by Keith Garebian  Swoon Elana WolffGuernica Editions (2020) ISBN: 9781771835077 Elana Wolff’s sixth poetry collection uses epigraphs that connote various meanings of “swoon:” The Living Torah’s example of Rebecca’s falling off a camel in a shock of elation at seeing Isaac; Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s slow swoon of life creeping back; Robert Walser’s example of a violent delight; and Franz Kafka’s “swooning counts as believing.” Wolff’s abstract cover painting detail (from her own “Elemental”) is a visual swoon of its own in its strong curves that portend something powerful and mood-driven. Building on her compulsion of perception in her fifth collection, Everything Reminds You of Something Else, and its spare, introspective, elliptical, and heart-probing lyrics, Swoon puts the reader “at the crux of wonderment/& tech sophistication,” with poems that are stunningly meditative, ekphrastic, and intense while being musical even in their intrinsic tensions.  The opening poem, “The Months of Flooding,” is a template in its technical devices and strategies, using strong sonic emphases by way of alliteration (“mantic movie music”), internal rhyme (“more rain fell than could drain”), …

by Carla Scarano In her career as a writer and award-winning poet, Josephine LoRe, who is based in Calgary, Alberta, is a remarkable example of an independent and committed author. She has published two poetry collections, Unity and The Cowichan Series, where poetry and photography merge, as well as a short story, Cornflower. Her work has been widely published not only in Canada, but also in the US, the UK, Japan, India, China, France, and Ireland. Her parents are Sicilian and she is currently working on a new collection about her Sicilian background. Josephine LoRe has written poetry since she was a child and studied literature and comparative literature at the University of Rouen, in France, and at the University of Toronto. She reads her work at Shelf Life Books, Koi Café, and Loft 112 in Calgary and is a member of the League of Canadian poets, Haiku Canada, Tanka Canada, the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, and Calgary’s Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society. Her life and work are set in a network of creative writing and …

by Marshall Gu  The Gospel of Breaking Jillian ChristmasArsenal Pulp Press (2020)ISBN: 978-1551527970  The poems of Ontario- born, Vancouver-based Jillian Christmas’ The Gospel of Breaking range in length, with a few as short as only three lines and others spanning several parts across several pages. Meanwhile, the styles within these poems range from rhythm-focused stream-of- consciousness to prose poems. One titled “the bike poem” is clearly meant to be read aloud when she addresses the “motherfucker who would steal my bike” before calling them a “douche-canoe,” which makes sense given her history as a spoken word poet. And there’s a few experiments with spaces and repetition to boot. All of this might make The Gospel of Breaking seem cobbled together. Might.  There are, however, common themes unifying these poems. For example, memories of her mother and cooking are often presented together. On “(from the ground, up),” Christmas compares herself to bananas, cherries and other fruits and vegetables “growing in mommy’s rainforest garden” (using adjectives more readily applied to fruit as she does), and then later on …

by Micheline Maylor Glass Floatby Jane MunroBrick Books (2020)ISBN: 9781771315241 Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, claimed Ginsberg, the skin is holy, the soul is holy. In Glass Float, Jane Munro explores the interiority and exteriority of the holy. What is holy when a woman finds herself widowed and suddenly solely responsible for herself: “directly responsible, that is. It’s a galaxy full of dark energy, matter: within you, what’s never been lit?” What contracts and what expands in grief and where does one go when there is no escape from the self?  Munro, through intermittent sparse and dense passages, contemplates eastern philosophy through her yoga journey, and plays with perceptive realities. Anyone with any thin familiarity with these philosophies will find footing. The poetics themselves pose a sort of yin-yang contrast with elegant and solid works suited for Japanese imagism, speckled with denser prosaic mini-essays in paragraph form. The style itself seems to play with the breath of lines, almost mimicking the inhale/exhale of meditation. In this, the authors voice is clear and intimate.  Glass Float …

by Skylar Kay TreeTalkby Ariel GordonAt Bay Press (2020)ISBN: 9781988168272  First of all, TreeTalk is an innovative poetry collection. While most entries are from Gordon, many others come from quotes or members of the community, as poems were attached to and later collected from an elm tree in Winnipeg. In creating this collection of poems, Gordon slowly transitions from being a writer to being a curator and finally an arborist. TreeTalk seems fairly random in its assortment of poems in the beginning, but as the collection grows and branches out, patterns emerge. The poems work in tandem, creating a discourse about community and therelationships between nature and humans. Gordon uses short forms packed with imagery and depth to produce these patterns, growing the book one leaf at a time in a way that keeps the reader interested the whole time. The connection between plants and humans is in lines such as “I am shrinking like a violet” and in poems which do a taxological breakdown of Winnipeg and elm trees. In some cases, Gordon explicitly compares …

by Joan Shillington To float, to drown, to close up, to openE. Alex PierceUniversity of Alberta Press (2020)ISBN 978-1-77212-453-8 In the last poem of her second collection of poetry, Nova Scotian E. Alex Pierce writes: …Whatdrives the heart – to view a life lived backwards, unspooling. (Page 71) which is what these well-crafted poems do. Pierce creates movements in the rhythm of the estuary of Sable River, where she grew up, opening, closing up, floating and drowning as consistently as moon directs the tides. The musicality of Beethoven and Bach symphony in the background throughout. She draws her reader inside her poetry as she drew herself Inside the music now, shebegins to breathe. The notes carry her. (Page 35) This collection is divided into four sections. The first, To float, to drown, to close up, to open – a throat explores childhood memories of grandparents’ homes, the delicate ecosystem: … soft fragments of rock,each piece worn flat – from shale, from sandstone, from slate,enough mica from granite to make it sparkle – tiny piecesstuck to …

by John Wall Barger  Waterline Immersion by Conrad ScottFrontenac House (2019) ISBN 9781927823972 In Waterline Immersion, Conrad Scott enacts the birth of the world using language that shifts tectonically under our feet—histo-geographic, anthropological, geological, mythic, personal—telling every story, all narratives, via Egypt (Horus), Norway (Odin), Iceland (Poetic Edda), and his own genealogy via Denmark, Ireland, France, Scotland. Yes, this book is ambitious. It’s also riveting.  Canadian geology is the central focus. Scott figuratively excavates Kamloops and Acadia and Glacial Lake Thompson—always seeking the heart of the place, keeping history, and “the long view of time” (33) in mind. “We all,” he says, “journey back to the glacier” (30). At times the mythic language of Waterline Immersion echoes Seamus Heaney’s North “leathery old stench of the bog,” (16) and Charles Olson’s Maximus Poems “All memory now / hunches / in glaciers of the mind / as we speak ourselves / into thawing,” (31). Scott’s mentor Don McKay—the book Strike/Slip in particular—was an inspiration.  Scott balances mytho-geological deep-dives with sobering reminders of climate change “Fossil elixirs consumed, / …

by Nikki Reimer  Pressure Cooker Love Bomb by Sharanpal RupraiFrontenac House (2019) ISBN 978-1-92782-383-5  Sex, love and food: the lyricism  The Instant Pot is all the rage right now, but what, exactly, is a ‘Pressure Cooker Love Bomb’?  Sharanpal Ruprai’s second book of poetry, Pressure Cooker Love Bomb, holds the answers. A lyrical, poetic dive into family expectations, arranged marriage, queer love, interracial relationships, and yes, cooking, it explores all the ways that a twenty-first century Sikh woman might find love on the prairies, might keep warm, might keep alive, and might write her own happy ending.  From the gentle epigraph, “create love,” (front-matter) to the final exhortative demand, “#lovemenow,” (75) Ruprai approaches her subjects with unflinching emotional honesty and great care.  Her minimalist word choices belie the impact of precisely chosen words. One rule for cooking offers “take up your rolling pin, yes / the one your mother beat you with” (13). Whole narratives waft out from those words; the weight of love, the weight of trauma. How the same object can be used to …