From the category archives:

BOOKS

Coherence Across a Sprawl of Forms

don’t get lonely don’t get lost, by Elisabeth Belliveau, Conundrum Press

by Matthew Surridge
30.08.2010

“No one suspects my music to have such precise references,” writes Elisabeth Belliveau, but it is precise references that give form to the work in her new collection, don’t get lonely don’t get lost. Poems, drawings, and animation (on an enclosed DVD) are assembled into one package, and Belliveau’s imagery unites it into a whole. [...]

BOOKS

A Passionate Thinker About Place

A Place in Mind, by Avi Friedman, Véhicule Press

by Joni Dufour
29.08.2010

Writer Avi Friedman is an award-winning housing innovator and professor at McGill University’s School of Architecture who, through his many books and lectures, has proved his passionate dedication to the business of roofs-over-heads, both private and public.

BOOKS

Novelist with a Generous Heart

Annabel, by Kathleen Winter, House of Anansi Press

by B. A. Markus
23.08.2010

Some novelists amaze and astound us with literary pyrotechnics. Some challenge us with narrative contortions and send us scurrying to the nearest dictionary in hopes of untangling their hyper-intellectualized prose. But Kathleen Winter, author of Annabel, is not at all interested in impressing or confusing her readers. From the first page onwards it is clear [...]

BOOKS

Hooked, Line and Sinker

Hooked on Canadian Books, by T.F. Rigelhof, Cormorant Books

by Marianne Ackerman
22.08.2010

Northrop Frye created something of a revolution in Canadian literature by refusing to play the rating game. He treated fiction as a collective body of work, identified themes, links to the Western canon and what it all had to say about the Canadian psyche.

BOOKS

A Decastitch in Time: The Crow’s Vow

The Crow’s Vow, by Susan Briscoe, Signal Editions, Véhicule Press

by Brian Campbell
16.08.2010

Susan Briscoe’s poetry is one of telling details, subtle hints and indications. The Crow’s Vow, her first collection, follows the slow breakup of a marriage as it is reflected in the passage of the seasons around the couple’s cabin in the woods. What most readers in our story-based culture would expect to make up the [...]

BOOKS

Bop-Inflected Vox, Meet Maple Leaf

Maple Leaf Rag, poetry composed by Kaie Kellough, Arbeiter Ring Publishing

by Maxianne Berger
15.08.2010

How does a self-described “word-sound systemizer” convey the syncopations of his “bop inflected vox” onto a printed page? Montrealer Kaie Kellough’s second collection, true to its title Maple Leaf Rag after the Scott Joplin composition, does just that and then some. In his preface “readeradar,” Kellough explains that “it fuses jazz music with our national [...]

BOOKS

Boy and Girl Break Up

Isobel and Emile, by Alan Reed, Coach House Books

by Justin Scherer
09.08.2010

He is alone. She is alone. They meet each other. They eat meals together. They are nervous. They laugh. They enjoy romance. They begin to trust. They fall in love… And it usually stops there; the typical two-become-one love story endemic to our popular discourse. In his novel, Isobel and Emile, Alan Reed upends the [...]

BOOKS

Forever Young

The End of the Ice Age, by Terence Young, Biblioasis

by Mark Paterson
07.08.2010

Contrary to the codes of cliché, there’s more to men at midlife than Ferraris and pharmaceuticals. In his fifth book, the excellent short story collection The End of the Ice Age, Terence Young trains his sharp eye on the tricky state of being between young and old. His meaningful stories catalogue an array of possible [...]

BOOKS

Teaching Old Words New Tricks

(made), by Cara Benson, BookThug

by Abby Paige
01.08.2010

While distinctly innovative and post-modern in its approach, Cara Benson’s first full-length collection of poems, (made), harkens back to an artistic impulse a century old. In 1915, Marcel Duchamp painted his name and the title “En prévision du bras cassé” on an ordinary snow shovel, giving birth to the ready-made. In the years that followed, [...]

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Thursday 02.09.2010

Marianne Ackerman
- Summer Reading 27.06.2010
Noah Richler
- It Takes A Village 30.08.2010
  In summer, relaxed more than I usually do, away from the city and the myria […]
Critical I
- An Embarassment of Laws, Part One 12.08.2010
  Our music editor discusses copyright in Canada and the current proposed amendment to the Copyright Act. […]
Upcoming Events

Sept. 7: Vernissage at Battat Contemporary to present artist Stephen Talasnik's futuristic constructions/ installations ... The Dièse Onze Jazz Club features Les deux Guitares Quartet, followed by the Thomas Carbou Trio ... The Fraser Hollins Quartet with Aerial Upstairs... Register now: Starting September 11, Professor Norman Cornett dialogues with pioneer feminist Judy Chicago ... At the Canadian Centre for Architecture, in the Octagonal gallery, Iannis Xenakis : Composer, Architect, Visionary ... [more]