There Once Was a Camel
P.K. PAGE & KRISTI BRIDGEMAN

There Once Was A Camel, a delightful new picture book by Canada's revered poet P.K. Page, introduces children to endearing animal friends who offer a bold approach to life. Combining the fun of a nonsense rhyme with the wisdom of Aesop’s fables, it is sure to become a story and bed-time favourite.

Nine O'Clock Gun
JIM CHRISTY

In Nine O’Clock Gun, the fourth and final novel of his Gene Castle, hard-boiled Private Eye series, author Jim Christy once again mines the streets of vintage Vancouver for the gritty characters and nostalgic settings that pepper the previous volumes. Vancouver is as dangerous as ever, though, and Castle’s just the man to solve the string of murders striking a little too close to home.

RLS: At the World's End
STEPHEN SCOBIE

In RLS: At the World’s End, award-winning Canadian poet Stephen Scobie charts an imagined course through Stevenson’s writings and travels. Scobie, himself a Scot living abroad, presents an extended dialogue between his own, contemporary voice and a poetic image of RLS: forever seeking a treasure island, forever longing to return home, living and dying at the world’s end.

Hellhound on His Trail
PETER TROWER

Internationally recognized as one of Canada’s finest poets and authors, Peter Trower likewise toiled in the freelance trenches for many years, hawking magazine features and newspaper columns to make ends meet. This collection represents some of his best writing from those publications, at turns humourous and heartbreaking, ribald and reflective. Real stories with real characters, told by someone who was really there.

Coming Down the Pike: Sonnets
DAVID WATMOUGH

These sonnets mark David Watmough’s 19th published book. After a lifetime of writing mainly fiction, all of it written in Vancouver, his retreat to boundary Bay (one field away from the U.S. border) has marked a significant change in his work, as well as his way of life. Watmough now confines his daily creativity to sonnets broadly in the idiom of those of John Milton.

Tantic Picnic: Tale of India
HANS PLOMP

The dynamic tapestry of contemporary India comes alive in the pages of Tantric Picnic: Tales of India by Dutch writer Hans Plomp. With humour and warmth the author chronicles this country of paradox, where the ancient and modern, the splendid and the sordid, endlessly collide. Carving a route well off the beaten path, Plomp probes the heart of India — the holy fools, village life, legends and myths, ruins and bazaars, the sway of tradition and the tug of modernity.

Against the Shore: the best of the PRRB
TREVOR CAROLAN & RICHARD OLAFSON

Addressing a broad horizon of topics and issues including East-West culture, serious poetry, international relations, history, and ecological inquiry, contributors include such distinguished writers as Gary Snyder, Josef Skvorecky, Red Pine, Rex Weyler, Andrew Schelling, and Michael Platzer, as well as many of the veteran and talented young west coast writers whose work PRRB has consistently championed.

The Discipline of Ice
LESLEY CHOYCE

The Discipline of Ice is an experiment of thought and word bursting with enthusiasm, devotion and despair. Part rant, part ode, part mirage, the book covers a wide range of important subject matter, including merit badges, God, cigarettes, Tokyo, Jules Verne, Iceland, Vietnam, cranberries, Clam Bay, Doaktown, Nietzsche, Culloden, County Cork, Joshua Slocum, Euell Gibbons, chantarelles, truth, delusion, class reunions, the death of Peter Gzowski, the Yellowhead Highway, the sound of birds singing and an anthem to silence.

Before Play
JANET ROTHMAN & HOWIE SIEGEL

Winner of the 2007 Canadian National Playwriting Competition, this two-act, two-character drama is an off-beat commentary on culture, maturity, relationships, loss and love offered with humour, intelligence and spice.

Poetaster!
LEOPOLD MCGINNIS

Poetaster isn’t a bunch of fancy poems. Poetaster is an open letter, in poetic form, to the cold, cold and clammy heart of meaning. Poetaster sweet talks the small nothings of this universe, begging for little secrets, asking for little truths, strokes the cheeks of existence in hopes of just one kiss in return.

The Plastic Heart
JOHN CARROLL

These poems find their centre where memories, places, and visions intersect. The narrative records how so many elements collectively press and guide the heart as it strives for understanding and unity, even in those moments when the mystery is unresolvable and unbearable.

The Emerald Hour
RICHARD STEVENSON

In The Emerald Hour Richard Stevenson focuses clearly on nature, the traditional subject of Japanese forms. From settings such as idyllic Henderson Lake, shown in evocative photographs by Ellen McArthur, to interior British Columbia and hometown of Lethbridge, Stevenson, offers monuments to moments, even Basho would enjoy.

Seduction of the Written Word
LALA HEINE-KOEHN

In this memorable new collection by Lala Heine-Koehn, evocative poems of love and silence suggest the subtle nuance of attraction and the complexity of romance. Arising out of the poet’s many journeys to Cuba for literary festivals, the poems in this volume may dazzle with Caribbean sun, but are universal in content and appeal. Anyone who has loved or longed for love will find beauty and solace in these delicate lyrics celebrating “someone I had not yet met.”

Sharav
DVORA LEVIN

In her first full book, Dvora Levin ponders the paradox of Jerusalem: the place of peace and ancient wisdom, seldom free of war and folly. From the rooftops of Zion to the depths of the praying heart at the Western Wall, the wind and sand of Sharav entices the spirit and engages the mind.

To Bite the Blue Aplle
DVORA LEVIN

From the shock of diagnosis to an awakened awareness of life's meaning and joy through the journey of a health crisis, Dvora Levin’s To Bite the Blue Apple documents a poet’s experience of cancer with humour, pathos and depth. Through metaphor drawn from nature and art, Levin observes the disbelief, fear and despair that accompanies such a diagnosis and then moves towards illumination, inspiration and hope, as she bites that ‘blue apple’ of the unknown.

Finding Louis O'Soup
WALTER HILDEBRANDT

Truth and lies, freedom and fascism, Old and New World, native and colonial values — these are the themes which permeate Walter Hildebrandt’s new volume of poetry, Finding Louis O’Soup. In three long poems exploring vastly different territory, Hildebrandt weaves a telling tale of displacement and dishonesty, exposing the discrepancy between unvarnished events and the sanitized accounts of history.

Shifting
ANNE SWANNELL

Movement, displacement, instability, change – these are a few of the themes artist and poet Anne Swannell delves into in Shifting, her remarkable new book of poems. With painterly clarity as well as wisdom, compassion and humour Anne Swannell draws a world where change and motion give life to colour and meaning.

Paper Trombones: notes on poetics
MIKE DOYLE

In Paper Trombones poet and scholar Mike Doyle shares musings on poetry – his own and others’ – drawn from informal journal notes of the past thirty years. With candid commentary on his wide reading in poetry, philosophy and criticism, Doyle is a personable guide to the currents of contemporary literature. An accessible journey through a personal landscape of poetry, Paper Trombones will appeal to those interested in the art of poetry and the dialogue on contemporary literature.