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Poets Dina Del Bucchia and Jay MillAr send up self-help and celebrate wonder in new works

The challenge of how to survive as an artist has plagued writers throughout history. Two recent books of poetry take on that idea in completely different and innovative ways.

Poems by Elizabeth Bachinsky and Sarah Pinder splice public and private life

In the age of weird combinations, two recent books of poetry set up an incisive debate on whether explorations of domestic internal experience should be configured randomly or...

Bent at the Spine and Whiteout test the flexibility of language

Books of poetry by Nicole Markotic and George Murray have a seemingly similar purpose but could not be more different.

Poems of desire fuse bodies and landscape

In a supposedly sex-saturated culture, why is the writing about sex often so bad?

Sachiko Murakami’s Rebuild looks at a constantly changing city

If you’ve ever engaged in the Vancouver-speak about finding a better, cheaper place to live, then you will appreciate how Vancouver is taken apart, examined, and reconfigured in...

Three poets reflect on the transforming power of loss

The words “I miss you” are probably the most written (or texted) words in contemporary English. But how do you relate those words to the actual person or the place that is missed?

Book review: Nox by Anne Carson

The revered Canadian poet has created a work of painful beauty.

Book reviews: Poetry by Dionne Brand, Jen Currin, Larissa Lai, and Susan Holbrook

To close out national poetry month, we celebrate by looking at four poets who investigate the contemporary moment, where communication compresses into tweets, texting, and status...

Reading the city as poem in A Verse Map of Vancouver

This anthology is meant “to raise the status of poetry in the everyday consciousness of Vancouverites”, but it will do more to uphold civic pride.

The city as poem: Little Hunger, Feria, and Nightmarker

Three diverse poets take elements of the past and insert them into the coffee shops, courthouses, and parks of the city, so we can see where we are positioned now.