration of the actual mechanics of poetry. Poetics exist autonomously and as abstraction. The body exists as “a mobile eternity,” and a “ghostly double/ inscrutable as/ the encoded night.” In trying to achieve understanding, we wrestle with “the exhausted vault/ of the poetic.” I want, as a reader, to apply this discourse and structure of semantics to thinking and to languages that present in ways that Western society doesn’t primarily orient within. I wonder how an encounter with the engine of dissonance would result thereafter?

I pulled from the text that crouching amidst the cogs of a machine is a general human “eeriness,” or darkness that we try to avoid, smooth over, or repress in the crux of the human living experience. This darkness is encased inside the horror of failing muses, unoriginal and vain existences of imitation and superficial distraction. “The smoothness of the delusion is not an occasion for celebration,” Dowker writes. Further, we, as a human species, do not want “otherness” or “justification,” in our complicated situations. We suffer, quietly and within our ongoing daily life grind, “besotted with multiplicity and within us eeriness.” Despite our shadowed recesses, “our stubborn poetries seek like-minded reveries.” And, in trying to be perfect, or striving to deny our darkness, we become controlled by our “own system of devotion.” Yes, there is complexity of being and functioning; maybe the obstruction of dissonance would be released and pulled through, like a decalcified pineal gland, secreting, pooling, and flowing naturally through rock beds of being. As free as not knowing fully which way the wind will turn. In accepting the dissonance engine do we then briefly feel some harmony?

Contemplating Dowker’s multilayered creation inspires me to imagine the text further, extending beyond the parameters of the machine or block of book to witness ideas and philosophies unfold in real time with a character able to take on the structure of Dowker’s language. With the body as the “Necker Cube,” and the text hinged to a lifeline, how can we witness this body in motion, living and trying to be alive?

Thank you to Book*hug Press for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review!

Book Review: Cyclettes by Tree Abraham

By Fayth Simmons

Ottawa-born author Tree Abraham’s novel Cyclettes is a genre-bending compilation of brilliant poetical musings and visual explorations considering the mundanities and intricacies of life from the vantage point of a writer who is both incredibly self-aware but also consciously questioning such awareness. Utilizing the motif of a bicycle to consider the cyclical and forward-moving patterns of modern life, Tree Abraham eloquently yet playfully provides a narrative window into the experiences that quantify aging into an abstract notion of adulthood.

Cyclettes is a sensitive and thought-provoking book that could arguably be characterized by its innate ability to match language to feeling via powerful emotive translation. The challenges of growth are given voice, and through such prescribed narration, they are made relatable. As an author, Abraham has a distinct tone that is both clear and objectively effective, but also simultaneously sympathetic and inventive. She is honest in her portrayal of a dynamic lived experience and generous in her translation of that experience.

The original and largely experimental format of Cyclettes allows for diverse contemplation of the content within. Text is accompanied by various pieces of artwork and diagrams that help to illustrate and elaborate upon the main themes of Abraham’s work and pull the reader along with the motion of the created narrative. Due to this organization of content, the book is accessible—philosophical reflections are mirrored within tangible elements, allowing for larger-than-life concepts to be unified within a cohesive whole. At just over 200 pages, Cyclettes is a lyrically dense, approachable read, and highly relatable. Combining dialogue with internal rumination, and maps with photographs, Abraham successfully redefines what characterizes a novel.

The resultant product is resolute in its portrayal of journeying towards the vagueness that so inherently approximates identity and the personal understanding of retaining meaning within the modern world.

Thank you to Book*hug Press for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Scars & Stars by Jesse Thistle

By Larissa Page

Scars & Stars is the follow up to Jesse Thistle’s best- selling memoir From The Ashes. A few years ago From The Ashes took Canada by storm, gaining hordes of readers who loved, resonated, praised, cried over, and shared in Thistle’s story of addiction, homelessness, jail time, recovery, resilience, and ultimately, love. Throughout that memoir, he provided snippets of his poetry, which readers praised and loved and requested for more. And so was born Scars & Stars.

Scars & Stars is a really unique collection of poetry. Throughout the book, Thistle gives us introductions of each section, real talk, and his real voice to explain what each sub-collection/section means, where it came from, and what it’s about. He tells us stories, some of which we already know (if we’ve read From the Ashes) but goes deeper, and some of which are new. Some of the sections and stories include things that have happened since the end of From the Ashes, like the birth of his beautiful daughter, Rose, and the worries and struggles that come with fatherhood.

As already recognized in his previous work, Thistle’s writing is beautiful. It is whole and full of emotion, of struggle, of suffering, and of love. His poems are original, unlike other works of contemporary poetry one might find on bookstore shelves. The poems grow, as he grew, and the poems change, as he changed. They were deep and impactful while still being accessible to those who may have had shared the same experienced he did.

What I think I liked the most was how Thistle framed this collection of poetry as a passing on of the knowledge he had held so close and ultimately served to keep him going in his bleakest moments. He describes what his “shield” was and how up until now he hasn’t shared this information for fear of losing its protectiveness but now feels it is time to share it so others can use it too, to get themselves out, to also rise from the ashes.

Poetry is often hit or miss for me. I do not always connect with the poet as I read a collection. However, this one was an absolute hit, out of the ballpark. An incredible follow up and companion to From the Ashes.

Thank you, Penguin Random House Canada, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: A Leaf Upon a Book by Anam Tariq

By Sara Hailstone

A Leaf Upon a Book is Anam Tariq’s debut poetry collection that gracefully shows a Bildungsroman contemplation of life crafted with a compelling command of language and skill. Influenced by William Wordsworth, John Keats, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, and T.S. Eliot, Tariq reveals the potential of contributing her voice to the Romantic literary style.

Tariq completed her M.A. in English at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Aligarh, India. She has also had poetry appear in various publications and anthologies.

The lasting impression for me with this book of poetry is the observation and appreciation of the growth of the writer in navigating the English language throughout the body of work. Tariq has ordered the set of poems chronologically, reflecting her evolution as an ESL speaker, which results in an eloquent and surprising encounter with English and literature in a creative way for me as a fellow writer. The diction, word choice, and ordering of words within the poems is refreshing and prompted me to see my mother tongue in new ways. This confrontation with life learning and the English language not typically used in colloquial or mainstream speaking captures the essence and potential of Tariq in her growth as a writer.

I am intrigued to come across future works by the author that pull through an overarching narrative and story throughout the body of poems, like Dionne Brand’s Thirsty.

Thank you to Tariq for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review!

Book Review: How to Hold a Pebble by Jaspreet Singh

By Fayth Simmons

In this collection of poems, Jaspreet Singh provides a narrative stage for an examination of the human in relation to the greater world. Using exploratory form, each of his pieces takes on a differing function to illustrate the place of humans in the continual development of the Anthropocene. The poems touch on the glaring fragility of existence and speak to the visceral understanding of what it means to be a writer in the current age, with the constant grasp of two separate worlds—the visible one, from which inspiration is drawn, and the created one, in which ideas are processed and tossed around before entering into the bounds of the former one.

Singh’s collection is potent, truthful, and emotional. Sorrow and pain infuse narrations on colonization and climate change, and frustration accompanies musings on capitalism, but despite these heavy touchstones, the poems are not hopeless. Singh is able to expertly weave sorrow through lines of quiet joy, and feelings of unrest are considered only in equal measure with feelings of peace and contentment. In this way, the collection is balanced, with clear questions and intentions.

There is a sincere wisdom and beauty to each poem in this collection, which is doubled by the symbolic image of the pebble: ancient, clear, and untameable. The reference to such an object cannot simply be stylistic—instead, Singh asks the reader how they may relearn how to hold the pebble, insinuating a need for a greater degree of thoughtfulness in regard to the human role of stewardship over all things that we have so carefully tied to ourselves and our linear continuum. There is a sharp intellect present here, and an undeniable lyrical sensibility, which transcends from the page and begs to be considered.

Thank you to NeWest Press for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Lunar Tides by Shannon Webb-Campbell

By Kaylie Seed

Poetry is a genre that I enjoy reviewing because it poses a challenge. It is not an easy task to take the author's inner thoughts and feelings and review them, and poetry is subjective because everyone who reads it will have a different experience. Shannon Webb-Campbell’s Lunar Tides is a collection of poetry that discusses love and grief while structured to follow the phases of the moon. Webb-Campbell’s poetry also explores colonialism, kinship, and Indigenous resurgence through the eyes of a mixed Mi’kmaq-settler woman.

While the focus throughout this poetry collection is on defining what grief and grieving really is, the reader will also note that Webb-Campbell attempts to lay the groundwork for seeking healing. This is important because while the grieving process is something we all have a basic knowledge in, healing is something we don’t put enough effort into understanding. Webb-Campbell also encourages readers to notice their connection to both their mothers (or mother figures) here on Earth as well as Mother Earth and the connection that they pose to each other.

Lunar Tides is a poetry collection that I would recommend to readers looking to explore the meaning of grief and grieving or to those who want a better understanding of how the moon cycles influence us in our daily lives. The poems were not as deep as one may expect since the topics found throughout are heavy, but the prose is lovely to read and those wanting a quick book will likely appreciate these poems.

Thank you, BookHug Press, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Hands by Marty Gervais

By Fayth Simmons

The Hands by Canadian poet, journalist, and teacher Marty Gervais features a collection just shy of forty poems, in which life and its complexities are narrowed down into minute and thoughtful details. It is within these smaller details that Gervais best illustrates the import of lasting universal themes.

His collection is separated into three main parts, titled “Language of the River,” “His Father’s Work,” and finally, “The Hands.” A single poem serves as the epilogue, and another as the prologue. The layout is pleasing and meaningful in and of itself. The title is characteristic of the role that doing plays in the process of creating art, life, and ultimately—identity. In reference to the symbolism and function of the fingerprint, in that each is individual and key to identification, Gervais utilizes the idea of hand characterization to describe the innate components of the self; in the third part of his collection, he transfers this philosophy directly into the narrative descriptions of various significant people, from Mother Theresa to Rosa Parks. Within these portrayals, he highlights their humanity and the poignant details that compose their states of being. Using language, he is able to shine a singular light upon his subjects in a way that acknowledges the surrounding shadows without allowing them to distract from meaning and intention.

His narrative pieces are very dynamic—both objectively simple in their telling, and yet each word is eloquently placed to suit the tone of the work. Gervais writes and ruminates upon a variety of themes, focusing most prominently upon the movement of time and place and the importance of doing, in a sense of both the physical and the abstract. In language that almost murmurs, he aligns his words and the spaces between them to shape the page and the mind of the reader. He is intentional and works to place heavy emphasis upon the cruciality of detail (which is fitting for a poet, as mentioned within the introduction by author and professor Bruce Meyer).

By incorporating detailed musings, sometimes so specific as the mention of a teacup balanced precariously atop a ruin of disorder, Gervais centres his reader, giving a meditative experience of sorts. His collection is successful not because of its subversive and conceptualized intellect, but because it is so easily and almost effortlessly consumed. Each poem resonates at some mundane or existential level. For example, in “Walking Distance,” Gervais uses simplistic and yet delicate language to describe a universal feeling of overwhelm and the peace that might be recognized amid such states of unrest. It embodies longing and release in equal and opposite measure. And this is perhaps what Gervais does best. In minimized tones he is able to prescribe plot to his poetry; in each poem, there is linear relation, with a concrete beginning, middle, and end. This element of finality likely allows for a greater appreciation of the themes which he touches upon in his work—the reader is left satisfied, with closure established, having benefitted from Gervais’s power over language.

Thank you to Guernica Editions for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Gigglepuss by Carlie Blume

By Fayth Simmons

Content warning: reference to sexual misconduct/assault

Gigglepuss, the debut poetry collection of Canadian author Carlie Blume, works to contrive of an adulthood shaped by the past traumas of a checkered youth. Nostalgia features prominently within Blume’s collection, but personal events are recounted as if through an objective lens rather than an inherently subjective and individualized one, being pulled as they are from the author’s childhood. Patriarchal norms are challenged from a vantage point of dynamic youth, and Blume highlights her experiences in a way that projects the truth of them upon the reader without vitiating such truth with the addition of emotional influence. Heavy themes are ruminated upon, such as femininity, sexual abuse, capitalism, environmental destruction, and self-identity and worth in the face of past traumas. Blume explores these topics with simplistic and sharp narration; the description, though lucid and expressive, is arguably distant, despite the emotional potency of the overarching themes.

Blume has a clear and convincing voice, and is not remorseful or overly melancholic in her use of language. It is perhaps for this reason that her poetry is effective in its communication of loss and equally of love. Because poetry is such a subjective genre, it can be difficult to quantify the measure of a collection’s success, but in Gigglepuss, the messaging is not lost to abstraction—it is vivid in its imagery, and evocative in the author’s re-working of a present identity from past images. As Blume comes to terms with multifarious familial and social dynamics and reflects on innate values of youth, she perhaps begins to compose a working understanding of the events that have precipitated her rise to adulthood and parenthood, and her attitude towards them. As a result, her collection is vibrant and layered in its realistic depiction of the female experience, and functions as an ode to self-awareness and actualization atop historical and cultural inhibitions.

Thank you to Guernica Editions for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Plumstuff by Rolli

By Caprice Hogg

Plumstuff is a book of poetry and sketches that kept me coming back for more. From the very first few lines where Rolli writes “If I ever write a book so bland it’s championed by every living critic seize my pen,” his wit and humour made me pause and contemplate my book review before I even started it! The poems in this book cover a wide range of topics, and the book was well laid out. Rolli writes about the critics, about philosophy, opinions, politics and so much more. I would put the book away and then pick it up again another day, open it to a random page and simply read and re-read. It allowed me time and space to ponder.

My favourite poems were the ones with fewer words. In my opinion, the fewer the words, the better the poem was. It gave me the opportunity for my mind to wander, absorb, and feel the emotion in the moment. The less words there were on the page the more I was able to take it in.

This is a book for those who truly love words. The words chosen are descriptive and lyrical and to the point. This shows the talent of the author, because it is no easy feat to bring about emotion with only a few syllables. In good writing and in good art, it is far easier to express oneself in lengthy diatribes; to use words and lines sparingly is an achievement.

The power in the simplicity of in his sketches was similar to his poetry. The fewer lines there were, the stronger the sketch was. The lines allowed the viewer’s mind to fill in the blanks and become a part of what was happening on the page. His compositions were strong, and I enjoyed the change in values from the black lines to the gray lines.

The sketches and poetry complemented each other. After reading and re-reading this book, I cannot imagine one without the other; the sketches are just as important as the poetry and vice versa.

To quote one of Rolli’s poems, “Though no one’s swung by anyone’s opinion the redundant tongue worms on.” As such, in my opinion, this book is for anyone who enjoys poetry or who would like to spend time getting to know poetry. While not every poem spoke to me, these poems will take the reader by the hand and lead them on a journey.

I would like to thank the author Rolli for the complimentary copy of his book “Plumstuff” in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Ink Earl by Susan Holbrook

By Erica Wiggins

Ink Earl is a book of erasure poetry. Erasure poetry is when an author takes an existing text and carefully erases words and letters to create a new work. In Ink Earl, the author uses an ad copy for the Pink Pearl Eraser. The author then begins her work by erasing to find the promise of “100 essays” using only this one passage. The author, Susan Holbrook, is a Canadian poet who published her first poetry collection while she was a graduate student. She has written several poetry collections along with a poetry textbook and play. 

This is my first foray into reading erasure poetry. It is a fun and interesting concept which requires quite a bit of creativity from the author. It took me a few tries to find the pattern and rhythm of the pages. At times, the words require some interpretation as the correct spelling of the words was not always used. You need to be patient and read between the lines. For me, there were a few pages where I was unable to decipher what the author was trying to get across. However, this did not take away from the book. 

The author groups the “essays” into categories. As I worked through the poems, I began to wonder which the author came up with first—the “essays” or the categories. When the author is working from one original text, the amount of time and careful consideration the author put into this work becomes clear. You begin to see the author’s personality and playfulness coming through in the various topics. 

Within each category, there were poems that made me stop and think and poems that made me laugh out loud. I felt like these were relevant to the world that we are living in now. Some of my favourite categories were the world, art, and health. From “RIP fresh air” to “Keep two metres apart” to “I lean in for her corners and dents,” I loved reading and sitting with each poem. 

If you are a fan of poetry, regular or erasure, check out this collection. I believe that it has a little something for everyone in it. It gave me a glimpse into a new style, and I will be checking out the author’s other works and more erasure poetry. 

Thank you, Coach House Books, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Spawn by Marie-Andrée Gill

By Meredith Grace Thompson

Marie-Andrée Gill’s poetry collection Spawn, available to my English eyes only through the 2020 translation by Kristen Renee Miller, is miraculous. It is sparse and poignant. Each poem sits on the page as an individual presence as well as a distinct movement between the sections of the collection as a whole. Imagery of water and splitting and towering run back and forth throughout the collection. 

Gill’s speaker is tied tightly to the life cycle of the ouananiche. Filled with imagery of a nostalgic 90s childhood, of a finding and seeking, of a coming together, and of a moving farther apart, Gill’s speaker moves through the sections of the poetry collection as the ouananiche move from the lake to the river. Birth, growth, spawning and eventually death. The ouananiche are everything. And we are spawning, and we are falling. 

“Timushum says: Only thunderstorms still tell it / like it is.”

“I am a village that doesn’t have a choice,” Gill writes, and I can’t stop focusing on the language. “And the lake, a luck, the lake.” I think of poetry as the building of words, the specific choosing and holding of individuals, linking to create lines and forming together in the culmination of image, tension, and that strange sense of sound in which words exist as muted silences on the page. A silence which sound is somehow filled in for, sitting at the back of our ears, inside the bones of our skulls. Gathered consonants create staccato rhythms inside themselves. But here—but here—I feel as if I am standing on one side of a waterfall, and Marie-Andrée Gill is standing on the other, speaking clearly and firmly, but I can’t hear her. I keep screaming what??, but I can’t hear her, and there is someone running back and forth telling me what was said, but everything feels staggered and lost, its resonance lingering and reverberating in the afterbeat, but the potency is diluted. The poetry itself is lost somewhat to me, and the translator is ever-present. But I want the poet.  

Incredibly aware of her presence as translator, Miller writes a beautiful translator’s note towards the end of the book in which she discusses her own connection to Gill’s work as well as the deeply rooted and problematized nature of language throughout the collection in and of itself. Miller is clearly incredibly aware of the role of the translator as bearer and caregiver of their translations. And Gill’s work is twice removed. Written in the colonizer language of French, Gill’s speaker is deeply connected to the world of her Ilnu ancestors but also ripped from that connectedness by the violence of colonization. 

“To lick the skin of the water / with a tongue I don’t speak” as the language that should have been the speaker’s birthright has been denied over and over again. Removed from ancestry through something as fundamentally vicious as the forced loss of the ability to understand and to speak. Forced conformity with European imperialistic standards. And what do we lose in the translation? And here I read the colonized words translated for the ease of another colonizer. And I wonder if these words are for me at all. 

I stand still on the edge of the lake and I wait. The words of each poem float up towards me, and I want to get closer to them. Can’t quite get close enough. 

Book Review: Scorpion Season by Tara McGowan-Ross

By Meredith Grace Thompson

I swore I would stop 

apologizing in matters of sex and business, so instead I say: 

thank you for your time and your interest in this project. 

There is this old folktale about a scorpion and a fox—sometimes it’s a frog—in which the scorpion asks the fox to carry it across the river because it cannot swim. The fox refuses because it knows how dangerous the scorpion is but the scorpion begs, promising not to sting the fox at any point on their journey. The scorpion seems genuine and so the fox, who is not a cruel animal, finally agrees to ferry the scorpion across. And so they set out into the river, the fox paddling with the scorpion perched atop its back. Halfway across the river the scorpion stings the fox. As its body fills with poison the fox looks back and asks: Why have you done this? Now we are both going to die. The scorpion says only, I am sorry, but it is my nature. 

The point of this story, I suppose, is to be wary of scorpions, assuming the listener identifies entirely with the fox, because scorpions will always sting you even if they promise otherwise. But what of the scorpion? What of the creature who cannot help but follow its nature, even if that nature causes it to drown without malicious intent? 

Scorpion Season, a poetry collection by Montréal-based Mi’kmaw poet Tara McGowan-Ross, seems to ask this very question, with “coping mechanisms so strong they may kill her.” The collection is as immersive as a sensory deprivation tank. You enter the book and the world is dark; sound muffled in that particularly meditative way where air is heavy and you find yourself submerged fully in each poem. They begin to ring, softly at first, and then louder and louder. The collection walks the tightrope of confessional poetry, which risks melodrama if it is not masterfully handled. But McGowan-Ross is a master. She dances through each poem, landing on distinctive beats and luxuriating in each line while propelling onto the next. McGowan-Ross creates the through lines of the collection, weaving between each stand-alone poem with the dimensionality of a novel. Scorpion Season follows the creation of a speaker as seen through differing accounts by minor characters all of whom weave together the story of a self in its formation, dealing with identity, addiction, eating disorders, friendship, love, self-love, academia, philosophy, family, and grief.  

The underlying beat of the collection is strong, giving McGowan-Ross space to use staccato notes, dancing softly on the syncopated beat. The beat changes, as do the syncopations, but McGowan-Ross’s skill is consistently shown throughout. The form remains close knit yet mouldable—as gauze over a wound. McGowan-Ross has an innate understanding of form, to rival any contemporary poet. Embedding trope, formal structure, mixed chronology, and more experimental styles including psychiatrist’s notes and emails with mysteriously redacted names, McGowan-Ross moves seamlessly throughout the seemingly sporadic yet meticulously intentional chronology of the collection (sometimes jumping between years from one poem to the next) to create an articulated self which expresses much more than its own selfhood.  

Churning through grief in physical form, through the carried intergenerational trauma of waves of colonized peoples in the folds of an individual body, through self-loathing, through causing the fox beneath you to drown, the speaker of McGowan-Ross’s collection is magnanimous. McGowan-Ross is a delight on paper. Her delightfulness radiates to make you wish she was the friend sitting next to you filled with laughter and stories of youthful rambunctiousness until far too early in the morning. 

In one interpretation, the tale of the scorpion and the fox presupposes the reality and functionality of a precise human nature; “mental defect: philosophy degree.” A secondary interpretation views the fable as a comment on individual nature. We are a composite of our contexts; “a psychologist tells me we repeat our parents’ habits in love and money. my immediate family history is one of resource mismanagement.” We are a mosaic of everything that we are or were or can be. All these things create our nature. 

NATIONALITY: Colonized 

RACE: Restless 

INSURANCE: handouts 

PRIMARY CARE: Alcohol

Scorpion Season is a revelatory look inside/beside/behind/in front of/and towards a mystical creature called woman/human/queer/philosopher/pervert/poet/artist/friend/daughter/sister/mother/lover/mentor/self and always (and always) filled with promises. 

I promise not to egg your house or cause a scene at your work

Book Review: Love in the Age of Quarantine by Katie Feltmate

By Larissa Page

Content warning: intimate partner abuse, depression, George Floyd/police brutality, the Portapique mass shooting, body dysmorphic disorder, disordered eating

Love in the Age of Quarantine is a collection of poems written by Katie Feltmate, who left a toxic and abusive relationship just before the COVID-19 pandemic. She wrote as a way to heal her way through 2020 and this collection of poems is one of the best collections I’ve read in quite a while. 

Feltmate bares her heart to us in the beginning section of this collection. She works through her trauma and her mental health after leaving a relationship that broke her down. Her writing is extremely vulnerable and I found it very impactful. Much of it gave me goosebumps as I read, though it was also tough to read about someone’s pain, especially when the pain of intimate partner relationships is so common and so prevalent.

I first came across this collection while attending a reading that Feltmate did. She voiced to us then that this “love in the age of quarantine” wasn’t, in fact, a romantic love (though she does write about romantic love as well) but actually the love of herself, of healing and finding her way back to herself after losing herself and her independence. The collection of poems begins painfully, but the way in which she comes back to herself and loves herself becomes evident as the collection of poems moves though the sections.

Toward the end of the collection of poems, Feltmate also writes about the COVID-19 pandemic itself, including poems about healthcare workers, anti-vaxxers, pregnant friends, people who have lost their lives due to the pandemic, BLM, and so much more. She includes a few poems about the Portapique mass shooting event that left Nova Scotians absolutely reeling. She lists the victims, and she honours them in her work. Living in Nova Scotia in the first half of 2020 was something none of us will ever forget and I was glad (and heartbroken) to see it memorialized within the pages of this book in beautiful poetry.

Love in the Age of Quarantine was truly a wonderful collection of poems. It gave me goosebumps, made me cry, and made me consider how other people lived during our times of lockdown and within this pandemic. It helped give me insight and understanding, as well as hope, respect, and love. 

Book Review: I Love You, Call Me Back by Sabrina Benaim

By Meredith Grace Thompson

 In I Love You, Call Me Back, Sabrina Benaim’s words speak directly into my mouth with a pre-pandemic intimacy which makes my skin shudder. Her speaker lives in isolation, compelled by brief interludes of virtual contact, distinctly within the moment of a summer in lockdown. She breathes video chats and walking her dog, cups of coffee on the stoop, and bird song. Her days are filled with cleaning rituals and phone calls with her mother and cooking. Her mind seems to exist within her body—tied very much to her body and yet floating beyond it somehow. Her relationships have become distances without intention . She watches her new nephew grow through a computer screen and listens to her sick mother describe what will come after she is gone, over the telephone.  

i am watching my nephew laugh for the first time 

through a screen 

i am watching my mother watch my nephew laugh (p.24)

Encapsulating the strangeness of pandemic isolation, Benaim writes a temporary yet inexhaustible reflection and refraction of self. Self-love; self-indulgence masquerading as self-care; self-care morphing into unfettered self-hatred, clawing its way back up up up into a healing, a growing together. A scar tissue collective sprouting into a blossoming nuance of form. 

She cascades through an inconsistently poignant use of capital letters— a lowercase i showing perhaps the deterioration self, perhaps the oneness of self. She captures through poetic form the layered depths of the rabbit hole which isolation opens up in the mind of the isolated. And while her body might be doing this or that, the mind of Benaim’s speaker is not limited to the same apartment, city, or time, but rather traverses freely through what came before and what is yet to come. Dreaming and daydreaming together at once. 

Benaim captures a moment of forced stillness, forced separation, relocation, and reflection where everything feels stalled, stagnant, reflective, spinning, and without a clear sense of time. Dates mark some of the poems to allow the reader a foothold within this swirling, mesmerising world, but being swept up into those swirling waters is the joy of Benaim’s writing. 

i have vivid dreams 

in all of them 

my mother is alive (p. 98)

A world which becomes comfortable to the speaker, at risk of perhaps not wanting to leave again.  

I hope the mail 

stays undelivered 

I do not wish 

to have my belongings back. (p. 57)

Benaim’s explorations of a self inside the extenuating circumstances of the pandemic are to be commended. Her poetry is fearless in its content, ranging from the deeply intimate nature of mental health and discussions of depression and body image, to the wild intimacy of the utterly mundane details of daily life (one poem is an excellent recipe for roasted cauliflower). For what could be more intimate than to be invited into the everyday of another human being, simply existing? The collection as a whole is a moment perfectly captured, leaving the reader with aftertastes of sunbeams and heavy summer air brimming with the strange daydreaming silence of mid-pandemic lockdown. 

...You bring yellow flowers

 every Monday when you arrive home. 

I keep them out on the wooden table 

no taller than a tulip standing 

on the shoulders of another tulip. (p. 23)

Book Review: awâsis by Louise B. Halfe (Sky Dancer)

By Carly Smith

In awâsis - kinky and dishevelled, Louise B. Halfe relays poems by way of awâsis, a being with a childlike, mischievous soul and a quick wit. awâsis is gender-fluid and embodies many different characters across Halfe’s compilation of poems. The concept of awâsis may be tricky to grasp, but their character is very fitting for the topics that Halfe covers, as well as for her desire to exude humour and a light-hearted tone. 

Halfe’s poems are loosely structured. They contain different sized stanzas and do not rhyme. The choice to make free-flowing, flexible poems parallels awâsis’s personality beautifully. Like awâsis, the forms in her poems keep readers on their toes; just as readers may have trouble predicting what awâsis will do or say next, they may also have trouble knowing when to move their eyes or stop their voices. The structures of Halfe’s poems are unique and whimsical, just like awâsis.

Halfe presents a variety of topics in her poems, including everyday experiences and mishaps, relationships, and sexuality. No matter the subject, Halfe’s words and awâsis’s adventures will leave readers chuckling and perhaps shaking their heads in agreement with a sly smile. Halfe does an amazing job of intertwining humour, wonder, and relatability. Furthermore, she uses word choice cleverly, sometimes choosing a Cree word instead of an English one, and at other times deliberately misspelling an English word. Her choice in language and spelling connects readers to the subject on a deeper level, and I appreciate that this technique is not overused. 

Overall, awâsis - kinky and dishevelled is a great book that leaves readers feeling both connected to Halfe’s work and intrigued by the parts they are unable to relate to.

Book Review: Metaflesh by Evan J. Peterson

By Shantell Powell

Content Warning: sexual content, body horror, white supremacist iconography, swear words 

Metaflesh is written by Evan J. Peterson, author of The PrEP Diaries: A Safe(r) Sex Memoir and DragStar!,  the world’s first drag performer role-playing game. Metaflesh is a book of verse and prose from the point of view of Frankenstein’s Monster. The reflections are inspired not only by Mary Shelley’s seminal work (double entendre fully intended) but also by the pop culture descendants of her novel. Sources include a wide variety of Frankenstein/mad scientist movies and song lyrics. The book also contains themes of Jewish folklore, queer culture, camp, and a lot of David Cronenberg-style body horror. The book covers the gamut of the Monster’s experiences through over a century of movies and songs, and portrays the Monster as both gender-fluid and a sort of chimerical film critic, reviewing portrayals of their self through lyric poetry and flash fiction.

This is an ingenious book of metafiction. Just as Dr. Frankenstein cut up different people and stitched the bits together, Peterson cut up and reassembled his sources, turning them into something greater than the sum of their parts. Borrowing from William S. Burroughs cut-up technique, he splices together Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with F.T. Marinetti’s Manifesto del Futurismo (Futurist Manifesto) and with J. G. Ballard’s essay, “Why I want to F*ck Ronald Reagan.” He apostrophizes the sexually explicit films of avant-garde queer Canadian creator Bruce LaBruce and doesn’t forget to include General Mills’ Frankenberry breakfast cereal or select lines from Mommy Dearest and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  The combined imagery of classical Greek mythology, white supremacy, drag queens, Judaism, and zombie erotica do not merge into a hot mess but meld together into a deliciously readable book.   

This literary retrospective is sad, funny, quirky, surgically precise, and captivating. I was never bored and didn’t skip through parts. I tore through my first reading at speed and have been taking my time through subsequent readings. The only spot which slows me down, pulling me to a frowning halt, is a simile in the poem, “His Name is In Me”:  “gross as the tallest savage.” Although I’m aware that white supremacist imagery is intentionally used throughout the book—punching up, not down—the use of the word “savage” feels out of place here. It is a racial slur used against Black and Indigenous peoples and stands out awkwardly in a poem strongly based in Judaic imagery. If it is a slur used against Jews, I am unaware, but this is my only quibble with the entire book.

I’d like to thank Evan Peterson for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.  This is my favourite book of poetry that I’ve read in the past few years.

Book Review: Green Horses on the Walls by Cristina A. Bejan

By Irina Moga

Content warning: sexual violence

Cristina A. Bejan is a poet, historian, and theatre artist who hails from Denver, Colorado. An Oxford DPhil, Rhodes, and Fulbright scholar, she is also the author of eighteen plays produced in several countries. 

Green Horses on the Walls, her first collection of poems, is a 2021 Independent Press Book Award Winner and the 2021 Colorado Authors’ League Book Award for cover design—which is also Bejan's creation.

In Green Horses on the Walls, Cristina A. Bejan delivers a poignant quest for identity that transforms the rawness of everyday events and unbearable trauma into a fluid and polyphonic poetic discourse.

Some of the poems in this collection were included in the show Lady Godiva, part of the Mead Theatre Lab Program in February 2016; the chapbook's tone vibrates with immediacy and, at times, whimsical humour. It engages the reader in media res of personal experiences, reinterpreted through witty lines:

"Things could be worse
Parents with cancer
Love of your life leaves you for the priesthood
You could have more than mental health "issues" and actually be totally insane 
….
Never cry
Not sleep enough
Swear off chocolate" (2)

The bittersweet decoding of Bejan's heritage, starting with "A Tricky Diaspora," introduces us to a suite of poems that reveal the pain inflicted by the Communist regime in Romania and how this suffering echoed through generations and across geographies. It is a tortuous thread that the poet is willing to surface and, in doing so, lets readers judge for themselves the facts narrated. 

A key poem in the volume, "Green Horses on the Walls," can be read as the allegory of a tipping point in which the writer comes to realize that art is precisely what keeps her in step with her inner self:

"My truth is displayed on the open canvas of my art
My truth runs with the green horses
Through the fields, down Rockville Pike, and eventually all the way through 
            the heart of DC—14th St." (14)

But the darkest and, arguably, most daring narrative in the book comes to us towards its end, in sequences of betrayed love, rape, and its effects that Bejan recounts in a gripping monologue:

"Thank you for proving that not all rape victims look alike
Thank you for proving that there is a reason for the ‘little black dress’ 

       stereotype as I was indeed wearing one" (32)

It's a moment of gloom and dissolution. Yet, we sense that the author has surpassed it through her faith, anger, and the catharsis of writing.

This poetry volume made me think of a quote by Shelley: "Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted."

In a brave new world in flux, millennial writers like Cristina A. Bejan are likely to find their way towards this perennial aesthetic goal.