Coal and Roses is a collection of 21 intricately formal glosas, arranged to explore the endless possibilities of language. In this slim volume, P. K. Page offers the reader a wildly eclectic overview
The Pigheaded Soul is a collection of acclaimed poet and critic Jason Guriel?s intelligent, sometimes controversial reviews, essays, and anecdotes on poetry and culture in North America.
At the end of Lewis' previous memoir, the bitterly and beautifully honest Little Comrades, she left her young self newly married in New York City in the year 1952. But at that point, everything is abo
Music is central to many of R. Murray Schafer's memories. `One of the sounds that I'd almost forgotten until I began to write this chronicle was the tinkling of the piano keys when my mother used to w
Eric Ormsby, that gracious, intelligent and occasionally fractious poet, has produced another vigorous collection of essays to shake North American literary criticism from its lethargy. Opinionated a
Joyce Wieland (1930-1998) is legendary for her contribution to the development of contemporary visual arts in Canada. A self-described `cultural activist' she is best known for celebrating Canadian n
Palookaville, the graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Seth (Gregory Gallant), creates a dystopian reality that struggles with existential questions about the time, fate and identity. His bold, confid
In 1968, Canadian artist and filmmaker Jack Chambers was diagnosed with leukemia. Faced with his own mortality, Chambers began a programme of research into the nature of his own immortality. From that
For some years before 2007, with editor Stan Dragland and Joan Eichner, her long time friend and editorial assistant, Margaret Avison had been working on her autobiography. After Margaret's death in
Master engraver George A. Walker presents The Life and Times of Conrad Black, a wordless biography of the Canadian-born media mogul. With 100 stunning woodcuts, Walker affords readers a glimpse of Bla
In A Kind of Perseverance Margaret Avison shares with readers two lectures she gave at the University of Waterloo in 1993 -- `Misunderstanding is Damaging' and `Understanding is Costly'. Thoughtfully
Walker's engravings in The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson pay homage to Thomson's contribution to Canadian culture through both representations of his own life and of the contemporary artistic commun
In Fabulous Fictions and Peculiar Practices, politics and economics sprawl comfortably alongside prurient dissertations on sex, marriage and aging as Leon Rooke and Tony Calzetta masterfully unfold a
Eric Ormsby is a poet who writes prose that is both graceful and hard-headed. With an outspoken contempt for cant and literary persiflage, Ormsby ranges over a surprising array of writers and literat
Known for his confident and elemental lyrics, and subtle shifts in diction, tone and voice, the poetry of D. G. Jones offers a portal to the natural world. Though initially his poetry tended toward fo
The two sagas of the Faroe Islanders and Greenlanders may be counted among the `Sagas of Icelanders', though Icelanders play no part in the first and little in the second, and events in both are remo
Concord of Sweet Sounds presents, in words and images, the musical instruments of Shakespeare's time. In his plays and poems, Shakespeare mentions twenty-seven different instruments specifically. In
The latest wacky and wonderful collection of children's poetry, Governor General's Award winner JonArno Lawson's The Hobo's Crowbar presents a world of word botchers and bird watchers, of vile versifi
?Slack action? describes the movement of boxcars in the midst of a train that brakes and then accelerates, where ?reciprocal momentums ... meet and intermingle, the forward push / backing into slows,
High-Water Mark is Bronwen Wallace Award–winner Nicole Dixon's smart and sexy debut. These ten tightly written stories, touched with humour, focus on characters pursuing romantic and professional desi
The reach of Rosemary Kilbourn's art -- primarily wood engravings and works of stained glass -- spans the country, having found welcoming homes in galleries and churches from Victoria to Montreal. Her
David Carpenter's stories often begin in a comic mode, and the voices of the characters, their accents, tones and peculiar vocabularies, are brilliantly caught. But what begins as comedy can frequent
`Most of all, it is Coles's mastery of syntax, sinuous and unpredictable, that brings his poems alive. The trademark hesitations, asides and parentheses that mark his lines derive from speech (a Hemi
In The sea with no one in it, Niki Koulouris takes readers from the mysterious and powerful depths of the ocean to the familiar and disparate artifacts of our land-locked daily lives.
Acclaimed poet P. K. Page weaves together an astonishing range of characters and themes in this remarkable selection of stories written over the last fifty years and collected here for the first time.
Carpenter's voice captures both the bleakness and the unexpected joys of life. Filled with moments of high humour but grounded by the sense of defeat and rejection that we all face, this novel provid
Always Now, Collected Poems of Margaret Avison, encompasses in three volumes all of the published books, from Winter Sun (1960) to Concrete and Wild Carrot (2002), and is framed by a gathering of unco
In the mid-1990s, artist and musician Alec Dempster returned to Mexico, the place of his birth, and discovered son jarocho. A genre of folk music from the Veracruz region of Mexico, son jarocho origin
Sailor Girl is both coming-of-age tale and love poem to the natural world. Set on the cargo boats of Canada's Great Lakes in the summer of 1981, it follows the literal and figurative journey of Kate M
Can a story be both a shrug and a prayer? Can it punch you in the arm because, hey, it is only joking, and the next minute fall at your feet, cling to your knees, beg you to listen? Sure. The stories
The culmination of decades of effort, Wayne Clifford's The Exile's Papers is a four-part poetic journey that explores narrative duplicity, familial and romantic relationships, the correlation between
The literary emblem can trace its roots back to sixteenth-century English collections, which sought to reconcile classical philosophy with Christian doctrine. Consisting of images and verses, emblems
First-time novelist Mary-Lou Zeitoun's 13 wryly evokes an unavoidable time and place in everyone's life -- the teenage years -- without rendering the experience into saccharine nostalgia. Zeitoun's im
Newfoundland writer Libby Creelman finds the emotional heart of her characters — characters continually seeking, and breaking, connections with others, though they rarely know it. A girl welc
`What you're after comes before and haunts your wanting it....'Surpassing Pleasure pulls hard in two directions. Launching for `the every-coloured light / streaming through the bright rose-window,' or
This is the sixth volume in The Porcupines Quill's Essential Poets series. The Essential Margaret Avison provides an excellent introduction to this distinguished Canadian poet and the evolution of he