In Stalin’s Carnival, Heighton explores the transformation of Josef Stalin from romantic and political poet to notorious dictator with chilling results. In this finely-crafted collection, the resilient lyrical voice is presented as a means of survival in a time of violence. Heighton recreates a... More Info
The first word in this new collection by Phil Hall is "verb" and the last word is "blurtip." Between these, many nouns cry out their faith within a hookless frameworkthat sings in chorus while undermining such standard forms & tropes as "the memoir," "genealogy" and "the shepherd's calendar."... More Info
The House is Still Standing is peopled with charlatans, gingerbread men, children, and savants ? the thousands and the particular. Adrienne Barrett builds this nimble first collection with a supple craft. The poems deke and swerve, from the wry to the theatrical to the intimate. Whether riffing on... More Info
Carmelita McGrath?s Escape Velocity ? the long awaited follow-up to her Atlantic Poetry Prize-winning collection To the New World ? culls overlooked fragments from our domestic lives and ferries them on unpredictable journeys. A conversation with a telemarketer becomes a monologue on overcoming... More Info
Gathering the strongest poetry published by Newfoundlanders since the death of E.J. Pratt in 1964, The Breakwater Book of Contemporary Newfoundland Poetry features selections from twelve of the province's most impressive poets, including Al Pittman, Tom Dawe, Mary Dalton, John Steffler, Patrick... More Info
A old woman buys a broken-down heritage house in Prince Edward County, Ontario without possessing any knowledge about old house care and repair. Her neighbour Elmer watches anxiously as she fails slowly, repeatedly, at her new labours, until at last he steps across the divide to lend her a hand.... More Info
The poet's fifth collection is a series of centos that, on one level, draw inspiration from a traditional Newfoundland craft. Like a hooked rug made up of strips of fabric cut from old clothes, the cento is stitched together from lines scissored out of other poems. Dalton's cento variants however... More Info
In The Civic-mindedness of Trees, award-winning poet Ken Howe updates the vocation of the "nature poet" for the 21st Century. These poems are witty and philosophical meditations on the haunting presence of the natural world, and on the familiar presence of humanity within it. In this book, odes to... More Info
In 1954, at the age of sixteen, Marilyn Bell became the first person to swim across Lake Ontario. It brought her fame and adulation; her life seemed charmed. Enter Shirley Campbell, another young swimmer whose accomplishments were poised to rival Bell?, but in falling short in her own attempts to... More Info
With Selected Poems, Tim Bowling has gathered together his finest poems over a twenty-year period, a selection including work from his widely celebrated debut collection, Low Water Slack, in 1995, to his tenth collection, Tenderman, in 2011. Always a poet of intense emotion and surprising metaphor... More Info
Having lived part time in Brooklyn for the past several years, Jacob Scheier's new poems are solidly rooted in Jewish New York life and examine love, loss, history, identity, protest, and popular culture. At the heart of Letter from Brooklyn is the notion that we understand who we are by where we... More Info
Long anticipated, Recalculating is Charles Bernstein’s first full-length collection of new poems in seven years. As a result of this lengthy time under construction, the scope, scale, and stylistic variation of the poems far surpasses Bernstein’s previous work. Together, the poems of... More Info
Sara Peters' visionary debut collection is a book about obsessions — about desire, violence, sex, beauty, and cruelty, about how they lace through our days, leaving us changed. In these startling poems of mystery and terror, we meet remarkable characters enduring unspeakable things, confronting... More Info
“I wish I could find the words to tell you the story of our village after you were killed.” So begins Senegal Taxi, the new work by one of contemporary poetry’s most vibrant voices, Juan Felipe Herrera. Known for his activism and writings that bring attention to oppression and injustice,... More Info
A young soldier dons Napoleon's hat. An out-of-work man wanders Berlin, dreaming he is Peter the Great. The famous exile Dante finally returns to his native city to “hang his crown of laurels up.” Familial and historical apparitions haunt this dazzling collection of poems by Will Schutt, the... More Info
Brad Cran's highly anticipated second book of poetry, Ink on Paper, is a compelling collection of political poems that seek to elucidate our relationships with our surroundings as well as those who surround us. Cran, former Poet Laureate for the City of Vancouver, masterfully constructs images held... More Info
Michael Crummey's first collection in a decade has something for everyone: Love and marriage and airport grief; how not to get laid in a Newfoundland mining town; total immersion baptism; the grand machinery of decay; migrant music and invisible crowns and mortifying engagements with babysitters;... More Info
Since the beginning of his poetic career in the 1990s, derek beaulieu has created works that have challenged readers to understand in new ways the possibilities of poetry. With nine books currently to his credit, and many works appearing in chapbooks, broadsides, and magazines, beaulieu continues... More Info
A lavishly designed, bilingual gift edition of the Nobel Prize-winning poet's romantic works is comprised of pieces mostly written on the island of Capri, where he found inspiration in its idyllic landscapes and his relationship with Matilde Urrutia. Original.
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Continuing in a long-established tradition of poetry excellence, the 50 poems in this collection are culled from Canadian literary magazines and journals. The handpicked selections include the best, and most current, representations of the vibrant Canadian poetry scene. This distinguished volume... More Info
The prose poems of My Life in Pictures are about the life and times of Canadian poet and novelist, Christian McPherson. He runs his own narrative through a film projector and what illuminates onto the page is a poignant coming of age story, along with the harrowing trails of dealing with a mentally... More Info
With her remarkable debut collection, Yukon poet Clea Roberts proffers a perceptive & ecological reading of the Canadian North’s past & present.Roberts deftly draws out the moments that comprise a cycle of seasons, paying as much attention to the natural—the winter moon’s second-hand... More Info
These are not love poems. These are almost-love poems. Jittery, plaintive, and fresh, Personals is voiced through a startling variety of speakers who continually rev themselves up to the challenge of connecting with others, often to no avail. Williams writes in traditional poetic forms: ghazals, a... More Info
Relationships--partings/reconciliations, solidarities/ruptures, trust/betrayal, exposure/withdrawal--are the deep fabric of this forceful collection by renowned poet Rich.
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Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs celebrates the astonishing career of Leonard Cohen, revered around the world as one of the great visionaries, writers, performers, and most consistently daring songwriters. Cohen’s career began in 1956 with the publication of Let Us Compare Mythologies,... More Info
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Shane Book’s collection,Ceiling of Sticks, is a powerful and unflinching sort of documentary poetics. It bears elegiac witness to the effects of global politics on individual lives. Book’s poems carry us to Uganda, Ghana, Mali, Trinidad, and... More Info
In 1990, the Swedish Academy awarded Octavio Paz the Nobel Prize in Literature “for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity.” Paz is “a writer for the entire world to celebrate” (Chicago Tribune), “the poet-archer who goes... More Info
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's first book since Poetry as Insurgent Art, a new call to action and a vivid picture of civilization moving towards its brink New Directions is proud to announce a riveting and galvanizing new book by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. At ninety-three, he shows more power than most any... More Info
Poetry is an ideal artistic medium for expressing the fear, sorrow, and triumph of revolutionary times. Words of Protest, Words of Freedomis the first comprehensive collection of poems written during and in response to the American Civil Rights struggle of 19551975.
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Incisive and intensely felt, Stewart Cole?s striking debut collection reminds us that we too live in an age of anxiety, disoriented by doubt, up late and compelled to confront the unanswerable. Sirens draw us to the inevitable fact of human suffering, black-winged redbirds perch aloof above our... More Info
"The Gargoyle 's Left Ear" presents a unique blend of vignettes, reminiscence, and poetry. What makes a writer? This genial and engaging narrative offers a rare chance to look inside a poet 's mind as she writes, mouth full / of roar.
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The epigraph for Howl is from Walt Whitman: "Unscrew the locks from the doors!/Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" Announcing his intentions with this ringing motto, Allen Ginsberg published a volume of poetry which broke so many social taboos that copies were impounded as obscene, and... More Info
Mean is a stunning exploration of the threshold and divide between our primeval origins and traditions, and the meanness of our everyday lives. Ken Babstock means to edge closer to what the elements give up, what they create, and what exists below their surfaces.
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Everything from her mouth / I wrote down in a blue book.' So begins "Hot Poppies," a collection of poems by Leon Rooke, that grand master of the vocal jag and lyrical roar. Those who know Rooke's fiction -- the Governor General's award-winning novel Shakespeare's Dog, for example -- will expect his... More Info
Number nine in our series of Essential Poets, this newly selected, essential collection of Tom Marshall's poetry, co-edited by his friends David Helwig and Michael Ondaatje, pushes Marshall to his rightful place in the Canadian canon. Tom Marshall lived in Kingston for most of his adult life.... More Info
Drawn from nine collections published over thirty years, the forty-one poems in this retrospective reveal the poetic accomplishments of John Barton. In this collection, Barton explores the role of love in contemporary society, the complexity of gay experience, the persistence of homophobia, the... More Info
Working in the tradition of such previous poetry collections as Daphne Marlatt??'s Vancouver Poems (1972), George Bowering??'s Kerrisdale Elegies (1986), Joe Blades??? River Suite (1998) and, closer to home, William Hawkins??? own Ottawa Poems (1966), rob mclennan??'s thirteenth trade poetry... More Info
Pierre Nepveu is unique among French Quebec poets for having forged a voice at once unadorned, sensuous, and adventurous, and this new collection is a masterwork consisting of three sequences. The first focuses on an immigrant night cleaner glimpsed on a subway; the second, a riff on a group of... More Info