Better break out your sledgehammer - it's time for a little concrete! Concrete poetry, that is. Concrete what? Well, it's poetry that's a lot like art - its meaning comes from what it looks like instead of the order of the words, so it's full of great visual puns and word puzzles. And one of its foremost practitioners is bpNichol, one of Canada's best experimental writers. Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer is Nichol's very first book. Originally published in England by Bob Cobbing in 1967, and then in Canada in 1973 by Nelson Ball's Weed/Flower Press, it has been unavailable for a dog's age. This new edition, curated by poet and antiquarian bookseller Nelson Ball, redresses this wrong. One of the few Nichol books that is dedicated entirely to concrete poetry, Konfessions is, like all of Nichol's work, playful, sincere, explorative, intelligent and human.

Shortlisted for the 2007 Trillium Book Award for Poetry

Ecologically aware poems, hardwired to the intellect and the heart in equal measure.

Adam Dickinson’s poems, with firm intellectual bite and imaginative scope, reach fresh levels of poetic – and ecological – awareness. Sometimes reminiscent of Wallace Stevens, sometimes of Christopher Dewdney, and with the ghost of Foucault always in attendance, they ply a language that is cool and precise on the surface to open into the deep resonance of geologic time. Imaginative and contemplative, this writing is bound to refresh the vision of the most world-weary reader.

For some time, we expected
the end of the world
to be a mushroom.
A vengeful good, a good
of fire, clouded thought.
But every spring they come out of the ground
like universal suffrage,
a writ of habeas corpus,
speech before writing.
They say, dirt. They say, get up.

from “The Good, part I”

The poems in Kingdom, Phylum push the boundaries of thought and language. Bringing lyrical and unsystematic modes of understanding into play, and keeping his ear tuned to the many disruptions involved in taxonomical arrangement, Dickinson shows how poetry both participates in, and unsettles, the provisional orders which develop between word and world.

“… a poet intensely, intricately, and metaphorically engaged with the world, the natural world in particular.” League of Canadian Poets website

“…Dickinson’s poems are luminous, subtle, and exceptional.” Books in Canada

A remarkable debut that expresses a humanism grounded in physiology.

At the heart of Karyotype is the Beauty of Loulan, a woman who lived four thousand years ago, her body preserved in the cool, dry sands of the Taklamakan Desert. Karyotype’s poems range from the title sequence, which explores the DNA and woven textiles of this woman and her vanished people (a karyotype is the characteristic chromosome complement of a species), to the firebombing of the National Library of Sarajevo, from an abecedarian hymn on the International Red Cross “Book of Belongings” to the experience of watching the televised invasion of Iraq in the dark of a Montreal night. The Beauty of Loulan becomes a symbol of the ephemerality of human genetic and cultural texts, and of our chances for survival.

And then there was Liu Baiqiang
sentenced to 18 years for “Counter-Revolutionary Incitement”
who attached words to the legs of locusts

Tyranny! Long Live Freedom!

and flung them over the walls
of his prison, into the air.

Praise for Karyotype:

“Karyotype is for me a crucial text in the work of reimagining what it is to be human… I am grateful, as well as inspired, to find an artwork performing this essential task.” —Don McKay

"I was touched by the depth of passion and awed by the firm resolve with which Mattie Stepanek pursued a dream that has evaded men and women throughout history. What began as a casual discourse, not too different from others I have had with inquisitive young people who have reached out to me, became a treasured and enlightening friendship that changed my life forever. With the purity of heart that only a child can possess, and the indomitable spirit of one who has survived more physical suffering than most adults will ever know, Mattie convinced me that his quest was not inconceivable. Inspired by his enthusiasm and without reservation, I committed to a partnership with him. . . . These words of wisdom and inspiration came from the most remarkable person I have ever known." —Jimmy Carter

Sometimes the most important messages come from the most unlikely places. Mattie J.T. Stepanek, a 13-year-old boy, made a difference before he died with his Heartsongs poetry. He continues to impact the world through Just Peace. This poet, bestselling author, peace activist and prominent voice for the Muscular Dystrophy Association fervently believed in and promoted world peace not just as a concept, but as a reality. Mattie was working on this manuscript with Jimmy Carter when he died in June 2004. His mother Jeni, who edited the material and wrote a preface for the book has published it at her son's request. Just Peace explores Mattie's concept of the world and all people as a unique mosaic of gifts. War and injustice shatter the mosaic, which can only be made whole again by planning and actively pursuing peace. The young visionary's essays, poetry and photographs appear throughout the book. Jimmy Carter has written a special foreword for the book. Just as important to the book and enlightening to the reader are Mattie's many correspondences. Central to these are his personal e-mails to and from former president Jimmy Carter, Mattie's peace "hero" and role model. The Nobel Peace Prize winner met Mattie, considered him an angel, messenger and hero in his own right, and was genuinely affected by Mattie's passion and drive. Just Peace is an intimate portrait of a president, a young man of hope and peace itself.

Joyfully melding knowing humour and torqued-up wordplay, Holbrook’s second collection is a comic fusion of the experimental and the experiential, the procedural and the lyric. Punch lines become sucker punches, line breaks slip into breakdowns, the serious plays comical and the comical turns deadly serious. Holbrook's poems don’t use humour as much as they deconstruct the comic impulse, exposing its roots in the political, the psychological and the emotional life of the mind. Many of these poems import shapes and source texts from elsewhere – home inspection reports, tampon instructions, poems by Lorca – in a series of translations, transpositions and transgressions that invite a more intimate and critical rapport with the written word. This is not merely a book, it is a chocolate-covered artificially intelligent virus with an impish sense of humour that will continue to replicate in your mind long after initial exposure.

From the timeless pen of the English poet, these monologues are spoken by the lover to his beloved.

Le « toujours merveilleux poète Alexis Lefrançois », comme le présentait récemment Hugues Corriveau dans Le Devoir, nous lance une invitation avec son recueil : Je vous rejoindrai au teminus vide. Alexis Lefrançois décrit l’éphémère rencontre avec l’autre, l’impossible lien, et s’acharne à percer le sens du persistant désir d’aimer qui pousse malgré tout l’être humain vers ses semblables, dans l’espoir dérisoire d’abolir son implacable solitude. Dans ce recueil, Lefrançois a adopté une démarche particulière qu’il explique dans la postface : « Les mots, écrit-il, n’appartiennent à personne. Seul leur agencement appartient au poète. Démarche qui me fascine d’autant plus qu’elle s’inscrit dans une forme d’« absence/présence » de soi, déjà pratiquée en traduction littéraire, mais cette fois poussée plus avant encore : écrire avec des mots qui ne sont même plus ceux de l’auteur d’origine, créer à partir d’une version de son œuvre déjà passée par le prisme déformant de la traduction. Et en faire, si possible, un recueil qui soit mien. Infini jeu de miroirs. »

Written to read like a memoir, this collection of poetry details the life of a family across generations and provides a moving and haunting portrait of the Italian mother who is the center around which this family revolves. But this is much more than a story about ethnicity; it transcends any single identity and explores instead the many ways in which people learn to identify themselves.

In this, her fourth book of poetry, one of Canada's best-loved poets takes on one of the most compelling divas of our time. In sixty-one audacious poems, Jeanette Lynes re-imagines and reanimates the peripatetic art, life, and times of Dusty Springfield.Alternating between playful irreverence and profound compassion, It's Hard Being Queen paints a compulsively readable portrait of an extraordinary life. Each page is infused with wit, drama, and, of course, music. Jeanette Lynes not only steps into the icon's shoes'she lives in her skin.