Category Archives: non-fiction

Jenna Butler’s visionary voyage into the Arctic.

Posted on September 28, 2018 by

Jenna Butler. Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard. (University of Alberta Press 2018). Although published in UofAPress’s ‘Wayfarer’ travel narrative series, Magnetic North reads as a sequence of meditational prose poems exploring one extraordinarily sensitive creative mind’s encounter with the … Continue reading →

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Brian Dedora’s profound journey to locate Lorca

Posted on April 21, 2016 by

Brian Dedora. Lorcation. (BookThug 2015). In the third & final section of this remarkable journey to locate Lorca where he lived, & died, & most importantly (mostly) wrote, Brian Dedora (who in Lorcation stands in for himself as writerly I … Continue reading →

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Jenna Butler professes hope in a market garden on the edge of the Boreal Forest.

Posted on April 4, 2016 by

Jenna Butler. A Profession of Hope (Wolsak & Wynn 2015). Subtitled Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail, this collection of essays makes a fervent argument for small organic farming, even as far north as the Southern edge of … Continue reading →

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Don Thompson demonstrates the definitely curious economics of contemporary art

Posted on November 8, 2011 by

Don Thompson. The $12 Million Stuffed Shark (Doubleday Canada 2008). This book, as thoroughly entertaining & as spiritually disheartening as Seven Days in the Art World, takes a much broader view of the high end art world & the economics … Continue reading →

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Sarah Thornton’s sharp as a knife ethnography of the high end art world

Posted on October 24, 2011 by

Sarah Thornton. Seven Days in the Art World (Norton 2008). Sarah Thornton introduces her exhilarating, expansive, & often disheartening ethnographic look at the art world of the early 21st century by telling readers that it ‘is a time capsule of … Continue reading →

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One Alternative: Frank Davey’s story of TISH

Posted on May 11, 2011 by

Frank Davey. When TISH Happens (ECW Press 2011 [$19.95]) Subtitled ‘The Unlikely Story of Canada’s “Most Influential Literary Magazine,’ When TISH Happens is a savvy mixture of memory, archival reconstruction, history, & high quality literary gossip, rendered in Frank Davey’s … Continue reading →

Posted in non-fiction, Poetry | 1 Comment

A not so odd combination

Posted on November 22, 2010 by

Adam Gopnik. Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life (2009). Robert Charles Wilson. Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America (2009). I read these books, together by a strange & as it turned out … Continue reading →

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