To kiss the hybrid future à travers un voile
Entre Rive and Shore, Dominique Bernier-Cormier. icehouse poetry, 2023.
Tout d’abord: wow. These were the first words that came to mind en mijotant sur how and where to begin a review of Dominique Bernier-Cormier’s multigenre, multi-temporal and dimensional, highly allusive, bilingual+ Entre Rive and Shore...
(Re)framing a Fragmented Biography
Precedented Parroting, Barbara Tran. Palimpsest Press, 2024.
How does one write one’s history when facts run fleet? How does one frame a biography when names and languages exist as disparate fragments, and community acceptance is seemingly conditional? These are the questions that populate Barbara Tran’s remarkable poetry debut, Precedented Parroting.
Alive through the Ghosts of the Past
Building a Nest from the Bones of My People, Cara-Lyn Morgan. Invisible Publishing, 2023.
Nestle In Words Like An Animal: The Poetic G/Rasp of Tongue, Throat, and Mouth in G by Kirby
G, Klara du Plessis & Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi. Palimpsest Press, 2023.
First, let’s talk about the design/packaging of this book.
It’s exquisite. The colour palette, fonts, printed endpapers, on signature Coach House zephyr, readable text on the page. A book you want to pick up, hold, caress with the eyes and the touch. Congrats to in-house designer Ellie Hastings, editor Jim Johnstone, and publisher Aimee Parent Dunn. Finery.
Lyrical Authenticity by Klara du Plessis
The King of Terrors, Jim Johnstone. Coach House Books, 2023.
Cautious Praise by Lynn Davies
Lent, Kate Cayley, Book*hug Press, 2023.
In Lent, Kate Cayley’s voice is driven by doubt and occasional bouts of confidence. In “Falling,” she says matter-of-factly,
I can’t find time to repair.
“Junkyard Apocalypse”: Uneasy Ecopoems, Unhomely Homes by David Huebert
Kill Your Starlings, Tom Cull. Gaspereau Press, 2023.
In A knife so sharp its edge cannot be seen, Erin Noteboom merges her background as a particle physicist with poetry. She excavates intangible and indescribable moments from scientific experiments to blur lines between worlds that otherwise seem separate.
“My parents peeled me like a fig. I was a different fruit each day.” Is the self the me, an object created, or the I, with self-knowledge and even agency over its own definition? In Métissée, ably rendered in English by translator and scholar Rebecca L. Thompson as Little Wet-Paint Girl, Québec poet Ouanessa Younsi brings multiple possible selves together in a collision complicated by mixed cultural heritage.
