The Search for Solace Within: Glad & Sorry Seasons gets a rave review from Prism

"Catherine Chandler’s Glad and Sorry Seasons is a successful illustration of the ways in which we as humans search for meaning in the face of passing time, the way in which we take pleasure and comfort in ordinary details and are simultaneously baffled and pained by them. The juxtaposition of artificiality, the poet’s expert use of constrained poetic forms—especially her characteristic sonnets—and a piercing sincerity makes this collection aching and beautiful."

Catherine Chandler's Glad & Sorry Seasons gets a rave review from Ruth Daniell in Prism International.  

Glad & Sorry Seasons a 'Best Selling Love Poetry Canadian Book' on Alibris

Catherine Chandler's Glad and Sorry Seasons is listed alongside books by Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, and Gregory Scofield on Alibris's 'Best Selling Love Poetry, Canadian Books' section.

The second collection by the winner of the Howard Nemerov Award, published this past spring, is available through Biblioasis and wherever fine books are sold.

"Powell actually cuts into you, leaves a mark": Michael Dennis Loves Inheritance

Michael Dennis, one of Canada's most ardent and prolific poetry bloggers, is head-over-heels with Kerry-Lee Powell's Inheritance, which he says "could be the best book of poems I've read since my own father died." He calls the book "a scourging, searing swat of emotional intensity" and expresses great admiration for the way Kerry-Lee  "mines the internal conflict" of her family legacy and "makes it public". 

Kerry-Lee Powell uses her personal history like a spring board. Watch as she jack-knives into your thoughts. These poems stay with you. The jack-knife in this case isn't the dive. Powell actually cuts into you, leaves a mark.

Inheritance was also chosen by Carmine Starnino as one of his "Top 10 Canadian Poetry Books of the Year" on the Vehicule Blog, a list which also includes fellow Biblioasis poet Catherine Chandler's excellent Glad and Sorry Seasons, which we released last spring. Sina Queyras also included Inheritance as one of her three favourite debuts in her 2014 poetry round-up over at Lemon Hound.

And if all that doesn't convince you to pick up a copy, head over to Verse Daily where today's featured poem is Kerry-Lee's "The Girls Who Work at the Makeup Counter," excerpted from Inheritance.

Thursday Poetry Round-Up

Since the weather has started to cool down in the past couple days, and the leaves are beginning to turn colour and loosen from their branches, and there's an undercurrent of wood smoke in the breeze, I'd be lying if I said it didn't all put me in a contemplative mood. So, with the spirit of contemplation in mind, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to bring a few recent poetry notices to your attention. 

A couple weeks ago, Catherine Owen's The Marrow Review did a nice roundup of two of our poetry books chosen completely at random: Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway by Alexandra Oliver and Meniscus by Shane Neilson. Oliver's 2013 Pat Lowther Award-Winning Canadian debut gets a favourable nod for its "sing-songy, Philip Larkinesque, rhyming, mannered, smart, continental and often quite droll" lyrics while Shane Neilson's "sophisticate and slant" musicality  in Meniscus is praised for its "bleeps & grinds & mellifluous witnessings to loss." Owen is especially fond of Meniscus for its controlled yet intense exploration of "elegy, insanity, injury and adoration."

Susan Gillis has been doing some great work on her newish blog Concrete & River of late, and this past week saw the posting of a short but fascinating exchange between her and Amanda Jernigan. Jernigan describes the various ways in which localized speech, a magical house of books in Virginia, and the life-altering experience of motherhood have informed her work and vision over the years. You can read the full exchange here. Jernigan's Groundwork was a 2011 Best Poetry Book, and her 2013 Cormorant follow-up, All the Daylight Hours, was a National Post Canadian Poetry Book of the Year for 2013.



Catherine Chandler's sonnet "Coming to Terms" received a Laureate's Choice Award earlier this month in the Great River Shakespeare Festival, Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest (Winona, Minnesota). It was singled-out among over 400 submissions by poets from thirty-six U.S. states and seven countries. The poem, which also won the 2010 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, appears in Chandler's Glad and Sorry Seasons. See why Eric Ormsby says there is "no form of which Catherine Chandler is not a master, from quatrains and Sapphics to ballads and pantoums. She is an especially brilliant sonneteer." 

And finally, Kerry-Lee Powell's Inheritance, which is our lead fall poetry title and which is making its way through the printers at Coach House as we speak, is a 49th Shelf Most Anticipated Fall Poetry Book. Kerry-Lee's fiction has won her a two book deal with Harper Collins as well as accolades from the likes of Nathan Englander and Junot Diaz, and her poetic debut is a fierce and moving one. It should definitely be on the radar of all lovers of Canadian Poetry.

And now back to my coffee and weltschmerz.

Catherine Chandler at the Signal Gala, This Friday

It's day two of National Poetry Month here at Biblioasis, and we're pleased to say that very soon our own Catherine Chandler will be launching her new book (Glad and Sorry Seasons) along with a host of extremely talented Signal Editions authors. Taking place on Friday at the Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 211 Bernard Ouest, Montreal, the Signal Gala is the perfect way to begin the month. Join Catherine along with Edward Carson, Jason Guriel, Jim Johnstone, and Richard Greene at one of the best indie bookshops going!

Catherine's poetry marries modern themes with traditional poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the kyrielle, the sonondilla, and the ballad stanza. We've included a little excerpt for you below (and we will, FYI, be continuing to post poems daily, or-close-to-daily, on Thirsty from now until the end of the month). She'll also be reading at The Yellow Door on April 10th.

(We're pretty sure spring feels a little more sprung now than it did when this next poem was written.)

Full Snow Moon
Catherine Chandler

The moon is full again. A latticed frost
clings to my window, while the crystal crust
of Lake Saint Louis glows as if embossed
with pearls this February night. It must
be twenty-five below. I search for words
of warmth the Guaraní alone must know
to trace their land of butterflies and birds
I made my own a mere four weeks ago.

She waxes and she wanes; she's counted on,
through human inconsistency and pride,
to reverence the rising sun each dawn
and keep her promise to the ocean tide.
But Luna's is a distant, lurid face,
her silent O no answer as to how
on earth I'll ever find the grit and grace
to muddle through to spring, one moon from now.