Snapshots
A quick look at the poetry world beyond CV2.
Critiques
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Review: Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes by Jennifer LoveGrove LoveGrove’s greatest accomplishment in the work is the deft blending of the horrifically specific — the details of things gone wrong and the inevitable, self-preserving drawing inwards that accompanies trauma and innocence’s end — with the general wistful ...
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Review: The Description of the World by Johanna Skibsrud Skibsrud’s poetry is most compelling when the language is concrete rather than abstract. For example, the startling poem “They Will Take My Island” is a narration of the dismantling of the self, a process that begins with the narrator’s ocean surroundings and ...
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Review: Ekke by Klara du Plessis
Therefore Therein All There Is Is There: A Review of Klara du Plessis’ EkkeEkke is a patient book, despite the urgency of its contents, and a helpful1 book, despite the importance of the difficulty its demonstrations pose. Its opening poem (“First of all ... -
Review: Saint Twin by Sarah Burgoyne Through its adept use of the technique of bricolage and Oulipian-like language games, Sarah Burgoyne’s first poetry collection, Saint Twin, tackles themes of personal loss, spirituality, and the quest to make sense out of the absurdity of human existence. ...
- from Daily Meditations As a little boy who had no connection to his history or culture, his language or stories, his homelands and to the bones of his ancestors buried there, I was given an incredible and life-altering gift. My late Aunty Georgina. Through her I was brought home. I was brought back to my history, my culture, my language, my ...
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Review: Dysphoria by Shane Neilson Shane Neilson’s Dysphoria formally represents the titular disorder, dysphoria—a deep sense of unease with one’s self or one’s body—by displacing the traditional couplet form within the structure of the poems, producing internal rhymes that are regular but ...
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Review: Waiting Room by Jennifer Zilm In Waiting Room, the debut poetry collection from Jennifer Zilm, form is an expression of the moment. The poems declare their identity one form to the next, in the spirit of what Donato Mancini has called, “writing at the site of writing” (34). Meaning is ...
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Review: Get Me Out of Here by Sachiko Murakami Airports, like subway stations and bus exchanges, have their unique characters and movements, small, intrusive rituals, and a single equalizing feature: everyone is in transit. Around the world, one airport is much like another — the people within it caught ...
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Review: Once in Blockadia by Stephen Collis Once in Blockadia is Stephen Collis’s sixth solo full-length book of poems (he also collaborated with Jordan Scott for 2013’s DECOMP). It comprises five titled suites, two of which are a 12-page meditative poem (“Home at Gasmere”) and an even longer serial ...
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Review: The Significance of Moths by Shirley Camia Toronto poet Shirley Camia maps the immigrant experience through lyric minimalism and vivid imagery in her second collection, The Significance of Moths. Divided into six sections — “In the Palm of an Evening,” “The Portrait Unravelling,” “Humbled Knowing,” “A ...
