Collected Poems
MIKE DOYLE

The label ‘Collected Poems’ sounds definitive, but is flexible. For some poets it has meant gathering everything they have written that manages to stay afloat; for others, a snipping off here and there of ‘poor shoots’ (watershoots, perhaps). Yet others collect those poems they consider their strongest, what they wish to be represented by posthumously. This last is Doyle's approach, though he is sceptical enough to believe that ‘posterity’ simply means an ISBN number.

Murmers of the Dead
AL MacLACHLAN

In what author Daniel Woodrell has dubbed “country noir,” Murmurs of the Dead examines the dark side of small town life in North America. This is an allegorical tale set in coastal British Columbia and explores a way of life that is slowly disappearing. The central characters are reporters who gradually become aware of the history of smuggling, the frontier justice, and marijuana grow-ops as they unearth stories from the town’s shady past.

Prison Songs and
Storefront Poetry
JOE BLADES

Joe Blades has built a solid reputation for writing adventurous and consistent poetry that explores casual perception with deliberate attention to detail, resulting in a lucid and acute artistry. In Prison Songs and Storefront Poetry exploratory poems are rendered with Zen-like simplicity and calligraphic precision, from the palpability and velocity-sensitivity of a typewriter keyboard.

In Long, Secret Rivers
ANNICK PERROT-BISHOP

The waters of In Long, Secret Rivers express both vehemence and serenity as they meld the minuscule and the cosmic, water and air, exulting in the mysteries, pains and joys of flesh, spirit, life, light and hope. These exquisitely nuanced, compelling poems awaken the senses with lush layering of sensuous detail and mythic resonance. In Long, Secret Rivers articulates the deepest impulses of our humanity to praise and reverence, and invites us to flow towards the sacred.

The Seven Wonders
of the Leg
GEORGE WHIPPLE

George Whipple has been called ‘a poet’s poet’ and his most recent volume, The Seven Wonders of the Leg, reveals the truth of this statement. Now in his eighties, Whipple casts an observant eye on life, love, memory and mortality in poems that startle with both lyricism and wry economy. Touching, humourous and, at times, exalted, this thirteenth published book of poems from Vancouver’s George Whipple, celebrates the poet’s devotion to craft while mining the human dimensions of being for spiritual essence.

Communion
NANCY MACKENZIE

Communion continues the spiritual and philosophical explorations of Soul’s Flight and The Illuminated Life by playing chords, taking down dictation from the muse, imagination and soul to feel resonance not only with ancestors’ dreams but also with the poet’s place in the world.The poems reach for the divine by charting soul’s migration from willow fen to farmyard, out to the cosmos, back in through the Earth, to a raven or mountain for voicing again its search for communion with the divine.

Scarecrow
DUNCAN REGEHR

In Scarecrow, a remarkable first book of poetry, artist, author and actor Duncan Regehr explores the metaphor of line – the line of verse, the line of the pencil, the lay lines of the land in the scarecrow's domain – with an artistic vision that is both penetrating and prophetic. Regehr's work invites the reader into an elemental universe where nature and culture are in constant interplay on a dancing gyre of shadow and truth.

Triptych
MANOLIS

In his second book from Ekstasis, the Greek emigre poet Manolis switches effortlessly from the real to the dreamlike, the observed to the imagined, composing poetry that is both gentle and piercing.Triptych is a remarkable follow up to his previous volume Nuances, presenting poems that are seemingly simple but are truly beautiful and dislocating.

The Jagged Years
of Ruthie J.
RUTH SIMKIN

Against her wishes, Ruthie’s family admits her to a mental hospital, Chestnut Lodge, of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden notoriety. She is put in the care of a sadistic psychiatrist, but through the friendship and love of her fellow patients and the subsequent help of a remarkable therapist, Ruthie J. frees herself, discovers her true sexual orientation and perseveres in her dream to become a physician.

Poems and life
with angels
GUNDULA MOGERMAN

Gundula Mogerman's "angels" are spontaneous manifestations from an inner depth, both personal and universal. They weave throughout, beckoning us into the poetry, and together, words and images offer experiences spanning time and place, touching emotions, memories, spirituality and our interconnectedness.

India, India
YOLANDE VILLEMAIRE

Journey with Montreal artist Miliana Tremblay in India, from the Kalachakra retreat to the spice and sari markets, through the crowded streets of Delhi to the breathtaking marbles of the Taj Mahal where, in the end, love and beauty silence the unanswerable questions on this enchanting journey of discovery in the complex world of India today.

Muscle Memory
LINDA ROGERS

In Muscle Memory Linda Rogers dares to illuminate the heart with the light of eccentric wisdom and compassionate grace, writing personal and social concerns in playful and moving images. Combining a baroque sensibility with a flair for surrealism, the poet affirmns the abundance of spirit that manifests when the muscles of the heart and memory are flexed.

Eyes and Ears on
Boundary Bay
DAVID WATMOUGH

The poems in Eyes and Ears of Boundary Bay are both lyrical and reflective, forming a discreet narrative stretching from immediate experience to distant memory. David Watmough cultivates a small garden of human experience, within the discipline of fourteen lines. Passionate and ironic, these poems are a testament of a life fully lived and realized through art.

The Watchman's Dance
MIKE DOYLE

Mike Doyle is one our more significant poets, and all he chooses to tell is told so quietly one marvels at the transparency of his art, as the complexity, variety, and depth of his work are presented in deceptively simple and disarmingly open contemplative poetry. The Watchman’s Dance is an urgent and imaginitively vigorous book, perhaps his most accessible, mysterious and immediately beautiful book.

Winnipeg from the Fringes
WALTER HILDEBRANDT

Award-winning poet Walter Hildebrandt and photographer Ron A. Drewniak combine to present a unique portrait of the city of Winnipeg. They look to the fringes to find a sense of connection, belonging and community.

What It Means
To Be Human
D.C. REID

What It Means to be Human is Reid’s tenth book: the title is both a statement and an open-ended question, as Reid explores what it means to be human through individual stories. He employs the conventions of prose, point of view, multiple people, time shifts and plot, to weave an intricate tapestry of lives, where the past intersects with the present, while questioning the meaning of home and identity.

When Does a Kiss
Become a Bite?
LEN GASPARINI

In his latest book of stories Len Gasparini holds a broken mirror up to reality to reveal the shattered shards of vivid characters with grace and precision. The stories in When Does A Kiss Become a Bite? are Chekhovian in scope, eloquent statements, strikingly rendered, executed with dark tenderness and hypnotic conviction.

Woman Walking:
Selected Poems
ELIZABETH RHETT WOODS

In her new collection Woman Walking: Selected Poems Elizabeth Rhett Woods wanders the world as we know it, singing secular hymns to contemporary life. For decades now, Woods has been writing clear and austere poems of straightforward brilliance and Woman Walking is a compilation of the many directions her path has taken her.