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Emily Skov-Nielsen: “What am I / Water’s Bitch?” Review of Wet Dream by Erin Robinsong

Posted on July 5, 2023

While considering my sprawl of notes from my reading, and re-reading, of Erin Robinsong’s second full-length book of poetry, Wet Dream, and wondering how to begin this review, I called to mind the following quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland:

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English), “now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was!”

Kevin Bushell: Poetry — not a jeux des mots but a weapon used to battle for historical truth, Review of The Ventriloquist: Poetic Narratives from the Womb of War by Gary Geddes

Posted on June 29, 2023

The current geo-political events in Ukraine make the release of Gary Geddes’ latest collection, (The Ventriloquist: Poetic Narratives from the Womb of War (Rock’s Mills Press), all the more timely. Geddes has gathered in this one collection four previous books on the theme of war: Letter of the Master of Horse (1973), War & Other Measures (1976), The Terracotta Army (1984), and Hong Kong Poems (1987).

Richard Cumyn: Oji Decides (And More’s the Pity), A Good Name, Yejide Kilanko.

Posted on March 24, 2023
Yejide Kilanko’s latest novel, A Good Name, is a page-turner written in simple, unadorned prose. The novel moves linearly through short chapters without flashback and is so compelling that, for this reader, the writing all but disappears. The story takes on new urgency around a third of the way in, when, after her wedding, an arranged marriage, in the Nigerian village of Oji, 18-year-old Zina travels to Houston, Texas, to join her husband, Eziafa. At first, Zina is excited by the prospect of life in America. Eziafa, 37, originally from Oji, has lived in the U.S.

Sherry Coffey: Dauntless, Why I’m Here, Jill Frayne.

Posted on March 22, 2023
Who hasn’t wanted to be the fly on the wall of a therapist’s office? To hear the secrets people pay others to know? Jill Frayne’s Why I’m Here is a novel set in Whitehorse, Yukon, in 1995 and tells the story of Helen Cotillard, a counsellor who works at the only counselling agency in the Territory. Out of necessity, Helen “took all comers” in her practice. Her new client, Gale, is a scrappy and unhappy adolescent from Cobalt, Ontario, who is brought to therapy by her stepmother.

Chris Benjamin: MacLeod hits all his notes, Animal Person, Alexander MacLeod.

Posted on March 22, 2023
More than a decade ago, Alexander MacLeod showed unusual patience with his debut short story collection, Light Lifting. Patience in his delivery, care in his craft. Not a word out of place, some would say. The collection itself was the result of more than a decade of story writing and publishing one at a time in literary journals. Great short stories take time to master, and the bevy of jury recognitions his debut garnered was more indication MacLeod had put in the work. 
 

Susan Haley: a collection of confessional poetry, Where the Sea Kuniks the Land, Ashley Qilavaq-Savard.

Posted on March 22, 2023
What is the source of joy we find in poetry? That thing that caused the prickle of A.E. Housman’s beard, that transfixed Anne of Green Gables in her desk when the teacher read Tennyson’s line, “The horns of Elfland faintly blowing.” It is what comes not from going about the woodland to see the cherry hung with snow, but evoking it in those very words, and with the delicate metaphor implied.
 

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