A Painful Homecoming: Quill & Quire on Robyn Sarah's My Shoes Are Killing Me + Tour Dates

Montreal poet Robyn Sarah's  latest, My Shoes Are Killing Me, is featured in the new 80th anniversary April issue of Quill & Quire, where reviewer Jason Wiens calls it a collection of "poems recollecting emotion in the (in)tranquility of boomer twilight."  Here's more: 

The title of Robyn Sarah's My Shoes Are Killing Me speaks to the nostalgia that her poems explore: if nostalgia literally means "painful homecoming," then the "shoes" - read as metonymy for the past of her life's journey - cause at times painful reflection on the rest of the voyage...the frame widens to include the broader public spaces of Sarah's Montreal, then extends this frame further to the global scale....the nostalgia encompasses memories of the Jewish diaspora alongside the motto of the poet's province: "a past continuous, a past as presence. Je me souviens. A motto you can make your own."  

Robyn Sarah will reading this spring along the 401 in Ontario as well as the East coast and Montreal. For a listing of upcoming dates, see below. 

April 20th - Montreal, @ The Word, w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 21st - Kingston @ Novel Idea w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 22nd - Toronto @ Dora Keogh w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 23rd - Hamilton @ Bryan Prince Bookseller w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 24th - Windsor @ Biblioasis  w/ Robert Melançon and TBA
May 19th - Halifax @ Halifax Public Library w/  Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane
May 20th - Lunenburg @ Lexicon Books w/  Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane
May 21st - Moncton @ Attic Owl Reading Series w/ Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane

Among the Quick: Sum by Zachariah Wells reviewed in Quill & Quire + Tour Dates

Zachariah Wells's third poetry collection Sum was on deck in the 80th anniversary April issue of Quill & Quire, and reviewer Jason Wiens calls Wells "a poet who delights in sound patterns—internal and end rhyme in particular." Here's more:

Highlights include "Squalid," which recalls "the dollars / squandered down urinal drains in bars / of dubious repute," and "The Parkinsonian Reflexologist," which mixes cliches to sometimes hilarious effect: "if you get caught fucking the dog / deny the devil his Scooby-Doo." "Magic Man," in its celebration of the retired Blue Jays player John McDonald, is a paen to the underdog, one "Consigned to ride pine for lack of thunder / in his bat." Appropriating Hopkins's "The Windhover," Wells traces the inscape of this infielder, "sensei of the second sack."

Wells will be presenting from Sum as part of IFOA's 7th Annual Battle of the Bards on Wednesday, March 25th @ 7:30PM. He will also be embarking on an Ontario and Montreal tour with Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon in late April, as well as an East Coast tour with Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane in May. For full listings, see the dates below.

April 20th - Montreal, @ The Word, w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 21st - Kingston @ Novel Idea w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 22nd - Toronto @ Dora Keogh w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 23rd - Hamilton @ Bryan Prince Bookseller w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 24th - Windsor @ Biblioasis  w/ Robert Melançon and TBA
May 9th - PEI @ Confederation Center Public Library w/ M. Travis Lane
May 19th - Halifax @ Halifax Public Library w/  Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane
May 20th - Lunenburg @ Lexicon Books w/  Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane
May 21st - Moncton @ Attic Owl Reading Series w/ Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane

Biblioasis leads off Quill & Quire's 2014 Short Fiction Fall Preview

In their new Fall Preview for Short Fiction and Crime Fiction for 2014, Quill and Quire opens with and devotes a whole paragraph to yours truly and our forthcoming story collections from Kathleen Winter and Diane Schoemperlen. We are pretty honoured. I include the paragraph in question below, and the full article can be found here.

Also, a nice nod to our own "talented designer of covers" Kate Hargreaves in the Poetry section, whose book  Leak is forthcoming from Bookthug in October. 

"In each successive season, Biblioasis (a small press in Windsor, Ontario) adds to one of the most impressive catalogues of short fiction being published anywhere in this country. This fall, it will release two new collections, including one by an undisputed master of the genre: Diane Schoemperlen. Her new work is billed as a sequel to the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning 1998 collection Forms of Devotion, which combined prose and images to tell its stories. By the Book: Stories and Pictures ($29.95 cl., Sept.) goes even further, comprising a series of stories interspersed with 73 colour collages that nostalgically evoke handbooks and encyclopedias of bygone eras. • Also in September, Biblioasis will publish the sophomore collection from Kathleen Winter, whose previous collection, boYs, won the Metcalf-Rooke Award. Featuring an erstwhile Zamboni mechanic who has entered the funeral business, a dog with a chastity belt, and a septuagenarian tree climber, The Freedom in American Songs ($19.95 pa., Sept.) showcases Winter’s offbeat, humorous sensibility." - Steven W. Beattie 

All Saints gets Starred Review in Quill & Quire

Angie Abdou gives K.D Miller's All Saints a rave review in the new Quill & Quire, highlighting the subtle intricacies of the linked story collection and how it "gains momentum, until it begins to feel very much like a novel." Revolving however loosely around the symbol/physical space of All Saints, a Toronto-based Anglican congregation in decline, the book, as Abdou aptly notes, does not consist of your grandmother's Anglicanism: "The collection is as much about eroticism and love as it is about religion and spirituality." Comparing its genre-bendiness to Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad, Abdou concludes that All Saints is "the work of a writer with a confident voice and a clear vision." 

And If that wasn't great enough, Jeet Heer then went on to tweet that "KD Miller is Canada's greatest unknown writer." A hearty and heartfelt endorsement we can get behind. 

And finally, did we mention how lovely the book itself is? The ornate frontispiece is textured and debossed, upping the physical desirability factor to celestial levels.  These pics only hint at the marvels. Go do yourself a favour and pick up a copy! 

Man, that IS important!

A new review just in from our friends over at Quill & Quire, this time on Alex Boyd's The Least Important Man:

"Boyd changes lenses more frequently as the book goes on. “Dead Bees Are Indomitable” traces a ghostly flight path, punctuated midway by a Paraguayan car bomb and ending in a shapeless fit of static. The poet can work magic in miniature: poems about chess pieces, toy soldiers, and house spiders each animate aspects of civic and personal life without lapsing into caricature. “Basil Rathbone Meets God,” “A Stuntman Destroys the Hate Window,” “Samuel Drowns, at Thirty” and others that hunker down and lavish their attention on one individual are among the book’s most beautiful and surprising."

By the end of the collection, I was able to count a number of these standouts. And man, that is important."

You can read the full review if you follow the link above.

Angel Quires

Afternoon, folks. April was kind to us over at Quill and Quire, with reviews coming out today for both Alice Petersen and Douglas Glover. Of Alice--who has her Montreal launch coming up at Atwater Library on May 7th--they say she "has produced a first collection of stories that, in its depth and quiet wisdom, is reminiscent of the work of another famous Canadian writer named Alice." All the Voices Cry they call "a beautiful tribute to human fragility and the inevitability of change." And of Doug Glover's Attack of the Copula Spiders they say quite simply:

Glover practises what he prays for in others. His own prose is clean and polished, thoughtful and intriguing, accessible yet serious .... erudite books such as Attack of the Copula Spiders are always useful as roadmaps for developing better readers and writers. Now if we could only get the world to read them carefully.

We couldn't agree more.

Don't forget, all you Toronto Bibliofans, that Alex Boyd's launch will start at the Dora Keogh in about 4 hours. Poesy and beer! And for those of you who already have the shakes for our next Toronto event, here's a little shot to steady the nerves. Courtesy of Open Book Toronto and featuring the marvellous Mike Barnes.