Pearl Pirie
Throwback: Go by Shelley A. Leedahl
In Go, Shelley A. Leedahl somehow mixes the best ratio of acknowledging muff-ups and small griefs, isolation and loss with a scintillating report of loving life.
Bait & Switch by Jim Johnstone
Do you ever wish poets would include essays to situate their poems? Some frank prose that ponders what their own poetry comes out of or means to do? We can’t follow every crumb trailer life, and not every aesthetic reaches universally. Consequently this book of essays, Bait & Switch: Essays, Reviews, Conversations, and views on …
IGoli | EGoli: Poems by Salimah Valiani
The meaning of the title IGoli | EGoli: Poems, by Salimah Valiani is not self-evident without a search. What does it mean? eGoli means “Place of Gold”.
The Unfolding: Poems by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
I have to say I rarely have loved a book as fully or read one as slowly.
When the Pine Needles Fall: Indigenous Acts of Resistance by Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel with Sean Carleton
How many of us took “The Oka Crisis” at face value of media portrayal? Something along the line of lawless warriors in masks opposing the police in the summer of 1990? There were blockades and a militarized zone. Traffic inconveniences going into Montreal. You may recall that a golf course was set to dig up an Indigenous graveyard.
The behind the scenes story is more complex, and long-standing, with not a lot of overlap with what was told in the media.
Permutations by Paula Turcotte
Permutations by Paula Turcotte is a high energy chapbook of the urban depressed and stressed. It is fresh and punchy as well as comic at times.
Rooted: poems by Tricia Snell
How not to judge a book by its cover when production values of Spot of Poetry are so high? Heavy, cream, textured cover stock with French flaps and full colour and inside-cover graphics, designed by Berdene Owen.
Groping in the Daylight: poems by Augusta Wynde
The language is striking and fresh in reach without being self-important, adding humour to the poetic palette such as in “Bout” (p. 8) which you’ll have to buy to see— no spoilers on that.
Dear Elsa by Marco Fraticelli
Two kids in grade 5 are paired as part of a pen pal program between schools in Toronto, Ontario and Boston, Massachusetts respectively.
A Beautiful Rebellion: poems by Rita Bouvier
There’s a gentle humility in persisting and insisting in the poem to build a better world.
Asterisms by Donna Kane: taking it to the next level
Asterisms by Donna Kane is a much-awaited collection. I’ll admit to a certain bias: I enjoyed her first three collections.
Scattered Snowdrops, compiled by Kamal Parmar : commonplace book
Scattered Snowdrops, compiled by Kamal Parmar is renewing the practice of keeping a commonplace book. This book meets at the modern crossroads of blogging and print on demand.
Smoked Frames by S. Rupsha Mitra: Ecstatic Reflections
At 40 pages, Smoked Frames is a slim debut book of poetry written over the coarse of 4 years.
Only Insistence by James Lindsay
Eclectic, darkly fascinating, and at times apocalyptic, Only Insistence is a protean book where lines and phrases echo back on each other, where images of the natural world are bookended by investigations that delve deep into memory.