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Last Updated: Jul 19th, 2010 - 13:48:37 |
Reviews
Carolyn Marie Souaid: Brooke JohnsonTrudeau Stories—True, Though Underwhelming
I found that the play had a very anglo, Toronto feel. I expected something more edgy and whimsical. Less safe. As well, more than once, I found that Johnson’s “Trudeau voice” bled into her own “character’s” voice, making me question her craft altogether.
May 12, 2010, 07:39
Reviews
Circus of Words/Cirque des mots 2010: A Big Hit
Amazing. Unbelievable. A wonderful eclectic evening. These were just a few of the many comments overheard as the crowd filed out of the Studio space at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts following the 6th annual Circus of Words / Cirque des mots last night.
May 2, 2010, 16:03
Reviews
Bruce Whiteman: “All Squawk & Caw”
Kate Hall. The Certainty Dream. This writing is not nearly as extreme as some lang-po, but clearly it is moving line to line in response to something other than normal logic or normal music. Poetry, of course, does not need to trade with anything “normal” when it comes to music and logic, though there are times in Hall’s work when it is hard to grasp what she is after
Apr 1, 2010, 00:01
Reviews
Lori Cayer: David Cavanagh "Falling Body"
Falling Body probes the gaps between expectation and reality in viewing the self as an aging, mortal creature in a world of other such creatures. The poems are quietly eloquent and precise, working separately to lift up the banal episodes of living but as they proceed we see the connections being made between the observer and the observed.
Apr 1, 2010, 00:01
Reviews
Lori Cayer: Road Show
Sina Queyras. ExpresswayThe grounding of these poems in the personal is not a sentimental act, however. Queyras moves the reader through a relentless enumeration of our downfall—our isolation from one another as we constantly move from place to place, the decay of the infrastructure and the damage it’s done to the planet at large and asks circular questions about our culpability and chances of redemption.
Jan 23, 2010, 20:32
Reviews
Louise Fabiani: Pause for Breath,
Robyn Sarah. Pause for Breath. Many of these 52 poems are solid, insightful, and tightly written, and a few feature eye-widening turns of phrase. But all are safe. These are the poetic equivalent of curling up on the couch with a blanket and a cup of hot tea on a winter day.
Jan 14, 2010, 16:25
Reviews
David Cavanagh: Raucous Music
Norm Sibum. The Pangborn Defence. The Pangborn Defence contains many more voices, threads, insights, and moods than this review can describe. It is a rich collection by a poet of range and intellect who has a large body of work going back many years. It surprises by moving suddenly from small scene to broad landscape and back again, sometimes within a line or two.
Jan 14, 2010, 16:03
Reviews
Bruce Whiteman: Another Family Album
Stephen Morrissey. Girouard Avenue. Morrissey is a romantic poet. “Poetry is the voice of the psyche speaking through the poet,” he has said. One hears Keats and Coleridge in such a contention, but also Jung and other depth psychologists who prefer to speak about the collective unconscious rather than the more personal subconscious theorized by Freud
Jan 14, 2010, 15:58
Reviews
Sinéad Morrissey: Writers Read at Concordia
She began by describing two poles of poetic sensibilities—one including the poet who receives inspiration, as it were, directly from another source and almost acts as a vehicle for transmission, and the other including the poet who shapes and crafts the poem carefully and skilfully, using conceits such as internal rhyme, character portrayal and word play.
Sep 20, 2009, 12:19
Reviews
Michael Towe: A Chaos of Beauty and a Beauty of Chaos: Photographs
Michael Towe sees an urban landscape. By this, I mean geometry: angular, triangular, rectangular—urban constructs and deconstructs. He sees urban colours: rain-washed neons, rusts, peels, graffiti, urban reflection; physical that becomes poetic and philosophical in the broken mirroring windows and stagnant pools around a construction sight. He sees urban nature: tangle of leaves and wires, both essential and both symbols of urban life.
Sep 19, 2009, 11:17
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