The photographs presented here also portray the multiple dimensions and complexity of life. Every photo has a unique message to convey which is picked up on by the poet as she explores the sensations, feelings, hopes and struggles reflected in the images. Urban Reflections is a unique collaboration – beautifully presented and deeply meaningful.
A review of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
The Hate You Give is a story of both justice and injustice, love and family. This book will have you laughing one minute and crying the next. An exquisite novel, I would recommend to not only YA but adults as well. This novel has a powerful message which needs to be spread.
A review of Crossing the Threshold by Katalin Kennedy
To write a novel so replete with historical and geographic information requires both research ability and personal experience. Author Katalin Kennedy, a graduate of Carleton University in Ottawa, is a Canadian of Hungarian background who took many coach tours with her husband over a forty year period, seeing much of Britain and continental Europe.
A review of That Strapless Bra in Heaven by Sarah Sarai
Many of Sarai’s lines have the declarative emphasis of aphorisms. “Easier to make an enemy than beef Wellington” begins the poem, “Call Me Sheena.” “Tenderness isn’t necessary but there it is / like a chemical we write to Congress about,” she writes in “Not Simple Is Joy nor Cosmology.” “Wedding planners are a food group,” she writes in “A Scarlet Moss,” “So is roast beef.”
A review of Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
Axiomatic is a gorgeous, difficult and extraordinary book that demands deep engagement from the reader. Tumarkin’s humility, dark humour, scholarship, and above all, the empathy with which she connects her own experience to that of her subjects and ultimately to that of the reader creates a tapestry that is moving, powerful, and important. This is a book that seeps under the skin, changing perception. It’s vital reading.
An Interview with Carole Mertz
The author of Toward a Peeping Sunrise talks about her new poetry chapbook, how and why she began writing poetry, her publisher Prolific Press and why she chose them, on poetic forms, poetry challenges, her studies at the Mozart Academy in Salzberg, using images in her work, some of the themes of her essay, what’s on her shelf, and lots more.
A review of The Grace of Distance by Matthew Thorburn
The Grace of Distance has an immediate appeal with a parabola of terse phrases and expressions turning into maxims. The poems of the first section have a wider spectrum of portraying the human emotions, drawing upon the spiritual wanderings through the labyrinths of one’s mind or hint of rebirth or reincarnation of human souls, as propounded by Lord Buddha.
A review of Meowku by Patricia Carragon and Flight by Robert Anthony Gibbons.
Bringing together 2 cultural forms of good luck exemplifies some of the more fun poems in the collection. Various puns and cross-stitchings of image and implication make the collection surprisingly wide-ranging.
An interview with Holden Sheppard
The author of Invisible Boys talks about his debut novel and how the book came about, characters and themes, on writing earnest depictions of guys, the bisection of the personal journey and healing with the creation of art, how things have changed, and how they haven’t, the power of music and its role in the book (and his life), excellent advice for writers, and lots more.
A review of Asylum Garden: after Van Gogh by Alan Catlin
As Catlin himself notes, Asylum Garden “is a book about seeing: what we see and how we see it.” Like his previous volumes, Wild Beauty and American Odyssey, Catlin’s poems here are inspired by artists and photographers. Blue Velvet and Hollyweird, two other recent collections, similarly find inspiration in grade B movies.