Titres dans Canadienne

In 2008, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. I underwent two years of treatment, including chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. In January of 2010, I had my bladder removed, and thankfully, I have been cancer free since then.

We all create false mountains to climb. Gypsy Muse is a collection of free verse poetry chronicling that journey, and how we move beyond.

Harbour Grids is a long poem in four parts that investigates ideas of community and belonging. Beginning as a meditation on the surface of New York Harbor, the poem radiates outward through issues of labor, location, history, belonging, and subjectivity. How do we experience our complex relations to the world we live in?

Spanning forty years and ten previously published collections, Wherever We Mean to Be is the first substantial selection of Robyn Sarah’s poems since 1992. Chosen by the author, the 97 poems in this new volume highlight the versatility of a poet who moves easily between free verse, traditional forms, and prose poems. Familiar favorites are here, along with lesser-known poems that collectively round out a retrospective of the themes and concerns that have characterized this poet's work from the start.

Kate Braddock, a sexually ambiguous ex-Spacer, isolates herself on Luna. After detecting a faster-than-light ship en route to Earth several years ago, she now conducts geophysical surveys for a mineral resources consortium. One day, she and a young intern, Mary Atteberry, discover an anomaly in the dust near the Mare Marginis that is clearly unnatural, and clearly alien.

In The Day-Breakers, poet Michael Fraser imagines the selflessness of Black soldiers who fought for the Union during the American Civil War, of whom hundreds were African Canadian, fighting for the freedom of their brethren and the dawning of a new day.

Songs for My Father is a raw and honest collection of free verse poetry about the author’s relationship with her father. It chronicles how his anger and abuse left her emotionally trapped for many years, and how she found her way back into herself through her art. Katherine Lazaruk takes the listener through her early childhood experiences, drawing connections between how family, music, and learning shaped the writer and artist within her. It is a poignant window into the things that so often go unspoken, the elephants in the rooms of our families.

Dark night of the soul, spirituality, ascension. These were all new concepts to KR. A whole new world had opened up to him. Willing to explore this new world, KR embraced the future with an open mind. And then there was Theresa, the catalyst that awakened him, sending him on a quest for answers that led him to a juncture of two paths, where anything could be manifested.

Through prose and poetry, A World Diverse is a personal account of David Edmond’s 34 plus year career in the Royal Canadian Air Force. His inspiration to pick up the pen came after the death of his wife due to complications from Parkinson’s disease. The opportunity to serve across Canada exposed him to a variety of personalities, and the chance to build strong friendships.

There are poems about a sparkle, about how to say light, about a scarecrow, a dung beetle, a fish without eyes. Known for her precision and elegance, for her small clear voice, for distilling meaning from details, for not wasting words, Thammavongsa confirms her gifts with these new poems. Light is a work that shines with rigour, humour, courage, and grit.

Katherin Edwards examines the fine line between what we remember and forget; how the memories we retain become cloudy and altered by the passage of time. This book of poems is also a compilation of the wonder and surprise we discover when we manage to endure in the midst of grief and loss.

With awe and wonder leading the way, Leedahl’s poems chronicle a journey that speaks of resilience, of joy experienced in simple things, and of the solace in discovering—finally, and late in life—exactly where one belongs. Leedahl’s fifth poetry collection lyrically documents major life transitions and reveals how loneliness—the other contemporary epidemic—compels one to keep moving.

A microscopic and intense view of the sometimes invisible and ignored parts of the world we inhabit. Peering into cities and our place within them, the poet searches for meaning after the death of his father, and observes the flora and fauna, which provide beauty and nourish us. This book delights the senses and poses the question, are we contributing to, or ultimately destroying our planet?

Making Believe responds to a remarkable flowering of art by Mennonites in Canada. After the publication of his first novel in 1962, Rudy Wiebe was the only identifiable Mennonite literary writer in the country. Beginning in the 1970s, the numbers grew rapidly and now include writers Patrick Friesen, Sandra Birdsell, Di Brandt, Sarah Klassen, Armin Wiebe, David Bergen, Miriam Toews, Carrie Snyder, Casey Plett, and many more.

In 2004, boldly original poet Lisa Robertson published a chapbook, Rousseau’s Boat, poems culled from years of notebooks that are, nevertheless, by no means autobiographical. In 2010, she expanded the work into a full-length book, R’s Boat. During the pandemic, she was drawn back into decades of journals to shape Boat. These poems bring fresh vehemence to Robertson’s ongoing examination of the changing shape of feminism, the male-dominated philosophical tradition, the daily forms of discourse, and the possibilities of language itself.

Truth spoken plainly and powerfully is difficult to dismiss and impossible to ignore. Edited with purpose by A. Gregory Frankson, AfriCANthology: Perspectives of Black Canadian Poets brings together some of Canada's most influential dub, page, and spoken word poetic voices and gives them space to speak freely about their personal journeys in piercing verse and unapologetic prose. Just as individual experiences of Blackness are diverse across Canada, each contributor recounts aspects of navigating their unique personal, professional, and artistic paths in Black skin.

Pain and trauma are what makes us human, arguably unifying us as a species. Finding our way out can be traumatic itself at the best of times, always confusing and so often riddled with false starts and mistakes. Through poetry, this collection will make you cry, laugh, empathize, question, and eventually help you find your way through and out of that dark place. From someone who has experienced the journey, and put in the years of study and work required to build a tool set to make the needed progress toward better mental health—the time is right to share this work with the world.

Life is full of poetry. Diary of a Life takes its listeners on the poetic journey of author Kimella Louise Gosse, leading us through her childhood and adolescence, her adult years of freedom and travel, motherhood and matrimony, and everything she discovered when her marriage ended and she learned to embrace herself and the world around her. With narrative storytelling and thoughtful poetic offerings, she clearly illustrates the ebb and flow of life, from slow-moving stream to rushing white water, and invites her listeners to join her on the ride

This is a collection of stray thoughts and daydreams, poetry and prose, fueled by caffeine and punctuated by the papercuts we get when we try to turn the pages of our life without being careful enough. Speaking up can change the world...but even when it doesn't, what we have to say is still worth saying. Even if the difference is only to one person. Enjoy the efforts within, let them make you smile and laugh, or think carefully about experiences shared. After, consider writing your own. Whether it's intellectual or idiotic, make a brew, pick up a pen, and enjoy what happens next.

The poems in Hail, the Invisible Watchman are as tidy as a picket-fence—and as suggestive. Behind the charms of iambs lurks a dark exploration of domestic and social alienation. Metered rhyme sets the tone like a chilling piano score as insidiousness creeps into the neighborhood. A spectral narrator surveils social gatherings in the town of Sherbet Lake; community members chime in, each revealing their various troubles and hypocrisies; an eerie reimagining of an Ethel Wilson novel follows a young woman into a taboo friendship with an enigmatic divorcée.