Two Poems by Robert Melançon

For the poetry-lovers out there, last weekend brought two pieces by Robert Melançon to readers of Maisonneuve. They're numbers 21 ("All the light is radiating from the lemons") and 25 ("We walk through streets we know"). If you click the link you get about 80% of them. Otherwise, plug plug plug plug, you can subscribe to the mag for $20/year. Enjoy.

Maisonneuve / Pigeon Wars of Damascus Joint Launch

On September 21st in Montreal Maisonneuve and Biblioasis will be joining forces at Drawn & Quarterly for a an evening of readings, music, food and wine. The event will serve as the Montreal launch of Marius Kociejowski's The Pigeon Wars of Damascus, the kick-off to what we at Biblioasis hope will be a regular series of travel literature. The follow up to his Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool (which Adam Thorpe, writing in the TLS, said was destined to be a classic), Pigeon Wars is, for my money, a far better book. It is equally beautiful, compelling, eccentric and true, but it is also immediately important, a darker book grappling in part with the changing nature of Damascene - and Middle Eastern -- society in a post-9-11 environment. It is a s urgent as anything I've read on the subject, and I hope readers of Thirsty will go and pick it up when it is released later this month.
The event serves as well as the launch of Maisonneuve's Fall issue, a magazine which has quickly become one of my favourites. Their last issue on The Music We Hate was brilliant, and contained an essay on villainy by Rebecca Rosenblum. This new issue also has Biblioasis author connections: there's an excerpt from A. J. Somerset's Combat Camera, an early review of Alexander Macleod's Light Lifting, and Kathleen Winter, the author of boYs (Biblioasis) and most recently Annabel (Anansi), will be reading that evening. It promises to be an excellent night, complete with music by James Irwin.

If you find yourself in Montreal that night, please head on down to Drawn & Quarterly. And pass the word: it promises to be a heck of an evening.