National Network for Equitable Library Service

Shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry. This poem resembles urban sprawl. This poem resembles the freedom to charge a fee. The fee occurs in the gaps. It is an event. It is not without precedent. It is a moment in which you pay money. It is a tribute to freedom of choice. Reality is a parking lot in Qatar. Reality is an airstrip in Malawi. Meanwhile the expressway encloses, the expressway round and around the perimeters like wagon trains circling the bonfire, all of them, guns pointed, Busby Berkeley in the night sky.

Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize (2002) The word ‘eunoia,’ which literally means ‘beautiful thinking,’ is the shortest word in English that contains all five vowels. Directly inspired by the Oulipo (l’Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle), a French writers’ group interested in experimenting with different forms of literary constraint, Eunoia is a five-chapter book in which each chapter is a univocal lipogram – the first chapter has A as its only vowel, the second chapter E, etc.

I'm ill-equipped for this. I sit by a fake fireplace that frames a real flame. I've been crossed by two crows today. 'Multi-vectored, Rogers's poems hum with life and tension, their speaker poised as mother, seer, reporter and daughter. They speak of loss and cold realities (misplaced charms of luck, a tour of an assisted-living facility, coins thrown into Niagara Falls).

Following the Fratellini Family of clowns, Jeramy Dodds astonishes readers and non-readers alike. Techniques such as his patented triumph, the Grand Mal Caesura, along with other favourites, are on display inside. Dodds is a warlock of words, only to be outdone by them, enslaved by them, freed by them – maybe even loved by them. A haunting, yet hilarious depiction of a journey to and from the furthest limits of the human experiment.

A vital collection that interrogates the stories of the dead white men that litter our histories and landscapes. Juxtaposing the seemingly benign names of Europeans that permeate our geographies with the details of their so-called discoveries and conquests, Dead White Men turns ideas of exploration, discovery, finding and keeping back upon themselves.

In Divide and Rule, Walid Bitar delivers a sequence of dramatic monologues, variations on the theme of power, each in rhymed quatrains. Though the pieces grow out of Bitar’s personal experiences over the last decade, both in North America and the Middle East, he is not primarily a confessional writer. His work might be called cubist, the perspectives constantly shifting, point followed by counterpoint, subtle phrase by savage outburst.

Cutting Room both describes and pushes against the anxious hum of the technologically saturated present. Sarah Pinder's poems navigate domestic and 'natural' spaces as landscapes charged with possible violence and desire. Using hyper-focus and the long gaze, they draw the eye to the corners and seams of these spaces, slowing us down, shifting our focus to worn detail, asking us to seek pattern and possibility in a hyper-paced present tense. These are little ominous films, documenting the minutiae around us that can be our undoing.

Winner of the Trillium Book Award for Poetry Nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Award. With cameos by jackalopes, Glenn Gould, homemade spaceships and Carl Linnaeus, these poems are remarkable for their technical agility and their restless inventiveness. There's an elegance here that matches Dodds' impulse to challenge the reader with fresh metaphor and astonishing phrasing; the formal ambitions of many of the poems in Crabwise to the Hounds are balanced by an inclination towards wordplay and a bright musicality.

With an alternating sense of wonder and detachment, Jay Ritchie's first full-length collection of poetry grapples with death, disappointment, love, emails – the large and small subjects of daily life. His unflagging sense of humour and aphoristic delivery create a work that is personable yet elevated, witty, and honest.

People who rely on stereotypes are often vilified. But really, is there a better way to classify people? There are some taxonimical difficulties, though. Exactly how many types of people are there? What behaviours are characteristic of each particular group? How do you know if you’ve spotted an armchair psychologist or a kleptomaniac? Gabe Foreman's A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People is not your average reference book.