News & Extras
The Puzzling and Mysterious Other: Animals in Sharon Butala’s The Perfection of the Morning
Jan 17, 2013
by Pam Chamberlain (a slightly edited version of this essay appears in Prairie Fire 33.3) In Sharon Butala’s bestselling and award-winning The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature, the narrator moves from the city of Saskatoon1 to a ranch on the southern Saskatchewan plains where she immerses herself in nature in an attempt […]
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An interview with Sharon Butala
Nov 22, 2012
by Geoff Hancock The following interviews took place over three mornings at my place in Stratford, Ontario. From May until October during the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Gay Allison and I operate a bed and breakfast. Sharon arrived for some theatre and fine dining. But we managed to find some focus and clarity for some morning […]
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The Other Side of Ourselves by Rob Taylor
Oct 24, 2012
Rob Taylor’s debut collection, The Other Side of Ourselves – which in an earlier version won the Alfred G. Bailey Prize for an unpublished poetry manuscript – shows considerable talent and imagination. Here is a poet who likes to play with a variety of traditional verse forms as applied to free verse: ghazals, sonnets, haiku, […]
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At the Gates of the Theme Park by Peter Norman
Oct 24, 2012
Peter Norman’s debut poetry collection covers a lot of ground without staking out any particular section as its very own. Norman rhymes a bit, messes with perspectives, fiddles with techniques, primps a tendency to lists and catalogues, and it all sounds refreshing and at ease. The writing is not laboured and only occasionally over-written.
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A Dark Boat by Patrick Friesen
Oct 24, 2012
During a taping of the radio show Speaking of Poets, Patrick Friesen and I were discussing the trip he took to Spain in 2010, following an earlier one to both Spain and Portugal in 2005. Patrick, who doesn’t appear to do anything in half measures, was delighting me with his discussion of Portuguese fado music. […]
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Louis: The Heretic Poems by Gregory Scofield
Oct 24, 2012
Finally, a Western Canadian, a Métis, writing about the mythic Western Canadian hero Louis Riel, whose first language was French and who was raised a devout Catholic. Father of Confederation for Manitoba, elected to parliament three times but unable to take his seat in Ottawa because of the warrant out for his arrest. Exiled, begged […]
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