USEREVIEW 050: Curating Vulnerability

USEREVIEW 050: Curating Vulnerability

With a conversational and knowing tone, Joelle Kidd uses the medium of the traditional review to reveal the layers of complexity on display in Molly Cross-Blanchard’s rollicking debut poetry collection, Exhibitionist (Coach House Books, 2021). ISBN 978-1-55245-422-0 | 112 pp | $21.95 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY “They will call this vulnerable,” the speaker of Exhibitionist declares, “because it’s a book written by a woman / and it checks the woman’s book vibes: / Heartbreak?

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From the Archive: Closing the Book on Storyland (CAROUSEL 39)

From the Archive: Closing the Book on Storyland (CAROUSEL 39)

Let me tell you a story … This is the small story of Storyland, told from beginning to end, and a little beyond. Storyland: a quirky, children’s theme park which opened in 1966 near the town of Renfrew (slightly northwest of Ottawa, ON), founded by Durk and Bonnie Heyda, two immigrants from the Netherlands, on an 175 acre property near the Champlain Lookout in Brown’s Bay — where legendary French explorer Samuel de Champlain made

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USEREVIEW 049: A Bespoke Respoke

USEREVIEW 049: A Bespoke Respoke

Gary Barwin uses the medium of sound poetry to respond to visual poetry, in this sensory-blurring experimental review of Kate Siklosi and psw’s collaborative artists’ book, Reply (2021). ISBN n/a | 40pp | €22.00 — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Print is synaesthetic. Its shapes and textures, papers and colours make the inner fingers tingle, the brainskin prickle. Looking is tactile, kinesthetic. Reading is musical, evokes sound. And collaboration, such as between Kate Siklosi and psw in

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USEREVIEW 048 (Capsule): Talking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator

USEREVIEW 048 (Capsule): Talking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator

Rosalind M. PepallTalking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator (Véhicule Press, 2020)ISBN 978-1-55065-541-4 | 224 pp | $22.95 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY In Talking to a Portrait, Rosalind M. Pepall employs a prose style that combines personal essay with art history to recount notable stories that unfurled during her decades as a curator for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. None of this is within my areas of expertise, and so I

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DECOCTION 01: Haruna Solomon

DECOCTION 01: Haruna Solomon

Elee Kraljii Gardiner interviews writers about their coffee and tea rituals in this special series for CAROUSEL … DECOCTION— the act or process of boiling usually in water so as to extract the flavour or active principle. “Coffee is a lot more than just a drink; it’s something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time,

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CAROUSEL 45 out now!

CAROUSEL 45 out now!

The summer 2021 issue of CAROUSEL is available to read for free at our website now! Summer 2021; released exclusively online Cover artwork by Amy Friend Design by Origin Obscure Art Portolio — Amy Friend Fiction — Shaelin Bishop— Dawn Lo— Thaddeus Rutkowski— Isabelle Teo Poetry — Courtney Bates-Hardy— Gregory Betts— Kate Cayley— Natasha Kessler + Adam Day— Annick MacAskill— Jessi MacEachern— Mickey Mahan— Carol Harvey Steski— Bronwen Tate— Carl Watts— Yvonne CHAIN Response Poetry

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USEREVIEW 047: Dreams to Have

USEREVIEW 047: Dreams to Have

In this traditional review, Ursula Pflug identifies Jessi MacEachern’s debut poetry collection, A Number of Stunning Attacks (Invisible Publishing, 2021), as a force that carries forward a legacy of feminist poetry. ISBN 978-1-98878-465-6 | 120 pp | $18.95 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY A few pages into the first section, ‘The Moat Around Her Home,’ Jessi MacEachern writes that she keeps a notebook labelled dreams to have. This is the sort of thing I would

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