That Could Be Me: A Poetry Showcase from Frontenac House

That Could Be Me A Poetry Showcase from Frontenac House

ContentsEric Barstad A Gloss on Our Painted Gods..................................... 4 © 2012, copyright remains with the authors. ISBN978-1-897181-55-3David Bateman & Hiromi Goto Wait Until Late Afternoon............................................ 5David Bateman Invisible Foreground................................................... 6 Impersonating Flowers................................................ 7 All rights reserved, including moral rights. ’tis pity...................................................................... 9Ven Begamudré The Lightness Which Is Our World, Seen from Afar...... 10 This publication may be downloaded free for the reader’s plea-Jocko Benoit Standoff Terrain....................................................... 12 sure. However, no part of this publication may be reproduced orDiane Buchanan Between the Silences................................................ 13 transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical unruly angels........................................................... 14 including photocopying, recording, or any information storageDouglas Burnet Smith Learning to Count..................................................... 15 retrieval system, for resale or instruction purposes, without permis-Lori Cayer Attenuations of Force................................................ 16 sion in writing from the author or publisher, or ACCESS copyright,Ron Charach Forgetting the Holocaust............................................ 18 except by a reviewer or academic who may quote brief passagesWeyman Chan Before a Blue Sky Moon............................................ 19 in a review or critical study.Nancy Jo Cullen Untitled Child.......................................................... 21 Book and cover design: Epix Design Science Fiction Saint................................................. 22 Pearl....................................................................... 23Adebe D.A. ex nihilo.................................................................. 24 We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the ArtsDymphny Dronyk Contrary Infatuations................................................ 25 for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the support ofJannie Edwards Falling Blues............................................................ 26 The Alberta Foundation for the Arts.Arran Fisher Static Mantis............................................................ 27J. Fisher Death Day Erection.................................................. 28 bulletin from the low light.......................................... 29Keith Garebian Children of Ararat.................................................... 30Leslie Greentree guys named Bill....................................................... 31 go-go dancing for Elvis............................................. 32Rosemary Griebel Yes......................................................................... 33Karen Hofmann Water Strider........................................................... 35Kevin Irie Dinner at Madonna’s................................................ 36 Angel Blood: The Tess Poems..................................... 37Alexis Kienlen She Dreams in Red................................................... 38 13.......................................................................... 39

Laurie Macfayden White Shirt.............................................................. 40Sid Marty Sky Humour............................................................. 41 The Rider With Good Hands..................................... 42S. McDonald Confessions of an Empty Purse................................... 43Edited by Ken Mitchell Rhyming Wranglers.................................................. 45Catherine Moss Swallowing My Mother............................................. 46Jim Nason Narcissus Unfolding................................................. 47William Nichols Fallacies of Motion................................................... 48Lisa Pasold Weave.................................................................... 49 A Bad Year for Journalists.......................................... 50 Any Bright Horse...................................................... 53Sharron Proulx-Turner she is reading her blanket with her hands................... 54Kirk Ramdath Love in a Handful of Dust.......................................... 55Nikki Reimer [sic]........................................................................ 57Pierrette Requier details from the edge of the village............................. 58Ali Riley Wayward................................................................ 59 Tear Down............................................................... 61 33 Million Solitudes................................................. 63Patria Rivera Puti/White.............................................................. 64 The Bride Anthology................................................. 65Anna Marie Sewell Fifth World Drum...................................................... 66Zaid Shlah Taqsim.................................................................... 67Bob Stallworthy From a Call Box....................................................... 68 Optics.................................................................... 69 Things that Matter Now............................................ 70Richard Stevenson Wiser Pills............................................................... 71Rosalee van Stelten Pattern of Genes...................................................... 72 Pavlov’s Elephant..................................................... 73Yvonne Trainer Tom Three Persons.................................................... 74Joanna M. Weston A Summer Father..................................................... 75Sheri-D Wilson Autopsy of a Turvy World.......................................... 76 Re:Zoom................................................................. 78 Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the Universe........ 79Other titles from Frontenac .............................................................................. 81

For OrpheusLate summer and the red death of leaves.He walks as if asleep and whispers to himselfa poem. About loss, of course, about deathand love. A typical poet? Yes,and the first.He fingers a scar on his chestfrom love-making. He hasn’t noticedthe birds, the trees, the rocks that have rolledbehind him. The insects hummingin time with him. Seven black bearsfollowing like paparazzi. He hasn’tshielded his eyes from the sunthat hasn’t moved. A Gloss on Our Painted Gods Then he sits. by Eric BarstadLooking around at the same clouds and trees 978-0-9732380-1-3, $14.95and birds as this morning, the seven black bearsand the flies that won’t bite him, he imagines he’s walked Eric Barstad currently lives with his partner Erin and their two catsin a circle, or worse, not at all. He believes this — Finnegan and Pickles — in Brooks, Alberta. Eric completed hisis his new tragedy, dementia from loss and death, MA in English and Creative Writing at the University of New Bruns-and love. wick in 2001 and now runs Shadow Box Creative Media, a web development company that builds websites for non-profit organiza-So caught up in his next sorrow, he doesn’t hear tions. Eric published A Gloss on Our Painted Gods with Frontenacthe footfalls of women in the forest, the blood House in 2003.sounding in their ears like a song.

D twentytwothe condensation of these ice cubesin a glasssquat blunt drunken penile objectsbobbing labial petalson a damp spent towelH twentythree Wait Until Late Afternooncondescension by David Bateman & Hiromi Gotoglassy eyed wetness 978-189718-130-0, $18.00slops over the lip David Bateman is a spoken word poet and performance artist licking the skin based in Toronto. His most recent performances, A Brief History ofa sticky hand White Virgins or The Night Freddy Kissed Me, and What’s It Like? were presented in Vancouver, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto during the winter of 2009. He teaches drama, literature, and creative writing at a variety of Canadian post-secondary institutions. Hiromi Goto is the award-winning author of Chorus of Mushrooms, and The Kappa Child. She has also written a children’s novel, The Water of Possibility, and a collection of short stories, Hopeful Monsters. Her most recent publication is a young adult novel, Half World, published by Penguin Canada. She and David Bateman collaborated on and showcased a performance piece entitled The Cowboy and the Geisha.

Watching Grown Men Cry1over cappuccino with a warm shot of whiskey beside a thin young woman on a barstool in a loungenamed “East of Never” under pressure in a late night board meeting when his son will be the east-ern star by nine in a first grade play named “Heaven” after stand-up sex with his golfing buddy in afully equipped RV while the wives are at the spa when the flirtatious lesbian economy of the straightwomen he works under excludes and excites him before undressing for dinner in full frontal perusalof twenty-five years of living he will never get back beside the pane-fused light of a sun razed moonon a surreal jigsaw on a commode in his den regardless of pomegranate salad sun dried children sentto camp she asks him to go down on her again with his shallow feet awakening in a sudden streamof light and some fragility in shadows Invisible Foreground2 David Batemaninside a posh holding bin for new psychiatric patients interrogating $2000 red leather Barcelona 978-1-897181-78-2, $15.95knock-offs below a wreath of holiday wealth imagining belief in small paternalistic doses without “A glorious chameleon on page or stage, Bateman tries on asregard for nothing less than fine wine praise for middle aged women sunglasses and scarves beyond many styles and forms of poetry in his new Quartet collection as hequestion the faint vivacious tremor of her lower lips inside identity defined by birth certificates does costumes. Invisible Foreground is as balanced as a practiceddriver’s licences genital configurations and undotted sin above reproach for moody playoff seasons set of gams in high heels …. A poetry of extreme originality, itmale menopausal breath beneath cribbage boards plastic pegs hedge clippings and the news of the will linger on the skin of all your senses until it sinks in for good.”world unless heaven allows foundational bliss and flood insurance —Laurie Fuhr, Fast Forward Shortlisted: Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry

Destiny (to have), Nicosia, 2006to have met for those five fabulous secondsit may have been more but it felt like five knuckledpummelled minutiae of timeto have made that wrong turnaway from the Lydras Palaceand into this racialized gazeto have lost one’s selfin the zirconian glowof your right lobeto have, at five foot seventowered over your immense Impersonating Flowersdwarfish masculine beauty by David Bateman 978-1-897181-11-9, $15.95you short exquisite man you!you lightly bearded angel! Rated PG, these poems loosely chart an adolescence – moving swiftly into middle age – experienced without parental guidance.to have spent those last few hours As the poet morphs from poodle to petal, finding solace in Haikuin the Turkish Republic of Cyprus (and other profound decorative forms) he considers a timeless re-hunting for the blue and black of those manageable evil eyes visionist anecdote – When he was just a little girl he said to histo wrap in socks to pack and carry home to envious comrades mother, “What will I be?”to have been lost among window shades and torn curtains Impersonating Flowers answers some of the questions his mother was afraid to ask.for a quarter of an hourassimilating death zones negotiating alluring tourism

remembering how we rode to empty reservoirslay down on soiled sleeveless tank tops in deserted asphalt riversthrusting hips and buttocks into sand and gravelto have sung of arid shorelinesto have been blown by vacant riverstoward an orange skyfucking into nightto have been rendered empty dreamersto have spoken of the placematsyou had sewn from the flat backs of his designer shirtsrequiem cuffs turned into napkin ringsto have howled in adobe homes and patio housesfrom Limasol to Phoenixto have seen the Nicosian youthon motorbikes crossing checkpointsfor same sex loveto have travelled without your auntand made such faint relations

pleasurehe does not see the sky as more beautiful and brightin the dying lighthe has always known that blue is blueand radiantand that clouds are softand tantamount to the pillows of a goddessroughly pushing luck and privilegein and out of liveshe does not stare more keenly at the moon and starshe has always known that precious celestial carshave driven him to worlds he craved and cherishedhe does not regret the solid diving into pleasure ’tis pityto have arrived here with so much sensation thrill and leisure by David Batemanand then to perish 978-1-897181-67-6, $17.95there is something perfect Currently based in Toronto, David Bateman is a visual artist, per-in the deconstructed pose of willows formance poet, and playwright whose most recent performancemeant to weep and droop and plummet to the ground piece, Does this Giacometti Make Me Look Fat? or Art Immuno Deficiency Syndrome, was presented in New Orleans in the springlike fonts of leaves rooted in the earth of 2010. A Brief History of White Virgins or The Night Freddywith trunks that smile and frown Mercury Kissed Me was presented across Canada in 2009, andgroaning merrily sheathed by blades of grass his spoken word monologue What’s It Like? has been presentedon mounds of dirt in Montreal, Toronto, Peterborough, and Cyprus (2010). He has taught literature and creative writing at a variety of Canadian post-secondary institutions. His two collections of poetry, Invisibletall proud flowers desolate and happily bound by inches Foreground and Impersonating Flowers, have been published byashes dust and earth Frontenac House (Calgary). Frontenac has also published his col- laborative long poem entitled Wait Until Late Afternoon, written with poet/novelist Hiromi Goto.

Tafelmusik Performs the “Other”Brandenburg ConcertosThat white winter I turned thirteen, I saw my firststring quartet. The Vaghy Quartet. Four men so bravethey faced down five hundred pairs of pupilsmore used to skits on that stage than strings. Don’t ask mewhat they played. All I would ever rememberwas the cellist. He was black. A lot of my heroes were blackback then – Sidney Poitier, Arthur Ashe – but an Indian kidhad to find heroes where he could. And better than serving aceafter ace, Ashe wore glasses. Now Poitier tries to act wisein the shadows of less gentle men. Ashe is dead.My heroes have names like Kingsley, Te Kanawa.Jon Kimura Parker – a Japanese Canadian I met calls him a Halfer. The Lightness Which Is Our World, Seen from AfarTurning thirty-seven today, I find myself far from home by Ven Begamudréas usual, in a church of all things, 978-1-897181-02-7, $15.95while a bearded giant in a cummerbund plays an oboe,bent over it as if over a straw. Washington McClain: Ven Begamudré was born in South India and moved to Canadagood name for a man who might’ve been a linebacker once. when he was six. He has also lived in Mauritius and the UnitedI love it when he lifts his eyes from the music. Not to me; States. He lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.to the first violin, those belled cheeks asking, Allegro?Molto? Later, taking his bows with the rest, he seems He has an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. He has been writer-in-residence forunaware of the stir his trousers cause, the dye more indigo the University of Calgary’s Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writ-than black. Outside, blizzards pound the seaboard ers Programme, the University of Alberta’s Department of English,from Labrador to Alabama. The power is out in Tennessee. the Canada-Scotland Exchange, Regina Public Library, McMaster University’s Department of English, and the Yukon Public Libraries.Back in our mixed neighbourhood, as in white collar and blue,Robert Holmes the ex-Roughrider renovates his house. Shortlisted:He grins. I grin. He says, Howza goin’. I say, Howza goin’. City of Regina Writing AwardOther times, near the corner store, I see otherblack men. They can tell I’m not one of them.

And though they ignore the whites hurrying past the cathedral,they often stop and say hello. Sometimes we shake hands.Brothers passing in the street? I don’t think so.But they take me back to the summer I looked up from a bookand what should I see but a black mancarrying his cello down our lane? It was late afternoonand it was perfect: that a man should carry a cello homeat quitting time; that such men live and work and play among us,and always have. So tell me something, J.B.:When you were trying to score that jobfrom the Margrave of Brandenburg,did you ever guess how many savage breastsyour music would one day soothe?

ScopingThe terrain is to be assessed in terms of distance, difficulty orease of travel, dimension, and safety. — Sun TzuHer perimeters seem easily mapped,Standard grid – though the usual squaresBulge from her curves. But try to breechHer fears, surmount her inhibitionsAnd I’m caught in a nervous barbed wire smile.If I look long enough at her eyesThe pupils become Rorschach blots.One day her face sags, the next it isImpenetrable. She is the floor of a lake, Standoff TerrainThe deepest parts seeming close enough by Jocko BenoitTo touch. Her moods are an open book 978-1-897181-39-3, $15.95Rifled by crosswinds. Jocko Benoit was born in Montreal and raised in Cape Breton,Perspective is difficult in this heat. and explored the rest of Canada one university at a time until ar-One minute she seems to be miles away, riving in Edmonton, where he lived as a poetic marauder with theBack to me, a concentrated point of disinterest, Stroll of Poets. He has written one previous collection of poetry,And then I find I’m surrounded, in the centre An Anarchist Dream, and his poems have appeared in magazinesWhere she camps. She shuts and locks the door in Canada, the U.S., England and Australia. His stories have ap-The way she might a telescope. peared in On Spec and Tesseracts. His screenplays have been shortlisted in competitions in Canada and the U.S. He divides his time between Calgary and Washington, DC.

The HitchThere’s no crease in his baggy jeans, All he did was steal some foodthough the crotch reaches his knees because he was hungry. All he didand his pant legs drag was run away from an abusive home.over unlaced running shoes. All he did was get bornA grungy elbow pokes through to a woman who didn’t wanthis sweatshirt as he stuffs thin hands his kind of reminder around. Howinto back pockets and rocks can he possibly understand:side to side taking a wide stance Keep the peace and be of good behaviour.in front of the judge who beginsto read his probation orders: It’s a teasing echo in this courtroom.Keep the peace and be of good behaviour. If only it came with a recipe. If only it could be bottled, could nourishHe’s fourteen, just pleaded guilty – hungry youths like this one hereagain to shoplifting. As he drops his head waiting for the judge’s recitation to cease Between the Silencesdark clumps of hair fall forward before he’s released, free to leave by Diane Buchananto cover pimples and a scowl with a hitch of those jeans, a scratch, 978-0973238-08-2, $15.95exposing scabby skin at the back a timid grin and these words, which,of his neck while shoulder wings jut hopefully, he’ll carry beyond these courtroom Diane Buchanan is a poet and essayist who has lived in andand flex, bony, featherless, grounded: doors: around Edmonton, Alberta all her life. The last thirty years haveKeep the peace and be of good behaviour. Keep the peace and be of good behaviour. been spent on a thoroughbred horse farm where she and her husband of forty-three years raised four daughters. She began to writeA familiar phrase heard over after retiring from nursing and returning to University at the ageand over in youth court, but not of fifty. Her first book of poetry, Ask Her Anything was publishedon the TV he watches, not in the music in 2001. Her next book Unruly Angels will be released in July ofhe listens to, not in the movies he sees, this year.not on the streets where he’s trying Shortlisted:to exist. Does this young man know The Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Awardwhat that phrase means or,are they just empty words to him:Keep the peace and be of good behaviour.

Cowboy CourageIt’s Thursday morning in Calgary’s flashy new steel and glasscourthouse. The Stampede’s over but here there’s still reasonto celebrate. It’s graduation day in Courtroom 505. Thisman’s no cowboy but he’s shown he’s got the guts to ride abucking bronco through the agony of withdrawal and win.It hasn’t been easy. It’s hard enough to last eight seconds, letalone fourteen months. But he’d already had a fifteen yearstruggle with the rankest of stock. And though there’s nosilver buckle at the end of this ride, his prize is the rest of hislife. He’s got his health, a home, and a job. He’s going to usewhat he learned while hooked on the horns of crystal meth,heroin and Listerine to help those who are still trying tosurvive the spurs and burrs of an addict’s life on the streets.This man doesn’t want to forget that ride, the many falls, the unruly angelspain of landing, of being trod upon again and again. But to- by Diane Buchananday he’s in the winners’ circle with his family, his friends and 978-1-897181-54-6, $15.95his colleagues. Today, it’s white Stetsons off for his cowboycourage. Diane Buchanan is a poet and essayist who has lived in and around Edmonton, Alberta all her life. The last thirty years havesobriety been spent on a thoroughbred horse farm where she and heroff the horse husband of forty-three years raised four daughters. She began tothe pinch of new boots write after retiring from nursing and returning to University at the age of fifty. Her book of poetry, Unruly Angels, about the drug court in Edmonton, Alberta, was published in 2011.

Closure in the ContemporaryItalian NovelA little after midnightin an un-named piazzawhere disappointment over anonymitytrickles out of the fountainand the heat of the dayleaks from old stones.Steady bus-drone, a sirencompeting with a car-alarm. Learning to CountThen, a tone higher, a canine cry turns by Douglas Burnet Smithevery head on a café’s terrace 978-1-897181-37-9, $15.95inside toward the bar: it’s an old man – Douglas Burnet Smith is the author of over a dozen books of po-black suit and black hat, bare feet, jaundiced etry. His work has won the Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize, and has been nominated for a Governor General’s Award andwhite shirt, mouth frozen the Atlantic Poetry Prize. He has been Writer in Residence at aopen in a toothless howl number of universities in Canada and the U. S., and has served as President of the League of Canadian Poets, as well as Chair of the Public Lending Right Commission of Canada. He teachesthat crescendos into a shrieking laugh. at St. Francis Xavier University, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, andHis fist shakes at the American University of Paris. He divides his time between Canada, France, and Argentina.a battered blue paperbackat everyone, and he shouts One of three poetry books listed on the Globe & Mail’s Globe 100 Best Books selection for 2010So come finisce! So come finisce!I know how it ends! I know how it ends! Shortlisted: The Atlantic Poetry Prize

Excerpts from the Dictionary of Winds—found poem from essay of same name by Ivetta GerasimchukA DAnemophile (phobe) Dictionary of Winds (Degree of Certainty)I admit I never thought about this: Sooner or later, a person assignsventivacts—traces, figures of wind erosion characteristics of infinity to the things mostthe work of wind and time—allow for finding dear.one’s bearings in the future. The dictionary Depending on what you want to see—a point,of winds insists that when you look, there a straight line, time.on the smooth surface of the lake This rushing movement is inclineda hard body oscillates under to reduce the essence of a thing to its origin.the impulse of applied force. Then follows the story connected to inaccu- racy. Attenuations of ForceB An optical effect often caused by wind by Lori CayerBachelor Wind (Crazy Wind, Dark Wind, The absence of calm. 978-1-897181-31-7, $15.95 Married Wind) This series of simplifications, a crown of clouds. Lori Cayer’s first book Stealing Mercury (The Muses’ Company)Let’s assume that the little person has measured What remains is only to console ourselves. won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award and was a finalist for theeverything—the number of constructions McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. She is a past winner equal H of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer.to the number of phenomena. Hall of Winds (Cave of Winds)Abstract words, lists, appear and disappear not Shortlisted: in Precisely then, there exists merely Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/an entirely clear way; one single movement of air, a single wind prix Lansdowne de poésie.in the first place, they can be interpreted arranged in compass points. Absoluteany way you like; such mystification sewn time on behalf of the convenience of man.with white threads. Constellation located. It is required that a point of referenceSomething familiar relative to which be constant and noticeableyou can determine your position. at scholarly symposia and in grocery stores. The hall a creation not of man, but of the winds themselves It is an excellent landmark.

M WMeasurement (Hypertime, Infinity) Wind Rose (Wind City, Wind Mill, Wind of the Seven Mountains)Nothing other than dots.Under the figures of the winds Resurrect the picture that has just departed intoa year flies by unnoticed. the past.Given the required observation of the To say that I was interested in history is merely conditions because of the cliffs. We were warned,of similarity, you can measure anything at all waited for it, when all kinds of junkby anything at all. perceived by us as eventsA similar equality of a part and its whole are crammed into it.is also inherent in zero. Notions of a better life have been reflectedScience begins from the moment measurement in various risky expeditions. begins. It is worth noting, in some strange dictionary, part of I is equalT to I itself.Tower of Winds (Grammatical Time)It is not obligatory to conduct an inventoryat the Tower of Winds.(E)ventus (e)ventus est.An event is wind. Wind is an event.You need to come here, to the sandwhere it seems nothing has changed,but each grain of sand lies in a new place.In an infinite number of cyclesthe common denominator is also equal to infinity.

LudochkaNot for you the pleated skirts, youwho dazzled us in the coat closetat the back of the class, butt slinking outof the elastic-waisted jeansyou called “suicides”.Not for you the comfort of only being imagined,as you slowly peeled yourself beforethe rapt attention of our blessed eyes.Just minutes ago our minds were a hazeof the strangest form of boredom, and awashwith those black-and-white films ofnaked bodies in heaps at Birkenauthat Mrs Lesnitsky forced into our gaze. Forgetting the Holocaust by Ron CharachDecades later, you and I would meet again. 978-1-897181-46-1, $15.95Under pancake make-upyou played the vamp so well Winnipeg-born Ron Charach is the author of eight books of poetry,no one would have pegged you among them Dungenessque, winner of the Canadian Jewish Bookas offspring of a single mother with broken English, Award for Poetry in 2003. His work is widely published in nationalyou, who flashed your tomboy body for the boys and international journals and anthologies of writing by doctors aboutin a dark room of damp winter coats, their craft. Now residing in Toronto, Charach combines a physician’sdripping scarves and limp mittens. candid eye for the foibles and betrayals of the body with a psychia- trist’s compassion for the suffering of the mind. He creates poemsIt took you a while to remember me. around the memorable image, the anecdote that initially seems to say little, yet opens to reveal a great deal about the human condition.But once, when you slowed the spinningof your pelvis, you cast me a longing look In Forgetting the Holocaust, Charach reflects on his life as a Jewnot as if you wanted me to want you more raised in post-Holocaust Canada. His poems look back on a life ofthan anyone else in that little room did, accomplishment and reflect, sometimes with broad comedy, some-but as if, in a way I only understood years later, times with great confessional power, on what it means, comingI might become an ally in your counter- from such a beginning, to be a good Jew, a good son, a good man.offensive to take back the flesh.

Snow poemI want to write a poem about snowand the naming of snowin the word our Step Mom re-trained us to sayin Chinese –thloot meaning snow –as she held a piece of beef jerky out for usto say each word of our mother tonguein 1968 we were reclaiminglike daylight savings the tongue that would repatriateour love for anyone who dared to marry our fatherto save his four kids from the foster homes.Dad and Step Mom talked about Heng Ha, the homeland: Before a Blue Sky MoonSah Vun, Thlum Gup, Bahk Sah by Weyman Chanjeweled villages on a shepherd’s path 978-0968490-35-8, $14.95to stone-hedged grave markers,each one in the shape of an inverted omega, Weyman Chan, who lives and works in Calgary, is married withcarved into rainy hillsides. two daughters. His poems and short stories have been published in many journals and anthologies. His poetry also appears in ManyThey never saw snow until they came to Canada Mouthed Birds: Contemporary Writing by Chinese Canadians. if your eyes move with it Before a Blue Sky Moon is his first book, and deals with themes of the snow will hold still childhood, displacement, loss and redemption both spiritual and while the earth meets up with it secular, the meaning of personal love, and at the same time gives us stunning and magical insights into a Chinese Canadian family. never to own or to be owned His second book, Noise From the Laundry (Talonbooks), was nomi-Step Mom warned us about heaven, when we were bad. nated for the 2008 Governor General’s Award for Poetry.There’s a heaven, she’d tell us. “Yu-ga hin.”She had eyelashes that seemed Winner:the perfect altar of warmth The National Magazine Awards Silver Medal for Poetry;to die on Stephan G. Stephansson Award, Best Alberta Poetry Book, 2002

snow is the one thing this body taken by storms and dart frogs, that holds still while we float free excoriations that bend leaves at night between lattice and rivulet with our children’s voices crying for us snow is the anchor of our moderation this bodybut snow kept her alone in the house caught in the middle distanceconstantly sweeping out the grey air where life stops freezing or burningyelling at us to step back and begins to know itself.when we walked in dusted with snowflakes I skated on the river todayand years later on the morning amazed that this distance could be mother to watermy mother-in-law died and that water could have made meher last eyes looking outfollowed that gentle whiteout to remember a word like thlootit hushed her breathing and I wondered on a day like today where the sun spoke to mehow anybody could stand open-mouthed like an old friend –looking upwardhoping to cradle-catch that illusion of falling Yes I remember you when you left me yesterdayinto its own vowel – its no, and I’ve slept without you in the worldnegation, have-not of heaven anticipating nothing until now.following the sand if snow could be a poem about the bodywhen in other seasons a fishcould dream air out of wateror a tree could bend sugar out of light,then snow would talk about disbelief,its six-sided dissolutionin the millionsproving that the smallest touch lastswhy her, why this falcon-like fallfrom recovery, only to believe withall the science of your heart that all we haveis this body

Santa MariaOh Mother of JesusThis world is still at warThe beautiful girl down the street has been murderedAnd we are empty as prayerIf we are made up of our lossesThen we are as thin as KleenexLiving in hope for the deadOur breath unable to rest inOur lungs search for solace in the new suburbiaWe shovel; we sowOur lawns so expertly mowedWe are the post-modern somnambulistsShopping for God and the perfect diet Untitled Child by Nancy Jo CullenAnd you souls in Purgatory 978-1-897181-27-0, $15.95Have you any insight for us sinnersWho have the sons and daughters to prove it? In 2006 Nancy Jo Cullen’s life partner died after a long struggle with mental illness and addiction. Untitled Child examines the tra-Oh Mother of Jesus you crazy so-and-so jectory of the end of the marriage between the two women andIs this what you imagined it would come to the author tries to understand her role in a series of painful events.When you slapped your insubordinate son Nancy Jo Cullen is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Science Fiction Saint and Pearl. Nancy Jo Cullen lives in TorontoWhat does resurrection matter where she is at work on an MFA in Creative Writing at the Univer-when the dead lie in our arms sity of Guelph–Humber.All beyond the presence of our fingertips

facing west everything in panorama there are things that seem like silence; cars passing onan always somewhere highway, voices of boys calling out acrossthe afternoon and Evelyn’s chickadees chattering in the bluespruce. how terrifying, that blue spruce, when you imagine itcrumpling – no, crashing – onto your roof. it would spell theend of you all, your grisly demise featured on the six o’clocknews. families around their kitchen tables would click theirtongues in horror. after that no one who’d ever loved you couldsit under a blue spruce without feeling a pang. at your funeralall your ex-lovers would sit in a row. humbled by your suddendeath, and a little bit destroyed. because there is was no one likeyou. they realize that now. and good, you think, they figured Science Fiction Saintthat out. except you won’t be thinking. you won’t be. you will be by Nancy Jo Cullenashes for the compost heap. and that makes you not fearless, but 978-0968490-37-2, $14.95dizzy. it makes you want to scream or puke or have intercourse.because of the force with which you can be pushed against a Science Fiction Saint, by playwright and poet Nancy Jo Cullen,bed. because of friction. investigates the space between a more traditional lyric line and the experimental use of form and language. A provocative work that this is a moment that can not be controlled shimmers with risk and offbeat humour. everything inside you is a weed Nancy Jo Cullen was the 4th recipient of the Dayne Ogilvie Grant. The grant is given annually to an emerging gay or lesbian writer washed in the panic of nothingness you understand. not who demonstrates great promise through a body of work of ex-yourself, but what it is that takes strangers to public washrooms ceptional quality.their hands stroking their genitals. not love, just that instant of Shortlisted:being perfectly alive with no attachment to another. and no idea The Gerald Lampert Award;of the consequences of a blue spruce ringing with chickadees The Stephan G. Stephansson Award; Alberta Book Awards Trade Fiction Book Award

The Future of ScentBefore the everyday use of plastic:Mud, horse shit and burning coalA damp wool blanketDiesel, spat from the trainFungal sheets, jismRye splashed against a windowsillA brisk westerly delivering dustand the promise of spring, or winter depending on which corner you stoodThe odor of a pipe, sweet until after the Spanish flu then sorrowfulVinegar on the morning floorsThe ears of an unwashed man (always too close to the nose)The piss of a tomcat on an inside wallA new deck of cards PearlRosewater and glycerin rubbed lightly on tired skin, by Nancy Jo CullenFunereal in retrospect 978-1897181-03-4, $15.95Cloves inside a tooth Pearl is a poetic exploration of the life of the legendary PearlBaked apples Miller, early Calgary’s most famous, and successful madam. Cul-The tight smell of ten days of thirty below zero len fuses traditional lyric lines and experimental uses of form andFresh cut lilacs in a bowl (again, in retrospect, funereal) language to fabricate a biography of Calgary’s mythical brothelToast and saskatoon jelly keeper.Regret unmitigated by capital assets Nancy Jo Cullen was the 4th recipient of the Dayne Ogilvie Grant. The grant is given annually to an emerging gay or lesbian writer who demonstrates great promise through a body of work of ex- ceptional quality. Winner: Alberta Book Awards Trade Fiction Book Award Shortlisted: The City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize

English LiteratureWhy,Because chiaroscurois where I belong.That and I was once Pushkin’s wife.O, my darling octoroon your Russia is doing alive and well,but your Ethiopia is still squinting into the sun,blind and full of lighttrying to find empire in uptown Harlembut all we get isgentrification petrification talkabout holy war, race war, war on warwhile the Church of Nazareth on 144th standsa burned-out shell, waiting. ex nihilo by Adebe D.A. 978-1897181-34-8, $15.95 Adebe D.A. is a writer whose words travel between Toronto and New York City. She recently completed her MA at York University, where she also served as Assistant Editor for the arts and literary journal, Existere. Her work has been published in various North American sources, including Canadian Woman Studies Journal, The Claremont Review, Canadian Literature, CV2 and the Toronto Star. She won the Toronto Poetry Competition in 2005 to become Toronto’s first Junior Poet Laureate. Ex Nihilo is her debut collection. Adebe D.A. was one of 16 writers longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize for her book ex nihilo. Global in scope, the £30,000 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize is awarded to the best published or produced literary work in the English language, written by an author under 30.

Soldier, SailorMake love to me like a soldier.Your new uniform hangs starchedand tough on the closet door.Leaning against the rocker, your gungleams maliciously in the moonlight.Afterwards, I will hold you, troubledand spent, your desperate arms too tightaround my neck.In sleep, macho dreams stumble from your mouth,like men in midnight trenches.You leave me nothing to believe in.It is absurd to put that much faith in fate.In the morning the rattle of your belt buckle wakes me.Your bus leaves at noon. Contrary InfatuationsAugust heat will stick you to your seat. by Dymphny DronykYou don’t know it yet, but 978-1-897181-10-2, $15.95all your generals are insane. Dymphny Dronyk is a writer, artist, mediator and mother. She isMake love to me like a sailor, passionate about the magic of story and has woven words forit is a course we have travelled many times. money (journalism, corporate writing) and for love (poetry, fiction,Your thick sweater lies curled on the rug. drama, mystery novels) for about 30 years. She lives in Calgary,Gumboots trip over themselves in the doorway, has three almost grown children and works in the “oilpatch”, inbrass pea coat buttons are polished, happy. stakeholder relations.The concertina plays a slow waltz to itself.Afterwards, I fall into the deepest slumber, Shortlisted: Gerald Lampert Award;drowning in a cove of your warmth and scent. Stephan G. Stephansson Award for PoetryAt least I can dream of this madness –your absence is finite and planned,your infidelity something I can trust.At dawn we rise from well-charted sheets,and I make coffee, French and black.You shave, singing a sea shanty,and swagger over the floorlike it’s a pitching deck.

Grand CanyonAt the rim, she wings it.A twitch of big bang dust, houndedthrough the gouged, high noon cathedral, seething.Darkness swallows light from the bottom up.Ego, love child of desert rat and turkey vulture,orphaned in the Great Unknowing,scritches and circles, sniffingthrough the carrion alphabetfor some sounds to speakto this hugeness.Awk, says Raven, disappearing. Falling Blues by Jannie Edwards 978-1-897181-36-2, $15.95 Jannie Edwards was born in South Africa and now lives and writes in Edmonton, Alberta. Her second book of poetry, Blood Opera: The Raven Tango Poems, was a collaboration with visual artist Paul Saturley and was adapted for the stage by Edmonton’s Theatre Prospero. Jannie Edwards’ website is www.jannieedwards.ca. Shortlisted: Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry

“Write lots of shit” he advised. We walked to myself in a bus shelter with the girl and an arm-the library as he spoke. The lie prayery, where I load of damp books about cats and dogs andpromised eternal devotion in exchange for the heterologicality. Grelling and the one about thechance to get laid before I graduated. Or else I thunderstorm and the pet loving girl from outdidn’t. And in this I lie as in a bed with two pil- of town. They had a whole lotta books aboutlows and a woman I push away because it’s too pets and a few of them can be most lovabledamn hot for a snuggle or maybe I’m just not companions.dead enough for damnation in return for ly-ing directly to the Almighty. But enough about “Is this the library?” Her eye winkedGod all right let’s focus on the matter at hand, and I saw she wanted directions, but I don’t Static Mantisusually the right but the left now ‘cause it’s like know shit about pets and I’d rather sleep in by Arran Fishersomeone else came towards me and said “Is this comfort than swelter in her arms. I prefer a 978-0-9684903-4-1, $13.95the library?” good sci-fi before I lie. The drop in her eye, but her arms were full and the ground wet, so Arran Fisher was born in Brisbane, Australia, and raised in Saska- She was unfamiliar with the buildings instead I offered to hold her pets so she could toon, Vancouver, and Calgary. He has a philosophy degree frombut had something in her eye. A glint or dust wipe. That wet patch which is always left over the University of Calgary, where he studied writing under Nicoleor just a drop of water. She wanted to find the between us reminded me of the downpour from Markotic and Fred Wah. Since then he has travelled to Europe,library or was unfamiliar with the language and the heavens like an open book full of locusts the United States, and Japan, where he took part in the All-Japanwanted to know the time. It was 4:27 and the or tadpoles. It was cold, but the sun was com- Aikido Demonstration. He is cofounder of the rock band, The Sum-library was in front of us and I knew she’d find ing out and the businessmen were folding their merlad.it if only I told her, but I lied and said “Move umbrella-like wings or solar panels. Shortlisted:over a bit, I’m too hot” and left it at that inter- Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetrysection, kitty-corner from the cathedral. Godsaw my misdeed and the sky opened up andeither rain or locusts fell upon the city. Like agood book with many insects among its pages,but like a bad book because it closed soon afteras it tends to do in the prairies, and I found

God’s animalsmust Late nitesto stay away from telephones heavy-intakemust hefty billsthere’s no love there too much smokestrong enough no sleepingwet enough or eating properlyon the other end or at all,to corral the lust swapping spitthe sucking chest wound with fat.that come aboutafter a couple cocktails. Ugly people in bad tavernsBathroom mirrors junkies help you sleepare the nitemare alone Death Day Erectionespecially always refused. by J. Fisherflourescent-lit men’s rooms It’ll have to do 978-0973238-05-1, $15.95in dive-bars this incessant needafter three days spent for fuelling J. Fisher was born in Edson, has lived and worked in Victoria’s down-sucking floor gives meaning town core and is now in Calgary. His first short story “for what it’syou can see right back to exhaustion worth” was published when he was 19. He spent his early 20s asto the real problem and carnal musings. a wildly unsuccessful blues singer and lyricist. His love of the wordjust under the lunatic dermis Playing part propelled him thru his failings until, in 2004, he managed to bringpores tell the tale. in phony revolution together the pieces which would make up his first collection, Death causes a great thirst. Day Erection. His poems continue to appear in e-zines, reviews and publications all over North America and Europe. Shortlisted: Alberta Book Awards: Book Illustration of the Year

into the arms of GodTue 2 May 2006 11:32 amEden works the Government strip simply release the fingered gripbut she’s not really there at all and it’s into the water, back into the arms of Godshe blows her mind out in the alleys but no, not todaybefore the johns come calling she’ll stick it out as her spike heels clickflashing cash and cock, against the worn asphaltpromising to do their worst she shakes her thoughts like water fromstuffing it in, taking it all out her curly brown locksone trick at a time catches the first car doorEden smokes a steady blue stream for another short rideperched outside the diner all day to nowheresee, she can’t sleep in the daylight’cause she knows bulletin from the low lightwhen the sun goes down it’s back to work by J. Fisherdown on her knees, down to business 978-1-897181-07-2, $15.95screaming without speakingspreading the disease J. Fisher is the Quintessential counter-culture archetype, a Jamesand her own loneliness Dean incarnate… Fisher’s strongest work blends base abstractionsEden takes a moment to lean over the rail with complex allusions. Nevertheless he achieves some dexterouson that famed Blue Bridge sleights of hand (it’s all in the wrist) and a sense of alienation onlytime between the poisonings to reflect the young can cherish.on how it all came to this —Anne Burke, Prairie Journalmemories like a slow-fisted dragpull up upon her past

Istanbul in Darkness, GrievingHouses, streets, ghettoes of childhood. Darkness is a cover for the eyeThe world almost forgetting these existed. peering at ghosts and shadows. DarknessYour city has always hidden its ruins, makesits black bile, its melancholy. a moral point. This darkness a grieving for what has fallen into ruin.Cities, like families, expect love and luckthe way lovers doin the acceptance of bodies, in their imperfections.We live in different fantasies of the same museum:bric-à-brac, photographs, locked glass cabinets,silent pianos, beaded curtains, large heavy carpets,and an old nanny who can no longer read love lettersfrom a dead suitor. Children of Ararat by Keith GarebianOutside the semi-darkness of these relics, 978-1-897181-32-4, $15.95the streets are weary, light decliningon the surfaces of fallen down mansions, Keith Garebian is a widely published, award-winning freelancecrowds huddled in winter’s thick coat, literary and theatre critic, biographer, and poet. Among his manynight rubbing its cold into streets and lives. awards are the Canadian Authors Association (Niagara Branch)Battered streetlamps, old wooden houses, Poetry Award (2009), the Mississauga Arts Award (2000 andconcrete apartments, chiaroscuro of decay. 2008), a Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Award (2006), and the Lakeshore Arts & Scarborough Arts Council Award for PoetryAge, neglect, dirt, and humidity (2003 & 2010). This is his fourth book of poetry.confuse the tourist’s eye,misinterpreting the value of the colour black.Dark haze on smoky morningssettles on rooftops or in eaves and gardensleft untended – not the pretty tints of etchingspainted by foreign hands.

guys named BillRian and I step off the plane the bartender at our hotelbreathing yellow hibiscus is Bill – Bill the Bartendertossing alohas to smiling swarthy men he loves us it’s nice to meet athey drape us with leis Bill who doeskiss us on the cheek he puts extra rum in our Mai-tais we laugh at his jokesI’m here to recover from Billshake myself clean at last and then there’s the nighttwo weeks in which to re-enter the world we join a table of singing Australiansprepare myself for the man the dark-haired one with freckleswho waits to buy me dinner is Bill of the Australian Navyon our return I haven’t kissed a man in almost a year butI did send Bill a postcard I’m used to kissing Bills guys named Billfrom San Francisco airport – by Leslie Greentreesomething about a man in a dress I’ve put away a lot of beer 978-0968490-36-5, $14.95I don’t know – with guys named Billit was a layover we were Leslie Greentree was born in Grande Prairie, Alberta, and has livedsleep deprived and a little drunk in various parts of BC and Alberta, including Salmon Arm, Mc- Bride, Dawson Creek, Crowsnest Pass, Calgary, and Lethbridge.everyone in Hawaii is named Bill Her first book, guys named Bill, was published by Frontenac House as part of their poetry series Quartet 2002.we have our pictures takenin Honolulu Leslie Greentree was the winner of the Howard O’Hagan Awardglorious parrots astride each shoulder for Short Fiction.the tousled man who chats us upis Bill, the Parrot Guy

black go-go bootsit’s stylized sixties the black boots are to her kneesbut the tank top with the silver spaghetti straps and her tinyskirt only nod to the originals the colours arecarefully psychedelicthe first photograph shows her and Elvis laughingher go-go boot draped lightly over his satin thighhair pulled high on her head ponytail cascading over hershoulders slapping her in the face as she gyratesthe second is of her in the classic pose arms pumpingclenched fists hair flying boots planted firmlytwo feet apart her head is down eyes closedI can feel the music here something like Jailhouse Rock or go-go dancing for Elvishis bastardized version of Hound Dog by Leslie Greentree 978-0973238-02-0, $14.95she’s having the time of her lifewhen she wore her boots to supper she felt wild and mod go-go dancing for Elvis by Leslie Greentree is the story of twogetting such a kick out of this outfit sisters: the beautiful sister, who travels the States as a dancer forlike the kid who used to put on the old clothes an Elvis impersonator, and her more conventional sister, who staysfrom Mom’s dress-up box home and renovates her house. It’s a story of love, jealousy, be- trayal, and the people who used to have our phone numbers. MostElvis told her to go back to the room and change of all it’s a story about Hawkeye Pierce and power tools.he’s had enough of looking at that crap every nightdoes he really have to take his work with him to supper? Shortlisted: The Griffin Poetry Prizepart of me is glad to see that even a go-go dancer for Elviscan be made to feel like an idiot be spoken to in that waybut I still want to drive to their hotel in Renoand kick his ass

INSOMNIAYou may have heard this before – an ancient Egyptianmeditation called quiet ears can cure insomnia. You plug the ear canals with your thumbsand listen for a high pitched singing in your head.If you give yourself over to it, the sound will carry you into sleep. Outside, the moon is yawning over the city –and the neighbour has arrived home. He opens a square of light to the night.My husband moves in his sleep,pulls the blanket to his shoulders. He is curled up,his ear pressed toward dreams. Now I understand how lovers Yes.fly around each other night and day – how close and secret by Rosemary Griebel are the passages of love. 978-1-897181-77-5, $15.95 Apparently that melodic sound Born in the farming community of Castor, Alberta, Rosemaryis always in the head – we just need to listen. Griebel grew up on the prairies. There she experienced nature asThe way birds hear a choir of light, and in darkness both immense and intimate. It’s common to say that there is little start to sing. room to romanticize nature when the lives and deaths of animals are commonplace and all around you. Yet Rosemary, currentlyAcross the river, wolves in the zoo are howling. Special Projects Manager with the Calgary Public Library, where You may have heard this too – she has worked for 20 years, always knew experience as bothimprisoned animals cry out for their kind, knowing something to be felt and something to be spoken of. Rosemary’s poems have been published on CBC’s radio program Anthology,they are out there somewhere. All creatures in national journals, in the Calgary Transit’s “Poetry in Motion”have an instinctive geography that goes beyond fences and cities. series of in-vehicle posters, and in chapbooks by Leaf Press. It is a map of belonging. Yes. is Rosemary Griebel’s long-awaited first book, an intimate journey through love and loss, an affirmation of the importance of curiosity, passion and vision.

Even my own father would call out to my mother in the night. He could hear her walking above him in heaven,opening doors, looking for him.Right now the wolves are hearing things their keepers can not – the sound of jazz bars closing, the clock-tickand night noises of humans: distressed crying, love making, and someone at a small window writing the worldwhile a distant keening in her head will not lead her back to sleep.It is 3 a.m. I would like to wake my love so we could talk,or lay our heads together like heavy hymn books, and listen.

Long BeachI am mesmerized by the young man analogous to something –zipping his girlfriend’s wetsuit, not loss, but something likejealous of the way he braces his feet the pattern of sand ripples, orand yanks, as if her skin I have been here before, orwere familiar to him as his own watch face. the cogs and gears that work the tides.I envy them as I envy the otters The young in their neoprene sleeknessanchored in kelp knots, rocked return to the water I climbed out of.and static in the moving sea, their eyes The seam where the ocean openssealed tighter than abalone, their pelts is sewnshiny as inner tubes, as harpoon steel. and opens again.Here on the beach I have been sandcastlingwith my children, constructinga simulacrum of well-being. Water StriderWe are sticky with flotsam, by Karen Hofmannglitter with mica, salt, fish scales; 978-1-897181-19-5, $15.95everything is gritty, ridged, creased. Karen Hofmann grew up in the Okanagan Valley, completed a BAThe sun slips a notch in its slow curl and MA at the University of Victoria, and now teaches English andand I wade in, cast for my lost skins creative writing at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, Britishbut bring in the usual old boot Columbia. She lives at the edge of a former pine forest with herof cartoons, and each frame husband, many children and small animals, and the constant fear that she has forgotten to do something important. Shortlisted: The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize

Entering VeniceShe looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,Rising with her tiara of proud towersAt airy distance … –Byron, Childe Harold’s PilgrimageSpanning Here, words are vines the breadth, of an invasive speciesthe back of Venice: borne by aerosol winds;graffiti scribbled across bare walls,a gorgon’s coil signature set as its own gaudy subject,writhing against the water, cheap paintslick tentacled creatures as netting, Dinner at Madonna’scaught in low tide. lattice. Scar. by Kevin Irie 978-0973238-00-6, $14.95Sprayed ropes Not beautyscale Castello, Cannaregio; but what defines it. Kevin Irie was born and lives in Toronto. His poetry has been pub-green, pus yellow, lished in periodicals and anthologies in Canada and the Unitedto tow the sight past walls Venice: States, Australia and England, and has been translated into Spanishwhere a gangrenous a catch lashed in painted nets. and Japanese. He won first prize in the 2000 poetry competition in Rice Paper for his poem “Tashme” which appears in Dinner at Ma-cut in a portal donna’s. He was a finalist in the prestigious CBC Literary awards formarks a gash as welt and whip. Each launch, his poem “Viewing Tom Thomson (A Minority Report)”. Kevin is also a finned creature the author of two previous books, Burning the Dead, and The ColourHearts become serpents moving in of Eden, which was a finalist for the City of Toronto Book Award. An-swallowing their tails; closer … gel Blood: The Tess Poems was also published by Frontenac House..their purple, not royal, but bruised.Damp worms, eels,plucked from the oceanthat wrings them outtill they seep faint blood.

Higher EducationSchool taught meI wasn’t my parents.School gave me a way to growagainst them. My educationa distance they couldn’t crossas I wandered further into myself.Each page was a new place they couldn’t find me,chalk across slatelike a trail escaping.You’re too smart for us now,my mother once told me Angel Blood: The Tess Poems by Kevin Iriethough I said nothing 978-0973238-04-4, $15.95to prove I was. Adopting the posthumous voice of a wronged girl from 19th-century fiction makes for a bold imaginative leap on Irie’s part. Yet he enters into Tess’s situation so thoughtfully, and his diction is so exact, that he ends up making a success of it. —Harry Vandervlist, Alberta Views Longlisted: 2005 ReLit Awards

chinese caféi want to eat chinese all the timeivory chopsticks between my fingers,porcelain bowls in my palms.i want to sit on the red vinyl seats,crack cookies between my canines,floss my teeth with fortunes.i love those old chinese cafés,jasmine, chrysanthemum, or green tea.i want to savour pork dumplings,dribble hoisin, garlic and black bean sauce over rice,want to twist and drip noodles into my mouth, She Dreams in Redlick my lips. by Alexis Kienlen 978-1-897181-12-6, $15.95i crave those wontons,thrust my tongue deep in the custard tarts. She Dreams in Red is the story of journeys – from China to Cana- da, to Indonesia, to Mongolia into the mysteries of the human heartthis chinese café stays open all night. and romantic relationships. Exploring the author’s unique cultural background and history, travels and encounters with love and loss, these poems attempt to make sense of the world with simple images painted in clean brushstrokes. Alexis’s new book 13 will appear in September.

the one who slippedwe have all heard anything to suck out the loneliness,about the little monster the dullness of endless wanting.who stepped out of the shadows,showed her face to a child. the child would take time to remember memories of fear.in the quiet stillness of the nightthe child’s scream summoned children have to learnbleary-eyed parents. how to be afraid, to recognize the differencethe little monster, terrified, between awake and dreaming.could not get away fast enough.she had snarled her fingernails a child has to learnin the child’s hair, how to scream.mesmerized by soft curls, 13the perfume of newness, by Alexis Kienlenperfect apple softness of the child’s cheeks. 978-1-897181-53-9, $15.95we were all familiar with the scene. Alexis Kienlen is originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She isin a moment of silence of mixed ethnic heritage: Chinese, French, German, and English/we imagined the child’s sleepy, trusting gaze, Scottish. She holds an International Studies degree from the Univer-the holy moments between them. sity of Saskatchewan, and a Graduate Diploma in Journalism from Concordia University. Alexis has lived in Montreal, Wainwrightawe as the monster Alberta, Grande Prairie Alberta, Vancouver, Indonesia and Mon-touched the soft skin of the other. golia. Her poetry, fiction and journalism pieces have appeared in numerous publications throughout Canada. She has written twoshe would have held poetry books, She Dreams in Red and 13.the small one close to her,to absorb the warmth,the feeling of life,

hoboyou would call me a nobodyi myself prefer the termemotional vagabondi am a nobodyand my mother’s given up on mebecause i’m hopping boxcarsin search of language for the unseenfor another thousand waysto say the things i was forbidden to sayshut up shut up shut upmy mother would call the train tracks dangerousbut i take comfort in their stretch White Shirttheir long steel hum, by Laurie Macfaydenthe way they just go off 978-1-897181-40-9, $15.95towards an ending you cannot seeyou know that ultimately Laurie MacFayden grew up in southern Ontario and has lived inthey must come to a halt out there Edmonton since 1984. She spent 30 years as a sports journalist,somewhere on the other side of trestles and tunnels most recently at the Edmonton Journal. She left the news media inand the dangers of unmarked crossings June 2007 to focus on her own writing and visual arts projects. This is her debut collection of poetry. She blogs at spatherdab.you would call me a drifter wordpress.com and her art lives at www.lauriemacfayden.com.i myself prefernot to be called Shortlisted: 23rd annual Lambda Literary Awards, lesbian poetry category. Co-Winner: Golden Crown Literary Society Award, lesbian poetry category.

Sky HumourAt last the ranger quits A humming bird comes hopefully to fanhis dusty circuit through the firs a yellow helmet flowering on the stepsDoped on light he seeks the cool The sleeper would have fed this visitorof a roof, paper work. But a single sheet But now his mouth yawns, stupid with defeatfalls on his wrist like a hot towel He dreams into the heat of MexicoDeer flies, horse flies, house fliesmoths and bees, thud as heavily as sparrows He’s there at the volcano’s rimagainst the screen. They make a kind of music when the molten climax seeds a year of rainHis head drops on his arms, glued with sweatto the clammy desktop Sky HumourOutside the clouds roll in by Sid Martybut they are thunderheads of smoke 978-1-897181-43-0, $15.95Ash falls softly on the cabin roof Now a singer-songwriter, author and poet, for 12 years Sid Martya parody of winter was a park warden, spending hours patrolling the mountain back-All promise of rain is just sky humour country with saddle and pack horses; he wrote many of his earlyClouds “Just empties goin’ back” poems literally in the saddle, composing them in his head while onas farmers say patrol far from home. Sky Humour, originally published in 1999 by Black Moss Press, is now available in this revised edition with a new cover from Frontenac House.

Packing Dynamite“The thing to remember”he saidBull Durham bag suspendedarchly from one pinky“is to keep your dynamiteand your blasting capsin two separate places”Caps were in my saddlebagsdynamite packed on the mareAnd back and forth my horsesbattled for the leadbanging pack-box and saddleroughly together The Rider With Good Handseight miles up the river by Sid Martyto the camp above Twin Falls 978-1-897181-45-4, $15.95My sun tan flaked off A selection of horseback verses from three earlier books, Head-and I was a white and shining angel waters, Nobody Danced With Miss Rodeo and Sky Humour toready to take wing illustrate the various rites of passage of a life lived close to theAll in white pieces earth in the mountains and foothills of British Columbia and Al-of a horse shit bomb berta, in the late decades of the last century. The book concludes with newer material that smacks of an even earlier time, since it is written in the rhyming tradition that never went out of style on the western ranges. Sid Marty is the author of five books of non-fiction and three poetry collections. His recent prose work, The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek, was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award in Non- Fiction and shared the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival. In 2008, he was awarded the Grant MacEwan Literary Arts Award for his contribution to the literatre of Alberta.

regent park will be there foreverI’ve got to tell you this: This is what I would do riding the subway every day whereIt’s 1974 and between Bloor and SummerhillI’m 14 years old. subway stations it was above ground.I’m in Grade 9,my first year of Outside. Lots of trees and green.high school. In the winter it would be covered in snow in a very soft, pretty way.De La Salle, an all-boys Sitting in the subway car,Catholic high school. looking out the window I would think of the sceneI took the streetcar fromand subway back andforth to school everyday. Valley of the Dolls Confessions of an Empty Purse where Barbara Parkins by S. McDonaldI was fat with flat, oily hair and pimples galore. was taking the train back from 978-1-897181-33-1, $15.95 New York City to Lawrenceville.wouldn’t that be a great drag name? S. McDonald was born, raised and continues to live in Toronto.Ladies and Gentlemen put your hands She’s looking longingly Ze grew up in pre-gentrification Cabbagetown and Regent Park.together and give it up for out the window of the train: Ze has performed zir alternative spoken word performance piecesPimples Galore! at various venues including Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s annual Her hair is in a sophisticated upsweep. Rhubarb! Festival and Paddy’s Playhouse. Ze is the love child ofAnyway: Her make-up is perfection. Christine Jorgensen & John Rechy & the spiritual godchild of Jac-I had no friends. None. Her black leather gloved hands queline Susann. clutch her mink coat about her throat.I lived a life so insular,so deeply, so profoundly Her perfect, perfect face achinginside my head with a sweet, serene melancholyit felt both physically … at life.and psychically painfulto even be outside in the world.

Every day as I rode understand:the subway betweenBloor and Summerhill: I didn’t see myself “as” Barbara Parkins looking out that subway window.as I looked out the train windowI saw myself, I saw myself looking out that window.Marsha:with sophisticated upswept hair, It was my perfectly made-up face.perfect make-up, my black leather gloved handsclutching my mink coat to my aching throat It was my hair in that sophisticated upsweep.to keep the screaming inside and most importantly:.my perfectly made-up eyes, It. Was. My. Mink. Coat.so catlike and desperate,looking longingly out I knew it then and I know it now:that subway windowinto my future. Regent Park will be there foreverfor that few minutes every day And I will always, always be me; Marsha …I was myself on that subway.I was Marsha riding into my future,riding away from everybody and everythingthat still clung to my skin and stained myheart,that cut my soul to the core at every turn

On the Missouri CoteauSure good to see ole Henk again ridin with our crewalong the trail on the big coteau. Bin years since he was through.He left here for the rodeo, then took up tendin barand livin the life of a vagabond with a banjo and guitar.But there’s heavy lines across his face and his eyes seem kinda dullas if them years he spent down South been etched inside his skull.“Boys,” sez he, “I’m tickled green to be sitting by your firecause all the fancy bars I’ve seen can’t set a tone no higher.“Way out here on the high plateau your spirit gets a shakelike the smell of coffee on the boil, a thing you don’t mistake.That grub we ate was what I craved, each night in every town.Your venison and biscuit pie in taverns can’t be found. Rhyming Wranglers“Oh, I’ve sampled horses’ doovers in the bistros of Orleans Edited by Ken Mitchelland all the bins on the Broadway – but they can’t match Donny’s beans. 978-1-897181-13-3, $18.95And smart talk? Well, I heard lots, in some courtrooms here and therebut I tell you men, my learning began when I heared ol’ Wally swear. Ken Mitchell is a well-known Canadian playwright, actor and novelist, with over 25 books to his credit, including the legendary“As for music, I took in a few big concerts in my days, “country opera” Cruel Tears. His drama about Norman Bethune,but I still prefer the steady purr of a crackling pinewood blaze. Gone the Burning Sun, toured the world in the 90s. Mitchell grewOr the plaintive howl of a coyote prowling through yon aspen wood up on a family ranch near Moose Jaw, and went on to become ais gonna affect the hair on your neck, like no soprano could. professor of English at the University of Regina. He lives in Regina with his wife, the scholar Jeanne Shami.“‘I’ve wandered the world, looked at great art, your Leonardos and Vince Van Go,but if you wanta study a masterpiece, take a sunset on the coteau. Rhyming Wranglers includes not only poets from pioneer times,Look at it there, all purple and gold, ’gainst a blue like a robin’s egg. and the current stars of the cowboy poetry festival circuit, but such major outlaw poets as Sheri-D Wilson, Sid Marty, Doris Daley andNo painter I know can capture the flow of those shapes on heaven’s lake. Corb Lund. You will find they all speak the authentic lingo of the“So pour me out another cup of Slim’s black-as-hades brew; cowboy. Especially in the poem “On the Missouri Coteau” written by Ken himself.the coffees I been sippin late are thin as Moose Jaw stew.I’ll just sit and reflect a bit on the loneliness of bars,and the music of the Big Coteau, and the distances of stars.”

Writing Above Timberlineabove eight thousand feetthe energy of emptinesspushes back larchlifts upstone valleysalpine tundrarejects formal scriptit splashes lichen graffitiorange yellow grey/greenon rockcut to the coreby snow wind the wildness Swallowing My Motherof an open page Catherine Moss 0-9684903-3-6, $13.95 Catherine Moss lives in Calgary and has often spent summer and fall hiking in the high country. Her favourite destinations involve the transition from forest to alpine tundra.

HorseYou sink into the rose-printsofa you bought at the Salvation Army,wake slowly into morning. Sunriseis fire through a crack in the curtain,circling your feet like an improbable haloon the pine floor, the consoling warmth.Hung above the Medici vase, a blackand white photograph of a thoroughbred –foaming flank of neck, strong legs weakwith rain and mud, zero percent body fatyou would say if the horse were nakedlike a man – maybe the man who spendsan extra ten minutes in the steaming showeracross from you at the gym, wanting eyes Narcissus Unfoldingon his lonely chest, loving the world of sit-ups by Jim Nasonand iron, hating himself for what he craves –you see this in the way he looks at your own 978-1-897181-48-5, $15.95fit body, how he soaps his rough thighs, bends Jim Nason is the author of two books of poetry, If Lips Were as Redslowly to massage his knees, by the way he and The Fist of Remembering, the latter an emotionally rich andhangs his beautiful head – hot water dripping honest account of the death of his partner from cancer, and a novel,down around the scalded circle of his neck The Housekeeping Journals (Turnstone). While his subject matter haslike a flaming lei of pink roses. often been about death and dying, his poetry is filled with light. In many ways his is the truly philosophical view that wastes no timeThe horse’s wet mane mourning what might have been but is eager to embrace all that lifeand ballsy stance, framed might teach even in the deepest of sorrows.in slick hardwood – complex weaveof petal and thorn, you want to touch it, Narcissus Unfolding inspires its readers to re-examine how they are loved in a world that’s often disappointingly real. Yet, oncesmell the sexy mix of lime powder accepted, once understood, real, flawed, failing love is seen in alland hay, hear the steady grind of oats its unfolded glory – and embraced.like gravel between his massive teeth,heavy tail swatting flies from his tensed-uprump, stomping in the stall, the water bucketspilling, sunlight over piss-soaked straw.

Heat Lightningthunder at a distanceclatter of cutlery in a slammed drawera dog bark multiplies itself down the alleya harley a sirensqueal of a gatean engine startscar lights swerve from a driveflash photography down the streetlight kicks at the curtainharleys sirens harleys sirens harleyscoins going round in a dryerleaves thrash the wallsmall birds cry from hidden placesthe summer ends this way Fallacies of Motionbox spring creaking by William Nicholswaiting for black violence 978-1-897181-35-5, $15.95or the hush of raindreams lay bedridden William Nichols is a public policy consultant based in Edmonton.detecting conspiracies Born in Moose Jaw, his travels have always brought him back tofrom scant evidence the prairies. Poetry is a counterpoint to the words he produces forsirens harleys sirens harleys sirens harleys business and government. William’s muse is dyslexia. Though his is a mild disability, it creates a continual tension between the mind, the eye and the page. A printed page can have as many possibilities as a blank one, as the letters slowly swim into words, possibilities are discarded, and meanings emerge.

which part isn’t the one you want?it seems a long time ago, when my husband made threewe married in a rush, he was sent back after two weeks.they were in france by then. he left me a painting of the alps.you want I should explain love like a cake? I cut that cakeinto pieces,one for each of my stale loyalties. I have worn the prettiestexpectations for people like you.as for love, haven’t you learned that lesson yet? everythingcoexists. three is a better number than two, it is more believable.let me give you an example. something impossible. what if you Weavedisappeared for three years; who would you find in your home by Lisa Pasoldwhen you returned? 0-9732380-7-0, $15.95would she invite you in? would she lend you clean clothes? Lisa Pasold has been thrown off a train in Belarus, mushed huskieswould she give you her clean hands. or send you out ahead of her in the Yukon, learned to polka at Danceland, and been cheated in the Venetian gambling halls of Ca’ Vendramin Calergi. She grewkiss you once and push you forward through the woods. would up in Montreal, which gave her the necessary jaywalking skills tothe cake survive as a journalist. She currently divides her time between ain your pocket crumble, its pieces now dry? tiny house in Paris and various borrowed addresses in Toronto. Awards/Award Nominations Shortlisted: Alberta Book Awards Trade Fiction Book Award

personal private newsif there’s too much of it, we are drowned; if there is none of it, we arestarving. is there no other word for what we lack? the volunteers all given white rubber gloves, cheap paper masks, a prayer of their preferred religious affiliation. bowing heads.the empty tap coming away in his hand. how water falls upon us orsweeps us away. how we die if it isn’t surely clean.something about compassion. put it on an aeroplane stampedwith initials, crosses or crescents. maybe he should have kept his southern accent, stayed thoroughly Johnny Cash, all drunk tank and motel. A Bad Year for Journalists by Lisa Pasold 978-1897181-01-0, $15.95there are two satisfactions: of looking without flinching, or elsethe satisfaction of flinching. he can’t say the latter. Pop music jingles, statistics, the frames of text and camera se- lecting the world’s headlines for our perusal. A stroll along thehe has a sudden craving for pistachios, must be something to do Champs Elysees jammed against the slum of Kibera — A Bad Yearwith the flavour of the air this morning, its lack. for Journalists feeds the jagged, seductive language of media into the emotional cusinart lives of the media’s flawed and courageousthere are no new ways of describing movement in water. malarial, practitioners.with long curved beaks and words like plumage. Shortlisted:so does the truth comfort? or does the truth makes us despair— Alberta Book Awards Trade Fiction Book Awardhe isn’t sure of his job’s description.

if he has to confess to a totem animal, he says “lion, or hyena”yet knows himself a civet, nocturnal, solitary.instead of the elephants, he finds himself watching a former modelsitting in yoga position on the roof of her jeep.the hopeful heart: giraffe sailing through the landscape, a secretary bird,then he’s on a little airplane leaving Nairobi.the stylist says “what bloody use are flamingos” while the driver’sguard dog lopes quietly down to the wet.haute couture shoot on the carved veranda of the Serena Hotel; sun-lit,palm-reflectioned, he mutters “i’m lost here.”taking a bite of the hibiscus because its petals should be edible, consistentdisappointment when they’re not. spitting colour.overhears “those tourists known as journalists.” unable to look around;holding to speed because the very breath depends on it.

brilliant pages for Figaro Magazine. he examines the prints for signsthat he’s still here. he can’t remember. the smallest spider he has ever seen, crawling across cracked leather of a hotel lobby desk. “the peace process crawls…”he’s there, camera flash as a coalition spokesman admits peacekeeperstortured the rebels to death; room boiling, unsurprised.all next day, streets empty as everyone watches football. how he wantsto join them, free his mind from everything but soaring energy.unable to prove his equal interests in what is kept,what is thrown away.the river overflowing its banks: the surge, pull, he thinks “howbeautiful” but catches himself; a global language of operational synergy.

If Marco Polo had never travelled to meet the Great Khan. Ifhe had never returned.If in middle-age, he had not felt uneasily sedentary, stifled bythe narrow canals of Venice.If he had not then accepted command of a vessel sailing totriumph against Genoa.If the naval battle had not been lost.If Polo had not been held, a prisoner of war, in Genoa.If he had not been imprisoned alongside a bored writer of Any Bright HorseArthurian romances, languishing in a neighbouring cell of by Lisa PasoldGenoa’s Palazzo di San Giorgio Jail. 978-1-897181-55-3, $17.95If this fellow inmate, Rustichello, had not written down the Lisa Pasold’s first book of poetry, Weave, was hailed as a master-stories Polo recounted. piece by Geist magazine. Her second book of poetry, A Bad Year for Journalists, was nominated for an Alberta Book Award. HerIf they had not collaborated, arguing through their various 2009 novel, Rats of Las Vegas, was described as “enticing as thelanguages and dialects, until Rustichello penned Polo’s lit-up Las Vegas strip and as satisfying as a winning hand at poker”complete narrative in an ungrammatical but highly romantic by the Winnipeg Free Press. Lisa has taught creative writing at theFrench. American University in Paris and led writing workshops in places such as Dawson City, Yukon, and Winter Park, Florida. Lisa grewIf this Book of Marvels had not been read rapturously even up in Montreal, which gave her the necessary jaywalking skills to survive as a poet and travel writer. While working as a journalist,by priests, had not been recopied and translated variously and Lisa has been thrown off a train in Belarus, mushed huskies in thefinally printed, for wide distribution, in 1477. Yukon, and been cheated in the Venetian gambling halls of Ca’ Vendramin Calergi. Her latest book of poetry, Any Bright Horse, was published by Frontenac House in spring 2012.

your wind a song & deepinside the hand hillsfor margie faccini-leethat sea of frozen grasses transforms to something delicate & finecaught in a wind something alive& bendingwhose underwater waves for you, margie leefill whole fields with spring words seem clumsy & uneven & youtheir scents your spirit a soft red leafyour walk the same leaf found under barbed wirea magnifier of your natural in mid-winter she is reading her blanket with her handsrare beauty perfect still Sharron Proulx-Turner rich & supple & pressed nowknowing you is like playing hopscotch on the inside the pages of a book 978-1-897181-18-8, $15.95surface of the water, the chalk returning to its maria campbell or linda hogan Sharron Proulx-Turner is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta.watery home, the rocks to throw from number lee maracle or beth brant Originally from the Ottawa river valley, she’s from Mohawk, Al-to number, too, gone back to the bottom of gonquin, Wyandot, Ojibwe, Mi’kmaw, French, Scottish and Irishfish creek, & me jumping anyway, the memory you hold onto grace ancestry. She’s a two-spirit mom of three adult children, Graham,working its way from thigh to knee to calf to like a child holds a dandelion Barb and Adrian, mother-in-law to Harold, and nokomis to Willow,heel, heel to toe, heel to toe, heel to toe. for her mother Jessinia and Mazie. Sharron’s work appears in several anthologies with deep joy and journals.to me at that time of dayyou’re like summer sweetgrass when morning meets the skylong & fragrant & generous & yours are prairie skiesyour wit your mind your humour bursting brilliant red bold & breathtakingyou’re a brilliant storyteller against a periwinkle bluean artistwhere everything you touch

marquez could do you justice(but for now the task is mine)when i think of youmy hands do not tremble with weaknessmy eyes do not fill with tearsno longer does thinking of youstir the embers of my desire into arousalstill, i am not lying when i declareyou are the most beautiful woman i have ever seeni would give my life for one more kissthen i would kiss you as if stopping meant deathfor as the fullness of life becomes a vast nothingnessin the moment of death Love in a Handful of Dustso has the pleasure of your lips by Kirk Ramdathmade the fullness of life without your kiss 978-1-897181-47-8, $15.95seem like a vast nothingness Kirk Ramdath is a mainstay among Calgary’s poets and spoken-an empty playground that i fill with secret thoughts of you word artists. His “Passion Pitch” poetry series has brought togetheri fill my soul with things that were dear to you a wide range of writers to share their words and music, drinksyou love the writing of marquez and discussion in an era when the open mic reading, so fertile aso i read the story of fermina daza and florentino arizo ground for many writers practicing today, has been abandoned. He has organized poetry in the park readings and as well as some of the readings in the Single Onion series. Kirk’s poetry has ap-the opening line connects bitter almonds peared in chapbooks, journals, and on stage – he was one of theto the scent of unrequited love first readers in the Calgary Spoken-Word Festival’s “Smart Men,at first it is easy for me to play the role of florentino arizo Hot Words” readings. His poetry is noted, appropriately, given thebecause he worships fermina daza reading series he founded, for its passion and sensuality.and like me, he cannot swimin the character of fermina daza, i see you “Ramdath’s poetry doesn’t posit a better world, it demands it. Ram-with your aura of self-possession dath’s dust is an incendiary device in mid-ballet.”your secret chord of strength —Bob Holmanyou never betray your calamity

navigating the disorder of the streetin your own time and spacelike a bat in the darkness6but florentino arizo becomes a rejected manwho purgatories his body countless timesto dull the pangs of despised loveall the while he cares more for the hairs that fall from his headthan the women in his bedall the while he hopes for the death of the husbandof the woman he claims to loveall the while,a deceitful wormthis is not the legacy that your love leaves in mei never cherished a worduntil i spoke your nameand then i knew —the highest concept can be namedi was changedwhen i said you were beautifuli was not speaking, i was breathingmy love for writingis woven with my love for youinto this tapestry of wordsinto knowledgethat there is no higher purpose for wordsthan to breathe love into the world

from Illness Narrativesfor centuries, Ukrainian bards have sung of a forsaken brotherwho flees barefoot across the steppes, holding thorns to his chestto prove to himself that he is still aliveplease respond to the social imperative to martyr oneself;clutch thorns to chest and march down hastings streetwork the job to job the work to job the work to work the job to job to work to jobwe all go to work in the panopticon but some of us arefrillier than others corporate whore says why can’t i wearpink boots and fishnet stockings to work?why can’t i flee barefoot across false creek?trapped inside, under glass:ignore the cushy union lunchbreak [sic]we like to drive the sidestreets at night blue tv set glow Nikki Reimersoothes an earnest canadian actress on a 52-inch screenare these vitamins or medications? 978-1-897181-38-6, $15.95do you have psychiatric problems? Nikki Reimer is a poet, blogger, curator, arts event planner,to co-opt this meat and potatoes monologue, adjust and cat photographer, in East Vancouver. Reimer was a foundingthe satellite dish listen – zombie heads chatter on location editor of (orange) magazine, a co-editor and designer of KSW’s W12: All Music issue, and creator of the disjunct! performance series. She has blogged for Lemon Hound and the Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival. Reimer lives in Vancou- ver where she is a member of the Kootenay School of Writing and a board member at W2 Community Media Arts. She blogs at www.nikkireimer.com/blog.php. [sic] is her first full-length book of poetry. Shortlisted: The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award

balloonMémère’s face    always watchful    something could happen    a chimney fire    a drown-ing    a heart attack    a storm    a drought    the neighbour hanging himself poor man    notquite right from fighting at the front and jealous    not wanting anybody near his wife    andkeeping one’s mouth proper    watching your words    quand on échappe les paroles on n’saitjamais où qu’i’ peuvent lander    and eating sparingly    you could run out of food    have tokeep some for les passants    eat with your mouth closed always taking small bites and smallslightly slurpy sips of piping hot tea    and keeping your mouth clean wiping it with a home-made Five Roses flour bag serviette many times patting your mouth dry free of crumbs andsaliva sometimes i felt a burst of light behind her face    that she might cluck or guffaw butshe didn’t burst    spit out    didn’t drool even a bit    this guffaw is a balloon stuck in mychest     i want to explode it details from the edge of the villageBalloon by Pierrette Requier 978-1-897181-24-9, $15.95assise sur le bout de sa chaise    ma mémère sappe sa tasse de Nabob tea brûlant    prend Pierrette Requier, a long time member of the Stroll of Poets Soci-de petites gorgées pincées    elle a toujours la mine un peu inquiète    comme si elle watch ety of Edmonton, facilitates the Wind Eye Poetry Seminars. Hertout le temps    on n’sait jamais    i’ pourrait y avoir un feu de cheminée    une noyade    une poetry has appeared on CBC’s Wild Rose country, in Legacy: Al-tempête    une sécheresse    une attaque de coeur    p’is le voisin qui s’est pendu    le pau- berta’s Heritage Magazine, Other Voices: Edmonton’s Journal ofvre    y était pas toute là    après avoir passé au front    à part ça    c’était un jaloux    fallait pas the Literary and Visual Arts, and in the anthology Writing the Land:toucher ni parler à sa femme    et qu’i’fallait watcher nos paroles    les mots ça s’échappe    on Alberta Through its Poets.n’sait jamais où qu’i’ peuvent lander    it’s best to keep your mouth proper    that’s what youhave to do    au commencement sur le homestead c’était pas facile de trouver d’la grub    fal- Shortlisted:lait toujours garder de la nourriture    pour les passants    mémère mange la bouche fer- Alberta Book Awards Best Poetry Book, 2010mée    prend de petites bouchées    “Pas trop pour moi    pas trop pour moi”    elle s’essuiela bouche avec une serviette de coton faite de sac de fleur Five Roses    pour s’assurer qu’il Longlisted: Alberta Reader’s Choice Award, 2010n’y reste pas de graisse    ou une seule miette    je crois parfois voir s’allumer dans ses vieuxyeux    une petite flamme d’humour    se lever    aux coins de ses lèvres un p’tit sourire com-me si elle allait pouffer de rire    peut-être même s’esclaffer    mais non    faut qu’elle s’enaille    j’ai une envie folle de crever la membrane d’la balloon d’inquiétude qui se gonfle dansma poitrine    de faire péter la crainte

Ghost DaughterYou can’t talk to your daughter she fondles a matchbookshe rolls her eyes if she were a boyshe looks daggers she might try arsonscreams “Hypocrite!” or bar fightsscreams “Stolen Land!” but she is a girlHer scars are a drug so she takes it outnothing stops the blood on the nearestin her head availablelike letting it bit of flesh.flowacross to show A delicate operation –down to go opening yourselfladders up her arms to pins and needles,her legs the harsh white light Waywardladders to her head of a small porcelain room by Ali Rileyladders to her heart 978-0973238-03-7, $14.95her wrists “She’s indestructible” they sayher ankles “She couldn’t destroy herself Sacred Heart of Elvis. In Toronto, she acted in several theatre pro-down her right thigh even if she tried” ductions, including The Lorca Play, for which the company wona graceful and try she does a Dora Mavor Moore award for best performance by a female.not-quite-healed fitting and gnashing Her poetry has appeared in Geist, The nth Position Anthology,snake sexing the chaos. Matrix, This Magazine, Event and the Moosehead Review, andshe’s traded her birthright she has performed at festivals, schools, and hootennanniesfor a beat she can dance to You thought you saw her across the country. She currently lives on a farm between Nantondark corner creeping into the master bedroom and Vulcan, Alberta.crimson tide knife between her teeth – Shortlisted:X carved through a new pair of tights leading an army of The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award vengeful children.

The nation’s bathrooms are full wearing that jacket you despiseadolescents acting out a ghost shirta dimly remembered deflecting your gaze, your questionsascetic past – Her door slams upstairsthey are possessed her music beginsovercome artillery bass basstheir bodies host old souls bassan angry tribe now her footstepscenturies dead are dancingthey are fasting dancingseeing visions like a warrior.bloodletting.a sleeping shaman liesin your bathtubas you floss your teethhe opens one eyewhispers“we shall live again”You can’t talk to your daughtershe runs the gauntletfrom back door to bedroomshe shoots through the family roomlike an arrow

HausfrauWomen decorate with an eye to how the world *should be. Mother of Pearl, Arms of Mary— You call. The date is made. I wait on the backwhat is worse than the dresser-top detritus of a porch. I practise meditation though I’m notman? His clutter is driving me mad. While he fit to breathe. My throat seizes with larcenousworks out of town I redecorate. I want magic. wow and flutter. My heart pounds like a shop-I fuss around altars. I arrange things. A pebble, lifter’s. I maintain outward silence, try to fighta smudge stick, heads of the Virgin. I place the gibbering brain-innards of monkey-mind.bits of bone, second-hand fur and Nana-bling,put glitter everywhere. This is embarrassing, *but I like to decorate and cook. It’s something The lady next door waters her Astroturf™ whileI really know how to do. Growing up, in my I wait for you. She sprays the sidewalks, goesfamily, a wife was not considered a decent to the bay window and polishes her Hümmelthing for a woman to want to be. figurines—Dutch children kissing. They remind her of the Old Country. The distance between Tear Down* This und That. A place where everyone behaves by Ali RileyMen decorate with representations of them- behind lace curtains. A flat-earth world outside 978-1897181-04-1, $15.95selves. See, that’s what guys don’t understand. these treacherous ranges.You wonder why your girl-roomie keeps mov- A disgruntled Disney™ employee, a Spanish mystic and a fever-ing your plastic Frankenstein toy back to your * ridden Supervixen are a few of the tenants of Tear Down. Anbedroom—even though it’s the only object A woman’s memory is spiked silver claws pierc- assemblage of myth, architectural narrative and trigger-tale, thethat’s yours in the realm of pink-fluff and faux ing a mattress, Freddy-style. Show-dog sex is collection draws inspiration from Catholic saints, garage bands,surfaces. The plastic toy is so male, so clearly my Old Country. We war horses are ponies the Seven African Powers, performance art, and the history of lip-you—monster hands held helpless in front of that never forget a trick. stick. Whether its characters are fasting in the desert, casting spellsyour face. in suburban kitchens, or losing an eye in the gender wars, Tear * Down takes a wry and visionary look at impermanence, the meaning of home, and finding solace in a fallen world.Well-meaning kitten-strangler. Unwitting I continue to wait, dry-mouthed, for the blackchild-murderer. reeds and uncharted marshes of your body. The sun is scary, so I wind-bathe in the shadow of a cedar. I am hungry to delineate your spacious gaze. I flip through The Mapping of Canada.

A rumble of thunder perks my ears: it could becrunchy gravel. A reason to run, poodle-like,to the picture window.You arrive. You smile. I walk away and youcatch my sleeve like stucco. Your twinkle dis-appears with the promise of a riding. Your eyesmatte with porno-glaze. Shell-shock.*We lock and roll. We are our own stuntdoubles. We step into our lost sluttiness likea Comeback Special, Liza-style—arms out-stretched—thank you—in the spotlight, prom-ising the crowd I’ll never leave showbiz again...An affair is a playground, not a house. Show-dog sex keeps our hearts safe. We pull all ourold specialties out of mothballs. Later I hidemy ripped knickers at the bottom of the trashcan.We are triple digit, triple threat. Man-Eaterand Lady-Killer. Cannibal and felon, bothformer addicts to the Playing Field. We left theWide World of Sport long ago but today weare Soop-ah-Stars! Of slag.Of shag.

The Beginning of the Long Dash Solitude of a DaredevilI want someone to wrap me in a pink blanket Why is it the wounded can’t face you?and feed me soup, but the world would stop. They swaddle themselves. Talk to the window.By day the disgraced man convalesces, A war nurse doesn’t mind a splashno plans for the immediate or any other future. of other people’s blood.His doings, f that’s what they are,must be covert, Eventually he will beunseen by nanny-cam, by infrared. three Safeway bags full of bleached dryHe’s given up on dares, bones to be carried out of the house.Fears the sounds of a stunt I want to motor across canyons,gone wrong. leap into something rickety because it feels heroic.He speaks in complicated metaphors Skidding tires, a crash landingabout grain elevators, breached boxcars. my dumb Viking heart. 33 Million SolitudesThe elevator in the distance, the one you by Ali Rileyhaven’t reached yet? I ask. 978-1-897181-56-0, $17.95Does it say Death, or Intimacy?He allows that it doesn’t say Desire. Ali Riley’s first poetry collection, Wayward, was short-listed for thePassed that one long ago, he says. O Gerald Lampert Memorial award, and her second, Tear Down,the world of sensuality only leads was short-listed for the Re-Lit award. She was born in Calgary and was the singer/songwriter of the seminal psycho-country bandto misery of expectation. Sacred Heart of Elvis. In Toronto her produced plays included dog dream, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Hole in My Heart the SizePretty pessimistic, I tell him. of My Heart. She was a contestant in the BookTelevision realityI’m in favour of happening. show The Three Day Novel Contest, and her three-day novel, Hag,I leap over tall buildings because I can. won the Walrus Magazine/SLS literary contest. Her writing hasI don’t want medals. appeared in Geist, The nth Position Anthology, Matrix, This Maga- zine, Event, The Moosehead Review, Alberta Views and Walrus. Her third book, 33 Million Solitudes, explores Canadian themes of isolation and survival with a 21st century twist, and reimagines the fur trade as a modern metaphor for love. She lives In Nanton, Alberta.

Sitting down for teawith the First Lady, 1954The sepia photo captures my motherin her one-and-only favourite frock – palm-frondsilk shift with a shirr of chiffon drapingthe bodice – while the other women, artfully made upin their pompadour hairdos, smart city clothes,smile widely for the cameras. An afternoon tea with the First Lady on her first visit to a rice-farming town in the plains of Nueva Ecija.The woman in the picture wants to disappearinto her shadow: she has never drunk Puti/Whitetea except to sip salabat with rice cake. by Patria RiveraIt is much too hot for an afternoon 978-0973238-09-9, $15.95of empty talk. Had they let her, she would’vestayed by the river to finish the day’s wash, Patria Rivera is a Toronto poet and editor. Her first poetry col-scrubbed off the day’s grime, lection, Puti/White, launched by Frontenac House in 2005, wasthe full torment of strange faces, shortlisted for the 2006 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Born andwith her work-scabbed hands. raised in the Philippines, she lives with her family in Toronto’s eastBut the presidential aides hustled her off end.to the municipio to keep company Shortlisted:with the President’s wife. Photo opportunity, Trillium Award for PoetryEl Presidente, recently proclaimed “Manof the Masses,” knows how important Winner:appearances can be: The First Lady spends Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetryan afternoon with the local mayor’s wife. She wouldn’t let on how she survived the day,how the sour camias soaked in burnt sugarwent with the well-coiffed ladies and their two-toned nails.She grips a Spanish fan, a memento from her abuela.She appears tight and vestal, her thin lips feigning a smile.

Fearless dressesShe cuts out dolls and dreams from an old Vogue catalogue,mixing shirts and skirts, pants, pleats and Pythagoras,the clickety-clack of the shears dulling herto submission, as if it were hermetal-to-metal impulse not to negotiate the intake valvesof frowned-upon choices,the remarkable assemblages constructed from found objects,a desire without fronts or backs or sides,like some vendeuse pirouetting the choreographer’s impressionsflat on the ocean, The Bride Anthology by Patria Riveracalibrating her emotions to the second, 978-1-897181-09-6, $15.95then as now,curbing her tendency towards a tight-lipped lower case “a”. The ways of love are long and torturous. They include the ability to start over after things have blown up as well as the fine art of remembering the good times and forgetting the bad. The convoluted paths of love never fail to beguile. Catch this poet as she runs after the fickleness of love and longing. “Rare Species”, a poem from this book was Second prize winner of the Eric Hill Award of Poetic Excellence

journey prayerenough light for the journeyand breath enoughenough fire for the journeyand love enoughenough road for the journeyand will enoughand all along the way to hearthe song that you are. Fifth World Drum by Anna Marie Sewell 978-1-897181-25-6, $15.95 Anna Marie Sewell is an Edmonton writer who performs theatre, prose and song. A Status Indian by Canadian government stan- dards, Sewell sees her heritage as far more complex and varied. Her 2007 Honour Songs project was part of Edmonton’s Cultural Capital initiative and she edited the 2009 Stroll of Poets Anthol- ogy. Fifth World Drum is her first book-length collection of poetry. Shortlisted: Alberta Reader’s Choice Award, 2010

Letters To A Young Bride“My girl,” you recall that afternoon spent shooting tequila overand that this will have pleased warm beeryou, is not enough, will provoke thescoffers into fits of rage, for what creaking into theownership have I over you, to what end bookstore’s basementdoes your pacified self serve mine? and to slur each other lovethis is no defense, but that you broke free,allowed me gentry status that afternoon saying our firstunder a redwood in Bothe State Park, goodnight, then stayingyou jarred the lines of symmetry, the night instead –slugged rapture from the sauvignon,left grocers’ chocolate on the rim, the amazing the soundcork still floating, pushed in by my of my name, how it leapt Taqsimtremulous hands, you softened and from your arabic tongue by Zaid Shlahwarmed, to produce from my pocket 1-897181-08-6, $15.95this ring. A native Calgarian, and of Iraqi heritage, Zaid Shlah now resides“Dear,” in the east bay, CA. His poetry has appeared in literary magazines, journals and anthologies in both Canada and the U.S. In May ofthe whole of you 2005, he was awarded the American Academy of Poets Award.lying complacent inside His first book of poetry is titled Taqsim (Frontenac House, 2006). Hethat couch of a word teaches English literature and composition at Solano Community Col-worries me lege and Diablo Valley College in northern California.that the propped pillowof hun, softening at my neck,might slip into two deferentbodies angling for sleep

Cold Callsthe fifteen year old’s girlfriendcalls to sayshe won’t be going to the dance Fridaywith himthe twenty year oldjust landed his first real paying jobsits in a cubicle with phone and phone bookthe thirty-five year old salesman in danger of losing his jobpays a visit to an unknown customer“the very latest ... the very best on the market”there’s been no appointment no referral From a Call Boxthe fifty year old police sergeant by Bob Stallworthythe younger cops give him 978-0968490-31-0, $13.95the visits to parentshe’s got kids Bob Stallworthy is a transplanted Maritimer who has lived in Cal-seen it all anyway gary for 25 years. He has written four full-length books of poetry, and an ongoing e-book called In Silhouette containing the pro-the eighty year old voice left on the answering machine files of Alberta authors. He has also written book reviews for Thetaped words Calgary Herald as well as a regular column for WestWord (thedeath going cold Writers Guild of Alberta magazine), and has written and pub-turning around and around lished poetry in literary magazines across Canada.they come just beforequitting timebefore supperbefore bedtimethey come at the most inopportune times

First Thunderstormthe crashlifts me off the bedand I’m not sure in its aftermathwhether I cry outor whether I just dream itI watch the lightning scythethe sky into bits and piecesremember the first thunderstormyou carried me to the windowwe watched the light tear up the skywhat frightened me awake tonight crash of thunder fear that you aren’t there now that I will have to explain Opticsthe flash of light by Bob Stallworthythat obliterates 978-0973238-06-8, $15.95everything even memory Focusing on intensely personal experiences, Optics shows vision as a trick of light. We see through a glass barrier we’ve placed between ourselves and our world, often filtered by the warps and swirls caught in that glass. We stand behind a window that is growing dark in early winter, not even noticing the creeping darkness across the glass blocking our vision. The poems explore the world reflected back by a simple piece of glass. Shortlisted: City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize

A Man Without ChildrenI’m a man without children, that much is clear, and I askmyself what the world will be like when I am no longer onit or should that be in. I wonder will it close over my headlike water closing over a man who has fallen overboard. Theman realizes that the people standing on the disappearingdeck are waving good bye. He cannot see any line of shore.He has swallowed more water than he has breathed air andhe has not yet touched the ocean floorI asked a man this question once, but he was forever get-ting lost in whether it was his turn or mine to buy the nextround. He was a man sitting at a wooden table made stickyby the beer bottles that stood like small children waiting fora parent to pay attention. And this man answered my ques- Things that Matter Nowtion with a long pull on his bottle of Moosehead Ale and a by Bob Stallworthyburp. A long burp, that much is clear 978-1-897181-26-3, $15.95 Things that Matter Now examines how reactions to persons and events change with age; how memories lose their power to control; how there is choice in those things one reacts to – in short, the things that matter now. Shortlisted: W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize; Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry.

Action DachshundGrack! Grack! Grack! yourselvesya damn dumpster divers!Have yer grackle grack attackin someone else’s compost!This is my crib, yadig?Keep your paws off my ka-nishor I’ll gnosh on the lot of you!I’m scampafterous, litheand wienerish. Ain’t inbetweenerist.Backatcha! Backatcha! Backacha!I’m Action Dachshund, not somebrown lyin’-on-the-sidewalk log, Wiser Pillsbut an on-the-job dog. Ya thieves! by Richard Stevenson 978-1-897181-20-1, $15.95Got no peers! Got no peers!I’m the alpha male here— The joke used to go, “Wiser Pills: take just one and you’ll be wis-bow-legged, balls-to-the-breeze, er,” as the cynical victimizer offered a rabbit raisin to the callownasty Eine Kleine dachshund. youth. From rabbit raisins to psychedelics, the edict of better living through chemistry had Sixties boomer kids dropping this, smokingAin’t no random action that, snorting something else, or poking it directly into their veins toPull toy boy, grow taller, get smaller … . Join poet Richard Stevenson on his ownAin’t no scamper-back-of-the-pantry putz. exploration of the rabbit warren of consciousness from childhoodI’m Action Dachshund! Action Dachshund! rites of passage, through dumb jobs, to middle age complacency as the perimeter of that age-old symbol of acquisitiveness, the im- maculate lawn, grows smaller and smaller and the poet’s wry grin grows wider …

We Never Went to Santa Fewe never went to Santa Fesipped Margueritas, tasted fajitasbartered with natives for turquoiseand silver, strolled leaf-laced courtyardsmeandered museums, stood hushedin the mission of Guadalupenever pressed palmsto pale warm adobeembraced beneath diamondsin dark desert sky, slippedbetween sheets smokedwith scent of mesquite Pattern of Genespostponing pleasure by Rosalee van Steltenfor all our tomorrows, forgettingthe gift of today 978-0968490-32-7, $13.95 Rosalee van Stelten CD, QGJM served in the Royal Canadian Navy (Wrens) during the Cold War. Her working life has taken her from Quonset hut, to palace, to cattle ranch, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. She is the only royal yachtswoman in HMY Britannia’s history. Born in Thunder Bay, raised in Winnipeg, and a Calgarian for many years, she now lives in Victoria, BC. A widely published free-lance writer, she has authored three books of poetry. She was awarded The Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002.

Bow River glacial and green, the river river curls, falls through lofty canyon canyon walls, runnelled sides carved carved by wind and rain into sandstone fingers fingers that point to belts of spruce and pine pine mountain crags, scudding clouds clouds azure sky from which an osprey osprey streaks with piercing cry, skims skims the frothy stream, then strikes strikes its talons clutching trout trout back arched, scales shedding shedding crystal water drops drops Pavlov’s Elephant along the river’s edge, hieroglyphics hieroglyphics by Rosalee van Stelten pressed in sand: track of coyote coyote 978-1-897181-23-2, $15.95 claw of bear, beside a lodge lodge built by vanished beaver beaver Rosalee van Stelten has won many awards for her poems, and, in dappled clearing clearing including: Finalist, Canada’s Cowboy Festival, Calgary; National a bonfire’s charred bones bones poetry contest; Gold watch award, Calgary Herald; Christmas story contest; and Alberta Senior’s Games, Culture Division, bronze medal for poetry.

Learning the LanguageWhat kind of lifewas that? Jimmyat St. Paul’s Mission Schoolbent like a question markin a deskwriting“I must not speak Blackfoot”one hundred timesevery time his tongue slippedAt that school he learneda powerful new language silence. Tom Three Persons by Yvonne Trainer 0-9684903-8-7, $14.95 Yvonne Trainer holds a BA in English, an MA in English/Creative Writing, and a PhD in Contemporary Literature with a special top- ics area in Medical Humanities. She has published one chapbook, four books of poems and over 400 poems and poetic articles in literary journals. Her latest interests have been in Canadian Ab- original Poetry and Ekphrastic Medical poems, and in Creativity and Neuroscience and how science is changing the writing of biographies and autobiographes. She lives in Western Canada and is presently spending the summer preparing to write full-time for the year.

The Child Who DiedMy childhood’s soul awoke this dying nightAnd walked the rooms I walk, that were her own; (from John Jarmain’s Poems)green cot broken in my father’s warblue dress gift to an artillery gunteddy bear squashed in an overseas graveno one remembers the childwho died of sirensand the whisper pulling silence A Summer FatherI died slowly, and watched it happen by Joanna M. Westoneach bomb, each plane, took a small piece 978-1897181-05-8, $15.95and wrote another letter of my name on the sky Joanna M. Weston grew up on the North Downs of Kent, undereach bursting house buried another limb one of the main bombing runs to London. She left England at ageduntil I was gone, without lament 18 for Canada where she has lived ever since, becoming Ca-to search for my childhood self nadian on February 15, 1965, the day the maple leaf flag wasand the father who died adopted. She is a full-time writer of poetry, short-stories, children’sbut I cannot reclaim the dead books and poetry reviews. She has published internationally in journals and anthologies and has two middle-readers, The Willow- Tree Girl and Those Blue Shoes, in print. “poignant and spare in all the good ways” — Richard Stevenson, The Danforth Review

Ma and Tight Corners: Tipsy Curvy “It goes like stink!” ~ Ma, 1969It was a turquoise And we’d go back to changing our clothes1957 Chevy and eating our Kentucky Fried Chickenwith the truck engine. right out of the barrel, like pros, finger lickin’ good, back then, before seat beltsAnd Ma would drive that old jalopy and car seats and sun block and water wings.around corners, hell bentlike a Formula One demon on speed, Back then, when they’d give usand she’d yell, Hang on! matches to play withWe’d be in the back seat and guns to shoot the bottleschanging from our school clothes lined up on the fenceinto our brownie uniforms, for fun.and she’d take the cornerwith a fighting spirit, on two wheels, Back when you could ride without a helmet, Autopsy of a Turvy Worldand we’d hang onto the seats feel the wind in your hair. by Sheri-D Wilsonfor dear life, gripping with our fingertips 978-1-897181-17-1, $15.95till our lips turned psych ward white, Back then.and then both car doors on one side It was a turquoise Since founding the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival inwould go flying open, 1957 Chevy 2003, Sheri-D has worked to present the largest Spoken Word Fes-no holy shit handles with the truck engine. tival in Canada. Driven by the passion to connect people, voiceswe’d hang on to that front seat and ideas she organized SWAN (Spoken Word Arts Network, 2007 & 2005), produced the 2008 National Slam of Canadawith the fake fur seat covers Because of Ma and since 2007 has been the Program Director of the Spokenso we didn’t go flying out… I’ve never been afraid Word Program at Banff CentreWhoaoooo... of the dark. She taught…and then the corner would be over me how to stay on my toes, www.sheridwilson.comand the heavy ’57 Chevy doors dance with danger.would come flying shut. And she’s funny. Damn, she’s funny. AlwaysBang! makes me laugh. Bang! Sometimes

it scares mewhen I thinkI might belike her, on two wheels.Hang on!

Re:member SnapshotWhat does it meanwhen you take in a roll of thirty-six shotsand they only develop eleven?I don’t knowI guess some didn’t turn outMaybe they were over-exposedWhat does it meanwhen you start the roll with one loveand end the roll with another?I don’t knowI guess some didn’t turn out Re:ZoomMaybe they were over-exposed by Sheri-D Wilson 978-1897181-77-5, $15.95What does it meanwhen you have two loves on the same roll Re:Zoom – a book of no return.and you’re not with either of them anymore? How can we return? We resume,I don’t know but never from where we left off.I guess some didn’t turn outDid you drop your camera? We continue from some other place. Winner: Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry Shortlisted: The ReLit award.

WHY CALLIOPE LOVES POETRYIt’s a gateway drug to profound intelligenceIf she were a dog it would be the off-leash parkIt’s where geeks go to talk dirty, nerdy wordy, beyond yes and no; and you can cry Nintendo tearsIt’s the epitaph, the epigraph, and the epiphanyShe can astral travel without anyone noticing cause they are tooShe crosses the bridge and never looks back Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the UniverseShe is a brobdingnagian humanitarian by Sheri-D Wilson and she detests Walmart 978-1-897181-60-7, $19.95She’s a layman Shaman The “Mama of Dada” Poet, film-maker, educator, producer and activist with ears of corn Sheri-D Wilson has 7 collections of poetry; her most recent, Autopsy of eyes of peas a Turvy World (2008, Frontenac House). Her last collection, Re:Zoom and head of oral tradition-alities (2005, Frontenac House), won the 2006 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, and was shortlisted for the CanLit award. She hasThe luminaries of the subterranean are coming 2 Spoken Word CDs (arranged by Russell Broom), and 4 award- winning VideoPoems, all produced for BravoFACT. Awards Include:She’s fond of happy Mediums CBC Arts Top Ten Poets in Canada (2009), ffwd Readers’ Choice – or should I say jovial intermediaries Best Poet (2007-2010), Global TV’s Woman of Vision Award (2006), SpoCan Award (2005), Bumbershoot Heavyweight Title for Poetry slow motion fireworks of the heart USA (2003). Since founding the Calgary International Spoken Word Aura Borealis—she can hear the sky sing Festival in 2003, Sheri-D has worked to present the largest Spoken Word Festival in Canada and since 2007 has been the Program Di- rector of the Spoken Word Program at Banff Centre.

When she hears glass wind chimes her body tingles like she’s just been visited by a late night incubus it reminds her of UlyssesThe only money she loves is a sand dollar and the only celebrity she follows is a starfishNothing is written in stone and she can decipher the Emerald Tablet in the iris of her lover’s eyes

OTHER TITLES FROMFRONTENAC HOUSE MEDIA

Recent Releases In ThIs Place calgary 2004 – 2011 PhoTograPhs by george Webber / Words by arITha Van herkIn This Place: Calgary 2006 - 2011 Visual Orgasm:George Webber & Aritha van Herk Highlights of Canadian Graffiti Adam MelnykCanadian PhotographyISBN 978-1-897181-59-1 Canadian Art192 pages, Hardcover, 9” x 12”, $40.00 ISBN 978-1-897181-50-8 108 pages, Paperback with flaps, 9.5” xIn This Place … is about Calgary. 8.5”, $35.00But it is not the customary view, the postcard tourist view, the sou- Visual Orgasm showcases the history of Canadian graffiti and itsvenir view, the view that lies solely on the surface, oblivious or American inspiration, featuring Canadian graffiti artists and im-indifferent to the life that unfolds below that surface, and beyond. ages of the last thirty years. The foreword is by graffiti legendThis book is about the images, both written and graphic, of the Zephyr, known for his graffiti in New York in the 1980s. Authorthemes that define the city. The overlooked, the feral, the discard- Adam Melnyk is recognized as the leading authority on Canadianed, the unexpected and mysterious. It is about looking backward graffiti, having collected images on his site, now www.visualor-and forward, inwardly and outwardly, like glimpses through a gasm.com since 1998.train window. It is about the images, both written and graphic,that piece together all those the hundreds of little clues to create agrand patchwork that identifies a place you might otherwise notsee. These images are about a city that is transforming itself. Theyare a little reminder that you cannot take things for granted.

Canadian Political Humour 13 Ways to Kill Your Community All Roads Lead to Manyberries And God Created Manyberries Doug Griffiths and Kelly Clemmer Ron Wood Ron Wood Political Humour Political Humour Political Humour ISBN 978-1-897181-42-3 ISBN 978-1897181-41-6 ISBN 978-1897181-15-7 160 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $19.95 224 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $21.95 191 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $19.95 Let’s suppose you have a really ambitious goal in life – you want “With sharp wit, bold characterization and a keen eye for observ- Fictional political satire, written in the form of tongue-in-cheek ban- to kill your community! You want to drive away people, eliminate ing what is important – and funny – to Canadians, Ron Wood ter in a small-town prairie saloon. The result is a refreshing antidote jobs, undermine businesses, and you won’t quit until the whole once again caricatures the political leadership and the small town to political correctness, sloppy thinking and lazy journalism. place is in ruins. Don’t know how to go about it? You’re in luck foibles of this country. Sounds rather Leacock-ian doesn’t it? As – here is a handy manual, chock-full of proven ideas, for the up- a former political backroom communications advisor, Wood has On the surface, a bunch of old-timers are sitting around drinking and-coming town wrecker. This is the book for you! all the necessary scalpels. It’s easy for the reader to imagine the beer and complaining about taxes and the government. But first characters in this book with their concerns, their plots and their impressions are deceptive – this is not mere tavern talk. Listen more But suppose you have a different goal – you want to save your humorous approaches to life in a small Alberta town.” -- Leacock closely and you’ll find scalpel-sharp dissections of double-talk, po- community. You want to promote growth, ensure prosperity, build jury discussing Ron Wood’s And God Created Manyberries when litical correctness, hypocrisy and lazy thinking. Nobody is spared: for the future. Well, you too can benefit from 13 Ways. All you it was short listed for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Award for inept and uncaring governments, both federal and provincial; have to do is follow the advice in reverse, and before you know Humour. All Roads Lead to Manyberries is the sequel. self-serving politicians demanding credit and glory without having it, you and your neighbours will have built a thriving, successful earned it; everyday guys who always want more than their share community that’s the envy of everyone. and more than they give; and members of the media whose stock in trade is trivia at the expense of real news.

Canadian Aviation History Amazing Flights and Flyers Maverick in the Sky Shirlee Smith Matheson Shirlee Smith Matheson Canadian Aviation History Canadian Aviation History ISBN 978-1897181-29-4 ISBN 978-1-897181-16-4 288 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $19.95 112 pages, Paperback, 8.5” x 5.5”, $9.95 Flight can be a combination of thrills beyond compare – and Aviation adventures are Shirlee Smith Matheson’s specialty. sudden full stops. The stories inAmazing Flights and Flyers encap- In Maverick in the Sky the author paints a fascinating portrait of sulate nearly every human emotion and scenario, and range from flying ace Freddie McCall, one of the most successful fighter pilots the early days of the 20th century to the present. of World War I. McCall’s bold spirit might well have been inherited from his clan motto Dulce Periculum – Danger is Sweet. His amazing wartime accomplishments, his extraordinary flying skills, his fiercely inde- pendent barnstorming character and his self-reliant entrepreneurial spirit make him one of Canada’s most spectacular mavericks.

Canadian art and artists MOON NIBBLER The Art of Pat Strakowski ANdREw OkO Photography by John w. Heintz Moon Nibbler: The Art of Pat Strakowski Breathing Stone: Andrew Oko Contemporary Haida Argillite Sculpture Carol Sheehan, Photography by Jack Litrell Canadian Art and John W. Heintz ISBN 978-1-897181-28-7 182 pages, Hardcover, 11” x 11”, $40.00 Canadian Art ISBN 978-1-897181-22-5 Pat Strakowski’s sculptures are created from papier-maché 192 pages, Hardcover, 12 x 9, $50.00 adorned by found objects as varied as ancient Japanese coins, Mexican ceremonial trinkets and wasps’ nests from the local neigh- Breathing Stone presents extraordinary sculptures by contempo- bourhood. Strange creatures abound in the artistic world of Pat rary argillite artists of Haida Gwaii- the Queen Charlotte Islands. Strakowski. Warriors sprout deer horns to enhance their communi- Carol Sheehan introduces the reader to Haida culture and the his- cation with the gods. Cats with serpent tails guard the household, torical realities that have shaped this unique art form. She outlines lurking beneath the staircase to attack intruders. Deformed angels how argillite sculpture is produced and how it can best be appreci- mourn the agonies of war. A young girl, suspended perpetually in ated. Personal portraits of 15 sculptors and their work, illustrated mid-air, performs timeless skipping rituals. By placing Strakowski’s by nearly 200 colour photographs taken in artists’ workshops, gal- work in the perspective of myth in the contemporary world, An- leries, collectors’ homes and on-site in Haida Gwaii, demonstrate drew Oko draws on the ideas of thinkers as diverse as Roland like nothing else the power and richness of this art form. Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Aldona Jonaitis, to create a frame- work that greatly enhances even a casual appreciation of the art of Pat Strakowski.

Complete Alphabetical list of Frontenac Titles [sic] Attenuations of Force Confessions of an Empty Purse Nikki Reimer Lori Cayer S. McDonald Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-38-6 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-31-7 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-33-1 96 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 93 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 ‘Tis Pity Autopsy of a Turvy World Contrary Infatuations David Bateman Sheri-D Wilson Dymphny Dronyk Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-57-7 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-17-1 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-10-2 96 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 13 A Bad Year for Journalists details from the edge of the village Alexis Kienlen Lisa Pasold Pierrette Requier Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-53-9 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-01-0 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-24-9 96 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x8.5”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 112 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 13 Ways to Kill Your Community Before a Blue Sky Moon Dinner at Madonna’s Doug Griffiths and Kelly Clemmer Weyman Chan Kevin Irie Political Humour, ISBN 978-1-897181-42-3 Poetry, ISBN 978-0-968490-35-8 Poetry, ISBN 978-0-973238-00-6 160 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $19.95 80 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 88 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $14.95 33 Million Solitudes Between the Silences ex nihilo Ali Riley Diane Buchanan Adebe D. A. Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-56-0 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-08-2 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-34-8 80 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 80 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 72 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 Alberta Anthology 2006 Breathing Stone: Contemporary Haida Argillite Sculpture Fallacies of Motion A.G. Boss Carol Sheehan , Photography by Jack Litrell and John W. Heintz William Nichols Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-06-5 Canadian Art, ISBN: 978-1-897181-22-5 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-35-5 168 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $18.95 192 pages, Hardcover, 12″ x 9″, $50.00; Paperback, $35.00 96 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 Amazing Flights and Flyers The Bride Anthology Falling Blues Shirlee Smith Matheson Patria Rivera Jannie Edwards Canadian Aviation History, ISBN 978-1897181-29-4 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-09-6, 96 pages Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-36-2 288 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $19.95 Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 72 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 And God Created Manyberries bulletin from the low light Fifth World Drum Ron Wood j. fisher Anna Marie Sewell Poetry, ISBN 978-1897181-15-7 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-07-2 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-25-6 191 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $19.95 96 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 Angel Blood: The Tess Poems Children of Ararat Forgetting the Holocaust Kevin Irie Keith Garebian Ron Charach Poetry, ISBN 978-973238-04-4 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-00-3 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-46-1 80 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $16.00 Any Bright Horse Clarence’s Engine From a Call Box Lisa Pasold Trudy Cowan Bob Stallworthy Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-55-3 Children’s Book, ISBN 978-1-897181-00-3 Poetry, ISBN 978-0-968490-31-0 112 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 11” x 8.5”, $14.95 88 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $13.95

Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the Universe Maverick in the Sky The Rider with Good HandsSheri-D Wilson Shirlee Smith Matheson Sid MartyPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-60-7 Canadian Aviation History, ISBN 978-1-897181-16-4 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-45-4112 pages, Paperback, 6″ x 9″, $19.95 112 pages, Paperback, 8.5” x 5.5”, $9.95 88 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95A Gloss on Our Painted Gods Moon Nibbler: The Art of Pat Strakowski ‘Tis PityEric Barstad Andrew Oko David BatemanPoetry, ISBN 978-0-973238-01-3 Canadian Art, ISBN 978-1-897181-28-7 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-57-780 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $14.95 182 pages, Hardcover, 11” x 11”, $40. 96 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95go-go dancing for Elvis Narcissus Unfolding Science Fiction SaintLeslie Greentree Jim Nason Nancy Jo CullenPoetry, ISBN 978-0-973238-02-0 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-48-5 Poetry, ISBN 978-0-968490-37-288 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $14.95 80 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 88 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $14.95guys named Bill Optics She Dreams in RedLeslie Greentree Bob Stallworthy Alexis KienlenPoetry, ISBN 978-0-9684903-6-0 Poetry, ISBN 978-0-968490-06-8 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-12-680 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $14.95 80 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $13.95 96 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95Impersonating Flowers Pattern of Genes she is reading her blanket with her handsDavid Bateman Rosalee van Stelten Sharron Proulx-TurnerPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-11-9 Poetry, ISBN 978-0-968490-32-7 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-18-888 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 80 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $13.95 96 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95Invisible Foreground Pavlov’s Elephant Sky HumourDavid Bateman Rosalee van Stelten Sid MartyPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-78-2 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-23-2 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-43-088 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 72 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 102 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95In this Place – Calgary 2006-2012 Pearl Standoff TerrainGeorge Webber and Aritha van Herk Nancy Jo Cullen Jocko BenoitPhoto Essay, ISBN 978-1-897181-59-1 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-03-4 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-39-3192 pages, Hardcover, 12” x 9”, $40.00 64 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 80 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 Learning to Count Puti/White Static MantisDouglas Burnet Smith Patria Rivera Arran FisherPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-37-9 Poetry, ISBN 978-0-973238-09-9 Poetry, ISBN 978-0-968490-34-188 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 80 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $13.95The Lightness Which Is Our World, Seen from Afar Re:Zoom A Summer FatherVen Begamudré Sheri-D Wilson Joanna M. WestonPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-02-7 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-77-5 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-05-880 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 104 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 80 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95Love in a Handful of Dust Rhyming Wranglers Swallowing My MotherKirk Ramdath Ken Mitchell Catherine MossPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-47-8 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-13-3 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-08-980 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 88 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $18.95 96 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95

Taqism WaywardZaid Shah Ali RileyPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-08-4 Poetry, ISBN 978-0-973238-03-796 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $14.95Tear Down WeaveAli Riley Lisa PasoldPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-04-1 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-07-5104 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95 88 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95Things That Matter Now White ShirtBob Stallworthy Laurie MacFaydenPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-26-3 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-40-972 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 80 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.9513 Wiser PillsAlexis Kienlen Richard StevensonPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-53-9 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-20-196 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95 96 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $15.95Tom Three Persons YesYvonne Trainer Rosemary GriebelPoetry, ISBN 978-0-968490-38-9 Poetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-49-272 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $14.95 84 pages, Paperback, 6” x 9”, $16.00Unruly AngelsDiane BuchananPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-54-6112 pages, Paperback, 6” x9”, $15.95UntitledNancy Jo CullenPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-27-080 pages, Paperback, 6” x9”, $15.95Visual Orgasm: Highlights of Canadian GraffitiAdam MelnykCanadian Art, ISBN 978-1-897181-50-8108 pages, Paperback with flaps, 9.5” x 8.5”, $35.00Wait Until Late Afternoon –OR distilled, decanted and debauchedDavid Bateman and Hiromi GotoPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-30-0120 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $18.00Water StriderKaren HoffmanPoetry, ISBN 978-1-897181-19-5104 pages, Paperback, 5.5” x 8.5”, $15.95

That Could Be Me: A Poetry Showcase from Frontenac House

by Cadence PR on May 30, 2012

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That Could Be Me: A Poetry Showcase from Frontenac House Presentation Transcript