In the Tiger Park by Alison Calder Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $16.95 ISBN 9-781550-505764 Sometimes one reads a book and, upon completion, thinks: Hmm, I bet I could be friends with this writer. This was my sentiment after completing In the Tiger Park by Winnipeg writer and university professor Alison Calder. What I most appreciated was Calder’s original and clear-eyed view on a variety of interesting subjects, including a dead poet’s clothes; impressions of Scottsdale AZ; witnessing a bride and groom having their wedding photos taken in a cold September lake; elephants; China; the moon; the experience of blind children; and football (Calder hails from a Saskatchewan Roughrider-loving clan). We sense the poet’s perceptiveness in her very first (and second longest) poem, “Blind children at the Natural History Museum, 1913,” in which she credibly describes how the various animals and objects might feel beneath the fingers of these children. The poem “On finding P.K. Page’s old clothes” is just three stanzas long-but they contain so much! We are treated to the wonderful world “selvedges” and to the ear-pleasing “They turn to metaphor\and mites.” We see “Their pearls glimmer\in cardboard darkness,” and when the dresses tear,…
The Vaults: Art from the MacKenzie Art Gallery and the University of Regina Collections edited by Timothy Long and Dr. Stephen King Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $39.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-289-2 Opening The Vaults is like cracking open a safe, revealing the cultural treasures stored in the collections of the MacKenzie Art Gallery and the University of Regina. This visually inspiring coffee table book explores only a fraction of the more than 4,500 works of art. The core of this collection originated when prominent Regina lawyer Norman MacKenzie started amassing art by European and Asian masters, along with emerging Canadian artists such as Inglis Sheldon-Williams. When MacKenzie began building his collection, art was not greatly appreciated in Regina. People thought he was foolish to spend his money this way. He lamented that it would be easier to sell 200 automobiles than to give away oil paintings. MacKenzie had to rebuild his collection after a tornado in 1912 virtually wiped out the pieces he had accumulated. One painting, ironically titled Storm at Sea, survived the storm and is reproduced in this lavishly illustrated book. When he died in 1936, MacKenzie bequeathed his collection of artwork and antiquities…
Dementia Prevention Naturally: Evidence-Based Strategies to Enrich Cognition by Felix Veloso M.D. with Roxanne Veloso-Tang and Joanne Veloso Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Regine Haensel $18.88 ISBN 978-1-927756-11-9 We are all getting older. “If you live long enough,” writes Dr. Felix Veloso, “you will either develop dementia or care for a loved one with the mind-robbing curse.” Felix Veloso, M.D., F.R.C.P. (C), F.A.A.N. is a Saskatchewan neurologist who has been practicing for over forty years. He is a professor of clinical medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. His book, Dementia Prevention Naturally, does not claim to diagnose, cure or treat any disease; rather it suggests strategies that can help keep us cognitively healthy. The book gives definitions and information about various memory impairments, such as Age-Associated Memory Impairment, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and disease driven dementias. Statistics, information from patient case studies, as well as data from reports and research studies are provided. Also useful are the notes at the back of the book, as well as a glossary and index. The reader is taken through some of the tests, evaluation methods, and criteria to…
man from elsewhere by Lorna Crozier Published by JackPine Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $30.00 ISBN 978-1-927035-09-2 Swift Current-born Lorna Crozier is one of the brightest lights in Canadian poetry. If you read poetry-and no, it is definitely not a genre to be afraid of-you’ll know that her name is a household word among poetry readers. She’s published numerous critically-acclaimed books, has won the Governor General’s Award for poetry, presents internationally, and is one of Canada’s most read and appreciated poets. It’s difficult to know for certain why some poets succeed and others burn quietly or flash out immediately. Certainly for “staying power” one must possess talent and its sisters: originality, skilled craftsmanship, and intelligence. One must have interesting things to say, and express these things in masterful and memorable ways. It also helps to be entertaining. Crozier possesses all of these attributes. She’s made her readers laugh and cry, and one might argue she’s even shocked us over the years. Why then, would a big name poet publish a hand-bound, limited edition chapbook with Saskatchewan publisher JackPine Press? Perhaps because some work, like the fervent love poems found in man from elsewhere (co-created with Saskatonians Lisa Johnson and…
Blue Grama by Heather Peat Hamm Published by Wild Sage Press Review by Justin Dittrick ISBN 978-0-988 1229-6-3 $18.00 Heather Peat Hamm’s collection of poems, songs, and illustrations, Blue Grama, offers readers a rich field study in monographic perspective, demonstrating this ecological poet’s masterful command of detail and description that holds the prairies in their clearest, most vivid light. No aspect of prairie fields, or people who call the prairie land their home, is too small or too hidden, to attract this poet’s perspicacious eye. These are poems not just to read, but to assimilate with care, as one assimilates the defining characteristics revealed in a botanist’s handbook. The poem’s are a celebration of a distinct livelihood—one that is seldom presented with such joie de vivre. The collection’s greatest triumph might be that it metaphorically couples the hardships, pathos, joys, and raptures experienced by the land’s people with penetrating insight into that which perseveres among them, the creatures and plants that share the conditions of life, wondrously unique, yet familiar, in their adaptive movements. The people and the land become intertwined as one reads the poems and studies the drawings painstakingly sketched and labelled by a deft poet-scientist. Like the…