Amid the heavy snow and cold one winter in southeastern B.C.'s mountains where Tom Wayman lives, he happened to reread the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's posthumous volume Winter Garden in translation. Wayman decided to write a series of poems in response to a phrase, image, or entire poem of the Nobel laureate's. Wayman's series ranges across memory …

In Cuba Unspun Rosa Jordan introduces readers to Cubans in all walks of life, people whom she has met during travels around the island by bike, bus, plane, train, truck, and car. Familiar places like Havana and Varadero are viewed from unfamiliar angles and serve as starting points for adventures that began in 1996 and continue into the future.

Evelyn Lau’s new book of poems, A Grain of Rice, picks up on some of the themes she covered in her last wonderful book, Living Under Plastic. Once again she honours people, in particular family, and the past; the presence and importance of nature in urban spaces; the influence of other writers on her life and in her career as a writer.

Rainbow Stage-Manchuria, Steve Noyes’s fifth collection, sees him return to the long poem twice over, displaying his range and inventiveness. “Rainbow Stage” presents a 1973 rock concert in real time by the psychedelic Winnipeg band The Next. This sly mélange of panoramic action, wicked lyrics and deft character sketches is a broad wink at t …

Gerry James, aka Kid Dynamite, was not only the youngest player ever to play in the CFL at 17, but he was one of the toughest athletes of his time. James led the league in scoring in 1957 and held the record for most rushing touchdowns in one season for forty-three years. He was on four Grey Cup winning teams. Along with his father, he holds the ho …

Fifty-year-old Robin Rowe returns to Dhaka, Bangladesh, her first visit since she was an exchange student there in 1970. The country, then East Pakistan, was on the brink of the war that led to its independence from Pakistan. Robin was repatriated just as the violence erupted, and as a result of the conflict, lost touch with her friends, and the Ch …

Highly acclaimed by Books in Canada, the Calgary Herald, The Globe and Mail, and Canadian Literature, twice shortlisted for the CBC literary prize, and selected as a People’s Choice winner, Bruce Hunter is a poet who goes to the core of life. These poems reveal the mysteries of rivers, the secrets of spurned loves, the lives of workers and the jo …

Living Under Plastic represents a major departure from the author’s previous poetry books. Instead of the obsessive focus on relationships and emotional damage that has characterized much of her earlier work, this book opens up to explore new subjects: family history, illness, death and dying, consumerism, and the natural world. In a tone that is …

These essays are forays into what Wordsworth called the "hiding places" of the creative impulse. Sometimes in aphoristic form, this selection of meditations on the arts of poetry and teaching functions as an indirect self-portrait and probes the poet’s Irish heritage. For Brownlow, there is a fruitful tension between scholarship and poetry; too o …

Leaving Germany with little more than their 16th century Anabaptist faith and lifestyle to guide them, Schroeder's family settles on a small Fraser Valley farm in British Columbia and proceeds to try making sense of the perplexing mores and values of "The English" who surround them. The family finds solace, but not much else, within the local Menno …

We first meet Vivian by her favourite fishing hole. With her we enjoy the taste of freshly-caught salmon cooked over an open fire, take a sip of a cold beer and listen to her stories. With Vivian as our guide, we follow the adventures of three women—Joan Dark, the mysterious and radiant Salmon Woman and daughter of Vivian; Mary Chingee, a Carrier …

In thirteenth century France, a catastrophic fire has destroyed the greatest shrine in Christendom. Out of the ashes of the tragedy, history leaves a shadowy tale of a miracle, of the resurrection of faith, and of reconstruction—the erection of the masterwork of Gothic architecture, the Cathedral at Chartres. At the time of the fire, a powerful v …