Contemporary Canadian
Contemporary Canadian literature, primarily things published in the last 5 years by a Canadian author, or older, but relevant to current times
Gary Barwin, Seedpod Microfiche
What is the algebra that reverse engineers Barwin’s paperweight enigmas?
Mayan Godmaire, Yesterday’s Tigers
We’re not in media res; we are part of the ritual that is audience-performance.
Ken Norris, Moon Over Thailand
Wistful and world-weary and world-travelled, Norris’s voice echoes the spry blank verse of Irving Layton or R. G. Everson.
Derek Webster, The Thinker
It is a parade of those things that make life worth living to the post-Enlightenment humanist poet, dalliances and assurances that feel increasingly seldom in the world we live in today at that.
Sarah Burgoyne, The Tentaculum Sonnets
Sarah Burgoyne has a propensity to show off like this in every stanza of every page she works on, and it’s scary, talented and exhilarating to read.
Moez Surani, The Death of Volodya Putin
Every line enumerated with a note, a reference, seems to be as confident, if not more so, than the last. But it is a purloined confidence, from the headline writers and lede buriers, a farce ad nauseum.
Hugh Thomas, Jangle Straw
This brief collection of mistranslations could only happen in Montreal. It has something of the city in it, I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Pearl Pirie, A Couple Sumerians
These poems are domestic, full of love, adoration, and humanity, yet brief, soft, and lightning-sharp, with a recurring motif of eye contact. Intimate.
Sarah Moses, Strange Water
If you’re a reader that delights in texts that surprise, then Moses’s Strange Water is a book you’ll want to read.
Manahil Bandukwala, Heliotropia
I am confident when I say it is genuinely so exciting to read and listen to everything Manahil Bandukwala creates.
