Best Canadian Poetry 2025,
edited by Aislinn Hunter,
Biblioasis,
184 pages, $23.95
ISBN: 978-177196-632-0
The sixteenth edition of best Canadian poetry certainly lives up to the high standards set by its predecessors, and if anything marks editor Aislinn Hunter’s choices, it’s a soothing clarity. In the Introduction, Hunter asks, “why poetry?” and offers a positive answer: “Because poems, through their prismatic attention and language-care, lift life a little bit higher. And with that, we are sometimes lifted too.”
Obviously, poetry is not just a romp through feel-good chat. Often problems are addressed, and it may simply be the sharing of trauma that helps to lift us. In the opening poem, “According to the CBC, Indigenous Peoples Are Demonstrably More Vulnerable to Illness and Disease, Live 15 Years Less Than Other Canadians,” Billy-Ray Belcourt addresses the enormous loss faced by indigenous people, and he imagines the birth of twin boys. “Every day they don’t die / isn’t of statistical importance.” And then he turns around that experience: “And so, every day they wake up / they invent another way to be / unconquerable.” Belcourt is a genius at showing the prevailing trauma of indigenous people and also their ability to cope with it. If anything, the presence of indigenous people shows enormous strength in the face of attempted genocide.
Robert Bringhurst’s “Life Poem,” one of the longer poems in the book, looks at the relationship of language and life, and in typical philosophical fashion, Bringhurst forces the reader’s brain to slow down and think and reread. Many poems do that, but Bringhurst’s work always does it, at least for me—and that is a true joy. For example, the speaker says, “ . . . Life is Being discovering / speech. Which is to say Being discovering being. / Is language Being discovering life? It might / be so. Which does not mean that speech / and being are the same.” Exploring the role of language in a poem, which is itself a use of language, is particularly apt.
Henry Heavyshield’s “My Brother, Om’ahkokata (Gopher)” can be seen as a more focussed example of some of Bringhurst’s ideas. Heavyshield’s speaker is a gopher, whose brother is superb at “The Crossing”—a game/life skill in which the creatures run from den to den, evading the swoop of predators. The gophers can be seen as gophers or as indigenous people who must move through a dangerous world and try to survive. In a lovely touch, the speaker gopher notes, “No one makes me laugh like my / brother,” and he expresses the gophers’ connection to the land: “From the age of pups we learn to speak / the ground’s common language.” Knowing the ground helps to keep the gophers (people) alive.
Another kind of language addressed is found in Evelyna Ekoko-Kay’s “On My Shoulders,” an insider view of neuro-diversity. She opens the poem by saying, “my autism is a disruption / to the ordinary body- // mind relationship. I know / what I should do I know how I should // sound . . . ” and the poem goes on to show how the speaker wants to be included (and should be) but isn’t because the others are unable to imagine how she experiences the world. In a way, maybe poetry offers a portal in to other experiences, especially feelings, and can foster kindness—the hope of lifting higher as Hunter depicts as a role of poetry.
Eve Joseph’s prose poem “Superpowers” refers to three French prose poem writers– Max Jacob, Jean Follain, Francis Ponge—who show up in the night and leave her poems. She wonders about what to do, and then trenchantly concludes, “This is the point where it can all go wrong. Where the gift of the poem gets weighted down by craft.” Joseph’s poem adds to the question of “why poetry” another fundamental one: “where does poetry come from?” The delicate mystery at the heart of creativity needs to be carefully handled, according to this poem or the poem is ruined.
The range of styles in this collection is as remarkable as the range of topics. Aislinn Hunter has curated a terrific collection, and as is tradition the book includes the contributors’ biographies and commentaries. The poets’ voices come through clearly in their poems, but for some reason, the commentaries amp up the connection between writer and reader, another level of lifting up. Give yourself a gift: get this book.
Best Canadian Essays 2025,
edited by Emily Urquhart,
Biblioasis, 152 pages, $23.95
ISBN: 978-177196-636-8
In the Introduction to Best Canadian Essays 2025, editor Emily Urquhart quotes from Robert Penn Warren’s Audubon: A Vision: “Tell me a story / In this century, and moment, of mania / Tell me a story.” These lines form the basis for her selection of essays, so it’s not a surprise that the essays skew to personal narrative.
The first essay, “The Boiler Room” by Helen Humphreys, reveals an experience the author had at seventeen and posits the following question: “what is the line between adventure and trespass?” As Humphreys describes her relationship with the school janitor, a man much older than she is, I defy any reader not to feel queasy. And Humphreys makes it clear that while she thought she may have been having an adventure, the same cannot be said of the janitor. The details are creepy, and I suspect not particularly unusual when an adult takes advantage of a teenager.
The last essay, “How We Said Goodbye” by Katherine Ashenburg, explores the distinction between grieving and mourning, the one private pain, the other a public display of loss through various traditions. Ashenburg focusses on the death of Anne Kingston, a fellow writer and friend, whose memorial was planned for March 2020. The pandemic intervened, and the memorial could not take place. Grief was experienced but not the “communal ritual of farewell.” And that lack has negative psychological effects. Eventually a memorial for Kingston takes place, and as Ashenburg so sensitively says, “We brought Anne back to life so that, finally, we could mourn her departure.”
These two essays bookend thirteen essays, which all have strong personal content, some like Humphreys’ essay on the self and others a bit more outward looking. Perhaps the least personal essay is Christine Lai’s “Now Must Say Goodbye,” which offers a short history of postcards and includes some pictures of the visual content while also including the written words. This essay is segmented, with each titled segment directed at a different subject, such as Walker Evans collection of over nine thousand postcards or a description of what’s in a postcard’s picture. Each snippet is kind of postcard, albeit a lengthy one.
Another essay in sections is Jessica Moore’s “Shadow Face,” although this essay has numbered parts. Moore explores what it means to be a mother, especially “what it means to be so porous as a mother,” and refers to other examples of porousness, such as that in Elena Ferrante’s novels among other literary works. She touches on Luce Irigaray’s idea of women and leakiness and wonders, “Are we, as mothers I mean, meant to have no boundaries?” a particularly cogent question for a woman who was cut open during labour.
Other essays deal problems of culture, such as the struggles of immigrants with a new language and new food (Jiin Kim’s “Complimentary, Free of Charge”), the enforced loss of First Nations’ sense of belonging (Vance Wright’s “Birth Stories, Adoption, and Myths”), mid-life crises (James Cairns’ “My Struggle and ‘My Struggle’”), and how children experience grief (Mitchell Consky’s “Notes from Grief Camp”). If there’s any one thread running through the collection, it may be loss, whether for a loved one, a way of life, or even a notebook (Sadiqa de Meijer’s “Found”).
And if there’s one essay that sums up the sense of loss of the writer, a loss of expectation of attention—or at least hope—it’s Tom Rachman’s “Confessions of a Literary Schlub,” which should be required reading for anyone aspiring to the life of a writer. Rachman writes wonderful novels and, by most measures, is a successful writer. But his essay lays bare the reality for many writers: “Now and then, a literary novelist is swept to fame. But most are swept by the polar wind of indifference.” The internet doesn’t help as Rachman notes, “Finally novelists didn’t need the gatekeepers. They could shout for attention themselves. On the downside, they had to shout for attention themselves.” The practicality of being a writer is challenging. But still Rachman writes. And for that I am grateful, as I am for all the work done by the people whose essays are in the pages of this collection.
Best Canadian Stories 2025,
edited by Steven W. Beattie,
Biblioasis,
264 pages, $23.95
ISBN: 978-1-77196-634-4
As usual, this year’s version of best Canadian stories is a terrific collection of varied topics and styles. In his Introduction, editor Steven W. Beattie asks, “What makes for a good short story?” and then goes on to expound on the difficulty of an answer. As he notes, “The short form opens itself to such variety in structure, syntax, and approach it seems finally irreducible to a set of rigid rules or intransigent first principles.” And of course, deciding what’s good or best is complicated by personal taste.
Beattie clarifies his choices by saying, “Vibrancy is a good word to describe the core qualities of the stories collected here.” It would be hard to dispute that assessment as even the stories a reader may not admire as much as others have this quality, and it’s easy to see why Beattie chose them. From the opening story by Mark Anthony Jarman, “That Petrol Emotion,” in which an Irish woman accidentally hits a child with her car to the closing one, Marcel Goh’s “The Vigil,” in which children are left to mind the corpse of their grandfather, the stories are intensely alive, even when dealing with death. Each story pulses with detail.
By far the most imaginative and complex story is Cody Caetano’s “Miigwetch Rex,” which encourages or perhaps even demands that readers lay aside any preconceptions of a story and language and just let the story unfurl. Caetano creates a fantastical surreal world with depressing smacks of reality: “Keep in mind that Little Miss Dominion’s prime minister at the time hit a sixth consecutive term, and about a month into it, he struck countered signed addenda for each treaty and pledged support from every assembly of heretical worm-tongues in political office and on tribal council.” The anger of the narrator is palpable, and no wonder, given history and the current state of affairs. Caetano uses garbage as both the material and symbol of how First nations’ lives have been affected by invasion: “When the coats first showed up at the lake, they brought with them garbage. Not just wickedness or gaslit, dour teachings about our wickedness, or the shame that afflicts those who mess around with guilt trips and scripture, but stinking garbage. The concept of it.” Combine that idea with the perspective that Frist nations people are dinosaurs, and the title character is “a Bojack-slacked Jurassic big head. Little Miss Dominion’s national mascot.” The sparks of humour serve to intensify the tragedy.
Christine Birbalsingh’s “Couples Therapy” also combines disaster (marriage breakdown) and humour (the wife’s perspective of therapy). Naomi’s family is from the Caribbean, and she explains that she tends to shout whether happy or angry. Her husband Ryan feels attacked. They have diligently researched counsellors, and unfortunately have ended up with a dud who tells Naomi, “When you move somewhere . . . you want to do what people there do.” Naomi is Black. And she was born in Toronto. The counsellor and Ryan are white, so it’s clear what’s going on. It’s sad as the couple really do want to work things out, in part for their young son, but they’d better move on fast from this counsellor. Birbalsingh’s language is direct and familiar, and Naomi is left unable to say anything.
Faltering personal relationships are explored in many of the stories. In Kawai Shen’s “The Hanged Man,” Queenie cheats on her partner Eunice, a woman of considerable accomplishments, with a young man named Ryan, who “collected tarot decks. But Queenie was self-aware enough to recognize her humiliation as part of the attraction.” People do get in their own way, and Queenie certainly plays out this problem. Several relationships are considered in Chris Bailey’s “We’ve Cherished Nothing”: father-son, friends, and partners. Clark returns to PEI from Toronto to see if he will take over fishing from his father. He doesn’t know what to do. He had left PEI, leaving behind Claire, who didn’t want to go. Clark compares his life to that of his friend Jacob who stayed and who is love with Claire. Life is messy as unplanned pregnancy affects the women in the men’s lives, and neither of the men have any agency in what is going to happen. The sense of loss in this story is substantial. It’s equally substantial in Liz Stewart’s “Funny Story,” in which lesbian sex goes acutely painful and the story isn’t funny at all.
Beattie offers a wide range in this collection, and while not all sixteen stories may be for all readers, each has something significant to offer. Best Canadian Stories 2025 does an excellent job of showing what’s current in the Canadian short fiction world.
Bad Land, by Corinna Chong,
Arsenal Pulp Press,
248 pages, $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-55152-959-2
Corinna Chong’s second novel, Bad Land, is a complex consideration of a family struggling with its past and how to move forward. After an absence of seven years, Ricky shows up at the family house in Drumheller with his six-year-old daughter Jez in tow. The last time the narrator Regina saw Ricky was at his wedding. It’s evident that Ricky is running away from something but the siblings are terrible at communication, and whatever the problem is, Ricky is reluctant to verbalize it.
Regina works at Fossil Land, a dinosaur information centre. She sells tickets and knows little about dinosaurs although she does know about fossils as she and her mother Mutti used to go collecting fossils. Mutti is out of the picture in the present time-line but she has had a huge effect on both her son and daughter, and Regina is often thinking about the past when her mother was living in the house.
The family dynamic is complicated. Mutti came to Drumheller from Berlin when Regina was a baby. About three years later, Mutti has Ricky with a man who is in the picture briefly. The novel holds back what has happened to Mutti to almost the end when Regina is trying to figure out what to do with Jez, who has some serious psychological issues to work through. In part she misses her mother, Carla, who Ricky says abandoned them at a truck stop. No one believes that story, but the truth of what happened back in Phoenix prompting the flight to Drumheller for Ricky and Jez creates suspense, and keeps readers turning the pages.
The adult characters have few personal interests. Regina and Ricky are somewhat opaque, and while they could be seen an uninteresting, Chong has done a good job of moving the story along by focussing on the disagreements between Regina and Ricky. For example, a huge red flag is thrown up when Regina says that Jez should be registered for school, and Ricky refuses. Ricky wants to find a job and have Regina stay home and take care of Jez. That situation prompts Regna to think of who took care of her and Ricky when they were children and their mother worked to support them. The blend of past and present is seamless as it often is when people think about their lives, and realistically, Ricky and Regina often interpret the past in different ways.
The character with the most personality is Jez, who is obsessed with the Arctic. She has a toy narwhal she calls Earl, and she frequently makes up stories. But it’s clear that she is troubled, and when the truth comes out, it’s shocking. The knowledge galvanizes Regina into action, and she is a woman who has basically drifted or survived until her mid-thirties. She has kept the same job and changed nothing in the house. She only notices how deterioration has taken over when she shows Jez the bedroom she has had since childhood: “When I opened the door, the pink carpet was patchy with stains, the linens on the bed were threadbare, and the smell of sleep seemed to emanate from the walls. I saw the crack that one of Mutti’s men had put in the drywall with a baseball bat years ago, and the missing knobs on my dresser.” The physical decline mirrors the emotional decay.
Regina’s strongest emotional attachment is to Waldo, her bunny. The animal even helps her make friends with children as they like Waldo. Regina says, “The neighbourhood children had invented a game of spotting me; when I passed by their yards on my walks, they’d call out, ‘It’s the Big Bunny Lady!’ whether or not Waldo was with me, their little fingers pointing.” Regina’s life is very contained. She works, and she plays with Waldo. Her doctor has advised her to walk to try to control her weight (she is extremely large). She has no friends. She doesn’t appear to have any dreams. So the arrival of Ricky and Jez at the beginning of the novel is a huge change to her life, but she takes it in stride.
The prevailing mood of this novel is solemnity. Corinna Chong has explored a family in crisis with extreme sensitivity. My main quibble would be the fact that the novel jumps into the future right at the end to potentially put a couple of the main characters on a new path. I’d rather see that time developed in the novel. But overall, the novel forces readers to think about they might handle the circumstances these characters are thrust into, and imaging other people’s lives is always a worthy endeavour.
