Press News

2009-10 Releases:

Sea Legend
new poetry by Mark Callanan
"Mark Callanan has written a nautical tale bent by poet's logic, replete with Newfoundland's beauty but also its mystery: the mystery of woman, the mystery of mermaid, the mystery of night, of death, of shipwrecks and conch shell music that seems to agelessly speak to us. Callanan has written poems that issue imagery into seamless universe: his poems are of the sea, capable of a great sympathy (for a giant squid exhibit, for example) and also a terrible power. And he sees the sea in us: that squid-watcher, who happens to be you, ends up "watching your reflection in the glass." But theme is secondary to the skill with language: Callanan has his eye on reader's, not sailor's, delight."- Shane Neilson.

Approaches to Poetry: the pre-poem moment (anthology)
edited & introduced by Shane Neilson
with essays and poems by twenty-seven authors
(see catalogue for a complete list of authors).
"The origin of poetry is presumed to be song;
but what is the origin of the poem?
This anthology attempts to explain the origins of the original poems by asking 27 poets to create a dialogue with a favourite poem (their own)
in the form of an essay. The poets were given free rein in answering; some were short and sharp, others ranged further, thinking of the essay as an opportunity to discover the means of poetry, how biography and image and the right words render themselves into the poem.
The results are sometimes essayistic and sometimes indivisible from their poetic origins. Poets can be as various as reaching back to
Robert Browning, sideways to the heteronym, or forward to the process of revision. Each of the poets surprised themselves as they trawled
their consciousness, discovering not just the elements of their poems, but their process." - Shane Neilson

Learning to Dance with a Peg Leg:
three dozen tunes for a third mate
Contemporary Canadian Poets: volume 5
poems by Wayne Clifford
drawings by MJ Edwards
"The age is not conducive to love poetry; poets aren't doing it anymore, it is as if they are rebelling against that most natural of modes, or, at least, poets out of their adolescence seem to distrust it. So, to start off with, I appreciate the genre. Secondly, I love several of the poems
in this small collection. I especially love the shorter lyrics;
they seem to articulate the word "love" without mentioning it,
they are quick direct sorties to the heart, they make me yearn.
These are clearly love poems of experience." - Shane Neilson

Oneiric
poems by Nyla Matuk
etchings by George Raab
"Part netherworld, part playground of the possible, part dizzying rush, part wordscape, Nyla Matuk is a maker: her poems chide the stuff of dreams according to an internal logic, a lyric experimentation.This is a poetry with definition, with realization, with what I call “capture”:
the jumping off point of the image, the lateral move into encapsulation, the recourse to joy.This is emphatically not an anecdote-did-what collection; Oneiric is about the mix and contiguousness of meaning
and meaninglessness, of skew, of metaphor, of how things cohere
and dehisce...."   - Shane Neilson

Reviewed by Robert Earl Stewart in
The Mansfield Revue - "The Monthly Revues - August 2009".

Forthcoming in 2010

Knife in the Head (Suicide by Morphine and Paris Green)
Short fiction by Mark Anthony Jarman
Due Spring-Summer 2010

The Book of Widows
Contemporary Canadian Poets: volume 6
new poetry by M.Travis Lane
Due Summer-Fall 2010

Looking for Tito
Short stories by Goran Simic
Due late summer 2010

John Glassco and the Other Montreal
Canadian Masters Series: volume 2
selections and introduction by Carmine Starnino
to be announced

Please see the catalogue section
for earlier releases

Poetry Readings & Book Events

LIVEWORDS - Toronto - February 4, 2010
Misunderstandings Magazine - Launch for Issue #13
8 pm at the Black Swan Tavern, 154 Danforth Avenue
(www.livewords.ca)

COOKED & EATEN - Peterborough - March 11, 2010
littlefishcart night featuring Zach Wells & others
location tba
(www.cookedandeaten.com)

Where & How to Buy Our Books:

BOOKSELLERS, LIBRAIRIES, LIBRARY SERVICE COMPANIES: Order directly from the Press using the interactive form on the Orders page or by mailing or faxing your purchase order or use our printable Order form.

INDIVIDUALS / SUBSCRIBERS: Please see Orders.

Notes on Typography and Book Design:

"Typography exists to honor content."
Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style.

Book Typography: A Designer's Manual
Michael Mitchell and Susan Wightman
ISBN 0 948021 66 7
(www.libanuspress.co.uk)