<\/p>\n
The Circle<\/em> It\u2019s not necessary to read The Break<\/em> (2016) and The Strangers<\/em> (2021) before reading The Circle<\/em>, Katherena Vermette\u2019s luminous and heart-breaking third novel in a trilogy spanning the lives of a compelling cast of M\u00e9tis characters in Winnipeg. But I strongly recommend reading the three novels in order as they display complicated relationships amidst a challenging social and legal environment for M\u00e9tis and indigenous people. <\/p>\n Discrimination and violence haunt many members of the Stranger family. At the beginning of The Circle<\/em>, Phoenix Stranger is about to be released from prison. Her sister younger Cedar has conflicting emotions about Phoenix\u2019s release. The girl whom Phoenix assaulted, and whose life changes as a result of the attack, is forced to relive the horror. Everyone is in a state of high alert, including Phoenix, whose first step is to try to get glimpses of Sparrow, the son she gave birth to in prison. Waves of fear and anticipation ripple out from Phoenix as questions abound about what she will do, if there will be some kind of retaliation, and how people will cope. And then Phoenix disappears.<\/p>\n The novel has three parts, and each part has multiple narrators, both first and third person. It opens with Cedar contemplating her sister\u2019s release and her crime. Cedar is a university student and lives in a house with other young people. Her housemate and best friend, Zig, struggles with her Moshoom\u2019s choice of his grandson, Zig\u2019s brother, to learn traditional ways. Vermette attends to the old ways, but is brilliant through characters like Zig, in showing the problems of privileging males. And Cedar struggles with a secret she has kept from Zig. Cedar says, \u201cI know that when [Zig] was thirteen she got beat up so bad she was hospitalized and her best friend was brutally raped. There is no other word for it: she was raped even though it was girls who did it. And I know it was my sister, Phoenix, who did that.\u201d Vermette also excels at dealing with a basic human problem\u2014loving someone who has done a terrible thing and also loving the victim and wondering about telling the truth.<\/p>\n No one excuses Phoenix, but what is fascinating is how the novels show how discrimination and violence can be intertwined. What Phoenix did is awful, but what is done to her is also awful. The legal system has failed her, and it continues to cause irreparable harm in The Circle<\/em>, which is a kind of verbal healing circle allowing the various voices to explore and explain how they view and deal with Phoenix\u2019s crime and then her physical freedom. <\/p>\n Along with glimpses in traditional life, Vermette also offers a trenchant look at contemporary life, with topics such as Tinder, videogames, junk food, gender, and sex. The young people are completely plugged into the social media world while still trying to navigate beliefs and practices from long ago. The pandemic is touched on. And at the heart of the novel is the question of identity and how it is constructed when identity is often unjustly loaded onto a person. People struggle to get along with their family members, their peers, and the various communities they move in. Cruelty and kindness co-exist, but the negative vastly outweighs the good.<\/p>\n One of the most moving sections is the third in Part One, title \u201cBen,\u201d which opens with a different kind of battle: \u201cPhoenix\u2019s old counsellor Ben is at war with skunks.\u201d Vermette makes terrific use of white space on the page in this section, a technique that slows the pace of reading and allows readers to enter a kind of introspective headspace typical of Ben even though the section is third person: \u201cYears of his life listening to their stories and giving them space. For all the good it\u2019s done. They still did some horrible shit. The people they hurt were still hurt. And most of the time, they themselves were still hurt. Half a lifetime of trying to do good and Ben really hasn\u2019t done anything at all. He hasn\u2019t changed a single thing.\u201d But maybe he has. And failure certainly doesn\u2019t mean giving up trying.<\/p>\n The Circle <\/em>abounds with humanity as does the trilogy. Katherena Vermette is an insightful and eloquent writer. Her powerful novels oblige readers to reflect on hard truths that must be addressed so that individuals and communities can build better lives than they have been allowed to in the past.<\/p>\n The Red One<\/em> Safia Fazlul\u2019s second novel, The Red One<\/em>, focuses on Nisha, a beautiful and desperately unhappy young woman. Married to a rich man, Nisha wants for nothing material, but her life is controlled by her domineering husband, Azar, and the expectations of her South Asian community near Toronto. Nisha is obsessed with her looks and shopping, and while it would be easy to dismiss her as vacuous, Fazlul, does a lovely job of humanizing her and demonstrating how few options Nisha has while she tries to make sense of her life and the sexual abuse she suffered as a child.<\/p>\n But before she can figure out what to do, Nisha spirals further down, succumbing to the numbing power of a drug called red powder. She has few skills apart from being expert at applying make-up, and everyone expects her to become pregnant. The novel rips apart gender roles as it lays bare the emptiness of valuing appearances and social connections more than real family care and friendships. Nisha describes her parents on page one, and it\u2019s clear that things are not going to go well: \u201cMy parents, Muslim Indians loyal to the traditions of the old country and obsessively religious, had a stellar reputation in the community. They valued their reputation more than they valued money because the latter they didn\u2019t have and the former secured invitations to parties, networking, and a sort of social validation they could not get anywhere else.\u201d Nisha recognizes that her father, a cab driver, works hard, and her mother takes care of the family, but suffers in isolation as she cannot speak English and is in a loveless arranged marriage. Th first chapter is delivered in past tense by Nisha, and then she shifts to present tense. The tense shifts signal where the story is in time.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a challenge to find anyone, certainly no female, who is living a happy and fulfilled life in Nisha\u2019s world. Her wealthy female acquaintances are expected to look good for their husbands, and the men are supposed to make the money. The women abide by a strict set of rules while the men do what they want, including being unfaithful. So externally Nisha looks she has a fabulous life. But it\u2019s all a sham. The red powder makes her feel better, and she requires more and more of it as time passes. She even starts to meet a mysterious man she calls the Red One. They have sex, and the graphic descriptions are overdone, but the intensity shows that something serious is happening. But is it actually happening? Out of her pain and need and drug abuse has Nisha invented the Red One?<\/p>\n The world depicted in this novel is populated by so many desperate and lonely people that it\u2019s hard to turn the page at times. But it\u2019s necessary to understand the isolation created by prescribed roles that no longer work, if they ever did. And it\u2019s really important to understand how devastating sexual abuse is for anyone, perhaps especially a child, whose innocence is stolen and whose dreams are shattered. It takes years for Nisha to even begin to cope with what was done to her. And it\u2019s obvious that such harm causes life-long changes in the survivor.<\/p>\n The Red One<\/em> shows with staggering clarity how abuse harms a person. It also effectively demonstrates the perils of defining people by appearance or wealth. To do so hurts everyone as authentic relationships are impossible. The quirkiness of the red powder or the Red One do not take away from the essential truths of Fazlul\u2019s novel.<\/p>\n Spiritual Pursuits and Other Stories<\/em> The five stories in Lien Chao\u2019s new collection, Spiritual Pursuits<\/em>, shine a light on the experience of Canadians of Chinese descent and their lives in and around Toronto. Perhaps the stories have an element of autobiography as some of the details of Chao\u2019s life are used, in particular Chinese Brush painting, which Chao has also written about, in addition to being an artist herself.<\/p>\n The first story, \u201cAn Abiding Dream,\u201d has a third person narrator on the lives of Ming and her mother and the struggles of artists, who have challenges everywhere. But the difficulty is compounded by lack of knowledge of English and the American and Canadian lack of knowledge of Chinese art. And there\u2019s often a split between Cantonese and Mandarin speakers among the Chinese immigrants. Big Brush, a Chinese artist, says, \u201cFifty years after oil painting was initially introduced to China from the West, it has been accepted and adopted by Chinese artists and audiences. . . . Why can\u2019t Chinese brush painting be accepted in the West?\u201d Ming, a portrait artist, and her mother, a Chinese brush painting artist, have no idea, but the accidental meeting of the four leads to a friendship, largely based in art.<\/p>\n The final and title story is also about art and culture. Harry, an art teacher and artist; Linda, an artist; and Andy, a worker at a non-profit meet at the Aga Khan Museum, and the narrator says, \u201cAttracted to each other by a mysterious energy, they decided to meet again so to form a meditation group for spiritual pursuits.\u201d They end up creating a multi-media stage presentation of Taoism for the Asian Heritage Month Festival. It\u2019s a lovely story about how people committed to an idea manage to put it into action because of their dedication and the help of other volunteers. References to Lao Tzu abound, and these help to explain the growth and change in the group and what they present.<\/p>\n The other stories tend to have a similar trajectory in that relationships are at the heart of plot and theme. As characters form deeper relationships, they move forward in their lives, even when what is happening is negative. For example, in \u201cFive W and H\u201d (a slogan from journalism), it\u2019s easy to see that the narrator, Pearl, and her friend Wendy are being taken for a ride by a company purporting to sell luxury goods. It looks like a pyramid scheme that plays on people\u2019s desires for brand name items, such as purses, but the venture doesn\u2019t get off the ground in Canada. The company then tries to develop customers in China, given the rise in wealth. Pearl is a retired teacher and a very trusting soul. The story has more sections with \u201chow\u201d in the title than the \u201cw\u201d words. Plus, it has a Prologue and Epilogue, making the structure unnecessarily fragmented. But again, the gentleness of the characters is appealing, and their hopefulness, while somewhat na\u00efve, is realistic as that\u2019s how such schemes get traction. <\/p>\n Chao occasionally uses Chinese words and characters, and she has published bilingual books. The language of these stories is straight forward, with some stiffness at times, but overall that tension gives a sense of the feelings of people working in a world that has no much unfamiliarity in it and which sees these characters as unfamiliar because of differences in culture. But the mild and open personalities of the Chinese characters mean that the narrative always has a calming undercurrent. It\u2019s a great change from all the online noise in our time, and it means that readers are invited to consider differences thoughtfully and respectfully\u2014and ultimately to recognize similar dreams. <\/p>\n Best Canadian Essays 2024<\/em>, The 2024 version of this annual collection of Canadian essays skews toward the personal, but as that\u2019s perhaps the most popular genre these days, it\u2019s not a surprise. Marcello Di Cintio has chosen 14 selections, and the task was, as he says, \u201cprofoundly difficult,\u201d in part because of the sheer volume of works to pick from but also because of \u201cthe time we live in\u201d\u2014that being having just come through two years of unease caused by the pandemic. But Di Cintio found solace in the essays, and he pays respect to the writers by saying that their essays\u2019 \u201creal achievement was inspiring me to think deeply at all\u201d after being unable to do so as he was dragged down by anxiety about the illness affected the world.<\/p>\n The first essay, \u201cRuffled Feathers: How Feral Peacocks Divided a Small Town\u201d by Lyndsie Bourgon is a slightly light-hearted and yet serious look at an unusual problem. Naramata, BC, was once home to peafowl, who took up residence in the early 2000s, but no one is sure where they came from. The birds were popular with tourists and some of the townspeople. Peacocks are dazzling in their feathery beauty, but they are not pleasant to hear. Their raucous voices grate. They also leave evidence of their presence: \u201cEvery Thursday, the peafowl could be seen chasing the garbage truck. Their droppings littered the streets, and their shrill cries echoed throughout the quiet town.\u201d Bourgon explains the history of the birds, as much as is possible, and sees them as emblematic of Naramata itself, \u201cquirky and colourful.\u201d The demise of the birds matches the changing culture of the town. This essay is one of the few non-personal ones.<\/p>\n The second essay, \u201cOne Route, Over and Over\u201d by Nicole Boyce, explains how a couple copes with a crying baby by spending unbelievable amounts of time in their car, driving the baby around so he will sleep. Parents who have had this experience are likely to recognize the exhaustion of Boyce and her husband, and anyone without a baby may be put off the whole experience, especially if they value sleep. However, it\u2019s clear that loving parents will do what it takes to care for their child. Other personal essays deal with such varied topics as Alzheimer\u2019s, gender, sick children, ableism, and vasectomies.<\/p>\n One of the most heart-wrenching essays is Fiona Tinwei Lam\u2019s \u201cBad Days,\u201d about the overt and vicious racism endured by people of Chinese descent because of covid. Lam uses the second person effectively in the essay, drawing readers of any ethnicity in to become the target of thoughtless and cruel people. \u201cThe model minority myth has splintered into tinder. The present equation is simple: all Asians are Chinese; all Chinese embody the virus; you are the virus.\u201d She details several incidents in which people are verbally and physically abused because of their appearance, building to the horrific murder of six women of Asian descent and two white people in Atlanta. The murderer\u2019s reason is offered by a police captain: \u201cYesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.\u201d Everyone has bad days, but going on a killing spree, motivated by racism (the white female who died was getting a massage; the white man who died was a handyman at a spa) is hardly an answer.<\/p>\n Another devastating essay is \u201cThe Fight of My Life\u201d by Hamed Esmaeilion. He tells the story of falling in love with his wife Parisa when they are both dentistry students in Iran and how they flee to Canada because of the repressive government. It takes them years. Their dedication to each other and their daughter is absolute. They miss their families in Iran, and when Parisa\u2019s sister is getting married, Parisa decides to take their child and attend. Hamed cannot go as he has published works against the regime. The return trip is on Flight PS752\u2014which crashes and kills everyone. The Americans say the plane has been shot down by Iran. Hamed feels his life is over now that his wife and daughter are gone, and he has dedicated his time to protesting. As he says, inflamed by such events as the death of Mahsa Amini, \u201cWe\u2019re fighting against our country\u2019s injustice and calling for change, for democracy.\u201d While he says, \u201cI live in darkness\u201d because of his grief over his family and his country, he is not giving up. Such strength demands respect.<\/p>\n Every essay in this collection has value. They vary in topics and style. But all of them offer worthwhile glimpses into the many ways of being human and many notable similarities. Justice, love, beauty\u2014the search for and appreciation of these aspects of life make life both difficult and tolerable. I look forward every year to Best Canadian Poetry 2024<\/em> because someone else has done the hard work of reading numerous journals and magazines to select a wide range of Canadian poetry. I am never disappointed, and the 2024 volume keeps up the high standards set by previous editors. This year\u2019s editor, Bardia Sinaee, eloquently addresses a significant issue in her introduction: AI and ChatGPT. As she says, \u201cAlthough it involves technique, poetry is not a technical problem. We write it because we want to, not because we lack technology that can do it for us.\u201d But she recognizes that AI will have an effect, and therefore, \u201cthe pieces collected in this anthology constitute a historical snapshot of an idea of poetry, a collective articulation of what poems are for circa 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n As is the practice, the fifty poems in this volume are followed by statements from the poets, a list of magazines consulted along with their addresses, and acknowledgement of the place of previous publication. While I often think I\u2019d rather have more poems, the information provided can be quite useful for anyone looking to expand their poetry horizons. And because the poems are often about a Canadian experience, the horizon seen may be a familiar one. For example, Nicholas Bradley\u2019s \u201cAtmospheric River\u201d is a letter to a friend in Alberta about the deluge that destroyed parts of major BC highways, flooded homes, and stopped travel: \u201cI look at these sweet nothings \/ through my own zeroes, leer at drone footage \/ of the crumbled Coquihalla Highway \/ and the streaming porn of liquefied cities.\u201d Another familiar experience for a resident of Vancouver Island is found in Anna Moore\u2019s \u201cPKOLS Equinox,\u201d which describes three girls on a beach while the air is tainted with smoke: \u201cToday there\u2019s no relief from the smog, \/ unless you\u2019re underwater or buried \/ in someone\u2019s arms.\u201d But the little girls are having a wonderful time exploring the beach: \u201cTo them a swathe of sea lettuce \/ is as beautiful as an evening gown. \/ What is time if not a void to fill \/ with anemones, rock fish, purple chitons?\u201d The concrete details are exquisite and pay homage to the beauty of the seashore.<\/p>\n Another poem that captivated me is Kayla Czaga\u2019s \u201cThirteen Years,\u201d in which the speaker compares her writing with that of a friend, while referencing Virginia Woolf and the suicide of a girl the friend knew. The speaker says,<\/p>\n That fall, you wrote a poem about the tide bearing her body even if I didn\u2019t believe it. I wrote tiny poems, How poems are conceived and how they are received both by the writer and reader\/listener can vary. In this case the friend says about her poem that \u201cevery line was bad.\u201d And that the speaker also didn\u2019t believe.<\/p>\n Carolyn Smart\u2019s \u201cAshes\u201d delves into grief. The speaker is given the ashes of a loved one \u201cin what might have been\/ a shopping bag, with handles. Inside it was a cardboard box \/ and inside that, ashes in a see-through plastic bag.\u201d The mundane containers contrast the precious life the ashes represent. The ashes are spread in a field the man loved, \u201cthe bone chips lying on the soil like flakes of snow.\u201d The bone chips eventually disappear after a storm, and the speaker says, \u201cBut unlike him, I know that they\u2019re still there.\u201d The quietness of the sense of loss is profound.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t pick out a favourite poem as so many of these have grabbed me, but I must draw attention to Matthew King\u2019s \u201cOn the Ducks Who Are People and the Ducks Who Are Ducks.\u201d Written in six sexains, the poem is a clever and sensitive (often difficult to blend the two) look at humans as if they are ducks. King factors in Daffy Duck, who is a person. The other ducks in the movie are just ducks, but most important is the recognition of the self: \u201cThe duck who talks and is a person is the one duck \/ who matters. That duck is you. You identify with that duck, not the others, because you are a person . . .\u201d Of course, as the poem points out everyone else also identifies with Daffy. The poem goes on to show the differences between ducks and humans, but that we also share experiences: \u201cBut we must not miss what they\u2019re not missing, in ourselves \/ or in them. They open onto the world like we do. \/ They are moved by the sun like we are, they feel it and \/ they awaken themselves . . . \u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to draw an overarching theme or form as in a collection of fifty poems by fifty different poets, trying to do so would be silly. But these poems have all been chosen by one person, and if any feeling unites them, it\u2019s a kind of gentleness even when the subject is uncomfortable. And that makes this book enticing emotionally on many levels.<\/p>\n Best Canadian Stories 2024<\/em>, In a departure from previous Best Canadian Stories <\/em>collections, editor Lisa Moore has chosen nine unpublished stories to include. The reason, she says, was to include voices that \u201crural\u201d and\/or \u201cnew,\u201d plus stories that are \u201cnot realism\u201d or that \u201cunfolded in the future.\u201d It\u2019s a little difficult to believe that those voices and stories could not be found in the many magazines she read for the collection, but editors get to choose their material, it appears. Having previously published stories form the bulk of Best Canadian Stories<\/em> may be a way for readers to find a new magazine or journal to discover.<\/p>\n In any case, the sixteen stories cover a range of subjects and styles. The overall effect is that these stories were chosen to demonstrate what stories can do, in a way a separate endeavor from telling stories. The second selection, \u201cInterloper\u201d by Sharon Bala, certainly falls into this category as it investigates the lives of Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa, and Vanessa\u2019s husband Clive Bell. The connection between the sister is shown to be stronger than that between Vanessa and Clive, and once the Bells have their son, the relationships among the various family members shift again. Both Virginia and Clive feel sidelined by Vanessa who is coping with her baby. The privilege these characters live with is extreme, and so is their emotional turmoil. They make fun of the lower classes: \u201cLord how the working classes enjoy their melodramas Virginia said\u201d as this privileged class does the same thing. Virginia\u2019s life is complicated by her \u201csapphic tendencies,\u201d as well as her perception that \u201cMr Joyce has smashed it all up. . . . What a novel should be, the form it must take. He has thrown tradition from the window. I should like to achieve something similar.\u201d This story works as an academic demonstration and it\u2019s helpful to know about the Bloomsbury set.<\/p>\n At another extreme is Lue Palmer\u2019s \u201cWata Tika Dan Blood,\u201d which uses non-standard English and takes some effort to follow. This story is much shorter than Bala\u2019s, which fits their respective styles. The use of language in Palmer\u2019s story develops its own poetry: \u201cAt the soul river, down in the water, where spirit float in pools of wet cloth; weaving bloated and swaying. Souls floating like jellyfish around each other. They colour red. They colour blue, black, brown, green, purple. They fold in on themselves, floating up like they ready for the judgement day.\u201d The pace of reading is slowed as a different world is explained in matching different language. It\u2019s odd, and it works. Being forced out of conventional language use invites a new way of thinking for readers used to a particular vernacular.<\/p>\n Billy-Ray Belcourt is one of my favourite writers, and he never disappoints. His story titled \u201cOne Woman\u2019s Memories\u201d features Louise, whose husband has died and whose adult son Paul lives far away from the reserve in Edmonton. Belcourt touches on the problems created by Indian Act; Louise\u2019s common-law husband doesn\u2019t have status because his mother married a M\u00e9tis man. The narrator remarks, \u201cMinor manipulations of colonial law shaped everyday life.\u201d Louise is proud of Paul and his university education. \u201cWhen he convocated, Louise sobbed in her seat in the large auditorium. It marked for her a subtle break from history. He would live a better life.\u201d This story is a tender look at how Louise is living through the changes in her life, and part of that is to talk to her son about her past, her experiences in residential school and her love for another Cree girl. Paul feels guilty for living his life in the city and has no desire to return to the reserve. Louise doesn\u2019t want to leave: \u201cLouise\u2019s sense of self is tied to where she is.\u201d Belcourt often writes about how we live in our bodies and how they can be connected to place. Louise is such a character.<\/p>\n Another well-known writer included is Ian Williams, whose story \u201cBro,\u201d is an unsettling account of a man who decides he needs a Black friend: \u201cGreg was on a mission to make a Black friend but there weren\u2019t many, any Black people where he lived.\u201d As an opening line, it makes hearts sink. Greg\u2019s wife rightly criticizes him, saying \u201cthat he should not approach finding a Black friend as an item on a checklist.\u201d But Greg insists. The fact that Greg has to call his new friend (not really a friend at all) Bro because he doesn\u2019t know the man\u2019s name says it all. And it\u2019s not that Greg is a bad guy. He\u2019s clueless.<\/p>\n Sara Power\u2019s \u201cThe Circular Motion of a Professional Spit-Shiner\u201d takes readers to RMC and the friendship of cadets Joyce and Roy. Female students have a rough time. Some of the male students are awful, and they get away with it. Joyce develops an eating disorder. Roy gets interested in mime and encourages Joyce. Their performances at mime open-mic contrast their inability to communicate at RMC. Joyce thinks she can\u2019t report the abuse, but when she performs she \u201chas faith that her audience can see what is invisible.\u201d This splendid story illustrates both harm and friendship and how people handle challenges, in some positive ways and in some negative ones.<\/p>\n Apocalypse is easy to imagine given the various disasters, and Sourayan Mookerjea\u2019s \u201cLong Haul\u201d is scarily believable. Set in the near future, the story features Jeff and Kim, firefighters in crews who are tasked with extinguishing fires in a reactor and then restarting pumps to cool things down. The destruction is reminiscent of the Fort McMurray fires, and the story\u2019s townsite is Fort Jasper. But the devastation of the fire is nothing compared to the environmental ruin: \u201cThe great lunar pox scars of the tar sands and their vast reservoirs and flood plains of toxic tailing slurry had been finally scabbed over and buried by the very funerary medicine that had long been clawed out and stripped from the living forest soil.\u201d It\u2019s hard to imagine anyone surviving.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a pleasure to have so many excellent and thoughtful stories in one volume. The subjects and styles vary, and anyone interested in the short story will find Best Canadian Stories 2024<\/em> full of engaging works.<\/p>\n Prairie Edge<\/em>, When you have a character making a living by stealing catalytic converters, perhaps it\u2019s not such a leap to bison rustling and setting the bison free in the Edmonton river valley. Ezzy has been raised in, or more accurately has mostly survived, a faltering social services system, and he sees little in his future. His cousin Grey, once a committed activist, has become cynical and scornful of activism which appears meaningful but which isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n So what can these Metis characters do to force change or at least show what change may look like? The answer Grey come up wit is to return bison to the river valley. It\u2019s crazy, but it\u2019s an idea that will generate huge interest. Fortunately, a herd of bison live close by in Elk Island Park. Whether the bison-napping will generate change beyond the lives of Ezzy and Grey is a huge issue. Conor Kerr cleverly deploys humour in the service of a serious problem. How is reconciliation to be effected? If the dominant and destructive settler culture is to be modified, attention must be paid to the natural world.<\/p>\n But Ezzy and Grey have a lot against them. Ezzy has done time in group homes and jail (and maybe there\u2019s little difference), and even when he goes to the friendhsip centre with his Auntie May, he feels uncomfortable: \u201cEzzy narrates, \u201cShe loved the community that hung out there, but I always felt judged when I went with her. Like they knew something about me that I didn\u2019t. Most people had done jail at some point\u2014just part of our existence\u2014so it couldn\u2019t be that. . . It felt like there was no way to do good in there.\u201d Ezzy\u2019s discouragement with life is mitigated somewhat by his relationship with Grey for whom he would do almost anything. Grey has to contend with a former boyfriend, Tyler, who has built his brand on activism while being entirely self-serving. Grey\u2019s contempt for so-called white \u201callies\u201d is palpable, and she places Tyler in that selfish group. An ally selling t-shirts and stickers to raise money for the Bison Strong movement is donating a whopping 10% to the activists. It\u2019s about as heartfelt an action as all the land acknowledgements spoken before every gathering. And Grey wonders why Tyler isn\u2019t in on the scheme.<\/p>\n The novel is constructed with both Ezzy\u2019s and Grey\u2019s points of view. Ezzy comes across as the much more believable character, and he is definitely more sympathetic than Grey, who is something of a cliched character\u2014a smart woman with possibilities and opportunities who squanders time on the wrong man because of sexual attraction. Her upbringing has been far less traumatic than Ezzy\u2019s, and the novel makes it clear than what Ezzy really needs and wants is a family to belong to. He tends to self-medicate with alcohol, a common choice for damaged people, although he tells his aunt, \u201cNo hard stuff.\u201d She accurately points out, \u201cBeer isn\u2019t sober.\u201d She speaks from her own experience and is sober.<\/p>\n Overall, the novel viewpoints, especially Ezzy\u2019s, that show the immense damage that has been done, both to people and to the environment, which are, of course, inextricably linked. Halting the damage is crucial, but answers are few. Grey thinks it\u2019s hopeless: \u201cI was so fucking stupid. We can\u2019t change the world. We\u2019re living in the apocalypse, and there\u2019s nothing we can do about it.\u201d Ezzy asks her, \u201c\u2018You talk to any Elders?\u2019\u201d and then says, \u201c\u2018You don\u2019t need to fix everything.\u2019\u201d Ezzy has a kind of innate wisdom that is appealing in its simplicity.<\/p>\n Prairie Edge<\/em> is an absorbing novel about contemporary issues that had their roots long in the past. The resolutions are going to take time, and things will not look like they used to, but then cultures and lives are in constant flux. What\u2019s critical is that change must happen and on a large scale for the survival of cultures and individuals within those cultures.<\/p>\n A Way to Be Happy: Stories<\/em>, Caroline Adderson\u2019s latest collection of short stories, A Way to Be Happy<\/em>, could function as a masterclass in writing. The eight stories perceptively explore the human condition, and suggests the way to be happy is not to be alone. But that is not a given as life itself is complex and often contrary. <\/p>\n The first and last stories are deliriously good at showing how lack of contact or care and too much can be equally destructive. In \u201cAll Our Auld Acquaintances Are Gone,\u201d Cory and Angel party-crash on New Year\u2019s Eve. Their goal is to steal enough to fund their own detox. Even before they leave the party in a Vancouver high rise, Angel starts to feel the effects of withdrawal and despairs about the plan. As the narrator says, \u201cA blunt, bitter stab against the back of her throat\u2014just a hint of what was coming. All this was pointless. No way could she do it. Maybe Cory could. He hadn\u2019t been around that long. Also, something was waiting for him on the other side, in that other life where she wasn\u2019t welcome.\u201d Adderson weaves in their background, especially Angel\u2019s, who has been living on the streets after being bounced around in foster care. Angel\u2019s best friend dies of an overdose. Cory can stay with his mother, but Angel Is not allowed. This story is all about loss, and it\u2019s sadly familiar. Drugs provide some relief from a grim life, but are no answer. And even when people want to get clean, the care is unavailable.<\/p>\n In stark contrast is the final story, \u201cFrom the Archives of the Hospital for the Insane.\u201d Set in 1909, the story combines narrative with documents and letters to display how the patients in the hospital get lots of care, but it\u2019s mostly the wrong kind and for the wrong reasons. Adderson focusses on female patients, who are institutionalized and constantly monitored, often against their will. Women are force-fed, sterilized, and subjected to what amounts to imprisonment for a variety of ailments, from mental health issues to poverty, lack of family, convulsions, and other reasons. The patients are often drugged and meant to follow a rigid schedule, which may cause further harm. Some of the caregivers do give care; others are mean. This last story demonstrates that forms of extreme care can be as damaging as no care, and it\u2019s clear that as a society (world?) we must find something that works better to treat the vulnerable. It\u2019s also evident that damage is caused in many ways in society and that healthy individuals can be made unhealthy by sick cultures. These two stories on their own make the book worth reading. <\/p>\n The oddest story, \u201cYolki-Palki\u201d (\u201cfir trees and sticks\u201d in Russian, meaning \u201choly cow\u201d), stems from a story Adderson found on line. As she explains in her Acknowledgements, \u201cShocked Russian surgeons open man who thought he had a tumour . . . to find a FIR Tree inside his lung.\u201d The main character, Varlam, is a contract killer who experiences pain in his lungs, presumably a metaphor for guilt. He thinks about his mother and a toy rabbit while being ministered to by a stranger named Darlene. It\u2019s a curious story that works by leaving an impression rather than a coherent series of events.<\/p>\n Fear of a standard medical examination drives Ketman in \u201cThe Procedure,\u201d and he suffers because his wife is apparently obsessed with their son and pays little to no attention to her husband. At the heart of Ketman\u2019s fear is loneliness, and Adderson uses the procedure to show how a man\u2019s anxiety may not be logical to others but do make sense, given his experiences. The imagery in this story succeeds in building Ketman\u2019s dread about the colonoscopy as it also positions the story in Vancouver: \u201cKetman was nearing the Massey Tunnel by then . . . . No bottleneck on a holiday. Ketman breezed right through, remarking–also as usual\u2014its untagged state, where every other stretch of bare concrete in the Lower Mainland bore the spray can\u2019s jagged testaments.\u201d The consistency of the imagery sneaks up and governs the story masterfully.<\/p>\n Story-telling lies at the heart of \u201cObscure Objects.\u201d Charlotte is told a story by her friend and fellow ESL teacher Renata, and the task is to figure out what she can use and how. The job at the private ESL college is bad, bad for the students and the teachers. Humour serves to make the situation even worse: \u201cThe photocopy machine churned away n the corner, a beige Satanic mill. . . . We could tell [the repairman] thought it was a shitty place to work and were furthered divided by our shame, just as management wanted it. They were terrified we would unionize.\u201d Charlotte tells the story of the job, her encounter with another colleague named Sterling, and Renata\u2019s story of infidelity. \u201cObscure Objects\u201d is a clever consideration of story-making.<\/p>\n Caroline Adderson\u2019s short fiction is terrific, and \u201cA Way to Be Happy\u201d is an excellent introduction to her work. Anyone who reads these stories is likely to search out her other books\u2014and they will be rewarded. And thus happy. 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\u2019s choices, it\u2019s a soothing clarity. In the Introduction, Hunter asks, \u201cwhy poetry?\u201d and offers a positive answer: \u201cBecause poems, through their prismatic attention and language-care, lift life a little bit higher. And with that, we are sometimes lifted too.\u201d<\/p>\n 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, \u201cAccording to the CBC, Indigenous Peoples Are Demonstrably More Vulnerable to Illness and Disease, Live 15 Years Less Than Other Canadians,\u201d Billy-Ray Belcourt addresses the enormous loss faced by indigenous people, and he imagines the birth of twin boys. \u201cEvery day they don\u2019t die \/ isn\u2019t of statistical importance.\u201d And then he turns around that experience: \u201cAnd so, every day they wake up \/ they invent another way to be \/ unconquerable.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Robert Bringhurst\u2019s \u201cLife Poem,\u201d 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\u2019s brain to slow down and think and reread. Many poems do that, but Bringhurst\u2019s work always does it, at least for me\u2014and that is a true joy. For example, the speaker says, \u201c . . . 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.\u201d Exploring the role of language in a poem, which is itself a use of language, is particularly apt.<\/p>\n Henry Heavyshield\u2019s \u201cMy Brother, Om\u2019ahkokata (Gopher)\u201d can be seen as a more focussed example of some of Bringhurst\u2019s ideas. Heavyshield\u2019s speaker is a gopher, whose brother is superb at \u201cThe Crossing\u201d\u2014a 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, \u201cNo one makes me laugh like my \/ brother,\u201d and he expresses the gophers\u2019 connection to the land: \u201cFrom the age of pups we learn to speak \/ the ground\u2019s common language.\u201d Knowing the ground helps to keep the gophers (people) alive.<\/p>\n Another kind of language addressed is found in Evelyna Ekoko-Kay\u2019s \u201cOn My Shoulders,\u201d an insider view of neuro-diversity. She opens the poem by saying, \u201cmy autism is a disruption \/ to the ordinary body- \/\/ mind relationship. I know \/ what I should do I know how I should \/\/ sound . . . \u201d and the poem goes on to show how the speaker wants to be included (and should be) but isn\u2019t 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\u2014the hope of lifting higher as Hunter depicts as a role of poetry.<\/p>\n Eve Joseph\u2019s prose poem \u201cSuperpowers\u201d refers to three French prose poem writers– Max Jacob<\/em>, Jean Follain<\/em>, Francis Ponge\u2014who show up in the night and leave her poems. She wonders about what to do, and then trenchantly concludes, \u201cThis is the point where it can all go wrong. Where the gift of the poem gets weighted down by craft.\u201d Joseph\u2019s poem adds to the question of \u201cwhy poetry\u201d another fundamental one: \u201cwhere does poetry come from?\u201d The delicate mystery at the heart of creativity needs to be carefully handled, according to this poem or the poem is ruined. <\/em><\/p>\n 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\u2019 biographies and commentaries. The poets\u2019 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.<\/p>\n Best Canadian Essays 2025<\/em>, In the Introduction to Best <\/em>Canadian Essays 2025<\/em>, editor Emily Urquhart quotes from Robert Penn Warren\u2019s Audubon: A Vision<\/em>: \u201cTell me a story \/ In this century, and moment, of mania \/ Tell me a story.\u201d These lines form the basis for her selection of essays, so it\u2019s not a surprise that the essays skew to personal narrative.<\/p>\n The first essay, \u201cThe Boiler Room\u201d by Helen Humphreys, reveals an experience the author had at seventeen and posits the following question: \u201cwhat is the line between adventure and trespass?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n The last essay, \u201cHow We Said Goodbye\u201d 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 \u201ccommunal ritual of farewell.\u201d And that lack has negative psychological effects. Eventually a memorial for Kingston takes place, and as Ashenburg so sensitively says, \u201cWe brought Anne back to life so that, finally, we could mourn her departure.\u201d<\/p>\n These two essays bookend thirteen essays, which all have strong personal content, some like Humphreys\u2019 essay on the self and others a bit more outward looking. Perhaps the least personal essay is Christine Lai\u2019s \u201cNow Must Say Goodbye,\u201d 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\u2019s in a postcard\u2019s picture. Each snippet is kind of postcard, albeit a lengthy one.<\/p>\n Another essay in sections is Jessica Moore\u2019s \u201cShadow Face,\u201d although this essay has numbered parts. Moore explores what it means to be a mother, especially \u201cwhat it means to be so porous as a mother,\u201d and refers to other examples of porousness, such as that in Elena Ferrante\u2019s novels among other literary works. She touches on Luce Irigaray\u2019s idea of women and leakiness and wonders, \u201cAre we, as mothers I mean, meant to have no boundaries?\u201d a particularly cogent question for a woman who was cut open during labour.<\/p>\n Other essays deal problems of culture, such as the struggles of immigrants with a new language and new food (Jiin Kim\u2019s \u201cComplimentary, Free of Charge\u201d), the enforced loss of First Nations\u2019 sense of belonging (Vance Wright\u2019s \u201cBirth Stories, Adoption, and Myths\u201d), mid-life crises (James Cairns\u2019 \u201cMy Struggle and \u2018My Struggle\u2019\u201d), and how children experience grief (Mitchell Consky\u2019s \u201cNotes from Grief Camp\u201d). If there\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cFound\u201d).<\/p>\n And if there\u2019s one essay that sums up the sense of loss of the writer, a loss of expectation of attention\u2014or at least hope\u2014it\u2019s Tom Rachman\u2019s \u201cConfessions of a Literary Schlub,\u201d 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: \u201cNow and then, a literary novelist is swept to fame. But most are swept by the polar wind of indifference.\u201d The internet doesn\u2019t help as Rachman notes, \u201cFinally novelists didn\u2019t need the gatekeepers. They could shout for attention themselves. On the downside, they had to shout for attention themselves.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Best Canadian Stories 2025<\/em>, As usual, this year\u2019s version of best Canadian stories is a terrific collection of varied topics and styles. In his Introduction, editor Steven W. Beattie asks, \u201cWhat makes for a good short story?\u201d and then goes on to expound on the difficulty of an answer. As he notes, \u201cThe 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.\u201d And of course, deciding what\u2019s good or best is complicated by personal taste.<\/p>\n Beattie clarifies his choices by saying, \u201cVibrancy<\/em> is a good word to describe the core qualities of the stories collected here.\u201d 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\u2019s easy to see why Beattie chose them. From the opening story by Mark Anthony Jarman, \u201cThat Petrol Emotion,\u201d in which an Irish woman accidentally hits a child with her car to the closing one, Marcel Goh\u2019s \u201cThe Vigil,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n By far the most imaginative and complex story is Cody Caetano\u2019s \u201cMiigwetch Rex,\u201d 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: \u201cKeep in mind that Little Miss Dominion\u2019s 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.\u201d 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\u2019 lives have been affected by invasion: \u201cWhen 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.\u201d Combine that idea with the perspective that Frist nations people are dinosaurs, and the title character is \u201ca Bojack-slacked Jurassic big head. Little Miss Dominion\u2019s national mascot.\u201d The sparks of humour serve to intensify the tragedy.<\/p>\n Christine Birbalsingh\u2019s \u201cCouples Therapy\u201d also combines disaster (marriage breakdown) and humour (the wife\u2019s perspective of therapy). Naomi\u2019s 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, \u201cWhen you move somewhere . . . you want to do what people there do.\u201d Naomi is Black. And she was born in Toronto. The counsellor and Ryan are white, so it\u2019s clear what\u2019s going on. It\u2019s sad as the couple really do want to work things out, in part for their young son, but they\u2019d better move on fast from this counsellor. Birbalsingh\u2019s language is direct and familiar, and Naomi is left unable to say anything.<\/p>\n Faltering personal relationships are explored in many of the stories. In Kawai Shen\u2019s \u201cThe Hanged Man,\u201d Queenie cheats on her partner Eunice, a woman of considerable accomplishments, with a young man named Ryan, who \u201ccollected tarot decks. But Queenie was self-aware enough to recognize her humiliation as part of the attraction.\u201d People do get in their own way, and Queenie certainly plays out this problem. Several relationships are considered in Chris Bailey\u2019s \u201cWe\u2019ve Cherished Nothing\u201d: father-son, friends, and partners. Clark returns to PEI from Toronto to see if he will take over fishing from his father. He doesn\u2019t know what to do. He had left PEI, leaving behind Claire, who didn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s equally substantial in Liz Stewart\u2019s \u201cFunny Story,\u201d in which lesbian sex goes acutely painful and the story isn\u2019t funny at all.<\/p>\n 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<\/em> does an excellent job of showing what\u2019s current in the Canadian short fiction world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bad Land<\/em>, by Corinna Chong, Corinna Chong\u2019s second novel, Bad Land<\/em>, 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s clear that she is troubled, and when the truth comes out, it\u2019s 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: \u201cWhen 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\u2019s men had put in the drywall with a baseball bat years ago, and the missing knobs on my dresser.\u201d The physical decline mirrors the emotional decay.<\/p>\n Regina\u2019s strongest emotional attachment is to Waldo, her bunny. The animal even helps her make friends with children as they like Waldo. Regina says, \u201cThe neighbourhood children had invented a game of spotting me; when I passed by their yards on my walks, they\u2019d call out, \u2018It\u2019s the Big Bunny Lady!\u2019 whether or not Waldo was with me, their little fingers pointing.\u201d Regina\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019d 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\u2019s lives is always a worthy endeavour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fiction, Poetry and Essay Reviews The Circle by Katherena Vermette Hamish Hamilton, 272 pages, $32.00 ISBN: 978-0-7352-3965-4 It\u2019s not necessary to read The Break (2016) and The Strangers (2021) before reading The Circle, Katherena Vermette\u2019s luminous and heart-breaking third novel in a trilogy spanning the lives of a compelling cast of M\u00e9tis characters in Winnipeg. But I strongly recommend…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2217"}],"version-history":[{"count":45,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5225,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions\/5225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nby Katherena Vermette
\nHamish Hamilton,
\n272 pages, $32.00
\nISBN: 978-0-7352-3965-4<\/p>\n
\nby Safia Fazlul,
\nMawenzi House,
\n224 pages, $22.95<\/p>\n
\nby Lien Chao,
\nMawenzi House
\n186 pages, $22.95
\nISBN: 978-1-77415-100-6<\/p>\n
\nedited by Marcello Di Cintio,
\nBiblioasis
\n176 pages, $23.95
\nISBN: 978-1-77196-564-4<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\nBest Canadian Poetry 2024<\/em>,
\nedited by Bardia Sinaee,
\nBiblioasis
\n168 pages, $23.95<\/p>\n
\naway like a bottle with a note curled up inside it.
\nOur writing group loved that poem. I did, too,<\/p>\n
\nstripped to nouns and verbs, a kind of writing
\nsomeone might admire but not love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nedited by Lisa Moore
\nBiblioasis
\n232 pages, $23.95
\nISBN: 978-1-77196-566-8<\/p>\n
\nby Conor Kerr
\nPenguin Random House
\n262 pages, $24.95
\nISBN: 978-0-7710-0357-8<\/p>\n
\nby Caroline Adderson,
\nBiblioasis,
\n230 pages, $22.95
\nISBN: 978-1-77196-622-1<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\nBest Canadian Poetry 2025<\/em>,
\nedited by Aislinn Hunter,
\nBiblioasis,
\n184 pages, $23.95
\nISBN: 978-177196-632-0<\/p>\n
\nedited by Emily Urquhart,
\nBiblioasis, 152 pages, $23.95
\nISBN: 978-177196-636-8<\/p>\n
\nedited by Steven W. Beattie,
\nBiblioasis,
\n264 pages, $23.95
\nISBN: 978-1-77196-634-4<\/p>\n
\nArsenal Pulp Press,
\n248 pages, $24.95
\nISBN: 978-1-55152-959-2<\/p>\n