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