Bird Spotting

Poetryreviews.ca praises Asa Boxer's The Mechanical Bird for its "shining brilliance" and Grasshopper Reads likes the way Boxer "discovers delight in the darndest of corners."

Seeing Double

Pop Culture Junkie on "lookalike" book covers.

Relit Twofer

Well blow me down. Vehicule has TWO books in the running for the Relit Awards. Penny Dreadful by Shannon Stewart (poetry) and Anna's Shadow by David Manicom (Fiction). Heartiest congratulations to both authors. Winners announced next month.

"Onward then to Constantinople"

Asa Boxer gives us a preview of his forthcoming collection Caveat Emptor.

Too Cool

Meet Justin. He's 28, lives with his "awesome" 73-year-old dad, and tweets "shit that he says."

Sundre: Rolling Over the Territory

Christopher Willard talks with the Calgary Herald about the dramatic potential he saw in the small and quiet Alberta town of Sundre.

Meanwhile, at Rover Arts, Joseph Elfassi digs into Willard's biography as a visual artist, and rolls with this perspective -- over the image and words territory of Sundre, which he calls 'a unique read'.

Putting Heads Together

Last week, I visited the Word and picked up, among other things, a copy of Rutting Season, a "mini-anthology" by Montreal micro-publisher Buffalo Runs Press. The concept is super-simple: a generous selection of poems by three young poets -- in this case, Ariel Gordon, Michael Lithgow and Linda Besner -- bookended by some shop talk as the poets discuss each other's work. I'll admit to some bias as we're publishing Linda Besner's first book in 2011, but the other poets (new to me) were definitely worth my time.