Nix Jessie Jones Desert Pets Press Review by Andy Verboom In poetry, myth is usually deployed either as allusion or as conceit. The distinction between allusion and conceit is analogous to how one might treat a very old hammer:...
Review by Annick MacAskill
Last October, my friend David Alexander (Modern Warfare, Anstruther Press, 2016) and I went to an Anstruther Press and Baseline Press chapbook launch to see a few poets we knew. When I heard Aidan Chafe read from his debut chapbook, Sharpest Tooth (Anstruther Press, 2016), I immediately wanted to buy his collection. I was drawn by Chafe’s strong imagery and measured, almost laconic consideration of the destructive ferocity and violence of the natural and human worlds.
When I saw that Chafe had released a second chapbook, Right Hand Hymns (Frog Hollow Press, 2017), I was eager to read his new work. The theme of violence continues in this collection, but instead of exploring this theme in poems about hunting, woods, and wolves, Right Hand Hymns evokes a similar wildness and chaos in poems about family, religion, and mental health.
Continue reading Hot-Tempered Divinity: A Review of Aidan Chafe’s Right Hand Hymns
Compiled and introduced by Rob Taylor Poet and editor Elise Partridge passed away in early 2015, months shy of seeing the publication of her third poetry collection, The Exile’s Gallery (Anansi, 2015), and soon after poems from that book appeared in...
The News
Rob Taylor
Gaspereau Press, 2016
Review by Steven Brown
It’s a brave thing to do, forging a plan to write a poem a week during your wife’s pregnancy when the subject of these poems will be your wife’s pregnancy. The poet can’t guarantee what’s going to happen because anything might happen. Life is fragile. And a bit of a gamble.
Continue reading Giving Birth to Poems: A Review of Rob Taylor’s The News
Review by Robert Colman The Witch of the Inner Wood M. Travis Lane Goose Lane Editions, 2016 M. Travis Lane has had a long and distinguished poetry career in Canada. Hers may not be quite the household name as...
Review by Kyla Jamieson even this page is white by Vivek Shraya Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016 Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya’s impressive body of work includes multiple albums, films, and books. Her debut novel, She of the Mountains, was...
Review by Selina Boan Diversion by George Murray ECW Press, 2015 Sitting down to read George Murray’s seventh collection of poetry, aptly titled Diversion, I found myself entering a world of one-off lines, aphorisms and clever hashtag titles (such...
Review by Wendy Bone Born Out of This Christine Lowther Caitlin Press, 2014 “I’ve been stamped both ‘nature girl’ and punk rocker,” writes Christine Lowther in her memoir, Born Out of This. “Like other writers, I’m industrious and rebellious,...
Review by Geoffrey Nilson Riffs Dennis Lee Brick Books Classics, 2015 The diversity of Dennis Lee’s writing can be daunting. From the Governor General’s Award winning philosophical inquiry of Civil Elegies to the experimental polyphony of his most recent...