Confessions of a Dance Mom by Alison R. Montgomery Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $16.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-28-7 Saskatonian Alison R. Montgomery recently published Confessions of a Dance Mom, and simply put, I love this book. From the outside, it’s an honest, naturally-voiced retrospective of the author’s son’s journey from a child with an interest in dance to his employment with the prestigious Stuttgarter Ballett. But it’s much more. It’s a compelling story about family, and a strong treatise on dedication, pride, loss, and letting go. Maternal love is at the heart of this beautifully designed and well-written testimony. Interesting, then, that my out-of-province daughter was visiting days before I began this book. She saw it on my desk, and said: “Alison was one of my high school teachers.” Of course. I hadn’t made the connection, but then I also remembered Montgomery, and my daughter and I recalled the tragic loss of her elder son, who died at 24 while mountain-climbing in BC. This is important, because that early loss forms the bass-line in this story: a mother fully supports her now only child’s rise from Brenda’s School of Baton and Dance in Saskatoon to…

The Trouble with Beauty by Bruce Rice Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $16.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-572-6 After completing poet Bruce Rice’s exquisite collection The Trouble with Beauty, the following question resounds: how can anyone not just appreciate poetry, but also help from falling deeply down the well in love with it? I consumed the bulk of the work in a coffee shop with an espresso machine, the conversation of strangers, and speakered-jazz trying their best to divert my attention, but Rice held me fast with his deeply-affective poems that explore landscape, the passing of time, the Self, and-as the title suggests-the beauty of it all. Disclaimer: I know Rice, a seasoned Regina poet and editor, but when I read his work I completely disassociate the poems from the person. Great poetry enables this. Some poets manage a few good lines in a book. Some a few good poems. Rice hits the emotional jackpot line after line, transporting readers into a higher-planed world of light, passing clouds, and “the shallow brown river\that seems not to move, all the while cutting away the time we have left.” The Contents page itself reads like a poem as you scroll down…

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,…

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…

The Knife Sharpener’s Bell by Rhea Tregebov Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $21.00 ISBN 978-1-55050-408-8 Recommendation: if you buy The Knife Sharpener’s Bell, by Saskatchewan-born writer Rhea Tregebov, budget your time accordingly, because you’ll not be able to put this gripping historical novel down. Where to begin? The plot? The story starts in Winnipeg, 1935, with the narrator, Annette, age nine, reluctantly seeing her idealist father off at the train station. He’s returning to Russia, the homeland, because he sees capitalism failing in the west amid the chaos of the Great Depression, and he believes “a planned economy” is “the only rational approach;” because it’ll make his shrewish wife happy; and because the Soviet Union is “a good place for the Jews.” After the visit, he’s convinced that his family must make their home in the east. Once back in Europe, however, the parents stay in Odessa and Annette and brother Ben continue to Moscow, where it’s safer. Except it isn’t. Or perhaps I should speak of the writing: Tregebov’s novel is literature. When she paints the scene of Annette in the middle of a war zone, among a river of people trying to get to…

Paperwhite by Catherine Mamo Published by Thistledown Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $15.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-60-7 One cannot judge a book by its cover, it’s true, but on occasion a cover does manage to reflect the essence of a book. Paperwhite, a new collection of poetry by Catherine Mamo, of Peachland, BC, is a case in point. It’s tastefully fronted by a photograph of an unusual fruit or nut set on a block of wood. This spotlit “scene” is rendered before a rich brown background. The cover’s subdued and beautiful, as are the poems within it. It suggests that the natural world is important for this writer, and it leaves much room for imagining. Numerous contrasts are evident in these “confessional” poems; the poet examines her ordered, domestic life (as a wife and mother), and juxtaposes her “picket fence” lifestyle against nature’s attractive abandon. In “April II,” she writes” “why do children\keep arriving\why do they swing and laugh\why does the grass\bend its one colour so”. The poet dreams of drinking at a river “like bear or deer\tongue lapping\at the very origins,” (“Thirst”). In “I am a Lazy Wife,” she writes “I want\to enter a fish’s gullet\and swim there,\tiny as that…

My Human Comedy by Gerald Hill Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $14.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-371-5 Sometimes, when I’m particularly fond of a poetry collection, I send the poet a gift. Not flowers, or cash; not even a Tim Horton’s gift certificate. I send the poet’s words back to him or her, extracting several of my favourite lines and reordering them to make a new poem, a tribute poem. It’s both a thank you and my highest praise. The last time I sent such a piece it was to Regina writer Gerald Hill, shortly after Coteau Books released his eclectic poetry collection, My Human Comedy: The Man From Saskatchewan Book Two. I couldn’t help myself; the book’s an absolute delight, and the excerpts – Hill’s an original – came together with ease: Sunlight In Patches, These Moments After Rain (A Poem For Gerry, By Gerry) Here between the street and his heart – a little place, not too far away – he wants to get rid of himself. Late afternoon, afraid to find more light. All of this easy as gravel to see. It’s hard to make a difference in this heat. He’s full of stillness, gets quieter…

Katie Be Quiet by Darcy Tamayose Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $18.95 ISBN 978-1-55959-390-6 Thirteen-year-old Katie Bean has much to process. She and her mother have moved to a “sleepy prairie town,” she is the target of school bullies, and “Her body [is] going through weird changes.” Her mother is preoccupied with her unusual new job – “drawing up plans for Constantine’s lavender farm” – and thus has zero time for Katie. These issues are difficult enough, but what’s truly devastating is the fact that Katie’s eccentric musician-composer father recently died “in his sleep,” and Katie’s grieving in solitude. Her only friend is her father’s piano. There is, however, a strange new development in her young life: the voice that “[keeps] shushing her.” Is she going crazy? So begins the juvenile novel, Katie Be Quiet, the second book by Lethbridge writer Darcy Tamayose. The “new kid not fitting in” scenario is common among books for young readers, but Tamayose’s book stands out for its complex mystery, its intermingling of youth and adult characters – including a rude man from Paris and his poodle-doting wife who’ve come to manage the lavender farm’s tea room – and for…

The Beautiful Children by Michael Kenyon Published by Thistledown Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $18.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-47-8 I’ve just finished The Beautiful Children, a poetic novel by BC writer Michael Kenyon, and feel I’m waking from a trance. In Kenyon’s mystifying story one’s never quiet sure what’s real and what’s imagined, or how the author – who hass previously published four books of fiction and two poetry collections – manages to shape-shift this harrowing tale about urban street kids and lost adults into a book that celebrates life. That sleight-of-hand, Kenyon’s musical language, and the book’s surrealistic qualities are its charms. The plot is easiest to follow in the first of the book’s three sections. Sapporo, a Japanese man, awakes with amnesia and finds himself in a hospital. In time he leaves the hospital with his son, a boy of ten. The awkward pair play catch, and at home, the uneasy roommates are “two animals who were shy of each other.” Sapporo regularly sees a therapist, but as time progresses he sinks further into his dreamlike world. He tracks the passing of time and records impressions but doesn’t understand their meaning. And he has no idea how to parent:…

In Silverthorne’s latest book, the prolific and award-winning Regina writer again introduces readers to a contemporary character who travels back in time. Young Emily, the likeable protagonist, travels to Scotland to spend time with her geologist father (whom she’s not seen since her parents decided to divorce, months before), and to learn more about her family’s Scottish ancestry. Before leaving, however, she finds a hand mirror – “with intricate filigree metalwork and inlaid stones” – in her recently-deceased grandmother’s home, and the image in the mirror is not Emily’s own.