“We breathe, and then / vanish,” proclaims a speaker in Once When Green, a new collection by accomplished poet Mark Irwin. While deeply personal, the book engages the earth, “gulls, / gray, quarreling air, their ha-ha-ha-ing at our trace / of garbage and carbon,” and addresses mortality as well as the consequences of global warming—how it impacts humans, animals, and the plant life that sustains us all. Poems here accent the lateness of our attempt to control pollution, while inte...

'Bozidar: Redemption' is a historical fiction that cuts across three turbulent generations of Yugoslavia (1944-93) and follows the trials and tribulations of the Bejic family. It also contains mystical elements and at times reads like a gripping thriller that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat with its action-driven tale of the eternal fight between good and evil.The story begins in 1944 with Europe ablaze in war and the indiscriminate brutality that comes with it. It is in...

'Poetic Musings' is an assorted collection from forty years of writing, learning and growing. It is unique in terms of style, rhyme and non-rhyme, figurative language, poetic devices, density (how much is said in how few words), imagery, symbolism, intensity, and humour.It has been described as, 'Deep and thought-provoking'.Open randomly on any page and take away something for your mind, your soul, your conscience, or your perspective on today, tomorrow, or yesterday.

SIX SHORTICTION STORIES by Mark Irwin (15,000 Words)GEORGE AND THE CAT WOMAN ... A man experiencing paranoid delusions deals with his cat and a woman as they plot against him. (2500)MIDNIGHT IN THE GULF OF MEXICO ... An American ship salvager and an impoverished Mexican struggle to survive as their derelict ship battles a fierce gale. (1700)THE DEMON ... A young woman is possessed by the evil living in her house. (3200)TRAVELLI ... A small a...

Through poems of witness, species and habitat extinction, war, pandemic, technology, history, and race, Mark Irwin’s elegant collection of poetry explores the collision between metropolis and wilderness, and engages with forms of spirit that cannot be bound. With the incursion of electronic communication, our connections with one another have been radically distorted. Irwin’s poems confront what it means to be human, and how conflict, along with the interface between technology and humanit...

Murder, shipwrecks, running from the law and a beautiful woman. This is the world of Bobby Rafferty. Bobby Rafferty has escaped with his daughter from unjust Canadian custody and fled to a safe haven in Mexico.Once there, he finds work with unscrupulous marine salvagers and unwittingly becomes an accomplice to the murder of a Lloyds ship inspector. He is left for dead but survives and returns to seek revenge as well as the monies owed to him.During his pursuit of a psychoti...

Murder, shipwrecks, running from the law and aBeautiful woman. This is the world of Bobby Rafferty.Bobby Rafferty has escaped with his daughter fromunjust Canadian custody and fled to a safe haven in Mexico.Once there, he finds work with unscrupulous marinesalvagers and unwittingly becomes an accomplice to theMurder of a Lloyds ship inspector.He is left for dead on a sinking ship but survives and returns to seek revengeas well as th...

Th3K1ng0fK1ng5Tommy is a teen genius who dominates the online world of Call of Duty (COD). In reality, the brilliant but nerdy Tommy is a constant target for schoolyard bullies. That is until the new kid, the athletic Ethan comes to town; a Jewish kid whose dead Grandfather talks to Tommy and guides him toward his goal of developing a device that will allow him to travel into the Fourth Dimension while promising grampa Joshua he will watch out for the dangers that Grampa Joshua kno...

Th3K1ng0fK1ng5Tommy is a teen genius who dominates the online world of Call of Duty (COD). In reality, the brilliant but nerdy Tommy is a constant target for schoolyard bullies. That is until the new kid, the athletic Ethan comes to town; a Jewish kid whose dead Grandfather talks to Tommy and guides him toward his goal of developing a device that will allow him to travel into the Fourth Dimension while promising grampa Joshua he will watch out for the dangers that Grampa Joshua kno...

Murder, shipwrecks, running from the law and a beautiful woman. This is the world of Bobby Rafferty. Bobby Rafferty has escaped with his daughter from unjust Canadian custody and fled to a safe haven in Mexico. Once there, he finds work with unscrupulous marine salvagers and unwittingly becomes an accomplice to the murder of a Lloyds ship inspector. He is left for dead but survives and returns to seek revenge as well as the monies owed to him. During his pursuit of a psychotic named Howie ...

Monster: Distortion, Abstraction, and Originality in Contemporary American Poetry argues that memorable and resonant poetry often distorts form, image, concept, and notions of truth and metaphor. Discussing how changes in electronic communication and artificial notions of landscape have impacted form and content in poetry, Monster redefines the idea of what is memorable and original through a broad range of poets including John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Thomas Sayers Ellis, F...

Leningrad, 1987. When a woman’s corpse is discovered on New Year’s Day, a hungover Detective Pavel Smirnoff hands off the case to his partner, Detective Boris Dimitrovich, hoping he’ll close it without fuss. Instead, Dimitrovich uncovers a connection to an old, unsolved crime, dragging them both into an investigation that puts their careers – and possibly their lives – at risk.