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The third in a series that launched to excitement and acclaim in 2009, The Best Canadian Essays 2011 covers an impressive variety of topics. New series editor, Christopher Doda, and guest editor, Ibi Kaslik, infuse the series with a breath of fresh air—selecting insightful and provocative essays from Canadian magazines that range from personal insights on post-partum depression, a pro-smoking diatribe, and an appreciation of the great opera singer Maria Callas to pieces on “wage slavery”, the plight of zoo elephants, Canada’s ongoing war in Afghanistan and much more. The Best Canadian Essays 2011 exemplifies the outstanding quality and stunning diversity of Canadian nonfiction writing today.

About the Guest Editor

Ibi Kaslik is an internationally published novelist, freelance writer, and teachers. Her most recent novel, The Angel Riots, is a rock’n'roll comic-tragedy and was nominated for Ontario’s Trillium award in 2009. Her first novel, Skinny, was a New York Times Bestseller and has been published in numerous countries. A native of Toronto, Ibi teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies and works as an art educator for youth.

About the Series Editor

Christopher Doda is an award-winning critic, editor, and poet. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Among Ruins (2001) and Aesthetics Lesson (2007). His poems and reviews have appeared in journals and magazines across Canada and he was an editor at Exile: The Literary Quarterly for five years. He is currently the review editor for the online journal Studio.

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The outstanding success of The Best Canadian Poetry in English series continues in 2011 with guest editor Priscila Uppal.

The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011 proudly continues a series that kicked off with a bang in 2008 and thrives under the stewardship of esteemed editor Molly Peacock and a different acclaimed poet guest editor each year.

This year Priscila Uppal chose the fifty best Canadian poems published in Canadian online and print literary journals in 2010. With this anthology, readers– often baffled by the proliferating poems and poets– are able to tap into the remarkable and vibrant Canadian poetry scene.

About the Guest Editor

Priscila Uppal is a poet, novelist, and York University professor. Her publications include Ontological Necessities (shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize), Traumatology, Successful Tragedies (Bloodaxe books, UK), Winter Sport: Poems (written as Canadian Athletes Now poet-in-residence for the Olympic and Paralympic Games) the novels The Divine Economy of Salvation and To Whom It May Concern, and the study We Are What We Mourn: The Contemporary English-Canadian Elegy. Time Out London recently dubbed her “Canada’s coolest poet.” Visit priscilauppal.ca

About the Series Editor

Molly Peacock is the author of six volumes of poetry, including The Second Blush; a memoir, Paradise, Piece by Piece; and a one-woman show in poems, “The Shimmering Verge.” She is a contributing editor of the Literary Review of Canada and a faculty mentor at the Spalding MFA Program. Her latest work of nonfiction is The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delaney Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, which was nominated for BC’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.

Praise for The Best Canadian Poetry series

“Some of us can only afford a half a dozen or so subscriptions to literary magazines, so the publication of The Best Canadian Poetry in English, now in its third year, is a welcome event.”
- Maxianne Berger, Rover Arts

“This would be an excellent book for the academic and the casual poetry fan who wants to dust off the rust in their CanLit poetry ligaments.”
- Michael Peckham, Broken Pencil

“The collection is a unique glimpse at a diversity of poets, from Ottawa’s David O’Meara to Margaret Atwood to the reverend P.K Page.”
- Cormac Rae, Ottawa Xpress

A selection of essays that demonstrates the outstanding quality and stunning diversity of Canadian nonfiction writing today.

The second in a series that launched to excitement and acclaim in 2009, The Best Canadian Essays 2010 covers an impressive variety of topics. Editors Kamal Al-Solaylee and Alex Boyd have selected insightful and well-written essays from Canadian print and online magazines published in 2009. Last year’s edition tackled an array of issues, including life with a child with Asperger’s, the last days of a Montreal convent, the devastation of the Alberta tar sands, and the state of Canadian theatre. This year’s anthology is no different in its reflection of the depth and breadth of contemporary Canadian nonfiction writing.

Click here to read an excerpt from The Best Canadian Essays 2010.

Praise for The Best Canadian Essays 2009:

“The individual contributions in Best Canadian Essays 2009 transcend simple reportage and reach the level of art. Each one has something distinctive and informative to say. Take heed.”
—Jennifer Curtis, Quill & Quire

“I should say, I am quite excited by, and envious of, Tightrope’s vision in putting together this and other ‘Best Of’ anthologies. I’d thought of doing something similar, and never got around to it, daunted by the task. I think they should be congratulated, as these volumes fill much needed voids, and have been handled in a very professional and engaging fashion. I’ll be picking up a copy and urge you handful of Thirsty readers to do the same. These are publications we should support in any way possible.”
—Dan Wells, Biblioasis

About the Guest Editor

Kamal Al-Solaylee is an assistant professor at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism. He’s a former theatre critic for the Globe and Mail and has written for the National Post, Elle Canada, Canadian Notes & Queries, and Report on Business. He holds a PhD in Victorian literature from the University of Nottingham in England and is currently writing his first book, Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes (HarperCollins Canada), due in 2012.

About the Series Editor

Alex Boyd lives in Toronto. He writes poems, fiction, reviews, and essays, and has had work published in magazines and newspapers such as Taddle Creek, Books in Canada, Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, The Antigonish Review and on websites such as The Danforth Review, and Nthposition. He booked and hosted the I.V. Lounge Reading Series in Toronto for five years, and edits the online journal Northern Poetry Review. His personal site is alexboyd.com, and his first book of poems, Making Bones Walk, won the Gerald Lampert Award in 2008.

The outstanding success of The Best Canadian Poetry in English series continues in 2010 with guest editor Lorna Crozier.

The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2010 proudly continues a series that kicked off with a bang in 2008 under the stewardship of esteemed series editor, Molly Peacock, and inaugural guest editor, award-winning poet Stephanie Bolster. The 2009 edition was expertly curated by A.F. Moritz, winner of the 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize. And this year, Lorna Crozier has chosen the fifty best Canadian poems published in Canadian literary journals and magazines in the preceding  year. With this anthology, readers—often baffled by proliferating poems and poets—will be able to tap into the remarkable and vibrant Canadian poetry scene, checking out the currents—and cross currents—of poetry in a volume distilled by a round robin of distinguished editorial taste.

Click to read an excerpt from the Best Canadian Poetry in English 2010.

Featuring work from Ken Babstock, John Barton, Anne Compton, Allan Cooper, Mary Dalton, Barry Dempster, Kildare Dobbs, Don Domanski, Glen Downie, Sue Goyette, Rosemary Griebel, Adrienne Gruber, Jamella Hagen, Steven Heighton, Warren Heiti, M.G.R. Hickman-Barr, Maureen Hynes, Michael Johnson, Jim Johnstone, Sonett L’Abbe, Evelyn Lau, Katherine Lawrence, Ross Leckie, Tim Lilbum, Dave Margoshes, Jim Nason, Catherine Owen, P.K. Page, Rebecca Leah Papucaru, Marilyn Gear Pilling, Leonore and Beth Rowntree, Armand Garnett Ruffo, Lori Saint-Martin, Peter Sanger, Robyn Sarah, Eleonore Schonmaier, David Seymour, Melanie Siebert, Sue Sinclair, Karen Solie, Nick Thran, Carey Toane, Anne-Marie Turza, Paul Tyler, Patrick Warner, Zachariah Wells, Patricia Young, David Zieroth, and Jan Zwicky.

Praise for The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008:

“Lovers of poetry should buy this volume: read some good poems, and encourage the future of this series.”
—Rover Arts

Praise for The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2009:

“This would be an excellent book for the academic and the casual poetry fan who wants to dust off the rust in their CanLit poetry ligaments.”
—Michael Peckham, Broken Pencil

“If poems outside Moritz’s personal aesthetic are understandably absent, the chosen fifty, presented alphabetically from Atwood to Zwicky, are in no way devoid of delights, and my notes record many remarkable moments.”
—Maxianne Berger, Rover Arts

“The collection is a unique glimpse at a diversity of poets, from Ottawa’s David O’Meara to Margaret Atwood to the revered P.K. Page.”
—Cormac Rae, Ottawa Xpress

About the Guest Editor

Lorna Crozier has received numerous awards for her fourteen books of poetry, including the Governor-General’s Award-winning Inventing the Hawk. She has also edited anthologies, among them Desire in Seven Voices and, with Patrick Lane, Addicted: Notes from the Belly of the Beast and two anthologies of new Canadian poets, Breathing Fire 1 and 2. Her most recent book is Small Beneath the Sky: A Prairie Memoir. She has read her work in every continent except Antartica and last year a collection of her poems translated into Spanish was published in Mexico City. She lives in Saanich, BC, and teaches and serves as Chair in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria.

About the Series Editor

Molly Peacock is the author of six volumes of poetry, including The Second Blush (McClelland & Stewart, 2009), Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems (W.W. Norton) a memoir Paradise, Piece by Piece, and a one-woman show in poems, “The Shimmering Verge” produced by Louise Fagan Productions (London, Ontario). She has been series editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English since 2007, as well as a contributing editor of the Literary Review of Canada and a faculty mentor at the Spalding MFA Program. Her poetry, published in leading literary journals in North America and the UK, is widely anthologized. Her latest work of nonfiction is The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72 (McClelland & Stewart, 2010).

Price: $21.95
Pub Date: 2008

This collection of graphic poems brings together eighteen works that fall somewhere between a graphic novel and poetic verse.

Participating authors reside across the country and include Derek Beaulieu, Christian Bok, Stacey May Fowles and Marlena Zuber, Tim Gaze, Jake Kennedy, Mark Laliberte, Donato Mancini, Kevin Mcpherson Eckhoff, Gustave Morin, Marc Ngui, Paola Poletto, Daniel Scott Tysdal, Jen Pickering, and Sally McKay.

Their poems tackle the broad topic of boredom: Is boredom a symptom of the absence of love? Does it suggest our present task is too easy?

Inside, graphic doesn’t always trump poetry and thus the ultimate tug of war is in the most captivating sense a real yawnyarn between word and image. We like images and we like words.

With epigonic respect to Dada and concrete poetry and with of-the-moment admiration for the graphic novel we’d like to think (we do think!) editors Jake Kennedy and Paola Poletto have collected something other. They are also flatlanders, mandalas, leg chewers, leaf-shakers, dogs, televisions, bricks, calligraphy, typefaces, remote controls, emblems, tazers, lightning bolts, hotels, and sinking cities. All of them sticking intrepidly an unwavering index into the hirsute gargoyle ear-well of boredom.

Click to read an excerpt from Boredom Fighters.

Jake Kennedy is a poet, prose writer, and teacher. His work has appeared in a number of literary journals and anthologies. His chapbook, Hazard, is published by BookThug. Jake currently teaches in the English Department at Okanagan College.

Paola Poletto is an arts administrator, mixed media and installation artist, writer and curator. Artist-led projects have included Kiss Machine Magazine (co-founding publisher since 2000), Inflatable Museum (on-line exhibit 2001-2004), Girls and Guns (travelling exhibit Toronto-London, 2003; Budapest-Albania-Montenegro & Serbia, 2004), and Robot Landscapes (exhibit Toronto, 2004). She is senior director of programs at Design Exchange, Canada’s national centre for design (www.dx.org), where she oversees youth programs, professional programs, exhibitions, museum collection and research. She is also the director of digifest (www.dx.org/digifest), a festival of design and media culture produced by Design Exchange in partnership with the Ontario Science Centre and Harbourfront Centre.

The poems in Bone Dream are darkly sensuous, capturing the unspoken moments of life through images firmly grounded in the body and the material world.

Relationships, family and death are explored at times through the medium of a dancers body, and at other times through the everyday artifacts we find around us. These poems move, disturb and bring us to realization.

Click to read an excerpt from Bone Dream.

Moira MacDougall is the assistant poetry editor of The Literary Review of Canada. She has had poems published in literary magazines and journals across the country. This is her first book length collection.

From a long list drawn from Canadian literary journals and magazines, award-winning poet A.F. Moritz, the volume’s guest editor, has chosen 50 of the best Canadian poems published in 2008.

With this anthology, readers, often baffled by proliferating poems and poets, will be able to tap into the remarkable and vibrant Canadian poetry scene, checking out the currents – and cross currents – of poetry in a volume distilled by a round robin of distinguished editorial taste.

Featuring work from Margaret Atwood, Margaret Avison, Ken Babstock, Shirley Bear, Tim Bowling, Asa Boxer, Anne Compton, Jan Conn, Lorna Crozier, Barry Dempster, Don Domanski, John Donlan, Tyler Enfield, Jesse Ferguson, Connie Fife, Adam Getty, Steven Heighton, Michael Johnson, Sonnet L’Abbe, Anita Lahey, M Travis Lane, Evelyn Lau, Richard Lemm, Dave Margoshes, Don McKay, Eric Miller, Shane Neilson, Peter Norman, David O’Meara, PK Page, Elise Partridge, Elizabeth Philips, Meredith Quartermain, Matt Rader, John Reibetanz, Robyn Sarah, Peter Dale Scott, Cora Sire, Karen Solie, Carmine Starnino, John Steffler, Ricardo Sternberg, John Terpstra, Sharon Thesen, Matthew Tierney, Patrick Warner, Tom Wayman, Patricia Young, Changming Yuan, and Jan Zwicky.

Click to read an excerpt from The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2009.

About the guest editor:
A native of Niles, Ohio, A.F. Moritz has lived in Toronto since graduating from Marquette University in Milwaukee in 1974. He teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Toronto. His poetry has received the Award in Literature of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as Canada Council, Guggenheim Foundation and Ingram Merrill Foundation fellowships. He has translated books by Ludwig Zeller including In the Country of the Antipodes: Selected Poems 1964 – 1979 and The Ghost’s Tattoos.

About the series editor:
Molly Peacock is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems, published by Penguin Canada, and by W.W. Norton in the US and UK. She is the Poetry Editor of the Literary Review of Canada. Before she emigrated to Canada in1992, she was one of the creators of Poetry in Motion on the Buses and Subways in New York City, and she served as an early advisor to Poetry On The Way. Peacock is also the author of a memoir, Paradise, Piece by Piece, published by McClelland and Stewart, and of a book about poetry, How To Read A Poem & Start A Poetry Circle, also published by M & S. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the Globe and Mail. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and the TLS. Recently she toured with her one-woman show in poems, The Shimmering Verge produced by the London, Ontario based company, Femme Fatale Productions. She lives in Toronto with her husband, Michael Groden, an English Professor at the University of Western Ontario. Her website is: mollypeacock.org.

Compiled from dozens of Canadian magazines by two award winning authors, this collection of essays covers a diverse range of topics by Canadian writers.

By turns these essays move and excite the reader and help shape Canadian cultural consciousness.

Featuring work from Alex Boyd, Carmine Starnino, Kalam Al-solaylee, Katherine Ashenburg, Kris Demeanor, Jessa Gamble, Nicholas Hune-Brown, Chris Kontges, Anita Lahey, Alison Lee, Nick Mount, Denis Seguin, Chris Turner, Lori Theresa Waller, Nathan Whitlock, and Chris Wood.

Click to read an excerpt from The Best Canadian Essays 2009.

Carmine Starnino has published four books of poetry, the most recent of which is This Way Out (Gaspereau Press) nominated for the 2009 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. His poems have won the F.G. Bressani Literary Prize, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award. He the author of A Lover’s Quarrel, a collection of essays on Canadian poetry, and the editor of The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry. A new collection of his poetry criticism is forthcoming from Biblioasis in 2011. He lives in Montreal, where he edits Maisonneuve magazine.

Alex Boydis the author of poems, fiction, reviews and essays and has work published in magazines and newspapers such as Taddle Creek, dig, Books in Canada, The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire and on various sites such as the late Danforth Review. He was the host of the IV Lounge Reading Series from 2003 to 2008 when the series closed its doors. He’s co-editor of the online jouirnal Northern Poetry Review, and his first book of poems Making Bones Walk was published in 2007 by Luna press, winning the Gerald Lampert Award.

In this gritty first novel by Stacey May Fowles, a group of Canadian twenty-somethings wrestle with sex, love, and lies. Each character has a distinct persona made of secrets and deceptions, which is shattered by the end of the book.

Set against the acutely drawn urban landscapes of Montreal and Vancouver, Morgan and Hannah struggle to navigate the maze of love affairs, failed relationships, obsessions, and departures from the familiar.

Deftly shifting perspective from the innocent and idealistic Hannah to the streetwise and damaged Morgan, to their friends and the men in their lives, Be Good eloquently exposes the lies we tell ourselves and others in order to cope with life and reveals the ongoing alienation and isolation of a world where the only reliable narrator is the future.

Click to read an excerpt from Be Good.

Stacey May Fowles‘ written work has been published in various magazines and journals, including Shameless Magazine, Kiss Machine, and subTERRAIN . Her non-fiction writing has been anthologized in the widely acclaimed Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and First Person Queer. Be Good is her first novel.

From a long list of one hundred poems drawn from Canadian literary journals magazines, this year’s guest editor, award winning poet Stephanie Bolster, has chosen fifty of the best Canadian poems published in 2007.

With this anthology readers, baffled by proliferating poems and poets, can for the first time tap into the remarkable and vibrant Canadian poetry scene.

Readers are invited to explore the currents and cross-currents of poetry in a distinguished volume distilled by a round robin of esteemed editorial taste.

Featuring work from Maleea Acker, James Arthur, Leanne Averbach, Margaret Avison, Ken Babstock, John Wall Barger, Brian Bartlett, John Barton, Yvonne Blomer, Tim Bowling, Heather Cadsby, Anne Compton, Kevin Connolly, Meira Cook, Dani Couture, Sadiqa de Meijer, Barry Dempster, Jeramy Dodds, Jeffery Donaldson, Susan Elmslie, Jason Guriel, Aurian Haller, Jason Heroux, Iain Higgins, Bill Howell, Helen Humphreys, Amanda Lamarche, Tim Lilburn, Michael Lista, Keith Maillard, Don McKay, AF Moritz, Jim Nason, Peter Norman, Alison Pick, E Alex Pierce, Craig Poile, Matt Rader, Michael Eden Reynolds, Shane Rhodes, Joy Russell, Heather Sellers, David Seymour, J Mark Smith, Adam Sol, Carmine Starnino, Anna Swanson, Todd Swift, JR Toriseva, and Leif E Vaage.

Click to read an excerpt from The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008.

About the editors:

Molly Peacock is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. She is the Poetry Editor of the Literary Review of Canada. Before she emigrated to Canada in1992, she was one of the creators of Poetry in Motion in New York City, and she served as an early advisor to Poetry On The Way. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the Globe and Mail, and her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and the TLS. She lives in Toronto.

Stephanie Bolster’s first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems, won the Governor General’s Award and the Gerald Lampert Award in 1998. She has also published Two Bowls of Milk, which won the Archibald Lampman Award and was shortlisted for the Trillium Award. Her work has appeared in literary journals internationally and has also garnered her the Bronwen Wallace Award, the Norma Epstein Award, and The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize. Her several chapbooks include, most recently, Biodme and Past the Roman Arena. Raised in Burnaby, B.C., she now lives in Montreal, where she teaches in the creative writing programme at Concordia University.