poetry

Coastal Spectator contributor Julian Gunn recently sat down over coffee to chat with Kitty Lewis, the general manager of poetry publisher Brick Books. At this year’s League of Canadian Poets gala, Lewis received the League’s Honorary Life Membership Award. She insists that her contribution is to support the artistic vision of Brick founders Don McKay […]

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Poet Chris Hutchinson’s new book, Jonas in Frames: An Epic (Goose Lane), is brilliant, funny, challenging, a hybrid form for our times. Born in Montreal in 1972, Hutchinson has published three books of poetry: Unfamiliar Weather, Other Peoples’ Lives and A Brief History of the Short Lived. He has a BFA from the University of […]

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The Fleece Era Joanna Lilley Brick Books 105 pages, $20 Reviewed by Julian Gunn Joanna Lilley’s The Fleece Era is the discovery of Brick Books’ spring season, a first poetry collection with a subtle, shifting vision of ecological and human connection. Lilley is a transplant, raised in England and now living in the Yukon. Because […]

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Victoria poet John Barton, perhaps as well known as the editor of The Malahat Review as for his 10 previous books of poetry, has just launched Polari, a new collection with Icehouse Poetry, an imprint of Goose Lane Editions. Co-editor of Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets, he has won a number of […]

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Steeling Effects By Jane Byers Caitlin Press 95 pages, $16.95 Reviewed by Barbara Herringer From the very first page, Jane Byers plunges readers into her gritty, beautiful first collection of poems as she prises apart her experiences of resilience, of hanging on, of enduring. In short, Steeling Effects reveals the real world: a near-death birth, […]

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Correspondences By Anne Michaels and Bernice Eisenstein McClelland & Stewart Unpaginated, $35 Reviewed by Karen Enns Correspondences is a deeply layered collaboration between poet and novelist Anne Michaels, and artist and writer Bernice Eisenstein (author of the graphic memoir “I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors”). It is a beauty of a book, seamlessly […]

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By Joy Fisher Vancouver writer Daphne Marlatt took her audience on a flaneurial stroll through the history of her city and its influence on her poetry and prose in the Lansdowne Lecture that opened the Second Annual Malahat Review Spring Symposium, WordsThaw at the University of Victoria recently. Aided by archival photographs by Philip Timm […]

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The Book of Places By Yvonne Blomer Black Moss Press 2012, 95 pages. Reviewed by Arleen Pare Book of Places is a neat little square of a book that would fit into most back pockets, most backpacks, most travel bags going most places in the world. It’s a fit travel companion too, covering not […]

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The Place of Scraps By Jordan Abel, Talon 272 pages, $19.95 Reviewed by Candace Fertile The Place of Scraps by Nisga’a writer Jordan Abel is a collection of poetry with an intriguing premise: Abel has started with Totem Poles, a foundation text by noted anthropologist Marius Barbeau, extricated passages, and created word pictures and images […]

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Poems from Planet Earth Edited by Yvonne Blomer and Cynthia Woodman Kerkham Leaf Press, 208 pages, $20 Reviewed by Candace Fertile Planet Earth Poetry is a reading series at the Moka House in Victoria, and over the years many poets have offered their work to an appreciative audience. Editors Yvonne Blomer (who runs the reading […]

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