Sandra Ridley’s latest book, Silvija, is a sequence of five feverish elegies which combine narrative lyric and experimental verse styles to manifest dark themes related to love and loss: the traumas of psychological suffering (isolation and confinement), physical abuse (by parent and partner), terminal illness (brain tumour and heart attack), revelation, resolution, and healing. Pulsing […]
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BookThug authors are always busy. Whether they’re promoting their latest book, performing at readings, giving interviews, writing new material, or managing the rest of their lives, they are always on the go. But even so, they still find time to constantly devour great new reads. If you’re looking for your next summer read, here are […]
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From award-winning poet, and our own senior poetry editor, Phil Hall, comes his latest collection of poetry, Conjugation. The term “conjugation” refers to more than the obvious grammatical movement of pronouns through time (I am / you are / they will be). For, in Biology, it also refers to the transfer of information between cells. Conjugation sees an […]
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Looking for the perfect book for your loved ones this holiday season? The BookThug Team is here to help! For Your Best Friend Pauls by Jess Taylor features ten poignant stories about different men and women named Paul as they love, lose and yearn. There is something for everyone in this critically-acclaimed debut which Heather […]
Continue readingAn obsessive perfectionist, Samuel Andreyev inhabits several worlds: he writes in English while living in France; he is an internationally known composer, performer, and teacher; and he is an experimental poet who documents words, phrases, and rhetorical devices while staying true to the fundamental tools of classical poetry. A 49th Shelf “Most Anticipated 2015 Fall […]
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From Steven Ross Smith, one of Canada’s preeminent sound poets, comes Emanations: fluttertongue 6, the latest installment in Smith’s ongoing life-poem series. Emanations: fluttertongue 6 marks Smith’s return to verse form, while being a further engagement with composition by sound and its visual placement on the page. In poems that “emanate” from specific works by other poets (including bpNichol, […]
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The fall book season has arrived, and cities far and wide will soon be abuzz with literary festival fun. Starting this month, BookThugs will be popping up at book festivals and fairs across the country. Following, we’ve compiled this helpful guide to find your local literary event and the BookThugs who’ll be attending. A BOOKTHUG’S GUIDE TO THE FALL 2015 LITERARY […]
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Summer reading is a distinctly marked species in the great genus Reading: a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work. Surly study has its dignities and claims: stiff-backed, hard-seated study, that makes no luxury of books, but quarries them, and digs or blasts material for solid uses. But there must also be […]
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The lyrics populating Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie‘s new collection, the pet radish, shrunken, buzz with oblique wisdom and surgically sharp wit. Cicadas chirp from beneath the troposphere; secret agent squirrels conspire among the peonies at sunset; revelatory reversals and unfamiliar aphorisms grow like wild flowers. Playing on themes of love and relationships, future-politics of the English language and the current […]
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Meet the amazing women of BookThug. In honour of International Women’s Day 2015, we’ve put together a recommended reading list of contemporary women writers, both emerging and established, we think you need to read. These 13 brilliant and fierce women push at boundaries in unexpected ways, and take you, the reader, to places you never […]
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