Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

Divide and Rule

By Walid Bitar

The new collection from Toronto poet Walid Bitar is a suite of dramatic monologues that find their genesis in the author’s experiences in North America and the Middle East. The narrative voice fans out to ... Read More »

April 12, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

Rain; road; an open boat

By Roo Borson

While it’s true that acclaimed poet Roo Borson has always been a traveller and imagist in the spirit of the ancient Eastern poets, her 2004 collection, A Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida (which won the ... Read More »

April 12, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

Whiteout

By George Murray

George Murray kicks off his fifth book of poetry with “Dante’s Shepherd,” which revisits Canto XXIV, 1–15 of the Inferno and, in so doing, reveals not only his subject matter but also his formal approach ... Read More »

April 12, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

★ A Lovely Gutting

By Robin Durnford

Robin Durnford’s debut collection guts the praise-song quality of nature poetry’s more traditional iterations in favour of a voice that is unafraid of tackling torment, loss, and the ebb and flow of nature’s sublimity. The ... Read More »

April 12, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

★ The New Measures

By A.F. Moritz

The poem “Explorer’s Notes,” from A.F. Moritz’s follow-up to his 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize–winning collection, The Sentinel, begins, “I came to another ruin and fell into a dream.” The dream Moritz is writing out of, ... Read More »

April 12, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

The Unmemntioable

By Erin Mouré

Prolific poet and translator Erín Moure’s latest book is a work of procedural poetry about the ways familial language and trauma reside in the body. The poems employ diverse tactics and approaches, including palimpsest, memoir, ... Read More »

April 9, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

Monkey Ranch

By Julie Bruck

Montreal native Julie Bruck’s third collection of poems is also her first since 1999. The intervening years have seen seismic shifts in aesthetics, but Bruck, now based in San Francisco, has produced a timely reminder ... Read More »

March 26, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

Paradoxides

By Don McKay

Don McKay’s 12th collection is his first since the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize–winning Strike/Slip. Despite the fact that this new volume is weighted toward verse about aging and life’s inevitable deterioration, its paradoxically upbeat and ... Read More »

March 22, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry