by prfire | Apr 29, 2019 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Non-Fiction
Bird-Bent Grass isn’t what I expected it would be. I thought: a memoir about a mother’s Alzheimer’s and a daughter’s three-year sojourn in Uganda in the mid-to-late-eighties—by a Canadian woman writer who is just my age and in the exact same professional role—now...
by prfire | Apr 16, 2019 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Graphic Novel
There is a tendency when thinking about the history of comic books to privilege the superhero, to reduce comics as a medium to the mystery men and women who fight crime in all their caped glory. There are both historic and cultural reasons that this happen—the birth...
by prfire | Apr 5, 2019 | Book Reviews, Drama
The uses and abuses of science in playwriting: a review of Hannah Moscovitch’s play Infinity Hannah Moscovitch is an indie darling of Canadian theatre, and her Dora-winning play Infinity reaffirms her reputation as one of Canada’s brightest, most ambitious...
by prfire | Mar 26, 2019 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Poetry
“Calligraphy”, the opening poem in Panicle, Gillian Sze’s most recent book of poetry, is a masterful distillation of the emotional work of poetry. In this poem, the art of calligraphy is deconstructed alongside the act of writing: the grinding down of the inkstick,...
by prfire | Mar 12, 2019 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Non-Fiction
When you watch a lot of movies, you likely start to recognize certain faces. Not the stars, who are familiar figures in the world outside of the screen—but the people in the background and around the edges of the story. Supporting players with maybe a line or two....
by prfire | Feb 27, 2019 | Book Reviews, Fiction
Stories are meant to be told, to be absorbed, thought about and laughed over. Appreciated. They float in the air like will o’ wisps, waiting for the storyteller to reach out and grasp them. It is then and only then that they become solid, and are given meaning. Norma...