National Network for Equitable Library Service

Poems that unfold like liturgy, confronting old violence with a trembling, dignified restraint.

Evolving from a routine of long walks he began to help him quit smoking, Winnipeg singer, songwriter and musician Scott Nolan's debut poetry collection Moon Was a Feather reflects on a life well-considered. Poems that chronicle a difficult youth, experience with drugs, friendships, and music are interwoven with insights gleaned from the eclectic jumble of neighbourhoods and people he encounters on his long walks.

An ode to Winnipeg's north end, where Ms. Vermette grew up. It's also the neighbourhood where her Métis brother went missing.

These are poems about what it means to be from the north ; a town divided along colour lines ; and a family dealing with its history of secrets. At it's core, this collection is about the life of a Cree girl and the places she finds comfort and escape .... Rosanna Deerchild is Cree from South Indian Lake, Manitoba.

In this, her third volume of poetry, this Aboriginal writer from Quebec again confronts the loss of her landscape and language.

Do Not Enter My Soul in Your Shoes is a poetry collection of great sensitivity. Above all it is a cry from the heart, as if empathy and poetry were dazzled by the eruption of a volcano. Natasha Kanapé Fontaine reveals herself as a poet and Innu woman. She loves. She weeps. She shouts... to come into the world, again. The book is first of all a journey deep inside the self, with joy and love, taking the body on a path to expectation and ecstasy, a quest sustained by incisive, inventive writing, which can leap from impressions of nature to references to a Dali painting.

The world of Dave Paddon's recitations is quirky, riotously funny, and utterly unique; a place of tall tales and plain foolishness, where fog is so thick you can use it for cannonballs, and a polar bear hijacks a bingo tournament. Berry pickers turn combatants and the result is a bay full of jam; a local handyman turns doctor and uses the spare parts in his shed to patch up his neighbours.

Swivelmount's concerns - the collapse of subject and world, eros and law, knowledge and bafflement - gain new urgency as Babstock fiercely reimagines and reassembles the remnants into a viable order. At the core of their kinetic imagery is a freefall into mourning, but also a faith in others: a Babstock poem is the voice next to you in the ER waiting room, becalmed, compassionate, darkly humorous. This is Babstock at his best.

Driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, you come to a road sign: Entering Sappho. Nothing remains of the town, just trash at the side of the highway and thick, wet bush. Can Sappho's breathless eroticism tell us anything about settlement--about why we're here in front of this sign? Mixing historical documents, oral histories, and experimental translations of the original lesbian poet's works, this book combines documentary and speculation, surveying a century in reverse. This town is one of many with a classical name.

With her remarkable debut collection, Yukon poet Clea Roberts proffers a perceptive & ecological reading of the Canadian North's past & present. Roberts deftly draws out the moments that comprise a cycle of seasons, paying as much attention to the natural--the winter moon's second-hand light that pools in the tracks of tree squirrels & loose threads of migrating birds--as she does to the manufactured--the peripheral percussion of J-brakes & half-melted ice lanterns.