My Mother Joins the Resistance: Poems by Richard Harrison
My Mother Joins the Resistance is broader than her role as his mother, or than her as an individual, or memories.
Pearl Pirie
Penguins Fly: A Queer Tale by Teren Hazzard
One of the first things that strike is how novel the literal colour. Every title is blue and the endpapers are blue sky and cumulous clouds continuing from the cover.
Tamil Terrains: poems, translations, reflections, edited by Nedra Rodrigo and Geetha Sukumaran
This book, Tamil Terrains: poems, translations, reflections, edited by Nedra Rodrigo and Geetha Sukumaran (Trace Press, 2025), emerged from “Root, Branch, Driftwood,” which were Tamil literary translation workshops held on Zoom but rooted in Toronto.
Do It Wrong: How to be a Poet in the Twenty-first Century by Derek Beaulieu
Beaulieu asks, why are we writing?
Best Canadian Poetry 2026 selected by Mary Dalton
In the best years, there is a lack of uniformity in poetic styles and moods. This is a good year. Most of the names are familiar with a few poets new to me.
Sincerely Katherine: Life, Gender, Inclusivity and Leadership for the Future by Katherine Dudtschak
Sincerely Katherine: Life, Gender, Inclusivity and Leadership for the Future by Katherine Dudtschak is a memoir that is synthesizing the past in order to better live the future. As the subtitle indicates, through Katherine’s story she frames a way forward for a better society. Personally, I like what I don’t know anything about, so Katherine’s …
The Time of Falling Apart by Wendy Donawa
As with movies that start gritty and move to hope or start sunlit and move to grim, this book has an arc starting quiet and small and becoming more vivid and joyful as it progresses, as if affirming to live every day.
A Friend of Dorothy’s by Richard Willett
The focus of the book is that compassionate curiosity of the narrator Eric as he tries to puzzle out his life, his times.
Hag Dances by Susan Wismer
There’s a haiku quality to her observations, and symmetry of sound, with profound weight.
Looking for Her by Carolyn Marie Souaid
Occasionally you read a book and love it and then you reread it and it is deeper, more architecturally sophisticated, not just an absorbing read, and you love it more and hope it will be on curricula for decades.
Why I Wrote This Book Issue #47
Featuring Pearl Pirie, Alexis Von Konigslow, Caitlin Galway, and Farah Ghafoor
Myth by Terese Mason Pierre
A widening gaze from a personal, deep past to a path forward for the wider scope of society.
Letters to My Dead Name by Richelle Lee Slota
Letters to my Dead Name is honest, dynamic, and vulnerable.
a disobedient gathering: poems for plants who can’t stay put by Katherine Barrett
The poems have a casual swagger and impish play with their subjects.
UNMET: poems by stephanie roberts
It’s lovely to read a collection and not once be pestered by the question, why is this a poem? Like her previous poems are not facile or conversational narratives. They are dense and intense.
