The Pickle in Grandma’s FridgeStory by Elena Bentley, Art by Tonia LairdPublished by Your Nickel’s Worth PublishingReview by Cindy WilsonISBN 9781988783857 $16.95 The Pickle in Grandma’s Fridge is a children’s book written by Elena Bentley and illustrated by ToniaLaird. It has a grandma, a fridge, and a fuzzy green pickle–of course it’s an interesting story! Annie is a little girl who goes to her grandma’s after school. How lovely is that? Annie tells Grandmathat her friend says if you leave food in the fridge too long it will grow legs. When Annie goes toGrandma’s fridge to get a snack she sees a very fuzzy green pickle! She thinks Grandma should throwthat pickle out before it grows legs. Grandma says ,“Don’t be silly. Food can’t grow legs.” But that night a tap, tap, tap, coming from the fridge wakes Annie. She opens the fridge door and outjumps the fuzzy green pickle! Follow along to find out what happens with Annie, Grandma, and Dil theFuzzy Pickle! Laird’s vivid illustrations will capture the attention of readers young and old, and clearlanguage makes reading along both easy and fun. The illustrator lets us know Annie’s personality through her very expressive facial expressions. We alsosee…

Goby Shelley A. LeedahlPublished by Radiant PressReview by Elena Bentley$20.00 ISBN 9781989274675 How often do we find a book of poetry in which a poet generously invites us in, like a long-time friend, to sit down and catch up? Not often. But in Go, Shelley A. Leedahl’s beautifully crafted fifth collection of poetry, the decades “dissolve / as mysteriously as mist” as Leedahl describes a life spent untethered to person or place and the loneliness that accompanies it. Friends give you all the important details, and so does Go: the messiness of lovers, the grief of losing a parent, the seemingly insignificant significance of gladiolus, salmonberries, and bald eagles. Go is open and honest in a way I’ve rarely experienced in a collection of poems. And I appreciate that Leedahl doesn’t sugar-coat or romanticize loneliness: “I may forever come home / to an empty house […] me with my pathetic need / to hold another warm hand, / to be whispered to across a pillow.” She acknowledges her desire for companionship, and I find it a refreshing confession. Keeping an “[e]ar to the pane,” Leedahl uses windows as a clever literary device with which to reflect on her past. “I…

Your Very Ownby John NymanPublished by JackPine PressReview by Elena Bentley$30.00 ISBN 9781927035443 As soon as I saw Your Very Own by John Nyman, I knew I had to read it. Because what 80s and 90s kid didn’t love reading the Choose Your Own Adventure series? I certainly did. Now, as an adult, I also love erasure poetry, and this chapbook published by JackPine Press is a delightful combination of both. Nyman, a visual poet and erasurist with a PhD in theory and criticism, calls himself “a theorist posing as an artist.” For those unfamiliar with erasure (sometimes called whiteout or blackout poetry), it’s a form of poetry where the poet or visual artist removes certain words from the original work; thus, producing a new poem. Your Very Own uses as its source text Choose Your Own Adventure #43: Grand Canyon Odyssey (1985) by Jay Leibold and Don Hedin. Divided into three sections “composed of three voices, or three ventures,” Your Very Own acts as “a kind of excavation.” “Much of what it excavates,” writes Nyman, “are products of a worldview that is cruel, ignorant, unjust, and violent.” Nyman trusts that we, as readers, not only “see this worldview as…

Synapticby Alison CalderPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Elena Bentley$19.95 ISBN 9780889778610 “[L]et me reverse your gaze, turn / the microscope upon the viewer.” It’s clear from the beginning of Alison Calder’s incredible third book of poetry, Synaptic, we are being asked “to think about the way we perceive and the ways in which we seek to know ourselves and others.” To find answers, Calder starts by exploring the field of neuroscience. “Connectomics,” the book’s first section, concerns itself primarily with the neuroscientific ways humans attempt to know themselves, or more importantly, the lengths to which humans will go to know themselves. Footnotes accompany each poem in this section, and the language is quite simple. Both the footnotes and straightforward diction allow the poems to be easily understood, despite the subject matter’s complexity. Aware of the large role animals play in our curiosity to glean self-awareness, Calder has written poems inspired by, among other things, the gene splicing of fireflies and mice, the genome sequencing of roundworms, and the discovering of algal protein for the use of optogenetics; however, she notes the curiosity is not reciprocal. An owl, for example, “knows itself / […] It sees you and doesn’t…

Shifting Baseline Syndromeby Aaron KreuterPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Elena Bentley$19.95 ISBN 9780889778542 Can anyone alive remember a time without TV? Not many people can. Soon enough, no one will remember a time without it. TVs and screens of every size will become part of our collective memory—things that have always just been—and we’ll forget how things were. The “name […] for this forgetting” is “Shifting Baseline Syndrome,” which is also the title of Aaron Kreuter’s second book of poetry. In this collection, Kreuter, with a unique blend of directness and sardonic wit, shows us how “[t]elevision is just another name for the Anthropocene.” Although we’re seeing a growing trend of climate change and doomsday poetry, Shifting Baseline Syndrome stands out because of its ingenious use of the television/life metaphor and Kreuter’s unabashed approach. These poems don’t hesitate to comment on the ridiculousness of our obsession with and over-consumption of television, the internet, and cell phones. For example, in the poem “Meanwhile,” we watch “Homer and Marge argue about the nuclear codes they / accidentally won in the town raffle; […] [m]eanwhile, the balsam fir colonizes another warming valley.” Put in a language us TV-obsessed readers can understand,…

coda: fluttertongue book 7by Steven Ross SmithPublished by JackPine PressReview by Elena Bentley$20.00 ISBN 9781927035467 When I think of poetry, I don’t immediately think of fun and games. But coda: fluttertongue 7 is just that—it’s fun! It’s a playful, tactile, tangible poetry experience. Steven Ross Smith brings to a close his decades-long “exploration of methods of poetic composition” with this highly innovative final installment of fluttertongue. Made in collaboration with artist, illustrator, and graphic designer Brian Kachur, this handmade chapbook is not your usual book design. The pages (die cut in the shape of a Roman numeral seven) are held together in the top left corner by a metal pin. This means you have full range of motion to turn and swivel the pages. And trust me, you’ll need to! Because while Smith composed the poem, Kachur organized the lines to flow and move around the holes in the die cuts. At times the lines read left to right, then swing downward, and at other times, the lines head upward, then curve back right to left again. Spoiler alert! Sevens appear everywhere: seven sections, seven pages per section, and seven splotches on the edge of the page that flutter when…

The Zombie Stance of the Technological Idiotby s. mintzPublished by JackPine PressReview by Elena Bentley$20.00 ISBN 9781927035412 I imagine you’re reading this review on your phone. You were likely scrolling through Twitter or Facebook, then you clicked the link, and now you’re here. Most of us spend hours staring down these days, existing in a state of “‘psychic rigor mortis’”—sluggish and numb from the “‘effects of new media.’” “Wavering between shock and stupor,” s. mintz’s debut poetry chapbook, The Zombie Stance of the Technological Idiot, “is a lyrical probe on media in the contemporary moment given the inextricability of media from the contemporary.” JackPine Press specializes in beautifully handmade chapbooks, and The Zombie Stance of the Technological Idiot is no exception. Accompanied by a bookmark that doubles as a pair of 3D glasses (the red and blue film kind), this chapbook invites participation with the interior images using a nostalgic piece of technology. A few poems also include web addresses, further compelling the reader to search the internet and participate in exactly the type of questions the chapbook considers: “how [do] we know what we know on the internet [and] [w]here does [that] authority come from?” Right from the opening…

Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeTooEdited by Sue GoyettePublished by University of Regina PressReview by Elena Bentley$24.95 ISBN 9780889778016 “[E]very woman has these / stories / or worse / even if they don’t / realize / it yet.” Poems written in response to the 2016 Jian Ghomeshi verdict fill the pages of Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo, edited by Griffin Poetry Prize nominee and current Halifax Regional Municipality Poet Laureate Sue Goyette. This anthology aims to be an act of artful activism, offering “relief from [the] silence” perpetuated by a legal system that “excus[es] or pardon[s] the perpetrator’s crime.” It is a place to speak and be heard. And, most importantly, it is a space where “a collective of people… have chosen poetry to process an experience of violence.” Of the four sections into which these masterclass poems are divided, the first, “Innocence/Exposure,” is the most difficult to read as the poems are highly affective and unsettling. Men collect, pull, play games with, crouch over, stare, poke, grab, paw, pin, grope, and pinch the young girls in these poems. The speaker in Marion Mutala’s poem says these experiences “chang[e] who you become.” But, luckily, this…

Beaver, Bison, Horse: The Traditional Knowledge and Ecology of the Northern Great Plainsby R. Grace MorganPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Elena Bentley$34.95 ISBN 9780889777880 The gratitude, kindness, and respect with which James Daschuk and Cristina Eisenberg write the foreword and afterword to Beaver, Bison, Horse: The Traditional Knowledge and Ecology of the Northern Great Plains reveals just how deeply influential Dr. R. Grace Morgan’s research has been, and continues to be, on the study of Plains ecology. Central to Dr. Morgan’s book is her insistence on the importance of acknowledging Indigenous ways of knowing the land—a view not widely shared by the scientific community at the time she was conducting her field research. According to Eisenberg, Indigenous “oral histories have only recently been allowed to inform [ecological] restoration. … However, this is changing thanks to [Dr. Morgan’s] persevering work.” Dr. Morgan originally undertook her doctoral research in the late 1980s, and completed her dissertation in 1991. Sadly, Dr. Morgan passed away before the publication of her book in 2020, but her children, and a few dedicated friends and colleagues, made sure her work found its way into the world because her scientific contribution “remains as important today as…

Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Futureby Mary SoderstromPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Elena Bentley$28.95 ISBN 9780889777804 In her book, Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future, authorMary Soderstrom asks us to “[l]ook out the nearest window, then try to imagine what the view would look like without concrete.” Admittedly, before reading this book, I hadn’t given it much thought; once I finished the book, however, I started to pay attention: a leftover pile next to the trees outside my house, the garage floor, the sidewalk under my bike—concrete really is everywhere. Concrete has been used globally in some form or another since about 8700 BCE, which means that concrete has a fairly substantial history. Soderstrom holds our attention by taking us on a fascinating journey through this history, briefly highlighting concrete structures of note and the issues that surround them. Found in all levels of society, from the super highways in California to the Great Wall in China, Soderstrom confirms that concrete is “a truly egalitarian material.” So prevalent is concrete’s presence that it has made its way into popular culture. As any good English major would, Soderstrom makes reference to novels by literary greats…