Backlist
2006 BOOKS (Click on Titles to Order)
THE EMILY VALENTINE POEMS
poetry by Zoe Whittall
6X6 inches
$10.00 CDN / US
ISBN: 0-9739438-3-1 / 978-0-9739438-3-2
The Emily Valentine Poems, Zoe Whittall’s second collection of poetry, is an innovative book that challenges the impossible notions of femininity that permeate our culture. The texts within include self-portraits, prose poems, fake fan letters and confessional lyric snapshots. These are pharmaceutically enhanced tributes to the hangovers of twenty-something love and to the pop icons from an unconventional 1980s childhood. With The Emily Valentine Poems, Zoe Whittall provides us with the perfect soundtrack for the culturally literate rebel in all of us.
“The only book of poetry I enjoyed this year was Zoe Whittall’s The Best Ten Minutes of Your Life. Everything about this book is pleasing.”
— Geist
“Brave, fun inventive poetry…favoring the emotional and the sensual, these delicate reflections and reinventions create a space where desire and distance combine.”
— Broken Pencil
Zoe Whittall was born in the Eastern Townships of Quebec and is now based in Toronto. She is the author of Bottle Rocket Hearts (Cormorant, 2007), The Best Ten Minutes of Your Life (McGilligan, 2001) and editor of Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws (McGilligan, 2003). She regularly writes cultural criticism for a variety of Canadian magazines.
ROPEWALK
poetry by Angela Carr
6X6 inches
$10.00 CDN / US ISBN 0-9739438-2-3 / 978-0-9739438-2-5
Ropewalk makes an acrobatic journey through the structures of history and language. Reminiscent of the work of Adrienne Rich and Gertrude Stein, Carr’s poems are compelling and challenging. At the core of the book lies a suite of poems that artfully revises the biography of sixteenth-century poet Louise Labé. Carr’s subtle skills bring language, ideas, memory and silences into a brilliant and highly original constellation.
“These poems are fascinating, difficult as stories constructed ‘under customs of cut and paste’ require a different kind of seeing. They meditate on history, dream, and autobiography as woven together, threads in the ropewalk, over which we traverse the abyss of the past, propelled by desire, memory and imagination.” — Mary di Michele
Angela Carr lives in Montreal where she is a contributing editor for Matrix magazine. Ropewalk is her first book.
$10.00 CDN / US
6×6 inches
96 pages
Poetry
ISBN 0-9739438-0-7 / 978-0-9739438-0-1
Jason Christie’s Canada Post interrogates the linguistic imperatives of the communication age and investigates the links between language and nationality with dry, delirious wit. Christie’s poems evidence a frightening, ludic journey from the capital to the outlying punctuation where the familiarity of our nation, language and identity begin to disappear in the cracks and fades of discourse. “Beware of grammar,” these poems advise. “It’ll get you every time.” Shrewdly political, wickedly funny, and fiercely intelligent, Canada Post is an important debut collection.
“Wry poetic trickster Jason Christie points a sharpened stick at Canadian politics, institutions, media and grammar.” — Broken Pencil
Jason Christie is an editor for filling Station. He lives in Calgary.
DREADFUL PARIS
Melissa A. Thompson
$10.00 CDN / US
6×6 inches
88 Pages
ISBN 0-9739438-1-5 / 978-0-9739438-1-8
“I am the dull sister, the matte finish in a family of fine, sparkling things.“
Having written this down on the second-to-last page of a borrowed copy of Art in America, at the age of 26, in the Turkish Delight Specialty Café, Ramona De Lottenville conspires to find her own glittering corner of the world. Further down that same page, Southebys announces the upcoming auction of a collection of rare thaumatropic devices. Cherished by Cheltenham Ladies College since 1887 and now available for public auction, a glorious possibility presents itself to Ramona. Dreadful Paris is a tale of private Mona Lisas, photographic decadence and, above all, distractions of the exquisite sort.
Melissa A. Thompson lives in Montreal, where she works as a researcher. Dreadful Paris is her first book.
