Poetry from beloved lead guitarist of the multi-platinum record selling legendary band Triumph Reinvention is a largely autobiographical collection of poetry — a project that followed on the heels of Rik Emmett retiring from a touring musician's and college educator's life in early 2019. Inside all of the slashes that define him — singer/songwriter/guitarist/rock star/teacher/columnist — writing has always been his strongest avocation, and the poetic style of 'Ultra Talk,' in particular, offered a welcome spark for a songwriter's freedom of expression. This creative license is organized under seven headings – The Humanities, Life & Death, There's Politics in Everything, Double Helix, Soapbox Sermonettes, Time Time Time, and Ars Nova 2020. Rik's poetry (literally) reinvents his own retirement, and it's not just some aging dilettante's bucket list fancy. He discovered a sincere way to tie up a lot of loose ends, fulfill dormant promise, and eschew show biz tangents. Reinvention, his first book, makes some sense of a life that always went in a lot of different directions at once. Finally, he's given himself permission to chase a mode of self-expression with less commercial potential … than jazz guitar recordings.

Anxious, twitchy, urgent poems-a collection that's at once sardonic and "chronically wishful."

Winner of the 1992 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry (QSPELL, now the Quebec Writers Federation) and shortlisted for the 1991 Pat Lowther Award

Naomi Guttman's first collection of poems marks the appearance of a deeply emotional, highly intelligent new voice. Its theme is intimacy -- ours, especially women's, experience of intimacy in many forms, how it marks us, how we long for it, the ways in which it is both our fulfilment and our undoing. The personae range from children to old men and women, jailbirds to schoolgirls; the language is chosen without ever becoming deliberate, precise but always musical. These are poems from and of the heart, chastened by experience, taut with craft.

J'ai souffert, c’est banal. Mon stage personnel chez les humains se déroule sans tragédie, pour le moment. Néanmoins, la douleur sans plaie existe, la douleur des craquements post-relationnels existe. En tant que stagiaire perpétuel chez les êtres humains, il m’arrive de commenter, dans le cadre d’un rapport, le kaléidoscope en forme de corps grave de mes passions.

Radio Weather confronts the changeableness of life—how existence can switch gears with the speed of announced-for snow that turns abruptly to rain. Shoshanna Wingate’s first book runs the gauntlet of her various roles—mother, wife, daughter—in taut, unsentimental, immaculately constructed poems that explore the tension between personal imperatives and fickle outside forces. Marked by a vision broad enough take in both a pigeon fancier neighbour and a murderer on death row, Wingate tracks the moments that—midstep, midway, midlife—alter us from who we might have been to who we are now. “The days depart in minor steps,” she writes, “then slip away for costume change.” Radio Weather is a memorable debut by a poet of exceptional promise.

In his second book of poems, Jason Guriel cuts a dazzling figurewhip-smart, charismatic, with a mischievousness always eager to play for more serious stakes. Guriels way of seeing the world is low-key and sly: he tries to show us the big picture by enumerating all the small oneswhat he calls the way tiny things / cant help being, next / to nothing, something. Although a zealous celebrator of ordinariness, his tightly-turned lines have the courage of their own spiky oddity.The poems in Pure Product celebrate the purity of complicated feelings distilled to crisp expression, a pure poetry true to the impurities of life. This is a formidable collection.

Winner of the Trillium Book Award for Poetry (2013) If it were necessary to tell someone where I am, I’d say the spheres of Kepler resonate like icicles. I’d say I have loved. These are high-energy poems, riddled with wit and legerdemain and jolted by the philosophy and science of time. 'Time's not the market, it's the bustle; / not the price but worth,' he muses, sailing through the rhythms and algorithms of a world made concrete by Samuel Johnson, before it was undone by Niels Bohr. Tierney's narrators grapple with the gap between what's seen and what's experienced, their minds tuned to one (probably) inevitable truth: the more I understand, the more I understand I'm alone. What continues to set Matthew Tierney's poems apart is their uncanny ability to find within the nomenclature of science not mere novelty but a new path to human frailty, a renewed assertion of individuality, and a genuine awe at existence.

These poems dwell in the hearth of domesticity, but they look beyond the confines of the home with clear eyes. Boldly unafraid, they confront the realities of climate change, the desecration of habitat, some quiet truths about aging and death. The first section consists primarily of the experience of childhood, not all of it particularly pleasant - much of it a reflection of an era that, thankfully, is now behind us with its often oppressive atmosphere. The second section continues to explore some of the experiences of growing up, but this is where the paranoid elements begin to enter the work. Visions of angels appear; repetition of life experiences specific to women emerge. The next section serves as a kind of pivot, with sometimes irreverent looks at religion. Following these poems, the tone shifts to a more Zen approach to spiritual matters, perhaps one that could even be called pantheistic. The final section deals specifically with aging, end of life, and loss. Yet even in the midst of such sometimes-gloomy thoughts, there is light and hope. There is no doubt that these are poems written by a woman. But even though many of them deal with the domestic world long considered the 'domain' of females, they reach well beyond the realm of the kitchen and tradition. They are a celebration of the quiet glory ensconced in the 'practical' nature of the everyday world, even though that world may often feel overwhelming filled with "anxiety."

La poésie de Louis-Thomas Plamondon marque un temps d'arrêt de beauté et d'existence. Les portages de Louis-Thomas Plamondon, à pas feutrés dans le brouillard, les plaines et les sentiers de branches, dissimulent des moments de présences au monde aigées et sculpturales. Se porter, c'est s'élever, se tenir éveillé et attentif aux instants de grâce.