Manipulators and liars, egomaniacs, bullies, interrupters, condescenders, ice queens, backstabbers, hypocrites, withholders, belligerents, self-deceivers, whiners, know-it-alls, nitpickers: these are some of the characters you’ll encounter in Difficult People, a collection of stories that investigates and celebrates difficult people (and some animals).As these characters fumble through their quests for YouTube fame, stand-up glory, romantic love, stable employment or anyon...

Carnal, flamboyant, visceral and bold, Table Manners is a rich meal. Catriona Wright’s debut introduces us to the image of the poet as “gastronaut,” a figure who seems to live entirely between table and a stove and who steeps her surroundings and relationships in complex emotional flavours. “My life,” she writes, “is now tuned to bone marrow donuts and chef gossip. I’m useless at any other frequency.” Wright’s wild narratives are sometimes funny, sometimes frightening and always r...

CBC BOOKS CANADIAN POETRY COLLECTIONS TO WATCH FOR IN SPRING 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 TRILLIUM BOOK AWARD FOR POETRYFeminist poems both serious and absurd that question our obsession with productivity instead of with care.Continuity Errors questions the privileging of work and productivity over rest and care from an ecological and feminist perspective. Written before and immediately after the birth of h...

Selected by guest editor Diane Schoemperlen, the 2021 edition of Best Canadian Stories continues not only a series, but a legacy in Canadian letters.“The best short stories,” writes editor Diane Schoemperlen, “are disruptive in all the best ways, diverse in all senses of the word, always looking back and leading forward at the same time … they must be written in the world, in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of more horrifying news every day.” Submitt...

“Poetry,” writes best-selling author Ellen Bass, “is the way I pay attention, appreciate, give praise, struggle, grieve, rage, and pray. It’s the way I embody my love for the world.”The Human Line, Bass’ seventh book of poems, startles with its precise detail, intimate images, and wild metaphors. Bass brings attention to life’s endearing absurdities, and many of the poems flash with a keen sense of humor. She also faces many of the crucial moral dilemmas of our time—geneti...

This collection of bold and scathingly beautiful feminist poems imagines what comes after our current age of environmental destruction, racism, sexism, and divisive politics.Informed by Brenda Shaughnessy's craft as a poet and her worst fears as a mother, the poems in The Octopus Museum blaze forth from her pen: in these pages, we see that what was once a generalized fear for our children (car accidents, falling from a tree) is now hyper-reasonable, specif...

In this debut poetry collection by award-winning author Kim Fu, incantations, mythical creatures and extreme violence illuminate small scenes of domestic life and the banal tragedies of modern love and modern death.A sharp edge of humour slices through Fu's poetry, drawing attention to the distance between contemporary existence and the basic facts of life: In the classrooms of tomorrow, starved youth will be asked to imagine a culture that kept thin pamphlets of poetry pinned to ...

Exploring the sudden loss of her child, the hope that precedes this crisis, and the suffering that follows, this collection of poetry renders a shattering experience with candor and immediacy.This collection is about the eviscerating loss of a child, the hope that precedes this crisis, and the suffering that follows. Spare, plain, sometimes startling in their snatches of humor, Pollari’s poems careen into the “tilted reality” of grief. This is poetry dredged from s...

"Perillo's poetic persona is funny, tough, bold, smart, and righteous. A spellbinding storyteller and a poet who makes the demands of the form seem as natural as a handshake, she pulls readers into the beat and whirl of her slyly devastating descriptions."-Booklist"Whoever told you poetry isn't for everyone hasn't read Lucia Perillo. She writes accessible, often funny poems that border on the profane."-Time Out New YorkThe poetry of Lucia Perillo is fierce...

In Mindy Nettifee's second book Rise of the Trust Fall her poems possess a magic that can only come from a seasoned writer willing to share more on the page than she's comfortable with. Whether exploring the strange alchemy of healing the perils of self-actualization or the contemporary experience of womanhood the poems in this daring collection are gorgeous and vibrant bitingly funny and unflinchingly honest. Rise of the Trust Fall challenges more than our understanding of ourselves. It c...

For a long time, people have looked to science as a way to understand their own lives. But while science has proven itself a useful metaphor, it has just as often been exposed as being as fallible as the flawed humans who lean on it. Newcomer Leigh Kotsilidis's lively, thoughtful and refreshingly speculative first collection engages and questions the linguistic roots of the hypothetical, both as they apply to the Scientific Method and its faith in certainty, and tothe word's alternate mean...

Trillium Book Award–winning poet Adam Sol’s newest collection is made up of poems that are loosely linked to the traditional Jewish morning prayers, the Birkhot haShachar, which try to find moments of blessing in the midst of personal and public pain, shame, and worryHow do we respond to others’ pain, both the pain of those we love and the larger global pain of those we don’t know? In a religious context, a witness can offer blessing when those in the midst of suff...