Stealing Home by Dwayne Brenna Published by Hagios Press Review by Kris Brandhagen $17.95 978-192671021-1 Stealing Home, a book of poetry by Dwayne Brenna, begins strong, careening through a tour of baseball parks. Some of the more notable parks mused on include Ebbets Field, Candlestick Park, and The Big O. In a poem called “Shea Stadium, New York City, 2005” Brenna uses the senses to provide vivid imagery: “the thwack of hickory…and rumble rising from expensive seats down low.” Here, auditory language is used to evoke the sounds of the game, which causes seasoned fans to reminisce about their ballpark experiences, or allow someone who doesn’t understand sports fans to put his/herself in their place. For those of you scoring at home, this also calls to mind that before television, most people experienced professional baseball through radio only. At the end of the first section, in “Cairns Field, Saskatoon, 2010,” Brenna evokes the visual: “the infield grass is luminous, as green / as spring in your imaginings. The lights / of Saskatoon are dots against the sky, / the deep blue sky behind right field.” This is my favourite passage, putting me right back on the mound. I recall seeing…

Masham Means Evening by Kanina Dawson Published by Coteau Books Review by Kris Brandhagen $16.95 978-1-55050-550-4 Sitting in the sun on my patio I feel a slight breeze. I feel secure, safe, and the chirping birds induce a calming presence over the distant sounds of construction. Opening this book of poetry, Masham Means Evening, written by Ottawa poet Kanina Dawson, from the perspective of a female Canadian soldier, I am transported into the intense heat, dust, and destruction of the war in Afghanistan. Though I suspect that war defies cohesive description, Dawson uses nuanced, economical language to flesh out the experience. Men, women, and children are maimed or killed, be they Afghan civilian, Taliban fighter, or coalition soldier. Afghan females, however, are struck or killed at the best of times, just for being female: a little girl is beaten by her uncle because Canadian soldiers wave at her, a female electoral candidate is murdered by her brothers. Acts of god factor in as well, as an earthquake kills a dozen schoolgirls. In her poem “Working for the Coalition,” Dawson writes, “it’s amazing the things you don’t stay amazed at. Afghan cooks / risk losing their heads [to the Taliban] to…

I Exi(s)t / exit I by C. Isa Lausas and Tyson Atkings Published by JackPine Press Review by Jessica Bickford $30.00 978-1-927035-15-3 I Exi(s)t / exit I is in the most basic explanation, three books musing on the same subjects brought together in one. Two monologue poems meet in a third text message dialogue between two people preoccupied with love, death, and existence. Of course, like all good art, it isn’t that simple. This book, with its white vinyl covers, titleless, and embossed with a triangle on each side begs for exploration, and it does not disappoint. With magnetic clips, it opens three different ways, revealing new content with each iteration and deepening the sense of mystery I feel clings to this book.  It never quite wants to tell you everything. I spent probably the first five or ten minutes with this book in my hands just playing with different ways to open it and finding the unique points of entry into the stories within. At the very centre of the book I found a selection of three digital photos, numbered and signed (as I Exi(s)t / exit I is limited edition), and revealing just one more detail about each…

Wildness Rushing In by dee Hobsbawn-Smith Published by Hagios Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $17.95 ISBN 978-192671025-9 Wildness Rushing In is the first book of poetry by Saskatchewan writer dee Hobsbawn-Smith, and, as with many inaugural books, she mines wide-ranging personal experience-from childhood to the present-for a collection that reveals her universe of passions, sorrows, and the reflective, in-between moments best expressed in poetry. Among what impressed was Hobsbawn-Smith’s range of form (she incorporates prose poems, the villanelle, couplets, quatrains, a glosa, and less formally structured pieces), and her liberal use of personification. Snowflakes “swathe\the metal braces and rusty frames\of the tools in the farm field,” morning fog is described as “smoothing\the landscape,” and sun “rubs the ashes\from the forehead of the sky.” In her poem “The great divide,” a remembrance of a drive home with sleeping sons in the back seat of the car, she writes “a windshield full of stars\weeps for what can’t be said.” So lovely, and weighted with meaning. One way a writer adds music to poems is by using alliteration, and we see-and hear-numerous examples of this kind of music in this book. In a touching poem for a brother who died too soon,…

Rove by Laurie D Graham Published by Hagios Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $17.95 ISBN 978-192671023-5 I usually open a poetry collection expecting that the first few pages will provide a reasonably good sense of the author’s style and subject matter. In the opening pages of Rove, by London ON poet Laurie D Graham, I correctly gleaned that this writer would address a veritable smorgasbord of issues: political, environmental, First Peoples’, agricultural, poverty, health, and urban vs. rural. I also learned that this rapid-fire poet writes mostly in couplets, she often begins her lines with imperatives (“Say fluorescent lightbulbs will save\the earth, say there’s a heart” and “See the branches of the suburbs blossom wild with bungalows”), and that hers is indeed a distinct new voice on the CanLit scene. Further into the book I realized that she also weaves in personal family history, and that I was often surprised and delighted by the myriad twists and turns this daring writer takes. Rove is a long poem that reads partly like a rant, (“say the numbers, tell the Wheat Board where to go, say it fast like an auction and move to the city, say minimum wage and grunt…

Afghanistan Confessions by Victor Enns Published by Hagios Press Review by Justin Dittrick ISBN 978-1-926710-32-7 $17.95 Victor Enns’ collection, Afghanistan Confessions, is voice poetry that draws on the violence, chaos, death, and wholesale desecrations that mark the dimensions of war as experienced by soldiers on the ground. Written in the confessional mode, the poems emanate affective energy, and are compulsively readable. It is poetry for readers who wish to probe the unlapsing dominion war wields over those who pursue it, over those who must grow more or less accustomed to its atrocities and its ugly realities. It unapologetically presents mind and perception under the influence of war’s effects, beyond the domestic domain of ideological argument, as one of its speakers declares, “[t]his is my third tour, and I still want more/heat, dust, challenge and blood”. This collection’s presentation of war, its glimpses of sublime transfiguration, is endorsed in an afterword by Neil Maclean, a veteran of Bosnia and Afghanistan, which lends this sympathetic and intriguing collection even greater credibility. It is honest, unflinching, and fully alive as an account of 21st Century war, a subject matter to which the poetic of voice seems especially suited under Enns’ pen. The collection…

The Invisible Library by Paul Wilson Published by Hagios Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $17.95 ISBN 978-192671019-8 There’s an image of a book on the handsome cover of Regina poet Paul Wilson’s The Invisible Library, and it couldn’t be more apt. This is a book about books, and one that word lovers should include in their libraries. It is my favourite book by this writer to date. Wilson is a veteran poet, editor, and a winner of the City of Regina Book Award. He clearly reveres books, and possesses the imagination, craft, and intellect to enthrall readers with his own. Sometimes the narrator addresses his readers and offers gentle advice. In “The Invention of Paper: A Memoir,” he writes: “Please,\read these words like falling snowflakes: without aim or goal.\ See how they take the shape of what they silently settle on.” As good poets do, Wilson pays attention to the things most people probably miss, like the “moist breath” of rice, and the “hair pins and the pennies\found in the dryer, and the lint too, purple, from the red shirts\and blue towels…” He writes that “Our finger-prints are small saline lakes\that will outlast us.” I love all of this….

Fog of the Outport by Robin Durnford, artwork and design by Meagan Musseau Published by JackPine Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $30.00 ISBN 978-1-927035-07-8 JackPine Press is well-known for publishing artsy chapbooks. I was prepared for the unconventional, but admit I didn’t know how to approach Fog of the Outport. The textless, off-white cover and grey, hand-stitched spine offered no clues as to what might be inside; thus genre, creators, and even the title awaited discovery. I opened the book and was delighted to find a dramatic landscape reflected in silkscreen prints; a design that merges with the unfoldable back cover to create an innovative, three-paneled panorama. This limited-edition chapbook, written by Robin Durnford, and illustrated\ designed by Meagan Musseau-Newfoundlanders both-is a gorgeous collaboration featuring prose poems named for each month of the year-“february” to “february”. It’s a memorial to the life of the poet’s father, whose own father died when he was five, and it’s an homage to Durnford’s widowed grandmother, left with nine children to care and provide for on “the exposed bone-belly” of Francois NFLD, an isolated, south coast outport. There is story here, and art, and language that made my mouth water. In the first…

Homegrown and other poems By Bryce Burnett Published by DriverWorks Ink Review by Justin Dittrick ISBN 9 781927 570081 In Bryce Burnett’s collection of cowboy poetry, Homegrown, readers will discover lively and intelligent poems that reminisce on country life from the turn-of-the-century to the present day. Bryce Burnett demonstrates that he is a master raconteur, spinning narratives of wit and turning conventional wisdom on its head. The commonplace and the significant converge in this collection, as seen in a son who contemplates his father in his own shadow, in “Dad”. These poems frequently surprise with the unexpected, with humourous, at times, hilarious, twists and turns, as in the poem “Silent is Golden”. Several poems share recollections of unique personalities shaped by the country life, such as the giving spirit demonstrated by the most frugal of men (“The Scotsman”), the simplified existence of life on the land (“George Law”), the close-knit, at times, comic, relations that characterize the landed community (“Newlyweds”), the hard-headed, crafty bargaining practices necessary to turn a profit (“Livestock Buyers”), and a man who shows up “when all the work is done” (“The Blister”). This collection captures the ethos and colourful outlook of frontiersmen, presenting a melodious set…

A Gift of the Prairie: Writing from the Southern Shores of Last Mountain Lake Edited by Bernadette Wagner Published by Last Mountain Lake Cultural Centre Review by Courtney Bates-Hardy $20.00 ISBN 978-0-9937215-0-2 A Gift of the Prairie combines all of the best things a poetry anthology can be: it’s short, focused, and includes a variety of work and writers. The anthology was the brain child of Bernadette Wagner, who served as the literary artist-in-residence at the Last Mountain Lake Cultural Centre in Regina Beach, Saskatchewan. Wagner worked quite closely with the community and wanted to showcase their work, so she sent out a call for writing about the Last Mountain Lake area. According to her foreword, she wasn’t sure at first that there would be enough of a response from local writers to create the anthology. However, as she states, the community came together and soon offered up their memories and writings about the area. A Gift of the Prairie is a short and satisfying read at a slim 71 pages. It starts off strong, with four beautifully minimalist poems from Jillian Bell and ends on an equally strong note with poetry from Paul Wilson, whose most recent book of…