Quill and Quire

Poetry

★ All We Saw

By Anne Michaels

In a note accompanying her long-awaited sixth collection of poetry, Toronto poet laureate Anne Michaels asks: “What words can we have for the last weeks and hours before the imminent death of one we love?” ... Read More »

September 25, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

Other Houses

By Kate Cayley

Roo Borson’s latest poetry collection begins in Rome with an ekphrastic view of a 2,000-year-old fresco commissioned by Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar. The image symbolizes the thematic question of Borson’s book: in what ways ... Read More »

July 24, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

★ Thing Is

By Suzannah Showler

Two new volumes find similar poets at very different stages of their careers: the established Mary di Michele and the emerging Suzannah Showler. The similarities lie in their formal practice: new formalist lyrics with heavily ... Read More »

April 10, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

★ Bicycle Thieves

By Mary di Michele

Two new volumes find similar poets at very different stages of their careers: the established Mary di Michele and the emerging Suzannah Showler. The similarities lie in their formal practice: new formalist lyrics with heavily ... Read More »

April 10, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

★ Little Wildheart

By Micheline Maylor

The first wave of 2017’s poetry collections include a late-career highlight from Lorna Crozier and books by younger poets engaged in typically Crozerian topics, from the Prairie spirituality of Lisa Martin’s Believing is not the ... Read More »

April 6, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

What the Soul Doesn’t Want

By Lorna Crozier

The first wave of 2017’s poetry collections include a late-career highlight from Lorna Crozier and books by younger poets engaged in typically Crozerian topics, from the Prairie spirituality of Lisa Martin’s Believing is not the ... Read More »

April 6, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

Cloud Physics

By Karen Enns

Using observation, technology, and reasoning, scientists can describe every aspect of the horizon, from the angle of light off the water to eras of time indicated by striations in the rocks jutting out of a ... Read More »

March 27, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

Dear Ghost,

By Catherine Owen

Catherine Owen’s latest collection is billed as an “extended love letter” to her poetic influences and fascinations. Poignant and honest, Dear Ghost, breathes with a tenderness that is also blunt and frequently melancholy: “I apologize ... Read More »

March 20, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

★ Xiphoid Process

By Kevin Connolly

A great deal of poetry – and thus, a great deal of poetry criticism – is taken up, whether explicitly or otherwise, with the notion of tradition. Where a poet is situated within a tradition, ... Read More »

March 20, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

Bad Ideas

By Michael V. Smith

Michael V. Smith’s new poetry collection, Bad Ideas, is comprised of meditations on mourning, longing, sexuality, and gender. Throughout the book are poems about the passing of Smith’s father, poems that question masculinity, and poems ... Read More »

March 20, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

The Analyst

By Molly Peacock

As Molly Peacock points out in a note at the end of her latest poetry collection, an artistic rendering of her 37-year-long relationship with her psychotherapist, it’s “rare to have such a long analytical experience ... Read More »

March 6, 2017 | Filed under: Poetry

Barbaric Cultural Practice

By Penn Kemp

It seems strangely à propos to see refined, award-winning poet and activist Penn Kemp return to a thematics of barbarism in her latest book. Kemp opens with “Tip Line,” a poem that sets the stage ... Read More »

December 6, 2016 | Filed under: Poetry

Yes or Nope

By Meaghan Strimas

In Meaghan Strimas’s third collection, the poet picks up where she left off in 2010’s A Good Time Had by All. Not one to shy away from life’s rougher edges, Strimas possesses a knack for ... Read More »

December 6, 2016 | Filed under: Poetry

How to Draw a Rhinoceros

By Kate Sutherland

Kate Sutherland’s How to Draw a Rhinoceros is a curious little book, presenting a series of poems about rhinoceroses with a focus on their commodification as spectacle over the course of western colonial history. The ... Read More »

November 17, 2016 | Filed under: Poetry

How Festive the Ambulance

By Kim Fu

How Festive the Ambulance is the debut poetry collection from the author of the acclaimed 2014 novel For Today I Am a Boy. The poems, which are mostly based around thought-provoking situations, demonstrate Fu’s attention ... Read More »

April 13, 2016 | Filed under: Poetry

Desecrations

By Matt Rader

“Discomfort / enthralls me,” writes Michael Prior, a poet who has published, seemingly, everywhere, and whose list of accolades is monumental. His first full-length collection, Model Disciple, concerns itself with the cycles of family history ... Read More »

April 13, 2016 | Filed under: Poetry

Let the Empire Down

By Alexandra Oliver

Ashley-Elizabeth Best’s debut collection, Slow States of Collapse, comprises mostly short, confessional, free-verse lyrics. The book is divided into five sections, some held more tightly together than others by a thematic or referential constant. The ... Read More »

April 13, 2016 | Filed under: Poetry

The Waking Comes Late

By Steven Heighton

Many Canadian fiction writers started out as poets. Rarer are people like Michael Crummey and Steven Heighton, who write poetry and prose in tandem. A grim warning: only a few of the greatest writers (Thomas ... Read More »

April 13, 2016 | Filed under: Poetry

★ Metanoia

By Sharon McCartney

The word “metanoia” means a change of heart resulting from a spiritual conversion. It’s an act of transformation through penitence. In Sharon McCartney’s latest volume of poetry, that transformation feels both reluctant and unharnessed. Written ... Read More »

April 4, 2016 | Filed under: Poetry

Model Disciple

By Michael Prior

“Discomfort / enthralls me,” writes Michael Prior, a poet who has published, seemingly, everywhere, and whose list of accolades is monumental. His first full-length collection, Model Disciple, concerns itself with the cycles of family history ... Read More »

March 29, 2016 | Filed under: Poetry