Quill and Quire

Poetry

Animal Life in Bucharest

By John Degen

John Degen meanders through the streets of Bucharest to produce a book of tight images in his first collection of poetry, Animal Life in Bucharest. Degen, a playwright, theatre critic, and freelance arts journalist, creates ... Read More »

February 23, 2004 | Filed under: Poetry

Burn

By Paul Vermeersch

Toronto poet Paul Vermeersch is a raconteur, a guy who writes poems about childhood terrors and screw-ups in love, about girls with metal in their tongues and boys with shotguns in their mouths. A guy ... Read More »

February 23, 2004 | Filed under: Poetry

★ Handwriting

By Michael Ondaatje

You are 20, a male tree-planter working the cleaving mountains west of Spatsizi in northern B.C. Mid-summer blackflies. You ache for the brown and blonding women on the crew: the ankle bracelets below calf muscles, ... Read More »

February 20, 2004 | Filed under: Poetry

Marrying the Sea

By Janice Kulyk Keefer

In this impressive collection of new poems, Janice Kulyk Keefer explores the fragility and power of human relationships. Her intelligence is evident in finely crafted lyrics that celebrate a daughter’s deep affection for her parents; ... Read More »

February 20, 2004 | Filed under: Poetry

She

By Claire Harris

Who is “She”? The enigmatic title of Claire Harris’s seventh book of poetry refers to a Trinidadian immigrant living in Calgary named Penelope-Marie Lancet. We learn of her tragic life in a series of erratic ... Read More »

February 19, 2004 | Filed under: Poetry

Another Gravity

By Don McKay

Another Gravity, B.C. poet Don McKay’s ninth book, weaves together three dozen poems by a writer who has surely thought a great deal about Shakespeare’s famous lines concerning lunatics, lovers, and poets who give “a ... Read More »

February 19, 2004 | Filed under: Poetry