James Pollock

James Pollock has what one of my uncles would have called, with a laughing shake of his head, a "horseshoe up his ass." With the ink barely dry on its pages, Sailing to Babylon—his debut—nabs a nomination for this year's Govenor General's Award for Poetry. It then catches the attention of Michael Lista (no mean feat) who, in the National Post, praises its "vision of an old world, freighted with history, and still able to astonish itself with the novelty of its recurrence." Next month, James will publish You Are Here, a fearless, brilliant book of criticism on Canadian poetry that will help drag the whole sorry spectacle into the 21st century. He reads for the Atwater Poetry Project this Thursday. Don't miss it.

Gift Horse Review

Quick off the mark, Quill & Quire has published a review of Gift Horse in its November 2011 issue (review isn't online yet). Meaghan Strimas describes Mark Callanan's poetry as

not fussy, nor is it driven by ego; it is humble, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is, for the most part, blessedly free of sentimentality and filler. There is an exactitude to his art, displayed in the efficiency of his diction and his tightly organized stanzas.

(Love that hedging "for the most part.") Callanan and Mary Dalton read at the Atwater Library in Montreal as part of the Atwater Poetry Project on April 26, 2012 at 7 p.m