National Network for Equitable Library Service

The poetry in Marimba Forever is concerned with love and longing, which the author displays in all their multifarious guises.

In Exploding into Night, Sandy Pool delves into the heart of a grisly murder that took place in the Parkdale area of Toronto. With its dazzling turns and deafening silence, this narrative poem is a stark reappraisal of urban existence and its heartache. Pool's metaphysical landscape speaks in multiple voices and prods the very nature of our collective conscience. A selection of poems from this collection was awarded First Place in the 2009 Elora Writers' Festival Poetry Contest. The collection has been short-listed for the 2010 Governor General's award for English poetry.

Courageous and astute, this collection of poems, written in varied styles, explores the emotional upheavals caused by the estrangement of a son. Weaving together complex layers of personal history, these poems capture the poet's personal journey in trying to understand how these things happen in families and the process towards reconciliation. 

Orioles in the Oranges is a collection of poems that tells the story of love and loss as they find common ground in a Metis legend and in modern times. The poems weave the contemporary voice of a young woman who finds herself on Pelee Island letting go of a lover with the telling of the Pelee Island story of a Metis woman who plunges to her death in Lake Erie after being abandoned by her English husband. The narratives dovetail, and grapple with the pull of physical and psychic places that we all find in the experience of finding and losing love.

One woman's emotional and cultural journey is luxuriously illustrated in this moving collection, as she artfully recounts leaving Lebanon for a new life in Canada. In a voice that blends prose with poetry, she copes with the newfound sense of rootlessness she gains in exchange for her new freedom. Though she is finally allowed to pursue the thirst for love and desire for acceptance that her former lifestyle forbade, she unexpectedly finds sadness in what she has to give up.

Showcasing the fruits of creativity from illness, this duologue and poetry collection addresses the last months of author Malca Litovitz's life and her devotion to writing. Life, love, and death are all reflected upon in unshielded, intimate language without pretense. Raw and moving, this poetry collaboration inspires appreciation for those living and love for those lost.

Merle Nudelman plumbs the nuances and vagaries which define our relationships and the shifting moments of lover, abuser, victim, and healer. The imagery in We, the Women is at once startling and evocative. Poems of layered scenes of domesticity and of the natural world border on the elegiac. In this richly textured collection, Nudelman celebrates the transformative power of love and spiritual awakening. "In her second book, Merle Nudelman writes with the accomplishment and confidence of an established poet.

"Laurence Hutchman's poetry is a witness to the world around him, to the patterns of families, nations, and landscape. He hears Mozart in the supermarket, and Nelligan breaking into song.

Ancient and medieval Jewish travelers are brought to poetic life amidst images garnered from the poet's personal journeys crossing the Sahara Desert and voyaging down the Congo River. This title is number 135 of the Essential Poets Series.

This new take on Hindu mythology includes poems inspired by South Asian stories and covers the dealings of Vishnu, human avatars Rama and Krishna, and the relationship between Rama and his wife Sita.