Signal Editions, Montreal Gala Launch, April 16, 2015

Chad Campbell, reading from Laws & Locks.

Talya Rubin, reading from Leaving the Island.

(From left) Ewa Zebrowski, Marsha Courneya, Carmine Starnino, Chad Campbell, Nancy Marelli

Carmine Starnino, Talya Rubin, Robyn Sarah

Hooking, Montreal Launch

Mary Dalton

Sue Sinclair

Mary Dalton 

Donald McGrath and Sue Sinclair

Bovinities Launch

Robert Moore reading from The Golden Book of Bovinities, launched last night at a packed Irving Hall, in Frederiction, NB.

Maisonneuve Spring Launch

I love this poster. Drop by if you can, and support the new team. At the very least buy the damn issue.

Sunday Poem

WATER GLASS

Sure fooled me.

Had me right up

to the tinselly scraping

when I downed

the last mouthful

and the ice cube turned

out to be glass.

Arrowhead.

Shark's fin.

Lifting it out

nearly cost me a finger

never mind

the carnage it

could've caused

in the throat.

Awe around the table

as if I'd gone

inadvertent skydiving

or breezed through

a tiger rodeo just while

sipping, squeezing in

a lime. See

how the trick is turned.

Thrilling to be fooled so,

like when I went to check

the time in Paris

and a thief's hummingbird

caress left me gaping

at my naked wrist.

That was a touch

I never felt, but this time

I'm suffered to see

how I'm spared.

Everyone wanted to touch it, tap,

test their fingers on the edge.

Makes you want

to try your luck again,

the way a carnival bohunkus

gawps at the stage;

then jets his hand

in the air with ballooning

faith. Me, me,

pick me, mister.

Saw me in half.

I believe.

From The Id Kid by Linda Besner, which will be launched April 17, 2010.

Your Daily Fix of Jason Guriel

Jason is today's NaPoMo poster boy.

You can also catch him revealing his writerly peccadillos at Desk Space.

And don't forget to visit his Harriet blog

(Photo is from last night launch for Jason's Pure Product, held at Drawn and Quarterly bookstore)

Dear Reader of the Future

Not sure if anyone will find this as amusing as I do, but my good friend Robert Moore, a very fine poet and all-around mensch, sent me a doctored mp3 of his poem "Dear Reader of the Future." It's a recording he did for inclusion on a complimentary CD that will be offered to buyers of his new book, Figuring Ground, at its launch in April. "With my voice adjusted," Robert says " I think I sound a bit like Elizabeth Bishop reading the poem in 1965, hailing us from the past."

We love posing!

Ryan Hunt went click click clicking away on a lovely evening of readings, food , drink and music.

David Manicom

David Manicom

Andrew Steinmetz

Andrew Steinmetz

Andrew Steinmetz

Swedish Boats

Manicom and Steinmetz launch party pics

A rather manic David Manicom holding Lucca Starnino

The Vehicule Family (Nancy Marelli, David Manicom, Andrew Steinmetz, Simon Dardick, Carmine Starnino and son Lucca)

Simon Dardick and Andrew Steinmetz

Marketing manager Maya Assouad and Maisonneuve editor Derek Webster

Buffalo Runs Press publisher Correy Baldwin.

Pennies from Heaven

In the latest issue Quill and Quire, Zach Wells has some very nice things to say about Shannon Stewart's Penny Dreadful:

"This is an ambitious undertaking that could have gone wrong in many ways, but Stewart eschews finger-wagging moralizing through formal playfulness. Selectively employed, well-timed rhymes often evoke children's verse, creating an effective juxtaposition of light and dark. Her handling of tone and perspective are deft as well. In one poem, for instance, the speaker ironizes her own relative affluence in a housing co-op; while some women "climbed into trucks, / closed doors and were gone," others "watched from [their] windows, / made cups of tea, carried on." The too-easy emotion is never indulged, the poet's big heart always balanced by her cold eye and keen wit."


Another endorsement came from the Vancouver weekly The Straight, which published a profile of Stewart for the occasion of Penny Dreadful's launch last month. Patty Jone calls the book "funny, horrifying, bizarre, rawly sexual, and heart-rending, frequently all at once.” Another great quote from the piece: "For the record, her poems are not as nice as she looks"

You can read the profile in its entirety here.

Below is a video of Stewart reading during her launch at the Railway Club. You can see more clips on her website www.shannonstewart.ca

Book Launch at Paragraphe Bookstore

Join Terence Byrnes for the launching of his book, Closer to Home: The Author and the Author Portrait -a series of portraits that take us inside writers’ lives and inside the process of making portraits.


Where: Paragraphe Bookstore, 2220 McGill College Avenue
Date/Time: Tuesday, October 28, 7:00 pm

Tonight at Drawn & Quarterly

Véhicule Press and Coach House Books bring two new nonfiction books that send readers around the world to Canada's capital.

Mary Soderstrom launches The Walkable City: From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacobs' Streets and Beyond and Anik See releases Saudade: The Possibilities of Place. The launch features short presentations from each of the new books, taking the audience around the globe with tales and images. Presentations will be followed by a Q&A with the authors about their geographically based nonfiction.

Where: Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore , 211 Bernard West
Time: 7:30 p.m.

Joint Launch at the Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore

September 23 – Travel 'Round the Globe at the D&Q Bookstore [211 Bernard West]

Mary Soderstrom and Anik See launch new titles with a worldview

Véhicule Press and Coach House Books launch two new books that send readers around the world, whether walking through the urban environment of Paris or taking the ultimate road trip in Australia.

Montreal author Mary Soderstrom follows up her acclaimed Green City, with The Walkable City: From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacobs' Streets, a book that walks through Paris, New York, Toronto, North Vancouver and other cities to examine how cities have changed their citizens and to highlight the importance of a walkable city.

Author of the food memoir, A Fork in the Road, Anik See, returns with Saudade: The Possibilities of Place, a series of essays on locations as varied as the fishing ports of Sri Lanka, fishfrys in the Northwest Terriories and the rough roads of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

Mary Soderstrom and Anik See will deliver brief presentations from their new books, taking the audience around the globe with tales and images. The presentations will be followed by a Q&A period.

Mary Soderstrom's Green City: People, Nature & Urban Places was selected as one of Globe and Mail's 100 Best Books of 2007. She is the author of Recreating Eden: A Natural History of Botanical Gardens
and The Violets of Usambara. She lives in Montreal.

Anik See is the author of the food memoir A Fork in the Road
(MacMillan, 2000). Her writing has appeared in Brick, Prairie Fire,
the Fiddlehead, Geist, Grain, the National Post, Toronto Life and, as
a contributing editor, in Outpost Magazine. She divides her time
between Canada and Holland, where she works with books, old and new.

This Island in Time

Please join us for the launch of This Island in Time: Remarkable Tales from Montreal's Past by John Kalbfleisch

Wednesday, September 17, at 7:30 pm
Westmount Public Library
4574 Sherbrooke Street,Westmount
514.989.5299

From Montreal's founding nearly four centuries ago down to the present day, an astonishing range of people have trod the city's streets. Here we have no ordinary history of Montreal. This Island in Time is a portrait as colourful as the city itself.

John Kalbfleisch is a long time Montreal journalist. "Second Draft," his weekly column on the city's history, appears in the The Gazette. He lives near Perth, Ontario.