USEREVIEW 117 (Capsule): The Family Code

USEREVIEW 117 (Capsule): The Family Code

Wayne NgThe Family Code (Guernica Editions, 2023)ISBN 978-1-77183-793-4 | 316 pp | $25 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY The Family Code by Wayne Ng is a riveting and heart-wrenching story of inter-generational trauma that pivots around Hannah and her young son, Axel. Hannah and Axel live in poverty and are both victims of abuse: Hannah, at the hands of her father and partners; Axel, at the hands of his mother. Interestingly, the novel is narrated

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USEREVIEW 083: Kenningdom

USEREVIEW 083: Kenningdom

In this lush and ambitious traditional review, Elizabeth Upshur coins stunning neologisms in order to craft a review that matches the linguistic elasticity of Nicola Vulpe’s latest poetry collection Through the Waspmouth I Drew You (Guernica Editions, 2021). ISBN 978-1-77183-591-6  | 80 pp | $20 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Spending time with a book of poems is the smallest of demands, and yet it offers the greatest of rewards if we can connect with

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USEREVIEW 056 (Capsule): Fuse

USEREVIEW 056 (Capsule): Fuse

Hollay GhaderyFuse (Guernica Editions, 2021)ISBN 978-1-77183-592-3 | 170 pp | $20 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Ghadery’s debut, Fuse, is a collection of personal essays so intimate and engrossing that at times I had the strange sensation that my consciousness had melted and was being subsumed into the author’s. As if the secrets she was telling were mine laid bare on the page instead of hers. This, of course, is an illusion, a deft trick

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USEREVIEW 046 (Capsule): Blood Rises

USEREVIEW 046 (Capsule): Blood Rises

David HaskinsBlood Rises (Guernica Editions, 2020)ISBN 978-1-77183-538-1 | 144 pp | $20 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Blood Rises is an apt title for the latest poetry collection from longtime figure in the literary scene, David Haskins. These poems are rich in lifeblood — the substance that rises to the skin at the sight of injustice, that brightens the cheek during unstoppable laughter, that pulses on insistently in the face of death and grief. The

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USEREVIEW 041 (Capsule): A Map of Rain Days

USEREVIEW 041 (Capsule): A Map of Rain Days

Jennifer HoseinA Map of Rain Days (Guernica Editions, 2020)ISBN 978-1-771834-41-4 | 128 pp | $20 CAD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY “My mother’s toes are / crooked and curled / in a misguided, arthritic map / of rain days,” writes Jennifer Hosein in the eponymous poem of her debut collection, A Map of Rain Days. In these lines there is a conflation of body and world, but also of space and time. Time becomes an entity that is spatially

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USEREVIEW 020 (Capsule): Cosmic Bowling

USEREVIEW 020 (Capsule): Cosmic Bowling

Cornelia Hoogland and Ted GooddenCosmic Bowling (Guernica Editions, 2020)ISBN 978-1-771835374 | 156 pp | $20 CAD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Cornelia Hoogland and Ted Goodden’s Cosmic Bowling (Guernica Editions, 2020) pairs Hoogland’s brief, meditative poems with Goodden’s humanoid ceramic sculptures to form a collaborative, multidisciplinary ekphrastic response to the I Ching. This book is the product of two practised artists, and both poems and sculptures have an unassuming, quotidian, near-directness about them, a quality of commonsense wisdom rendered

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USEREVIEW 019: Playing with the Universe

USEREVIEW 019: Playing with the Universe

In this exuberant traditional review, Julie McIsaac traces the metaphysical, mythological and scientific lineage of Cosmic Bowling, a collaborative art and poetry collection by Cornelia Hoogland and Ted Goodden (Guernica Editions, 2020), while simultaneously imitating the spirit of playful wonder that animates the book.  ISBN 978-1771835374 | 156 pp | $20 CAD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Cosmic Bowling by Cornelia Hoogland and Ted Goodden was released in 2020 as part of Guernica Editions’ Essential Poets Series. The collection

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