by prfire | Feb 6, 2020 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Poetry
I began reading Ariel Gordon’s Treed a day or two before October’s unseasonal and devastating storm. This storm, which dropped heavy wet snow all over Manitoba, had an immediate and destructive impact on our trees, trees that had been coming to life for me in...
by prfire | Jan 28, 2020 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Poetry
Intensely political and personal, Katherena Vermette’s second book of poems, river woman, achieves the impact and appeal of the great Canadian singer-songwriters while exploring what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a river. Under her consideration, this...
by prfire | Jan 16, 2020 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Theatre
In her introduction to Vera Manuel’s collection Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Plays, Emalene A. Manuel remembers the discussions she had with her sister Vera about the kind of storytelling they were creatingand developing with their theatre...
by prfire | Jan 6, 2020 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Poetry
As I write this review from Halifax, a yellow crane lays crumpled at one of the city’s busiest intersections. Toppled over during September’s post-tropical Hurricane Dorian, the crane has remained lodged in the side of a downtown high-rise, looking at times...
by prfire | Dec 19, 2019 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Fiction
‘Ordinary’ and ‘strangers’ are two words that seem contradictory. Yet they fit in this fine book by Bill Stenson, author of Svoboda and Hanne and Her Brothers among others. Sage and Della Howard are a couple on their way to Fernie, BC. After a brief stop in Hope where...
by prfire | Dec 9, 2019 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Fiction
Coopsammy’s novel, set in Trinidad in the 1950’s, features Tessa Joseph who is eight years old when the story begins and nineteen when it ends with her leaving the island, having won a scholarship to attend university in Delhi. Tessa is an avid reader who dreams of...
