news | Wednesday April 2, 2025

You're Invited to the Talonbooks Spring 2025 Launch

You’re invited to celebrate the new spring releases from Talonbooks! Please join us at the Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall on Friday, May 23, to welcome the following books to the world:

allostatic load by Junie Désil
Crowd Source by Cecily Nicholson
Future Works by Jeff Derksen
Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali and
Uiesh / Somewhere by Joséphine Bacon, translated by Jessica Moore!

The launch will be hosted by andrea bennett, author of the berry takes the shape of the bloom.

The Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall is wheelchair and scooter accessible. There is a parking lot behind the venue in the alley between East 3rd and East 4th Avenues. Attendance is free! Snacks and drinks will be served. A live stream will be available on the Talonbooks YouTube channel. See you there!

Talonbooks Spring 2025 Launch
Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall
1955 McLean Drive
Vancouver, BC
May 23, 2025
Doors open at 7:00 p.m.; readings begin at 7:30 p.m.

news | Thursday April 24, 2025

An Interview with Stephen Collis

Photo Credit: Dana Graham Lai

Rebecca Saloustros chats with Stephen Collis about A History of the Theories of Rain and The Middle.

From the article: “Collis acknowledges that one of the reasons we keep hurting the Earth is because of our disconnection from it. However, that disconnection doesn’t come from being stuck in an office all day away from hiking trails. Instead, it comes from seeing ourselves in isolation and thinking everything revolves around us, which Collis sees as detrimental. Instead, he’d like us to place ourselves in the “context of the wider web of life” all the time. Thus, he chose migration and displacement as his central theme in The Middle.”

Enjoy their conversation here.

news | Tuesday April 22, 2025

Crowd Source on CBC Books

The new poetry collexction Crowd Source by the award-winning author Cecily Nicholson is featured on CBC Books’ article on Canadian books to read for Earth Day!

Rich with Nicholson’s exceptional poetic attentions, Crowd Source is a text for all concerned with practising ecological futurities befitting corvid sensibilities.

View all of CBC Books’ recommendations here.

news | Tuesday April 15, 2025

Wet in MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing

Alexa Cho reviews Wet by Leanne Dunic in MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing.

Of the collection, Cho writes: “Wet does not hold back in explaining all the ways gentrification and labor exploitation hurt Singapore’s citizens. Numerous short vignettes and poems are simply the narrator living her life, but she constantly witnesses heart-wrenching moments in the process. … Wet is replete with dynamic and original forms of storytelling, breaking barriers between genres and incorporating images to visualize what cannot be described.”

Read the complete piece here.

news | Sunday April 13, 2025

An Interview with Jeff Derksen

BC BookWorld interviews Jeff Derksen about his poetry journey to date and his latest collection, Future Works.

From the interview:

“BCBW: You are also involved in the visual arts community. How does that intersect with your written poetry?

JD: In any of the cities I’ve lived in—Vancouver, Nelson, Calgary, New York, and Vienna (Austria)—I’ve always been part of those two communities—artists and writers—and that sparked a lot of friendships and collaborations. … Being part of two communities in that way, I’ve never felt like an isolated or solo poet and the ideas and dynamics of contemporary art have definitely shaped how I write poetry and how I think about poetry in the world. For me, it has been communities of writers and artists and others who have influenced my work, more than an individual writer.”

Read the complete piece here.

news | Friday April 11, 2025

Wet Named a Finalist for the 2025 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize

A huge congratulations to Leanne Dunic whose poetry and photography collection Wet is a finalist for the 2025 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize!

In Wet, a transient Chinese American model working in Singapore thirsts for the unattainable: fair labour rights, the extinguishing of nearby forest fires, breathable air, healthy habitats for animals, human connection. In photographs and language shot through with empathy and desire, Wet unravels complexities of social stratification, sexual privation, and environmental catastrophe.

You can view all of the titles shortlisted for the 2025 BC and Yukon Book Prizes here. Congratulations to all of the finalists!

news | Thursday April 10, 2025

allostatic load Has Arrived!

Great news! allostatic load, the second poetry collection by Junie Désil has arrived! 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. allostatic load invites readers to hold the vulnerability and resilience required to navigate deep healing in a world that does not wish you well, in a world that is inflamed and consequently inflames us, in a world where true restoration and health must co-occur with the planet and with each other.

From “he has beautiful flowering trees this elder neighbour”:

“one time he dropped by with fresh-caught
salmon
sweet sun-ripe plums and plump fragrant
blackberries
purple mulberries that stain
lips and fingers
in my previous life i scheduled acquaintances
and loved ones
like appointments – i couldn’t handle spontaneity
and here a neighbour
happily unknowingly interrupts a work Zoom call
to hand me
this bounty of local seafood and fruit”

Moving between diaristic intimacy and the remove of news reportage, allostatic load is a triumph. Pick up your copy here.

news | Wednesday April 9, 2025

Four Talon Titles on CBC Books

National Poetry Month gallops on, and all around us, much like the magnolias, poetry collections are blossoming. We were excited to see four of our spring 2025 titles featured in a CBC Books article about must-read poetry collections arriving this season. As the folks at CBC Books would say, be sure to check out allostatic load by Junie Désil, Crowd Source by Cecily Nicholson, Future Works by Jeff Derksen, and Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali!

Peruse all of CBC Books’ recommended titles here.

news | Wednesday April 9, 2025

It's Arab American Heritage Month!

April is Arab American Heritage Month! To mark the occasion, we want to recommend some recent titles to enrich your to-be-read pile.

Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali arrives this month! Mirwali’s debut book 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. Working between a Palestinian and Iraqi poetics drawing from artists like Mahmoud Darwish and Naseer Shamma and a feminist Canadian poetics inspired by Erín Moure, M. NourbeSe Philip, and Nicole Brossard, Revolutions spirals and collapses as we turn and re-turn around its circles.

An excerpt from “Meeting + and –: January 18th”:

“On the plane Mama asks if xxxxxxx has a
boyfriend. We are two women talking about
a girl we are worried for. We eat the halal
meal. We scroll past a photo on Instagram
think how ugly that girl’s shoes are. We sleep on our shoulder. We feel our warmth
doubling. We forget our obligation to split.”

Pre-order your copy of Revolutions here.

Released in February of 2024, Speaking Through the Night: Diary of a Lockdown March–April 2020 by Wajdi Mouawad and translated by Linda Gaboriau is a glorious demonstration of Mouawad’s unparalleled ability to turn a phrase. While isolating in the early days of the pandemic, Mouawad embarks upon a spectacular inner voyage, travelling from his own microcosm to the eye of the Big Bang. We follow him from Peter Handke’s office to his father’s retirement home, from the banks of the Saint Lawrence to Montréal, Greece, Greenland, and the Lebanon of his childhood. Through Kafka and Star Wars, by way of French phonetics and the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, he explores the razor’s edge of madness, conjures a dream shared by all humanity, and probes the bestiality of our everyday lives.

An excerpt from Speaking through the Night:

‘My father, like so many others, doesn’t fear confinement as much as he fears solitude at the moment of his death. War, it’s true, had accustomed my father to solitude. For years on end, having stayed in Lebanon to continue working while we were in Paris, then in Montréal, he had to learn to cope with unhappiness. For years, much later when I would stop by to visit him, I often asked him about those terrible years. He always avoided the question, finding clever ways to change the subject and bring me back to the question of money, his favourite subject. But as the years went by, with the onset of old age, illness, and the prospect of death, his heart opened and he began to speak more openly, freed from the sclerosis of shame that had restrained him for such a long time. “How did you manage on your own during the war, Papa? When the bombing was so intense, not only was it impossible to leave the house but it was impossible to communicate with us or with anyone? Internet didn’t exist, cellphones didn’t exist, and the phone lines were always down. So what did you do?…” I think I asked him that question every Sunday for ten years. And one day, instead of dismissing the question with his usual answer, “I don’t know. What do you expect me to say?! That’s how it was, there was no way around it. What do you think we could do? I don’t know. How can you expect me to remember? Stop asking me these questions, yallah khalas!”…One day, instead, he started to laugh and he said: “You won’t believe it, but I’ll tell you anyway, and you can use it for one of your plays and you’ll stop thinking your father’s an idiot and it will be a great comedy.”’

Pick up your copy of Speaking through the Night here.

Happy Arab American Heritage Month! As ever, we wish you great reading.

news | Sunday April 6, 2025

Crowd Source Has Landed!

Hold onto your feathers, folks, because Crowd Source by the award-winning poet and current Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry at the University of California, Berkeley Cecily Nicholson has landed! 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.

An excerpt from Crowd Source:

“blooms of soot an everyday Newtonian wash
southern sky at dusk this city late summer

rooks taken flight in a low-end concert theory
of a widely distributed family

the designation of songbirds includes the position
of feet, unconcerned strides like no other

stride street hop lessons well in the anatomy
vocal areas moving as water sheds shores

onto Still Creek independent muscle controls
either side syrinx folds produce different sounds

in theory two different songs that is
two impressive vocal repertoires at the same time”

If you’d like to kick off your National Poetry Month with some tour de force poetry, pick up your caw-py of Crowd Source here.

news | Saturday April 5, 2025

Hot Off the Press! Open House Has Arrived!

Get ready, because the latest play by the award-winning author, playwright, and documentarian Drew Hayden Taylor has arrived! Open House is a dark comedy that follows an African Canadian man, a Chinese Canadian man, and a Jewish/Indigenous lesbian couple hoping to find their dream home in a red-hot housing market. They all show up to an open house run by a white settler real estate agent. Each potential buyer feels most deserving of the prize. When a police incident outside traps them together in the house, debate erupts over which of their cultures has faced the most discrimination and exclusion. Passions run high and opinions clash.

An excerpt from Open House:

“NED
If she’s so hands-on about all this, why isn’t she here?

ADRIAN
Selling our house in Vancouver. This kind of thing is more
her thing. I’m not really a details person, as she so frequently
points out.

NED
Vancouver. Got too many relatives there. One of the reasons
why I live here. You two moving here?

ADRIAN
I’m already here, renting a very small and rather expensive
studio for the moment. You?

NED
Just divorced. Or freed. It’s just a matter of semantics. Looking
for a place to call my own. I was going to go condo, but I don’t
know. Spent my whole life either in apartments or condos.
Wanted to try something a little different. I mean … who can
argue with a lawn? Love that tree out front. Must be amazing in
the fall. (looking around) Yeah, I can have a lot of fun here.

ADRIAN
Fun? Who buys a house for fun?

NED
Life is full of phases. This is my buy-a-house-and-have-
fun phase.

ADRIAN
Hey, I’m sure you’re your own guy, but aren’t you a little old for
that kind of attitude?

NED
Au contraire, I was raised to be old. In the Chinese community,
there are always obligations. Family, cultural, social, etc. It’s
a long story, but those obligations are never-ending and can
quickly age you. So now I am in the process of de-obligating
myself. (toasting) To the art of de-obligating.”

With wry humour, Open House deftly navigates current conversations about oppression, colonization, and middle-class aspirations. Order your copy here.