by prfire | Feb 20, 2014 | Book Reviews, Poetry
Jason Heroux’s Memoirs of an Alias surprised me with its brilliance. His ability to create images seemed bold, rewarding and quite new. His Mansfield Press follow-up, Emergency Hallelujah, continued in the same direction: image vector attached to image vector like the...
by nicole | Jan 21, 2014 | Book Reviews, Poetry
Victor Coleman has been writing for a lifetime, working at the edges of poetry – never afraid to challenge any reader gutsy enough to pick up one of his books. This one comes with the head-scratching title ivH: An Alphamath Serial displayed in a pitch-black font...
by prfire | Oct 21, 2013 | Book Reviews, Poetry
In Victor Enns’s Boy, family and locale figure prominently, as well they might when the topic is adolescence. Enns feels dearly about his sister, not as strongly about his brother, he desperately needs his mother, and Dad keeps a leather belt in his roll-top desk. We...
by prfire | Jul 15, 2013 | Book Reviews, Poetry
In Firewalk, Katherine Bitney writes poems against a spectacular northern backdrop of aurora borealis conceived of as a “forest of green girls” (13), with the stag at the winter solstice standing with the sun “mov[ing] lower, into his antlers” (37), and the...
by prfire | Jan 24, 2013 | Book Reviews, Poetry
Katherena Vermette’s North End Love Songs is a debut collection from an emerging Winnipeg poet, a book that combines elegiac and fiercely ecstatic melodies to sing of a complicated love for a city, a river, and a neighbourhood. It is deeply rooted in its location, yet...
by prfire | Jan 24, 2013 | Book Reviews, Poetry
It took me a while to figure it out, but now I know who David McFadden reminds me of – the late American performing artist Andy Kaufman. He has that same almost illicit sense of humour – a kind of wicked take-your-PC-and-shove-it attitude that doesn’t show up...