Apostrophes: woman at a piano
by E.D. Blodgett
ISBN 0-9699904-0-5
Poetry 1996
$14.95 CAD/USD
Winner 1996 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry
Winner 1997 Canadian Authors' Association Award for Poetry
Finalist 1997 Stephan Stephansson Award for Poetry
In The Invisible Poem, a unique bilingual undertaking, E. D. Blodgett conceives of the poem first in French, and then he translates it into English, his mother tongue. In doing so, he reverses the established, ingrained modality of language, causing these poems to embody a marvelous sense of discovery. The poems rest side by side; the reader moves between the languages and into the ‘immediacy’ of the poems.
In 2000 in Galicia, in a maelstrom of rupture from her previous poetics, well-known poet Chus Pato gave readers a startling new book that instantly demarcated the literary landscape. This book was a reverberative crescendo, a roar and clamour of genres and fictions for the multiplied "I" in a time of unspeakable catastrophes.
One of the Chosen
by Danuta Gleed
ISBN 0-9699904-3-X
Short fiction 1997
$14.95 CAD/USD
"One of the Chosen takes us into a world very few know about except in a vague way—the world of the Displace Persons of the Second World War. Several of the strongest stories are set in Kenya, where a Polish family tries to make sense of the loss and outrageous displacement. How does one carry on a "normal" existence in such circumstances? (The answer is, one doesn't.) The beauty of the writing saves these stories from being almost too unbearable to read. But the saddest thing of all is that this, Danuta Gleed's first collection, is also her last. Let it stand as a memorial to her talent, her perception and her people." Audrey Thomas
Past, Present: Tense...
by Douglas Isaac
ISBN 1-894543-19-X
Poetry 2004
$15.00 CAD/USD
A challenging long poem, epic in scope, but postmodern in its handling of language and in its view of authority, literary or otherwise. It's also an important "document" in terms of Mennonite history in Canada. Gary Geddes
Well researched and provocatively presented. At times sad, funny and a little "on the edge." Should cause debate or prompt some to search out their own heritage. Richard D. Thiessen, Director, Mennonite Historical Society of B.C. and Chief Librarian, Columbia Bible College [Abbotsford, B.C.]
“Seasons of Blood takes on the world of greed and material interests. It’s a bold, impassioned plea to forsake the conflicts and wars that are the legacy of this blindness, in exchange for an immersion in nature and love. Yet the nature Beissel presents here is not just nurturing and beautiful, it’s violent and cataclysmic, where winter is ‘not a season / but a destiny for every sun’ and where spring, we are told, ‘leaves a train / of blood / up and down / paths of renewal.’ Not an easy path, since the mind must journey ‘on pain of death / to reach fulfilment.’ In the face of these challenges, the poet asks:
Is there not ecstasy enough
in this perpetual holocaust of creation
for a love to encompass all? Gary Geddes
The Bridge
by Christopher Levenson
ISBN 1-894543-02-5
Poetry 2000
$15.00 CAD/USD
Finalist 2001 Ottawa Book Award
Finalist 2001 Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry
Mature and confident, the poems in The Bridge show a talented and experienced writer at his most persuasive. Christopher Levenson has always been an open and accesible poet, but never before has he allowed us to see so much of the people and places, the emotional geography of his life, as he takes stock and searches for lasting value. "What will survive," he asks, and that is the urgent question of the collection. I would suggest that the best of these warm, human poems certainly will survive, and for that we should be grateful. The Bridge is Levenson's strongest book so far.
The Company We Keep
by Nancy Baele, Mary Borsky, Gabriella Goliger, Alison Gresik,
Debra Martens, Nadine McInnis, Sandra Nicholls, Kim Reynolds,
Barbara Sibbald, Vivian Tors and Susan Zettell
ISBN 1-894543-20-3
Sort Fiction and Photos 2004
Blaine Marchand’s The Craving of Knives is the work of a mature and worldly writer. It is the poetry of a man who asks difficult questions, meets his fears and moves beyond a obscurant life to one of transformation. In doing so he confronts the spectre of loss:
The birds, like sparks, spiral
beyond the cremation of darkness;
they drop the fruit,
hearts, impaled by blades of grass.
(“Grosbeaks”)
In The Horse Knows the Way, award-winning author Dave Margoshes transforms memory as he (re)imagines childhood and plunders the everyday for moments of transcendence:
So cold your face stings, your gloved hands
numb in the heartless sun and you wonder
how the chicadees can open their mouths
to sing without freezing their throats….
(“The hunger”)
1877. An international diplomatic crisis faces the new Dominion of Canada. The celebrated and reviled warrior chief Sitting Bull has crossed the 49th parallel ahead of pursuing U.S. Army troops. Camped near Wood Mountain just north of the border, he asks for asylum in Canada for himself and thousands of his Sioux and Cheyenne followers.
In a series of scenes and monologues representing the many sides in this life-and-death confrontation, Colin Morton casts new light on a past whose consequences still demand attention. History, tragedy, poetry, story-telling—The Hundred Cuts: Sitting Bull and the Major reminds readers that we are all implicated in history, that the past is not gone. It is part of us.
“With their capacity to listen intently and to everyone, their seasoned home-grown voice, and their front-and-back porch wisdom, Julie Berry’s poems seem effortlessly to set themselves to music. While her work is indeed, ‘rooted’ in place, these are roots that reach and probe; this is place (south-southwestern Ontario) translated into language with its address, its humour and tang, intact. Especially when so much is rendered anonymously global, this is poetry to be cherished.” Don McKay
Threats of Intimacy, the debut poetry collection by Ela Przbylo, attempts to map that most ephemeral of journeys, the journey of the human soul. The persona is aware of the many ways in which time and space encompass us, and she acknowledges the needs of the body. She reaches through these, past these, toward something possibly eternal.
25 Years of Tree
James Moran and Jennifer Mulligan, editors
ISBN 1-894543-31-9
Poetry Anthology 2005
$15.00 CAD/USD
25 Years of Tree showcases the work of participants in Ottawa's Tree Reading Series. Celebrating its 25th year in 2005, the Tree Reading Series is a diamond in Ottawa's literary rough. With assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts and the League of Canadian Poets, Tree has featured hundreds of poets including George Bowering, George Elliot Clarke, Lynn Coady, David McFadden, Camilla Gibbs, Doug Barbour, Mark Cochrane, Catherine Jenkins, and Gil McElroy to name a few. 25 Years of Tree includes selected poetry by some of the participants, essays by the series' founders and the most comprehensive list available of the meeting dates and participants from Tree's first quarter century.
West of Darkness/À l’ouest
de l’ombre
by John Barton translated by Arlette Francière
ISBN-10: 1-894543-35-1 / ISBN-13: 978-1-894543-35-4
Poetry (bilingual edition English/French) 2006
