news | Friday March 21, 2025

Today Is World Poetry Day!

March 21 is World Poetry Day! Talonbooks has had the pleasure of working with tremendous poetic talent since its inception as Talon, a high school literary journal in 1963. To celebrate World Poetry Day this year, we’ve put together a reading list of collections from our backlist that are well worth a read, a re-read, and a shout out.

1. hypoderm: notes to myself by Weyman Chan

Weyman Chan’s 2010 poetry collection hypoderm: notes to myself is a manifesto of observations, intimations and recognitions of mortality that get under the poet’s skin—that remind the reader that poetry is documentation and speculation, not a sentimental fabrication of the rapture (rupture) of our “end times.” hypoderm was shortlisted for the 2010 W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize. Pick up your copy here.

2. page as bone – ink as blood by Jónína Kirton

Death, desire, and divination are the threads running through Jónína Kirton’s debut collection of poems and lyric prose. Delicate and dark, the pieces are like whispers in the night – a haunted, quiet telling of truths the mind has locked away but the body remembers. Loosely autobiographical, these are the weavings of a wagon-goddess who ventures into the double-world existence as a mixed-race woman. In her struggle for footing in this in-between space, she moves from the disco days of trance dance to contemplations in her dream kitchen as a mother and wife. Order your copy here.

3. breth /th treez uv lunaria by bill bissett

breth presents both new and selected poems from legendary Canadian sound, visual, and performance poet bill bissett. bissett’s innovations have shaped poetry, music, painting, and publishing and have stimulated, provoked, influenced, shocked, and delighted audiences for half a century. breth includes more than a hundred illustrations and visual poems, many of them appearing in print for the first time. Get your copy here.

4. PERFACT by Nicole Raziya Fong

PERFACT is a series in three parts, beginning with an interrogation into the structure of experience, language, and identity. The title poem, “PERFACT,” is an approach to materiality and consciousness in which each intersect, partaking in a coded interchange. This interchange precedes the stage play, 物の哀れ (“mono-no-aware,” an untranslatable Japanese term which might be expressed as an empathy or awareness of things), a “dark night of the soul” whose dramatic interchange leads a feminine “I” inwards and back again, countering the coherence of singular identity with the threat of sublimation. This mystical junction makes way for “MINE,” a lineated poem presenting a disassociated clarity marked by absence, survival’s persistent interlude. Pick up your copy here.

5. full-metal indigiqueer by Joshua Whitehead

It’s always a good time to revisit Joshua Whitehead’s full-metal indigiqueer. This poetry collections focuses on a hybridized Indigiqueer Trickster character named Zoa who brings together the organic (the protozoan) and the technologic (the binaric) in order to re-beautify and re-member queer Indigeneity. This Trickster is a Two-Spirit / Indigiqueer invention that resurges in the apocalypse to haunt, atrophy, and to reclaim. Following oral tradition (à la Iktomi, Nanaboozho, Wovoka), Zoa infects, invades, and becomes a virus to canonical and popular works in order to re-centre Two-Spirit livelihoods. They dazzlingly and fiercely take on the likes of Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and John Milton while also not forgetting contemporary pop culture figures such as Lana Del Rey, Grindr, and Peter Pan. Zoa world-builds a fourth-dimension, lives in the cyber space, and survives in NDN-time – they have learned to sing the skin back onto their bodies and remain #woke at the end of the world. Order your copy here.

6 Music at the Heart of Thinking: Improvisations 1–170 by Fred Wah

The music of thinking. The thinking of music. Music at the Heart of Thinking is a poetry that works through language as the true practice of thought and improvisation as the tool that listens to and notates thinking. The poetics that generates these texts arises out of a lifelong poem project that has its roots in the long poem genre of the ’80s and its interest in the resistance to closure and the containment of meaning characteristic of the lyric. This collection was shortlisted for the 2021 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Get your copy here.

7. The Place of Scraps by Jordan Abel

The collection that won the 2014 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, The Place of Scraps, revolves around Marius Barbeau, an early-twentieth-century ethnographer, who studied many of the First Nations cultures in the Pacific Northwest, including Jordan Abel’s ancestral Nisga’a Nation. Drawing inspiration from Barbeau’s canonical book Totem Poles, Jordan Abel explores the complicated relationship between First Nations cultures and ethnography. His poems simultaneously illuminate Barbeau’s intentions and navigate the repercussions of the anthropologist’s actions. Pick up your copy here.

8. Wayside Sang by Cecily Nicholson

Cecily Nicholson’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry–winning collection Wayside Sang concerns entwined migrations of Black-other diaspora coming to terms with fossil-fuel psyches in times of trauma and movement. This is a poetic account of economy travel on North American roadways, across Peace and Ambassador bridges and through the Fleetway tunnel, above and beneath Great Lake rivers between nation states. Nicholson reimagines the trajectories of her birth father and his labour as it criss-crossed these borders in a study that engages the automobile object, its industry, roadways and hospitality, through and beyond the Great Lakes region. Order your copy here.

9. Rom Com by Dina Del Bucchia and Daniel Zomparelli

At precisely the cultural moment you were hoping for, a dream team of smart, sexy, brunette, West Coast poets of Italian descent has passionately co-authored an intelligent collection of poetry that both celebrates and capsizes the romantic comedy. How to tell if you are compatible with this book: Are you equally versed in literature and pop culture? Are you a film-savvy fan of contemporary poetry? Are you an academic with interest in literature and cultural studies? Are you in general a cool, sad person? This book might just be the sassy best friend you’ve wanted. Get your copy of Rom Com here.

Happy Poetry Day to all of the poets and poetry lovers! May your day be full of verse, form, line, metaphor, and words that make you Feel Things.

news | Wednesday March 19, 2025

Dale Martin Smith Longlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize!

Dale Martin Smith, author of Flying Red Horse, has been longlisted for the 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize for his poetry collection The Size of Paradise (knife | fork | book)! Check out the complete longlist here. A huge congratulations to Dale!

news | Tuesday March 18, 2025

Interview with Oana Avasilichioaei

Erín Moure interviews Oana Avasilichioaei about her new hybrid poetry collection Chambersonic! Watch their discussion here.

news | Tuesday March 18, 2025

Talonbooks Titles on Read Local BC

Read Local BC has put out a list of titles that will offer a wonderful shake up to your TBR pile. No Signal No Noise by A Jamali Rad and Withrow Park by Morris Panych are among the titles recommended to diversify your reading list. Check out all of their suggestions here.

news | Saturday March 15, 2025

Wet in BC BookWorld

Susan Sanford Blades reviews Wet by Leanne Dunic in BC BookWorld. Blades calls the collection “Direct and unsentimental … an accessible and thought-provoking balm.”

Read the full-page article here on page 31.

news | Thursday March 13, 2025

Talonbooks Titles Featured for Women's History Month

Wonderful to see Standing in a River of Time by Jónína Kirton, Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali, and The Boys’ Club: The Many Worlds of Male Power by Martine Delvaux, translated by Katia Grubisic on Read Local BC’s list of books to read in honour of Women’s History Month. See all of their recommendations here.

news | Wednesday March 12, 2025

Behind the Moon One of The Georgia Straight's Theatre Critics' Picks

The Touchstone Theatre presentation of Behind the Moon by Anosh Irani is in The Georgia Straight’s theatre critics’ picks. Of the play, Vicki Duong says “Marking its Vancouver debut, Behind the Moon blends humour and emotional depth in a portrait of displacement and belonging.

Check out all of the recommended performances here.

news | Tuesday March 11, 2025

Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer Reviewed in Stir

Trudie Lee

Angie Rico reviewed The Cultch’s presentation of Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer: A Trickster Land Claim Fable by Kevin Loring in Stir.

An excerpt from the article: “And sure enough, our narrator’s cheeky smile throughout says it all. The most obvious Trickster, maybe, but definitely not the only one, as the play itself moves with the same irreverence—throwing expectations off course and finding the joke in every turn.”

Read the complete piece here.

news | Monday March 10, 2025

Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer in Pancouver

Charlie Smith talks with Kevin Loring about Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer in Pancouver. The pair talk about the play’s central concepts and the striking story that inspired Loring to write Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer in the first place. Read the complete article here.

news | Saturday March 8, 2025

Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month, and today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. It’s the perfect opportunity to express our gratitude to the women whose shoulders we stand on and to those now squaring up their own shoulders. To celebrate Women’s History Month, here are just a handful titles by brilliant women working in poetry, in fiction, in memoir, and in drama that we’d love to recommend.

1. The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin & Kitimat: Two Plays for Workers by Elaine Ávila

Discover how Canada got the eight-hour workday! Visit the first town to vote on Big Oil! The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin recreates the events surrounding the mysterious death of Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, who led a strike at a Canadian zinc smelter in Trail, BC, that brought the WW I British war machine to a halt. In Kitimat, residents of an industry town in the glorious BC wilderness struggle to decide between economic prosperity and environmental protection when they must vote yes or no to a proposed oil pipeline. Pick up your copy here.

2. Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali

Forthcoming this spring is Hajer Mirwali’s debut book, Revolutions. Revolutions sifts through the grains of Muslim daughterhood to reveal two metaphorical circles inextricably overlapping: shame and pleasure. In an extended conversation with Mona Hatoum’s artwork + and –, Revolutions asks how young Arab women – who live in homes and communities where actions are surveilled and categorized as 3aib or not 3aib, shameful or acceptable – make and unmake their identities. Pre-order your copy here.

3. Grazie by Lucia Frangione

Grazie is Lucia Frangione’s first novel. When Graziana’s violent stalker dies in a car crash, the abrupt news and its resulting catharsis land her in hospital. Her eight-year-old, the willful and creative Hazel, suddenly becomes the ward of Grandpa “Grumpy” Herman, while her mother embarks on a necessary path to healing – a path that includes a pilgrimage to Italy to bike the famous Via Francigena. Get your copy of Grazie here.

4. allostatic load by Junie Désil

Junie Désil’s new poetry collection is arriving in April! allostatic load navigates the racialized interplay of chronic wear and tear during tumultuous years marked by global racial tensions, the commodification of care, and the burden of systemic injustice. Moving between diaristic intimacy and the remove of news reportage, Désil’s second poetry collection invites readers to hold the vulnerability and resilience required to navigate deep healing in a world that does not wish you well and where true restoration and health must co-occur with the planet and with each other. Pre-order your copy here.

5. Uiesh / Somewhere by Joséphine Bacon, translated by Jessica Moore

Hot off the press! The dual-language edition of Uiesh / Somewhere in Innu-aimun and English has just hit the shelves! The poems in Uiesh / Somewhere are rooted in Innu Elder Joséphine Bacon’s experiences of moving between the nomadic ways of her Ancestors in the northern wilderness of Nitassinan and the clamour of the city. From her quiet centre, she listens to the voices of the Old Ones, whose stories are alive within her, and reflects on the beauty and the pain of her long life. Order your copy here.

6 They Called Me Number One by Bev Sellars

Like thousands of Indigenous children, Xatsu’ll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. In this frank, powerful, and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph’s Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school’s lasting effects on her and her family—from substance abuse to suicide attempts—and shares her own path to healing. Purchase your copy here.

7. The Boys’ Club by Martine Delvaux, translated by Katia Grubisic

The Boys’ Club examines the history of gentlemen’s clubs and male fraternity in this devastating wide-reaching study of patriarchy. Delvaux lays bare the brazen misogyny of boys’ clubs across many fields, including media, politics, technology, law enforcement, architecture, and the military. Examining popular media produced by men about men, The Boys’ Club exposes a culture of consumption which profits off female experiences while disregarding female voices. Pick up your copy here.

8. cop city swagger by Mercedes Eng

Investigating whose safety really matters in the most expensive city in the nation, cop city swagger conducts a threat assessment of Vancouver’s police. Holding close lived and living connections to the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown neighbourhoods, Eng juxtaposes the police’s and the city’s institutional rhetoric with their acts of violence against marginalized people, presenting a panoramic media montage of structural harm and community care. Order your copy here.

9. Crowd Source by Cecily Nicholson

Forthcoming this spring, Crowd Source parallels the daily migration of crows who, aside from fledgling season, journey across metro Vancouver every day at dawn and dusk. Continuing Nicholson’s attention to contemporary climate crisis, social movements, and Black diasporic relations, this is a text for all concerned with practising ecological futurities befitting corvid sensibilities. Pre-order your copy here.

We are proud to work with women who dig their heels in, who refuse to cooperate with oppressive systems, and who continue to push creative boundaries with their brilliance, their vision, and their words. We’re grateful for the sharing of stories and ideas, the lighthearted and the serious alike. Happy Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day! We wish you good reading.