• View Cart
  • $16.95

    ISBN: 9780889227613 | Paperback

    96 pages | Pub. Date: 20120415
    6 W × 9 H × .5 D inches
    Backlist | Poetry | Bisac: POE011000
    Rights: WORLD

    Or find Liquidities in your local bookstore

Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now gathers many of the poems from Daphne Marlatt’s 1972 Vancouver Poems, somewhat revised or in some cases substantially revised, and follows them with “Liquidities,” a series of recent poems about Vancouver’s incessant deconstruction and reconstruction, its quick transformations both on the ground and in urban imagining.

Vancouver Poems were a young woman’s take on a young, West Coast port city as it surfaced to her gaze in the late 1960s. In these “re-visions,” it remains verbal snapshots, running associations, sounding locales and their passers-through within a shifting context of remembered history, terrain, and sensory experience. Phrases break open in successive instants of perception, moving outward to observation and inward to linguistic play. Irony shifts tonal levels and traces the effects of imported colonial culture paving over local indigenous cultures.

“Liquidities” (from liquid assets, cash): the slower, more introspective rhythms of the city some forty years ago speed up in this new series as wordplay intensifies to verbal collision. Images traffic faster, with quicker jumps through milieu and temporal strata. Forest terrain transforms to high-rise architecture. On edge, littoral, surfacing through the litter it leaves, the city’s genius wavers in and out of focus through its tidal marks of corporate progress and enduring poverty.

“Everything Marlatt has published is instinct with caring, intelligence, and a feel for technical innovation.”
– Ken Adachi

“Marlatt’s language conveys a rich sensuality, a sensibility honed to a fine edge.”
– Judith Fitzgerald

By Daphne Marlatt

Daphne Marlatt was at the centre of the West Coast poetry movement of the 1960s, studying at UBC and with many of Donald Allen’s New American Poets, most notably Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan. Her writing includes prose narratives on the Strathcona neighbourhood of Vancouver and of Steveston and several poetry books. In early 2006, she was appointed to the Order of Canada in recognition of a lifetime of distinguished service to Canadian culture.

Read more about Daphne Marlatt


news | 2020-05-19
Daphne Marlatt reads for SpokenWeb

…in 1972. Check it out! Want to read more? Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now gathers many of the … substantially revised, and follows them with “Liquidities,” a series of recent poems about Vancouver’s …


news | 2015-02-19
Today on the Mountain: the Daphne Marlatt Archive Inauguration

…in an hour to hear Daphne Marlatt read from Liquidities and other works to celebrate the library’s …


news | 2014-12-27
2014 ReLit Award Nominations

…in the Novel category, and Marlatt’s Liquidities and Del Bucchia’s Coping with Emotions and …


news | 2014-01-15
Lunch Poems with Daphne Marlatt and Jordan Scott Delight

…latest book of poetry published with Talon is Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now , and she chose a …


news | 2013-06-05
Meta-Talon: Quill & Quire Reviews Daphne Marlatt’s Liquidities

…review of Daphne Marlatt’s latest book of poetry, Liquidities (Talonbooks, 2013). We republish this review by …


news | 2013-05-28
Video: Daphne Marlatt Reads at the Talonbooks Spring Poetry Launch in Vancouver, 2013

…Daphne Marlatt reads from Liquidities , which launched in Vancouver in April. The full …


news | 2013-04-03
Talonbooks Launches Five New Poetry Titles for Spring!

…Janes, To the Barricades by Stephen Collis, and Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now by Daphne Marlatt. …


news | 2013-03-15
Urban Change, Urban Unrest!

…To the Barricades and Daphne Marlatt’s Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now , with both echoing … the commune is reconvened in Vancouver’s streets. Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now gathers many of the … substantially revised, and follows them with “Liquidities,” a series of recent poems about Vancouver’s …


news | 2013-02-21
Daphne Marlatt at Scrivener's Monthly in March!

…Daphne Marlatt reading from her new book of poems Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now at the Western … substantially revised, and follows them with “Liquidities,” a series of recent poems about Vancouver’s …


news | 2012-05-11
Daphne Marlatt Receives Lifetime Achievement Award

…pleased to announce that Daphne Marlatt’s Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now will be appearing …