by prfire | Mar 26, 2020 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Non-Fiction
In Lori Cayer’s fourth book of poetry, Mrs Romanov, she beautifully crafts an intimate and passionate interior life for Alexandra Feodorovna, the last tsarina of Imperial Russia. Perhaps because we are so familiar with her story–Feodorovna, her...
by prfire | Mar 16, 2020 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Poetry
People and landscapes inhabit our memory but when we want to recall them it can be difficult; we must either pull at them or ask someone, or rely on written records. And it is so with family. What do we remember of our grandmothers and grandfathers or of our...
by prfire | Feb 28, 2020 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Fiction
In the title poem of her newest collection, This White Nest, Frances Boyle poses the question “What shines?” This is the question that sits with the reader as they make their way through the poems, but others soon weave their way in, too. In “Tutelage,”...
by prfire | Feb 18, 2020 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Essays
Against the Machine: Luddites is Brian Van Norman’s third novel, and is a work of historical fiction that takes place in northern England at the beginning of the industrial revolution. The book follows the birth and progression of the Luddite movement, a...
by prfire | Feb 6, 2020 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Poetry
I began reading Ariel Gordon’s Treed a day or two before October’s unseasonal and devastating storm. This storm, which dropped heavy wet snow all over Manitoba, had an immediate and destructive impact on our trees, trees that had been coming to life for me in...
by prfire | Jan 28, 2020 | All Reviews, Book Reviews, Poetry
Intensely political and personal, Katherena Vermette’s second book of poems, river woman, achieves the impact and appeal of the great Canadian singer-songwriters while exploring what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a river. Under her consideration, this...
