Frog Hollow Press

Books, Chapbooks & Broadsheets

Catalogue: New in 2009-10

Sea Legend

Poems by Mark Callanan

Notes from the Editor: "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.

Offered in a hand-sewn chapbook format; printed on acid-free, archival 80 lb. Mohawk Eggshell paper. Cover printed on mould-made papers by Saint-Armand Papeterie using an Epson printer with K3 pigment inks. Printed in an edition of 75 copies. 32 pp.

Due in January 2010 .

COMING SOON: View the cover and selected pages for this book.

Chapbook

ISBN: 978-0-9810354-6-8

$22.50

$ 26.00

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Approaches to Poetry:
the pre-poem moment (anthology)

Edited by Shane Neilson.

Essays & Poems by: Mark Abley - Brian Bartlett - John Barton - Stephanie Bolster - Tim Bowling - Ron Charach - Evie Christie - Wayne Clifford - Geoffrey Cook - Jason Dewinetz - Crispin Elsted - Ben Hart -
Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst - Amanda Jernigan - Jim Johnstone - Monica Kidd - M.Travis Lane - Nyla Matuk - Alison Pick - Harold Rhenisch - Claire Sharpe - Goran Simic - Sue Sinclair - David Solway - Carmine Starnino - Sara Tilley - Zachariah Wells.

"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 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 reign 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 unto a 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 a 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

Offered in two bindings, both printed on acid-free, archival 80 lb. Mohawk Eggshell paper. Covers are printed on Japanese silk bookcloth and on custom-made St-Armand papers using an Epson printer with K3 pigment inks.
208 pp.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 30 case-bound books, cloth-over-board; endpapers; headband.
Regular Edition: (PB) An edition of 200, of which #90-200 will be for sale. Smyth-sewn; paper cover; flyleaf.

Coming soon: view the cover and selected pages for this book.

Deluxe Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9810354-4-4

2009

$70

$85.00 (incl. s/h, etc.)

Regular Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9810354-5-1

2009

$40

$49.00 (incl. s/h, etc.)

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learning to dance with a peg leg: tunes for a third mate

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 5

Poems by Wayne Clifford
Drawings by MJ Edwards.

an open letter to Wayne Clifford: I have read Peg Leg and think that its chief trick and artistry is to take that most primary and redeeming of feelings, love, and to resuscitate the static but grand tradition of love poetry (for my money, Shakespeare and Hardy). The poems here are shouting love, are screaming it, yet the word is hardly found therein (merely saying "I love you" has no poetic ambition at all). The collection as a whole wastes little time with the unambitious, and so is a natural way of falling in love, the greatest of human ambitions; it is a compendium of essentials, a heart's messenging system, what one man holds and has held and is being told. The ultimate test of love poetry is in the field, namely the bedroom: this is the kind of stuff that lovers would read to one another. These love poems send their messages as wrapped gifts, proving that the age is conducive to love poetry, through quick diect sorties to the heart, making anyone alive to language yearn. These are clearly love poems of experience." - Shane Neilson

Offered in two bindings, both printed on acid-free, archival 80 lb. Mohawk Eggshell paper. Covers printed on linen bookcloth and mould-made cotton and sisal papers using an Epson printer with K3 pigment inks. Typeset in Adobe Jenson Pro roman and swash italics. 80 pp.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 30 case-bound numbered books, linen cloth-over-board; endpapers; headband; approximately 25 copies are offered for sale.
Regular Edition: (PB) An edition of 70 numbered books, Smyth-sewn with a cover of mould-made Saint-Armand (cotton & sisal) papers; flyleaf.

View the cover and selected pages for this book.

Deluxe Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9810354-2-0

2009

$60

$75.00 (incl. s/h, etc.)

Regular Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9810354-3-7

2009

$30

$36.00 (incl. s/h, etc.)

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Oneiric

Poems by Nyla Matuk
Etchings by George Raab

Notes from the Editor: "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 real-ization, with what I call “capture”: the jumping off point of the image, the lateral move into encapsulation, the recourse to joy. This is emphatical-ly 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.
This book begins as the first poem, “Aquarium,” begins, as a “carnival” like “a city on fire.” The words are part of a style that reifies, that singes, that is conversant with the technical (“cephalopods”) and the precise (“pointillism under a Cinzano umbrella”) and the beautiful (“imperatrix-es of deep, diagonal, navigational dart”) offset by a willingness not only to say the unusual (this is not a mere compendium of the bizarre) but the coined thing: in “Love’s Denotation”, a poem interrogating a relation-ship, she writes of “things we know but/ never face” and you know that Matuk is in the dream trenches, she has leveraged the personal into the ruefully prophetic. Love is the major subject, literally followed by death. In the Matuk formulation “All love leads to death,/ the love series and the death series” framing emotional truth as a mathematical function but fused with lament. It is the kind of all-encompassing definition of the best poetic utterance.
My favourite moment? Vesalius can be anatomizing in “Now for Vesalius” but Matuk makes her mark: “Picture the liver connected to the heart and/ an extra, fictional organ, a little clown’s nose/ in a better catalogue of parts.” It’s rhythmic, rhymes subtly, and has the twist that Matuk constitutively provides: a little injection of magic, the idea that the working cogs of the human machine are bridled to the dream-image, itself as important in her naming of the detoxifier, the liver, and the king organ, the heart. Hers is the better catalogue, in sympathy with the “sick and the dying” but also in prose poems that range about, packing in the question of affiliations and in “the tone of questions.” These are poems with elbows-up, glistening, hard things that rhetorically latch in the ear, that are above all precise and intended, just as the dreams we dream are intended for us, are what we deserve, and could be no other. These are difficult dreams, but leavened with “an oceanic of laughter” that authenticate them, that acknowledge that intelligence and feeling can be reconciled in that device known as the poem." - Shane Neilson

Offered in two bindings, this book is printed on acid-free, archival 80 lb. Mohawk Eggshell paper. Covers are printed on bookcloth and mould-made papers using an Epson printer with K3 pigment inks. Typeset in Mrs. Eaves with Lithos for display. 64 pp.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 30 case-bound books, Japanese silk cloth-over-board; endpapers; headband. SOLD OUT
Regular Edition: (PB) An edition of 60 numbered books, Smyth-sewn with a cover of mould-made Saint-Armand; flyleaf; approximately 35 copies are offered for sale.

View the cover and selected pages for this book.

Deluxe Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9810354-0-6

2009

SOLD OUT

Regular Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9810354-1-3

2009

$30

$36.00 (incl. s/h, etc.)

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Catalogue: Forthcoming in 2010

Knife in the Head (Suicide by Morphine and Paris Green)

Short Story by Mark Anthony Jarman

Offered in two limited edition bindings and printed on archival and acid-free 80 lb. Mohawk Eggshell Text. Other details tba.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) Case-bound in an edition 0f 30 copies, Japanese bookcloth-over-boards; endpapers, flyleafs, headbands

PayPal prices above include applicable taxes & shipping fees.
To purchase this book payable by cheque, please visit the orders page.

the book of widows

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 6.
New poems by M.Travis Lane

To be offered in two bindings, both of which will be printed on acid-free, archival 80 lb. Mohawk Eggshell paper. Covers to be printed on bookcloth and mould-made papers using an Epson printer with K3 pigment inks.
Other details tba.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 30 case-bound books, Japanese bookcloth-over-board with endpapers, flyleags and headbands.

PayPal prices above include applicable taxes & shipping fees.
To purchase this book payable by cheque, please visit the orders page.

Looking for Tito

Short stories by Goran Simic

Notes from the Author: "The idea behind "Looking for Tito: is to describe a character who finds himself in odd circumstances in different countries and at different times. The mystery of Tito's name is the mystery of everyday life, in which simple details never cease to surprise us with their complexity once we learn to read people around us. The book's intention resides in the notion that either our past experience wasn't a perfect teacher or, on the other hand, we just might have been bad pupils. The language of the stories is stripped to its essence, emphasizing the basic premise that all the strange details of life can be easily explained."-Goran Simic

Offered in limited editions of two bindings and printed on archival and acid-free 80 lb. Mohawk Eggshell Text. pp to be announced.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 30 copies, Japanese bookcloth over boards, endpapers, flyleafs and headbands.

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john glassco and the other montreal

Canadian Masters Series: Volume 2.
Selections and introduction by Carmine Starnino.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) case-bound books, cloth-over-board; endpapers; headband. Other details tba.
Regular Edition: (PB) Edition size tba. Smyth-sewn; paper cover; flyleaf.

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Catalogue: Earlier Releases

Dough Rolled Perfect

Poems by Ben Hart.

Letter from the Editor: "I myself have been known to write love poems; but the love poems I write are predictable. They are written to a lover, a daughter, a mother. Yours are not so expected. You have written delightfully about delectations; you are the bard of Boston Crème. I admit that I initially thought it impossible; I didn’t think it could be done. I suppose a poem or two could accomplish the feat, but a whole sequence of poems dedicated the donut? And baked with such linguistic playfulness, such antic language? I sensed dreary confections. And I was surprised: you use the language of devotion, a language with appetite, with jam-filled centres. What should be utterly silly is actually slavish in its attention, is careful, is serious. These are love poems. They are emphatic. I get the sense that from you they could be nothing else." - SN

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 30 case-bound books, Japanese (100% cotton) cloth-over-board; endpapers; headband; of the 24 copies offered for sale, 13 remain.
Regular Edition: (PB) An edition of 60 numbered books, Smyth-sewn with a cover of mould-made Saint-Armand; flyleaf; approximately 30 copies are offered for sale.

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The Stages of J.Gordon Whitehead

Long story by Steven Heighton.
Original artwork by George A.Walker.

Notes from the Editor:
In The Stages of J.Gordon Whitehead, Steven Heighton, a master story- teller, playfully invents a history for the student who may or may not have been responsible for the death of Harry Houdini.
Heighton's Whitehead might be thought of as a refugee from irony; ever since his fateful blow to Houdini's stomach, irony stalks him, from the streets of Montreal to the mountains of the American south. The story is not judgemental and even allows for the doomed Whitehead, in his own way, to be redeemed.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 20 case-bound books, Japanese (100% cotton) cloth-over-board; endpapers; headband; only 2 copies remain for sale.
SOLD OUT
Regular Edition: (PB) An edition of 75 numbered books, Smyth-sewn with a cover of mould-made Saint-Armand; flyleaf; approximately 45 copies are offered for sale.

PayPal prices above include applicable taxes & shipping fees.
To purchase this book payable by cheque, please visit the orders page.

Miracle Mile

Short story by Alexander MacLeod.
Title page wood engraving by George A.Walker.

Notes from the Editor: Miracle Mile is a kind of love story amongst the runners, a story that drips with the mindless sweat of preparation and eventual culmination of what is won, but more enigmatically, what is lost. And there is no preparation for the ending of this story, something brutal but always rooted in MacLeod's rendering of character.

REVIEWS

In Canadian Running magazine, Book Reviews (January-February 2009), John Lofranco said:

"The story opens 'the day after Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear,' a chilling foreshadowing of what happens when a person 'gives in to his rawest impulse.' ...
Most people run for all the right reasons: fun, fitness, feeling good - ours is a balanced pastime. The 'pure specialists' in Miracle Mile are motivated by a darker place. The fantastical train-racing scene is a story in its own right, as is the final, warm-down episode that provides the twist and bookends the Tyson opener. In the closing moments, the reader will understand just how much the cannibal boxer and the high-strung miler have in common."

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 20 case-bound books, Japanese (100% cotton) cloth-over-board; endpapers; headband; only 15 copies are offered for sale. SOLD OUT

Regular Edition: (PB) An edition of 75 numbered books, Smyth-sewn with a cover of mould-made Saint-Armand; flyleaf.

PayPal prices above include applicable taxes & shipping fees.
To purchase this book payable by cheque, please visit the orders page.

Excerpts from
Gerald, God and the Chickens

Poems and illustrations by
Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst.

“So quirky, so forthright, so weary… I’m enchanted,”
—Shane Neilson wrote in his acceptance letter to
Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst.

Notes from the Editor: Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst has written poetry that, like its title, is irreverant, and which is also supremely concerned with the alienation of God and the alienating force of mental illness. This is not poetry for the pews, nor poetry from the disheveled street, more a collection of verses that effortlessly channel all of incredulity and whimsy in a tone that's as serious as the philosophical implications of God.
Is Gerald hallucinating? Or is he closer to that which moves us? And where do the chickens come in? Read and find out what happens, what is made happened, by Gerald, who is child-like in intensity. Who so clearly loves, and who must peck amongst the sorrows, or wander in Food Basics.

Offered in two bindings, this book is printed on acid-free, archival 80 lb. Mohawk Eggshell paper. There are 15 full-colour illustrations. Covers are printed on bookcloth and mould-made papers using an Epson printer with K3 pigment inks. Signed and numbered cards will accompany each book. Typeset in Bembo Book. 32 pp.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 20 case-bound books, Japanese (100% cotton) cloth-over-board; endpapers; headband. SOLD OUT
Regular Edition: (PB) An edition of 75 numbered books, Smyth-sewn with a cover of mould-made Saint-Armand and a flyleaf of Nepalese kozo.

PayPal prices above include applicable taxes & shipping fees.
To purchase this book payable by cheque, please visit the orders page.

Illustrations from Excerpts from Gerald, God and the Chickens can be purchased from Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst's website:
www.hiemstra-vanderhorst.com

Exterminate My Heart

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 4
Poems by Shane Neilson.
Wood engravings by George A.Walker.

New poems from Shane Neilson about the loves of his life and his rediscovered love of life. Poems come under the headings Absolution at Big Park, Love Life, Prenuptial, etc. With titles like “Monsterology,” “Disney Propaganda” and “Your Daughter’s Weird,” these poems are neither bedtime lullabies, nor your usual love poems. Instead, they are honest, edgy poems about being a father and about finding out, after a dodgy start, what it means to be a loving and loved husband. Poems that look back to a steamy love affair that failed and several that try to make sense of his relationship with his mother round out this collection of poems about trying, failing, and trying yet again.

REVIEWS

In Prairie Fire online Review of Books (January 2009) Andrew Vaisius said:

" Exterminate My Heart is nearly heartbreaking, always taut, and often extra-ordinary poetry....The poems map family affairs, and readers are tempered by the familiarity. We will not remember Neilson's wife and daughter the way we remember David McFadden's wife and daughters...because Neilson doesn't work toward that kind of familiarity. He works toward the exposition of his own part in the drama. ...The poems in this volume sound china fragile, yet ironically, wire strong."

In The Fiddlehead (Summer 2008, #236, pp.174-7), Karen Schindler said:

"...The book's two central sections, "Love Life" and "Prenuptial," focus on marital and premarital love, and are the strongest in the collection. Here,
in accounts of misguided apologies, comic wooing, "numb summa" goodbyes, and shrugged denouement, Neilson sounds most securely possessed by his language. His tropes are provocative...strings of aural pairings ... accentuate the poem's mounting intensity, while enjambment creates building presure at line ends.

In Thirsty: A Biblioasis Miscellany (Apr.13, 2008), Dan Wells said:

"... a new collection by Shane Neilson titled Exterminate My Heart. Another beautiful, beautiful Frog Hollow Press Production, wonderfully illustrated with wood engravings by George Walker. It's a lovingly produced volume of love poems to Neilson's wife, daughter and mother. But like all else by Neilson, this collection of love poems is not typical, neither sweet or saccharine. They are tensely dark and open and howling and beautiful and loving and generous and read true. Very powerful..."

Offered in two bindings, this book is printed on acid-free, archival 80 lb. Mohawk Eggshell paper. Covers are printed on bookcloth and mould-made papers using an Epson printer with K3 pigment inks. Signed and numbered cards will accompany each book. Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro with Trajan for display. 96 pp.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 25 case-bound books, Japanese (100% cotton) cloth-over-board with endpapers of cotton paper (India); SOLD OUT Regular Edition: (PB) An edition of 125 numbered books, Smyth-sewn with a cover of mould-made Saint-Armand and a flyleaf of a cotton paper (India).

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To purchase this book payable by cheque, please visit the orders page.

Catalogue: New in 2007

Against

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 3
Poems by Sharon McCartney.
Wood engravings by George A. Walker.

Notes from the Editor: I've always wondered what the female response to George Meredith's Modern Love would be; Sharon McCartney's Against is that response.

In Against, McCartney's femininity is rancourous, carnal; her style breathless and breath-taking. Her urge to say is sublime; the poems are oral, suggestive. She writes from the trenches of a doomed relationship, a natural arc that follows a fractious togetherness to a worn, measured retrospection. In Against, love does end, but not before it coughs and hurrahs.

Each poem is a bete-noire, an antic anti, a railing against something, be it cleanliness, an oblivious competitor, or skunks. Thus it's a collection that shows versatility of subject and of mood, a collection that's mired in life, that refuses to succumb, that defiantly writes back, that writes against. There is no sad-sack pining here, only a lesson that love is brief, and to be treasured, and, as the conclusion attests, perhaps its only real province - and compromise - is memory. — SN

REVIEWS

In The Malahat Review #162, Summer 2008 (pp.93-95), Rhonda Batchelor said:

"The focus of the collection is the open portrait of a marriage gone wrong. We're privy to the first inklings of dissatisfaction, the reluctant nostalgia for what was once a grand passion, and the bitter anger and anguished despair that accompany its demise. In lesser hands, this could be predictable territory for easy finger pointing and blame, but McCartney's narrator combines a longer, almost detached, perspective with an intense examination of self to discover her own role in the dissolution of the relationship. For this alone, the work is mature and brave, but it is the craft displayed that further enhances our experience. We're along for a rocky ride, intimate and uncomfortable at times, but never once do we want to look away..."

In Books in Canada (Dec.2007), Andreae Prozesky said:

"Against is a... more polished, more solid effort...written in the voice of a more mature, more confidant woman...once-fresh wounds are faded battle scars, markers of absences that have become presences...McCartney's lines are long, and her sentences longer, cataloguing emotion and phenomena with dizzying intensity. The voice is alternately sharp and tender... If McCartney establishes herself as a significant voice in Canadian poetry, it will be due in no small part to Against, which is an achievement."

Zachariah Wells said this about Against in his blog, Career Limiting Moves:

“A powerfully emotional and very tightly-strung suite of 26 poems, with woodcuts by George A.Walker. This is, I think, Sharon’s best work to-date, and beautifully presented...by Frog Hollow Press.” (www.zachariahwells.com/log.html)

Offered in two bindings, this book is printed on acid-free, archival Mohawk Eggshell 80 lb. Text. A signed and numbered card accompanies each book. Typeset in Dolly, with Chiller for display. 64 pp. All books are numbered and a card signed by the author will accompany each book.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) An edition of 25 case-bound books, cloth over board with endpapers and flyleafs of a cotton Indian paper. SOLD OUT
Regular Edition: (PB) An edition of 150 Smyth-sewn books with a cover of mould-made Saint-Armand and a flyleaf of cotton Indian paper.

PayPal prices above include applicable taxes & shipping fees.
To purchase this book payable by cheque, please visit the orders page.

Aerobic Capacity

Poems by John Lofranco.

Letterpressed chapbook.

If you think that running is a grueling, lonely pursuit, that it's all about training, stopwatches and body aches, John Lofranco might agree—but only to a point. In these poems, running is not only about pushing the body to the limits of endurance and the discipline required to achieve results, it is about life itself. For Lofranco, running is the backdrop against which other elements play out—love, the blues.…

This chapbook is letterpress printed on Magnani Biblos paper and hand-sewn into an inner cover of St-Armand Canal paper with a wrap of handmade St-Armand 'Red'. Edition of 125 copies. Typeset in Bembo Book with Blue Island for display. 40 pp.

REVIEWS

Canadian Running Magazine, Sept. 2008.

Zachariah Wells said this about Aerobic Capacity:

“John Lofranco: Aerobic Capacity. ... collection of 21 poems, all about running, a subject its author, a competitive long-distance runner, knows intimately. The best poems – and there’s a handful of them – capture that intimate knowledge, and the passion that attends it, memorably. Other poems are marred by a felling of excessive strain and labour in language and metaphor, lacking the flow of a race well-run. Still, a lovely little book that makes what as always seemed to me a peculiarly masochistic form of insanity (I used to run some myself) compelling. ”

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Now That You Revive

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 2
Poems and Afterword by A.F. Moritz.
Introduction by Shane Neilson.
Wood engravings by Wesley Bates.

In Now That You Revive Al Moritz writes poems of love and desire, of coming to terms with the passage of time and its attendant glimpse back to earlier days. Moritz loves, and is loved, and not without complication. Written concurrently with recently published works and polished over time, these poems reveal a lighter, more playful Moritz than we usually encounter; a Moritz that is accessible and, as always, a joy to read.

Offered in two bindings, this book has been printed on Magnani Biblos. Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro with ITC Garamond Handtooled for display. 80 pp.

Deluxe Edition: (HC) Printed in an edition of 50 books Coptic bound, Japanese bookcloth-over-board with endpapers of handmade St-Armand Old Masters. NOTE: The remaining 25 copies of the Deluxe Edition will be case-bound, Japanese cloth-over-boards with Zerkall Ingres endpapers; headbands. Only 10 copies remain for sale.

Regular Edition: (PB) Printed in an edition of 140 books Smyth-sewn in an inner cover of St-Armand Sisal with a letterpressed wrap of handmade St-Armand Old Masters.

ON SALE - regular price $35 - now $25

REVIEWS:

Ewan Whyte, The Globe and Mail,
Books p.D4, Saturday, June 23, 2007.

“The latest book by … Moritz is quite different in style and tone from his previous volume, Night Street Repairs. …. Moritz’s new work is lyric, lighter in tone and accessible… His language is polished and precise. …These poems about mature love express a Gnostic sensibility. Love in human terms is dictated by the deepest part of one’s humanity, which for many Gnostics, and perhaps for Moritz, is also love of God. … Moritz exhibits an effortless control of language, as well as a heightened joy in the music of words. His book succeeds in reviving love poetry for an audience that may have grown tired even of the thought of love poetry.”
-Ewan Whyte

Marnie Parsons, Books in Canada,
vol.36 #5, Summer 2007, pp.35-36.

“…so deeply musical that singing is everywhere implied, and music courses through this volume-as poem title, as image, as form, as presence. Beautiful cadences, finely framed repetitions highlight language as sound. Moritz uses form with grace and flexibility, but he is no less accomplished at the level of syllable.”

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Catalogue: Books in Print 2001—2006

A Set of Deadly Negotiations

Sonnets by George Murray.

Letterpressed chapbook.

Who in Canada writes dangerous poems anymore? In A Set of Deadly Negotiations, George Murray has married a questing intelligence with a deeply dissatisfied view of the world. Murray writes poems that are intimidating, that ask difficult questions, that are each a set of negotiations with the reader. This chapbook is part parable, part virtuoso piece, but wholly a strict interrogation of how we are in the world. With this unsettling volume, more interested in the whys of our existence than merely cataloguing our decline, George Murray takes his place in the front rank of Canadian poets.

A Set of Deadly Negotiations was published as a hand-printed chapbook with text on Magnani Biblos; hand-sewn into an inner cover of Indian-made paper with an outer wrap of St. Armand 'charcoal'. 40 pp. Edition of 150 signed and numbered copies.

ON SALE - regular price $35 - now $20

REVIEW:

Matthew J. Trafford, Books in Canada (Jan-Feb. 2006):

"Caryl Peters’s design for this chapbook includes the image of a small dangling spider, which is brilliantly appropriate for Murray’s poetry. Every line shimmers with seduction and the possibility of danger, a savage beauty and ruthless efficiency. Certain poems, such as “The Beautiful Hands of Skeptical Women” and “An Evolution of Injury,” fuse violence, sensuality, and grace into a seamless whole that feels both familiar and vaguely predatory. These poems describe a gossamer world where “rain falls in prison bars” and the “future floats foetal through a landscape/ of broken teacups and toppled salt pillars.” Technically these poems are as intricate and fine as a dew-covered web; rhetorical questions and capitalization are used competently and significantly, punctuation with an elegant touch, parentheses sparingly and with a haunting sense of the possible. “Weather the shape of eggs,” memory, hope, “humanity opening like nesting dolls,” the “tiny cannibalisms of everyday,” “one burning city,” “the hourglass body, the sandy soul” – the poetic voice treats each subject reverently, as a delicacy to be savoured. The reader of this collection is a fly in George Murray’s parlour, hypnotized by his rhythm and assonance, fascinated with his philosophical ruminations, and surprised by the “sheer range of darkness and light.”

View the broadsheet announcement.

Chapbook	ISBN 978-0-9732776-9-2	2005	$20

$25.00 (incl. s/h, etc.)

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Books, Chapbooks & Broadsheets

Catalogue: New in 2009-10

Sea Legend

Poems by Mark Callanan

Approaches to Poetry: the pre-poem moment (anthology)

Edited by Shane Neilson.

learning to dance with a peg leg: tunes for a third mate

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 5

Poems by Wayne Clifford Drawings by MJ Edwards.

Oneiric

Poems by Nyla Matuk Etchings by George Raab

Catalogue: Forthcoming in 2010

Knife in the Head (Suicide by Morphine and Paris Green)

Short Story by Mark Anthony Jarman

the book of widows

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 6. New poems by M.Travis Lane

Looking for Tito

Short stories by Goran Simic

john glassco and the other montreal

Canadian Masters Series: Volume 2. Selections and introduction by Carmine Starnino.

Catalogue: Earlier Releases

Dough Rolled Perfect

Poems by Ben Hart.

The Stages of J.Gordon Whitehead

Long story by Steven Heighton. Original artwork by George A.Walker.

Miracle Mile

Short story by Alexander MacLeod. Title page wood engraving by George A.Walker.

REVIEWS

In Canadian Running magazine, Book Reviews (January-February 2009), John Lofranco said:

Excerpts from Gerald, God and the Chickens

Poems and illustrations byJessica Hiemstra-van der Horst.

Illustrations from Excerpts from Gerald, God and the Chickens can be purchased from Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst's website: www.hiemstra-vanderhorst.com

Exterminate My Heart

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 4 Poems by Shane Neilson. Wood engravings by George A.Walker.

REVIEWS

In Prairie Fire online Review of Books (January 2009) Andrew Vaisius said:

In The Fiddlehead (Summer 2008, #236, pp.174-7), Karen Schindler said:

In Thirsty: A Biblioasis Miscellany (Apr.13, 2008), Dan Wells said:

Catalogue: New in 2007

Against

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 3 Poems by Sharon McCartney. Wood engravings by George A. Walker.

REVIEWS

In The Malahat Review #162, Summer 2008 (pp.93-95), Rhonda Batchelor said:

In Books in Canada (Dec.2007), Andreae Prozesky said:

Zachariah Wells said this about Against in his blog, Career Limiting Moves:

Aerobic Capacity

Poems by John Lofranco.

Letterpressed chapbook.

REVIEWS

Canadian Running Magazine, Sept. 2008.

Zachariah Wells said this about Aerobic Capacity:

Now That You Revive

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 2 Poems and Afterword by A.F. Moritz. Introduction by Shane Neilson. Wood engravings by Wesley Bates.

ON SALE - regular price $35 - now $25

REVIEWS:

Ewan Whyte, The Globe and Mail, Books p.D4, Saturday, June 23, 2007.

Marnie Parsons, Books in Canada, vol.36 #5, Summer 2007, pp.35-36.

Editing Moritz

Correspondence Between Shane Neilson and A.F. Moritz during the editing of Now That You Revive. Wood engravings by Wesley Bates.

Companion to Volume Two of the Contemporary Canadian Poets series, Now That You Revive.

ON SALE - regular price $35 - now $25

REVIEW:

Ewan Whyte, The Globe & Mail, Books, p. D4, June 23, 2007.

Catalogue: Books in Print 2001—2006

A Set of Deadly Negotiations

Sonnets by George Murray.

Letterpressed chapbook.

ON SALE - regular price $35 - now $20

REVIEW:

Matthew J. Trafford, Books in Canada (Jan-Feb. 2006):

Alden Nowlan & Illness

Canadian Masters Series: Volume One. Poems selected and essay by Shane Neilson with fore- and after-words by Gregory Cook and Robert Gibbs. Original wood engraving by Wesley Bates.

Letterpressed book.

ON SALE - regular price $90 - now $75

REVIEWS

tracery & interplay

poems by matt robinson.

Letterpressed chapbook.

ON SALE - regular price $25 - now $20

Approaches to Poetry:
the pre-poem moment (anthology)

Poems by Wayne Clifford
Drawings by MJ Edwards.

Poems by Nyla Matuk
Etchings by George Raab

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 6.
New poems by M.Travis Lane

Canadian Masters Series: Volume 2.
Selections and introduction by Carmine Starnino.

Long story by Steven Heighton.
Original artwork by George A.Walker.

Short story by Alexander MacLeod.
Title page wood engraving by George A.Walker.

Excerpts from
Gerald, God and the Chickens

Poems and illustrations by
Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst.

Illustrations from Excerpts from Gerald, God and the Chickens can be purchased from Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst's website:
www.hiemstra-vanderhorst.com

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 4
Poems by Shane Neilson.
Wood engravings by George A.Walker.

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 3
Poems by Sharon McCartney.
Wood engravings by George A. Walker.

Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 2
Poems and Afterword by A.F. Moritz.
Introduction by Shane Neilson.
Wood engravings by Wesley Bates.

Ewan Whyte, The Globe and Mail,
Books p.D4, Saturday, June 23, 2007.

Marnie Parsons, Books in Canada,
vol.36 #5, Summer 2007, pp.35-36.

Correspondence Between Shane Neilson and A.F. Moritz during the editing of Now That You Revive.
Wood engravings by Wesley Bates.

Canadian Masters Series: Volume One.
Poems selected and essay by Shane Neilson with fore- and after-words by Gregory Cook and Robert Gibbs.
Original wood engraving by Wesley Bates.