DRIVEN Virtual Launch Video

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Last night’s launch of Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers went spectacularly! Author Marcello Di Cintio had an engaging discussion of the book (and a few of the stories that didn’t make the cut) with Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, as well as a Q&A with the audience. The night rounded off with a successful book giveaway! The event was hosted by Biblioasis, Shelf Life Books, and Glass Bookshop.

And in case you missed it, you can still watch the launch here:

ABOUT DRIVEN

In conversations with drivers ranging from veterans of foreign wars to Indigenous women protecting one another, Di Cintio explores the borderland of the North American taxi.
“A taxi,” writes Marcello Di Cintio, “is a border.” Inside every cab is a space both private and public: accessible to all, and yet, once the doors close, strangely intimate, as two strangers who might otherwise never have met share a five or fifty minute trip. In a series of interviews with Canadian taxi drivers, their backgrounds ranging from the Iraqi National Guard, to the Westboro Baptist Church, to an arranged marriage that left one woman stranded in a foreign country, Di Cintio seeks out those missed conversations, revealing the untold lives of the people who take us where we want to go.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marcello Di Cintio is the author of four books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades which won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize, and Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense—also a W. O. Mitchell Prize winner. Di Cintio’s magazine writing has appeared in publications such as The International New York Times, The Walrus, Canadian Geographic and Afar.

 

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Learn more about Driven at Biblioasis!

DRIVEN: Leading Up To The Launch

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It’s launch day for Marcello Di Cintio’s Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers here at Biblioasis! We’re taking a look back at some of the latest in news leading up to tonight’s launch, from interviews to twitter takeovers.

Marcello Di Cintio was interviewed about Driven in the Calgary Herald! The article was published in their print issue and online on April 30, 2021. You can read it on their website here.

Eric Volmers wrote:

“Fascinating … Nuanced … In Driven, Di Cintio stayed in his own country and paid close attention to the men and women most of us take for granted. Most were immigrants. Many came from war-torn nations. Many were what Di Cintio calls ‘chess masters of their own lives,’ possessing a genius and ingenuity that few of us recognize.”

Marcello was interviewed on May 3 on Global News Edmonton at Noon to discuss Driven and the Edmonton taxi drivers featured in the book! You can watch the interview below:

An excerpt from Driven was published in the Toronto Star! The excerpt is from the opening chapter in the book about Peter Pellier, a veteran taxi driver from Mississauga, ON. It was published on Saturday, May 8, and you can read it on their website here.

Marcello Di Cintio was interviewed on CBC’s Alberta at Noon on May 10 at 12 PM MDT! You can listen to the show here.

On May 11, Driven was featured on the Road Warrior News website, where they also hosted a book giveaway for drivers! You can take a look on their website here.

Marcello Di Cintio also did a Twitter takeover on The Walrus‘ Twitter on May 6, 2021 to highlight the different drivers in Driven. You can read the thread here. 

ABOUT DRIVEN

In conversations with drivers ranging from veterans of foreign wars to Indigenous women protecting one another, Di Cintio explores the borderland of the North American taxi.

“The taxi,” writes Marcello Di Cintio, “is a border.” Occupying the space between public and private, a cab brings together people who might otherwise never have met—yet most of us sit in the back and stare at our phones. Nowhere else do people occupy such intimate quarters and share so little. In a series of interviews with drivers, their backgrounds ranging from the Iraqi National Guard, to the Westboro Baptist Church, to an arranged marriage that left one woman stranded in a foreign country with nothing but a suitcase, Driven seeks out those missed conversations, revealing the unknown stories that surround us.

Travelling across borders of all kinds, from battlefields and occupied lands to midnight fares and Tim Hortons parking lots, Di Cintio chronicles the many journeys each driver made merely for the privilege to turn on their rooflight. Yet these lives aren’t defined by tragedy or frustration but by ingenuity and generosity, hope and indomitable hard work. From night school and sixteen-hour shifts to schemes for athletic careers and the secret Shakespeare of Dylan’s lyrics, Di Cintio’s subjects share the passions and triumphs that drive them.

Like the people encountered in its pages, Driven is an unexpected delight, and that most wondrous of all things: a book that will change the way you see the world around you. A paean to the power of personality and perseverance, it’s a compassionate and joyful tribute to the men and women who take us where we want to go.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marcello Di Cintio is the author of four books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades which won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize, and Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense—also a W. O. Mitchell Prize winner. Di Cintio’s magazine writing has appeared in publications such as The International New York Times, The Walrus, Canadian Geographic and Afar.

Don’t miss tonight’s launch of Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Driver, on Facebook Live or YouTube, where you can join in on a Q&A, and have a chance to win your own copy of the book!

Learn more about Driven at Biblioasis.

WHITE SHADOW, MURDER ON THE INSIDE, ON PROPERTY, FOREGONE, DEBT, STRANGERS: Biblioasis Headlines!

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It’s a busy time of the year here at Biblioasis, and we’ve got the media coverage to prove it! Why not listen in as our authors discuss their work? Or, you can take a look at some of these excellent reviews! Check out these and more below:

White Shadow by Roy Jacobsen was reviewed in the Historical Novel Society. Check out the full review on their website here!

Janice Derr had this to say:

Jacobsen’s sparse and raw prose evoke the chaos and despair of war, and his atmospheric descriptions vividly depict the island’s brutal landscape.

Order White Shadow today from Biblioasis!

 

Catherine Fogarty’s Murder on the Inside received quite a bit of attention, with Catherine appearing on several radio and tv spots. She was interviewed by Ramanjit Sidhu on CKER World FM, and by Mehroop Kaur on The Evening Roundup on CJCN Connect FM. Catherine was also a guest on Kitchener Today with Brian Bourke, which you can listen to here!

Get your copy of Murder on the Inside from Biblioasis!

 

On Property by Rinaldo Walcott was featured in a great review by Quill & Quire. 

Reviewer Sanchari Sur wrote:

“Rinaldo Walcott locates his contribution to the Field Notes series on current issues, On Property, in the present political moment, while using historical references and events to argue for the abolition of police and property … Walcott concludes his case by asking for a new ethics of care and economy that does not keep feeding into the incarceration system, a system rigged to continue Black suffering … It is a question we must ask ourselves after reflecting on the ways in which we, too, are complicit.”

Check out the full review on their website here.

Order your copy of On Property today from Biblioasis!

 

Foregone by Russell Banks received a phenomenal review in the LA Review of Books! The review was published on May 5, 2021, and can be found on their website here.

Rob Latham had this to say:

“Complexly engaging … In this most haunting of metafictional echoes, the author shows how the lonely death of a minor Canadian filmmaker, ‘famous only in certain unfashionably leftist quarters,’ may yet be a tale of deep grace and significance, a gathering into the artifice of eternity. If Foregone turns out to be Banks’s final novel (and, given its many strengths, one hopes not), it is a profoundly compelling valedictory.”

Get your copy of Forgone now from Biblioasis!

 

Andreae Callanan’s poetry collection The Debt was featured in a notice by the Memorial University Gazette, which you can find on their website here.

Mandy Cook writes:

“The collection of poems is an argument for community and connection in an age increasingly associated with isolation of the individual.”

Get your copy of The Debt from Biblioasis!

 

Strangers by Rob Taylor was beautifully examined in a review by the Miramichi Reader, which you can read in full on their website here.

Reviewer Chris Banks writes:

“If ‘Imagery is the memory of memory’ as Stanley Plumly believed, Rob Taylor’s Strangers out with Biblioasis press uses imagery as both revelation and reconciliation. The poems tease epiphany from memory, memory from language, language from grief and loss. I urge everyone to go out and buy this wonderful poetry collection that dares sadness and boldly remembers, imagining a present moment where our deceased loved ones and friends are still close by, albeit unseen, making loss and life more palpable.”

Buy your copy of Strangers now from Biblioasis!

IF YOU HEAR ME a finalist for the 2020 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARD IN TRANSLATION

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We are absolutely delighted that on Tuesday, May 4, 2021, it was announced by the Canada Council for the Arts that If You Hear Me by Pascale Quiviger & translated by Lazer Lederhendler has been shortlisted for the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation!

Each finalist receives $1,000 CAD, and the winner of the award receives $25,000 CAD. In the case of co-creators, the award money is shared. The winners will be announced via press release on June 1, 2021.

The awards, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, are given in seven English-language categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young people’s literature—text, young people’s literature—illustration, drama and translation. Seven French-language awards are also given out in the same categories.

The other finalists for the Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation are Amaryllis & Little Witch by Pascal Brullemans & translated by Alexis Diamond (Playwrights Canada Press), Back Roads by Andrée A. Michaud & translated by J. C. Sutcliffe (House of Anansi), The Country Will Bring Us No Peace by Matthieu Simard & translated by Pablo Strauss (Coach House Books), and The Neptune Room by Bertrand Laverdure & translated by Oana Avasilichioaei (Book *hug Press).

ABOUT IF YOU HEAR ME

Sliding doors open and close automatically, exit to the left, entrance to the right. Beyond it, cars go by, and pedestrians and cyclists. A large park behaves as if nothing has happened. The mirage of a world intact.

In an instant, a life can change forever. After he falls from a scaffold on the construction site where he works, David, deep in a coma, is visited regularly by his wife, Caroline, and their six-year-old son Bertrand. Yet despite their devotion, there seems to be no crossing the divide between consciousness and the mysterious world David now inhabits. Devastated by loss and the reality that their own lives must go on, the mourners face difficult questions. How do we communicate when language fails? When, and how, do we move forward? What constitutes a life, and can there be such a thing as a good death? All the while, David’s inner world unfolds, shifting from sensory perceptions, to memories of loved ones, to nightmare landscapes from his family’s past in WWII Poland.

Elegantly translated by Lazer Lederhendler, If You Hear Me is a gripping account of a woman’s struggle to let go of the husband whose mind is lost to her while his body lives on in the bittersweet present, and a deft rendering of the complexity of grief, asking what it means to be alive and how we learn to accept the unacceptable—while at the same time bearing witness to the enduring power of hope, and the ways we find peace in unexpected places.

 

Born in Montreal, Pascale Quiviger studied visual arts, earned an M.A. in philosophy and did an apprenticeship in print-making in Rome. She has published four novels, a book of short stories and a book of poems, and has written and illustrated two art books. Her novel The Perfect Circle won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction in French, and, in English translation, was a finalist for the Giller Prize. The Breakwater House was a finalist for the Prix France-Québec, and If You Hear Me was translated into Spanish. A resident of Italy for more than a decade, Pascale Quiviger now lives with her family in Nottingham, England.

Lazer Lederhendler is a full-time literary translator specializing in Québécois fiction and non-fiction. His translations have earned awards and distinctions in Canada, the U.K., and the U.S.A. He has translated the works of noted authors including Gaétan Soucy, Nicolas Dickner, Edem Awumey, Perrine Leblanc, and Catherine Leroux. He lives in Montreal with the visual artist Pierrette Bouchard.

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HERE THE DARK a finalist for the MCNALLY ROBINSON BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD and the MARGARET LAURENCE AWARD FOR FICTION!

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We at Biblioasis are thrilled to share that on Friday, April 30, 2021 at 11 AM CDT, it was announced by the Manitoba Book Awards that Here the Dark by David Bergen has been shortlisted for both the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction!

The prize for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award is $2000 CAD, and the prize for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction is $3500 CAD. The winners for both will be announced online on Thursday, May 20, 2021 at 11 AM CDT via social media and media release.

The other finalists for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award are Black Water: Family, Legacy, and Blood Memory by David A. Robertson (HarperCollins), Dragonfly by Lara Rae (J. Gordon Shillingford), My Claustrophobic Happiness by Jeanne Randolph (ARP Books), Tablet Fragments by Tamar Rubin (Signature Editions), and The World is Mostly Sky by Sarah Ens (Turnstone Press).

The other finalists for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction are Kate Wake by Mariianne Mays Wiebe (DC Books), My Claustrophobic Happiness by Jeanne Randolph (ARP Books), Still Me: A Golf Tragedy in 18 Parts by Jeffrey John Eyamie (Turnstone Press), and The Lightning of Possible Storms by Jonathan Ball (Book*hug Press).

ABOUT HERE THE DARK

From the streets of Danang, Vietnam, where a boy falls in with a young American missionary, to fishermen lost on the islands of Honduras, to the Canadian prairies, where an aging rancher finds himself smitten and a teenage boy’s infatuation reveals his naiveté, the short stories in Here the Dark chronicle the geographies of both place and heart. Featuring a novella about a young woman torn between faith and doubt in a cloistered Mennonite community, David Bergen’s latest deftly renders complex moral ambiguities and asks what it means to be lost—and how, through grace, we can be found.

David Bergen HeadshotABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Bergen has published eight novels and a collection of short stories. His work has been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Impac Dublin Literary Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He won the Giller Prize for his novel The Time in Between. In 2018 he was given the Writers’ Trust Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life.

Get your copy of Here The Dark now!

Poetry Month with Biblioasis Poets: Part II

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National Poetry Month may be over, but poetic excellence lives on! If you happened to miss our posts on social media, thankfully you can still enjoy listening to our fantastic poets read from their works, collected below! Check out out these virtual readings from the last half of the month (and you can find those from the beginning of the month here).

Erín Moure kicks off this round reading from her poem, “Odiama,” featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and first published in Arc Poetry Magazine.

Frances Boyle reads from “Pegging Out Washing,” which was in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and originally in Queen’s Quarterly.

Andrea Thompson both reads, and explains the inspiration behind her poem, “To Whyt/Anthology/Editors,” which appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and was first published in Arc Poetry Magazine.

Babo Kamel reads from her poem “It’s Always Winter When Someone Dies,” which was featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and first appeared in Contemporary Verse 2.

Abby Paige shares from her “Selected Hoems.” Her work can be found in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and was originally published in Arc Poetry Magazine.

Selina Boan discusses and reads from her poem, “Minimal Pairs Are Words Holding Hands,” which can be found in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and was originally published in Room Magazine.

Maureen Scott Harris shares with us “A Room Of My Own,” which can be read in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and was first published in The New Quarterly.

Have a listen to Tanis MacDonald’s reading of “Feeding Foxes,” which is featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and was first published in Contemporary Verse 2.

Join Anita Lahey in her reading of Adele Wiseman’s “Never Put Off a Poem,” which can be found in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and was first published in Juniper.

Last, but certainly not least, finishing off the month is Margret Bollup, reading from her poem “Dementia and common household objects,” which is featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and was originally published in The New Quarterly.

We hope you enjoyed our celebration of Poetry Month, and continue to dive into the works of our wonderful poets.

Purchase Best Canadian Poetry 2020 from Biblioasis here, or from your local bookstore!

A GHOST IN THE THROAT, STRANGERS, DEBT, VILLA NEGATIVA, ON TIME AND WATER, SEA LOVES ME, DRIVEN: Latest News!

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We’ve gotten some fantastic coverage on a number of our titles here at Biblioasis in the last couple of weeks. Take a look at these reviews!

IN THE NEWS

Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat was highlighted in the New York Review of Books, and in a starred review by Foreword Reviews! You can read the New York Review of Books article here, and the Foreword Reviews article here.

New York Review of Books reviewer Ange Mlinko writes:

“Ní Ghríofa is a poet through and through: in this prose work she writes lyrical sentences that make the physical world come alive … It was around Ní Chonaill’s time that a new poetic form was invented: the aisling, a dream vision of Ireland revealing itself to the poet as a beautiful woman in need of saving. Ní Ghríofa certainly gives us a new, feminist vision of a woman saving another woman, righting a historical imbalance that persists in women’s continued sacrifices.”

Michelle Anne Schingler writes in Foreword Reviews:

“History mutes women; it also depends on them. This paradox is at the heart of a A Ghost in the Throat, an extraordinary literary memoir that finds life in buried spaces … Feminist and feminine, A Ghost in the Throat gives defiant voice to hushed womanhood, in all of its pain and glory. Her images incandescent and brutal, Ní Ghríofa writes about the omens represented by starlings and about unearthed fragments of teacups, but also about caesarean scars, bleeding hangnails, and the consuming fire of her husband’s touch … A Ghost in the Throat is an achingly gorgeous literary exploration that establishes a sisterhood across generations.”

Visit their websites for the full reviews!

Order your copy from Biblioasis, or your local bookstore.

 

Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time and Water, and Mia Couto’s Sea Loves Me were both featured in reviews by the Winnipeg Free Press! The piece on Magnason can be read here, and the one on Couto can be read here.

Of On Time and Water, reviewer Joseph Hnatiuk had this to say:

“Compelling … This clarion call to action on the climate issue, coming from award-winning Icelandic poet and novelist Andri Snær Magnason, should be required reading for deniers of the greatest crisis humans have ever faced … A memoir and polemic featuring mythological stories, Icelandic folklore, cultural histories and science-driven extrapolations which effectively combine to send a strong message about the planetary damage humans are causing.”

While Rory Runnells wrote about Sea Loves Me:

“Extraordinary … Begin anywhere, with any story, and you as reader are safe within Couto’s world. The imagination is without limit, the poetic force is exhilarating and often disturbing, while the surprise of some is breathtaking … Couto is as much a master of the pointed anecdote as the longer tale.”

Check out the Winnipeg Free Press website for the full reviews.

Purchase your copy of On Time and Water from Biblioasis, or your local bookstore!

Order Sea Loves Me today from Biblioasis, or your local bookstore!

 

Strangers by Rob Taylor, Villa Negativa by Sharon McCartney, and The Debt by Andreae Callanan were all featured on CBC’s 55 Canadian poetry collections to check out in spring 2021 list! For a look at our poetry collections and more, check out the full list here.

Order your copy of Strangers at Biblioasis

Order your copy of Villa Negativa at Biblioasis

Order your copy of The Debt at Biblioasis, or your local bookstore!

 

And just last week, Marcello Di Cintio’s Driven was given a glowing shout-out on twitter by none other than Margaret Atwood!

Atwood wrote:

“An astonishing book about folks from all over, many of whom have been through total hell but have somehow made their way out … You never know who’s driving you. Each person contains multitudes.”

Purchase your copy of Driven at Biblioasis, or your local bookstore!

THE DEBT Virtual Launch Video

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Over the weekend we celebrated the launch of Andreae Callanan’s poetry collection, The Debt! Andreae Callanan was joined in conversation by Elaine Feeney, and the event was emceed wonderfully by Mark Callanan. The launch finished off with an audience Q&A, and a successful book giveaway. The event was also co-hosted by Running the Goat Books in Tors Cove, NL.

And if you couldn’t make it, don’t worry! You can still watch here:

ABOUT THE DEBT

Set against the backdrop of a post-moratorium St. John’s, Newfoundland, The Debt explores tensions between tradition and innovation, and between past and present in a province unmoored by loss and grief. The Debt is about development and change, idleness and activism, ecological stewardship, feminism, motherhood, the personal and the political. It is also about resistance—against the encroaching forces of greed and capitalism, even against the accumulated notions of the self. The poems are an argument for community and connection in an age increasingly associated with isolation of the individual. The Debt explores the dues we all owe: to nature, to those who came before us, and to one another.

ABOUT ANDREAE CALLANAN

Andreae Callanan’s poetry, essays, and reviews have been read in The Walrus, Canadian Notes and Queries, Canadian Verse 2, Riddle Fence, CBC.ca, and The Newfoundland Quarterly. She is a recent recipient of the Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing Award at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and she holds a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship for her doctoral work in English literature. Her chapbook, Crown, was published by Anstruther Press in 2019. Andreae lives in St. John’s with her husband and their four children.

 

Pre-order your copy from Running the Goat Bookstore

Learn more about The Debt, or pre-order your copy, from Biblioasis

STOOP CITY Wins ReLit Award!

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Stoop City coverWe’re thrilled to announce that Stoop City by Kristyn Dunnion has won the 2021 ReLit Award in the short fiction category!

Founded in 2000, The ReLit Awards are awarded annually to book-length works in the novel, short-story and poetry categories, and are considered the preeminent literary prize in independent Canadian publishing.

Stoop City was selected from a shortlist which also included Here The Dark by David Bergen (Biblioasis), Seeking Shade by Frances Boyle (Porcupine’s Quill), The Swan Suit by Katherine Fawcett (Douglas & McIntyre), The End Of Me by John Gould (Freehand), Swimmers in Winter by Faye Guenther (Invisible), Permanent Tourist by Genni Gunn (Signature Editions), Czech Techno by Mark Anthony Jarman (Anvil Press), Dominoes At The Crossroads by Kaie Kellough (Esplanade), Paradise Island and Other Galaxies by Micheal Mirolla (Exile Editions), and Goth Girls Of Banff by John O’Neill (NeWest Press).

 

ABOUT STOOP CITY

Welcome to Stoop City, where your neighbours include a condo-destroying cat, a teen queen beset by Catholic guilt, and an emergency clinic staffed entirely by lovelorn skeptics. Couples counseling with Marzana, her girlfriend’s ghost, might not be enough to resolve past indiscretions; our heroine could need a death goddess ritual or two. Plus, Hoofy’s not sure if his missing scam-artist boyfriend was picked up by the cops, or by that pretty blonde, their last mark. When Jan takes a room at Plague House, her first year of university takes an unexpected turn—into anarcho-politics and direct action, gender studies and late-night shenanigans with Saffy, her captivating yet cagey housemate.

From the lovelorn Mary Louise, who struggles with butch bachelorhood, to rural teens finding—and found by—adult sexualities, to Grimm’s “The Golden Goose” rendered as a jazz dance spectacle, Kristyn Dunnion’s freewheeling collection fosters a radical revisioning of community. Dunnion goes wherever there’s a story to tell—and then, out of whispers and shouts, echoes and snippets, gritty realism and speculative fiction, illuminates the delicate strands that hold us all together.

ABOUT THE AUTHORKristyn Dunnion

Kristyn Dunnion grew up in Essex County, the southernmost tip of Canada, and now lives in Toronto. She is the author of six books, including Tarry This Night and The Dirt Chronicles, a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her short fiction is widely published, most recently in Best Canadian Stories 2020, Foglifter, Orca: A Literary Journal, and Toronto 2033. Dunnion works supporting homeless adults with serious mental illness, and has been a healthy food advocate for marginalized communities in Davenport-Perth, where she resides.

 

Order your copy from Biblioasis, or from your local bookstore!

 

 

Celebrating Poetry Month with Biblioasis Poets!

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It’s National Poetry Month, and Biblioasis is celebrating virtually with our brilliant poets! Each day we’re featuring a different poet on our social media, who not only reads from their work, but gives a little insight into their poetry as well. Join us for this exciting month of paying tribute to poetic excellence by checking out their readings so far below!

 

Starting off the month was a throw-back to an event from last year, A Best Canadian Poetry Virtual Event, with Anita Lahey and Luke Hathaway. Featuring readings from, and discussions about, Best Canadian Poetry 2020 anthology!

Sanna Wani is the first of our individual poet readings, beginning with her poem “As I pray”, which was in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and originally published in canthius:

Geoff Pevlin reads and discusses “clumper crackies/Ice Pan Puppies”, from Best Canadian Poetry 2020, originally published in The Fiddlehead:

Fiona Tinwei Lam leads us into her poem “Ode to the Potato”, featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and originally published in The New Quarterly:

Next up, Dallas Hunt reads “Louise”, featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and originally published in Contemporary Verse 2:

Susan Haldane gives a lovely reading of “Thin-Skinned”, featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and originally published in Grain Magazine:

Rob Budde discusses his poem “Blockade”, featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and first published in The Goose Journal:

Kevin Spenst’s poem, “It Will Rain Like Rods On the Hillside in Sweden” is read not by one, but various people to to articulate the presence of rain across the world. Spenst is featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and his poem was originally published in Taddle Creek.

Dell Catherall brings us outside with her poem “Fig Sestina”, featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and originally published in The New Quarterly:

Rounding out the first half of the month is Erín Moure, reading “Odiama”, which was featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and first published in Arc Poetry Magazine:

 

But Poetry Month’s not over yet! Follow along on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube throughout the rest of April to continue listening to more from our amazing poets!

 

Purchase Best Canadian Poetry 2020 from Biblioasis here, or from your local bookstore!