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,…

The Zombie Stance of the Technological Idiotby S. MintzPublished by JackPine PressReview by Toby A. Welch$20.00 ISBN 9781927035412 What a fascinating gem this book is! JackPine Press, the publisher, explains this book as “a lyrical probe into contemporary media, with focus on the inextricability of media from culture. Its playful, challenging, and satirizing verses throw comical punches, while the book’s analog zine design juxtaposes themes of the work with ideas about communication and alternative media in a pre-internet world.” Huh? I’ll be honest – I had no idea what any of that meant. That is until I got my hands on a copy of the 30 page book. More a piece of funky art in parts than a book, this soft cover read is short but awesome! When you crack into the book, the preface explains Mintz’s thinking behind this dive into post-internet art, lyrics in the technological age, internet authority, the post-internet self, and numerous other issues. Once through the preface, you are treated to an assortment of drawings, poetry, and lyrics. It’s a delight for all of your senses.  My favourite work in the book is News of Them. The poem shares the story of someone sitting in…

Race to Finishby Marion MutalaPublished by Millennium MarketingReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.99 ISBN 9-781777-371319 Marion Mutala is a literary machine, with sixteen published books and more on the way. I’ve previously reviewed two of her children’s books—Grateful and the 175-page, multi-story achievement, Baba’s Babushka. The Saskatchewan writer’s latest title, Race to Finish, is a poetry collection, dedicated to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG); the First Nations children buried in unmarked, residential school graves across Canada; and the Black Lives Matter movement. It begins with a foreword by artist Kevin L. Peeace, who relays the experience of presenting in an elementary school and being asked by a young student: “What was it like being at the residential school?” Peeace also provided the compelling black and white cover drawing of a bisected face: one half representing the bricks and tears of the residential school experience, the other representative of his peoples’ connection to the land and familial love—at least that’s my interpretation. Mutala’s poems champion racial equality, gratitude, positivity, and God, as well as personal experience, ie: “the old wooden cookstove on the/farm when I was a child” (from “Reminds Me”). Not every poem is rosy, however. In…

Blue Moon, Red Herringby Angeline SchellenbergPublished by JackPine PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$30.00 ISBN 978-1-927035-39-9 Clever, layered, original, fun. These words leap to mind after reading Winnipeg poet Angeline Schellenberg’s colourful limited-edition chapbook—bound to resemble a paint swatch—Blue Moon, Red Herring. Each of the twenty-five prose poems in this 2019 collection were inspired by a colour, and the colours themselves appear where a Contents page normally would. No need for titles when the paint-chip colours do the work, and each poem’s colour-matched with its sample. What results is candy—for the eye and the mind. Schellenberg employs a kind of controlled stream-of-consciousness in these delightful and deceptively simple poems, but don’t be fooled: much research went into this. My best analogy: microwaved popcorn. The poet’s hue-inspired thoughts seem to pop around, but they stay “in the bag” of her theme, and each poem’s written in a single controlled paragraph. Colours aside, Schellenberg’s myriad references are gleaned from art, literature, science, nature, religion, history, philosophy, pop culture, advertising slogans, cliché’s and personal experience, and this rich gallery of inspirations makes for genius mélanges. In “Magenta” she writes: “like soul mates and democracy, magenta exists only in your mind”. We also get a…

The Poetry & Lyrics of Jay Semkoby Jay SemkoPublished by Wood Dragon BooksReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.99 ISBN 9-781989-078631 “She ain’t pretty she just looks that way.” If you’re a Canadian of a certain age, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize that lyric from the song “She Ain’t Pretty” by The Northern Pikes, a Saskatchewan-based band that rose to popularity in the 1980s and still records. The Pikes’ bassist and a vocalist, Jay Semko, also penned many of the band’s songs, and now he’s released a book that’s “a mixture of song lyrics and ‘stand alone’ poems written over a 25-year period”. The Poetry & Lyrics of Jay Semko begins with the artist’s abbreviated autobiography. Jay Semko was bullied as a grade-accelerated child in rural Saskatchewan; became passionate about learning guitar and writing songs in his teens; and enjoyed career success both with The Northern Pikes and as a solo artist (ten albums plus music composition for film and television). We also meet the Jay Semko who is “a recovering addict … living with Bipolar Disorder”. Sharing his experience “helps [him] immensely, and is crucial to [his] own personal recovery”. “Write what you know” is a common literary adage and…

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…

Fact, Fiction, & Fantasyby Saskatoon Writers’ Club Inc.Published by Saskatoon Writers’ Club Inc.Review by Marlin Legare$15.00 ISBN 9781777528928 Fact, Fiction, & Fantasy can be best described as a delightful reminder of the great things that can be achieved with community, teamwork, and passion. Written and published by the Saskatoon Writers’ Club Inc., this anthology includes 18 distinct Saskatoon authors who have come together to create a whopping 59 separate pieces of literature into one comprehensive celebration of the literary arts. Not only that, but it is a celebration of passion for writing and the great things that can come of a local community’s “Do It Yourself” spirit. To judge a book by its cover, the homespun nature of this book is reflected in the book’s photographic cover of Saskatoon’s beautiful river and skyline taken by the club’s very own president, Stacey Simpkins. Writing is always more fun to read when it comes from a place of love and passion. I have not read a book in a long time that embodies this more than Fact, Fiction, & Fantasy. The reader is treated to a literary buffet within the 186 pages of this project that spans from short stories, poetry, recollections,…

Table for Fourby Eccentric Crops (Colin Smith, Jennifer Still, Steven Ross Smith, Ted Landrum)Published by JackPine PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$30.00 ISBN 9781927035405 JackPine Press has been challenging traditional ideas re: what constitutes a book since the press’s inception, and with Table for Four, written by the four-poet collaborative Eccentric Crops—Colin Smith, Jennifer Still, Steven Ross Smith, and Ted Landrum—JackPine once again reimagines “book” and gives us an imaginative, multi-media chapbook, about the size of a bread and butter plate. Fittingly, this tasteful chapbook features a red coaster on the front cover and comes with a large red and white checked napkin folded inside a back flap that’s held in place with sturdy toothpicks. Also included: concrete poems, drawings, and a mostly black image with white pinpoints, titled “napkin braille”. Different? Indeed! Welcome to JackPine Press. This collaborative project’s interesting on numerous levels. Firstly, contributor Jennifer Still, from Winnipeg, co-founded JackPine Press in 2002, and in her own work she “[explores] the intersections of language and material forms”. Both Still and Saskatoon’s Steven Ross Smith have worked with sound poetry, and both also publish with traditional publishers. Poet Colin Smith, in Winnipeg, was previously “strongly allied to the Kootenay school…