A startling and original new voice that owes as much to Black Flag and Bikini Kill as it does to J.D. Salinger and Heather O’Neill.

A South African copywriter is transplanted to the urban jungle of Manhattan. A recovering rape victim tries to resume a normal life. A Toronto nurse cuts herself to fill her emptiness. In Got No Secrets, Danila Botha takes us into the private lives of twelve different women, with only one question in mind: What if these women were you? From addiction to abuse, from childhood to suicide, from Hillbrow, Johannesburg, to downtown Toronto, Botha’s prose is compassionate, provocative, often funny, and always fearless.

Danila Botha was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She volunteered with Na-me-res, an organization benefiting the homeless, which inspired many of the stories in Got No Secrets. Her writing has appeared in 24 Hours, Yoink! Magazine, and NOW. She lives in Halifax.

ISBN-13: 978-1-926639-08-6
ISBN-10: 1-926639-08-1
$18.95

Fearless and insightful poems that illuminate one woman’s experience of chronic illness, relationships and gender identity, and solitude.

Anna Swanson’s poetry leads you through a life that tries to deal with a misunderstood illness, a gradual acceptance of one’s sexuality, and a sometimes onerous relationship with nature. Her writing is as honest as it is complex, and it attempts to reconcile an identity that has been distorted by illness through a profound analysis of memory and individual meaning. With poems that run the gamut from fearful to the absurd, that are at once deep and pithy, Anna Swanson proves in The Nights Also that she is a brave new voice in Canadian poetry.

Anna Swanson studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her poetry has appeared in PRISM International, The Antigonish Review, The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008, and numerous other literary journals. She has paid the rent by planning festivals, selling books, serving drinks, making maps, walking on stilts, bowling with teenagers, writing press releases, and watching for forest fires. She now lives in Vancouver, BC, and works as a children’s librarian.

Praise for The Nights Also:

“There are the nights, yes, but in this startling debut collection ‘each day is a / thin steel catwalk of light’ and ‘the sun makes its arc across the mouth’ . . . Each word and image is freshly forged. The poems are smart, original, and daring, the footwork so assured that Anna Swanson dances with the future with no missteps. This is a strong new voice that reaffirms my faith in the heartbeat and vision that poetry can give us.”

—Lorna Crozier

“As meditations on illness, these are extraordinary—sad, undermining, and, sometimes, spiked with a sense of humour.”

—Tim Lilburn

“ ‘Oh dear body,” Anna Swanson writes in her impressive debut collection, “How did we get here?” How indeed? Throughout The Nights Also, Swanson asks: What does it mean to be frail and human. What is illness? Health? Gender? Memory? Love? And though Swanson doesn’t (thank God) arrive at any definitive answers, her skill and delight in exploring life’s mysteries and complexities are palpable. These poems—intelligent, passionate, and beautifully executed—announce the arrival of a gifted poet, one I hope we’ll be hearing from for years to come.

—Patricia Young

ISBN-13: 978-1-926639-13-0
ISBN-10: 1-926639-13-8
$14.95

Ian Burgham once again presents poems of compassion that celebrate all manner of the heartland’s hazards and risks.

In his third collection of poetry, The Grammar of Distance, Ian Burgham writes from his gut and his heart. His imagery is, by turns, sensuous and rough-hewn, soft and hard. The poems crackle with sonic energy; they whinny and stamp. They whistle in the dark. His poetic landscapes frequent the windswept coasts of Scotland; but in this collection, we also find him doing terribly Canadian things like snowshoeing, surveying, chopping wood. Sometimes Al Purdy can be heard in Burgham’s voice and, occasionally, Patrick Lane. His penchant for storytelling and Celtic elegiac moods makes him a solid candidate for the position of poetic counterpart to Alistair MacLeod. Like all strong poets, Burgham’s imagination breaks past borders. Tribal and intense, his poems are conversations with loved ones, lost ones, and all the poets with storms in their bones. They are feisty. They rant. They grieve. They celebrate. Burgham is a thinker, a philosophical poet, a restless soul who asks big questions.

Ian Burgham is an associate of the League of Canadian Poets. Born in New Zealand, raised in Canada, he has lived and worked for extended periods of time in both New Zealand and Scotland. He studied literature at Queen’s University and at the University of Edinburgh. He worked as an editor for Canongate Publishing and later became publisher of Macdonald Publishing in Edinburgh. He has previously published two collections of poetry, A Confession of Birds, a chapbook published in the UK in 2004, and The Stone Skippers, published in 2007 by Tightrope Books and nominated for the 2008 Relit Award. He currently divides his time between Toronto and Kingston. In 2004-5 Burgham won the Queen’s University “Well-Versed” Poetry Award. His work has been published in many Canadian literary journals including Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2 (CV2), The New Quarterly, The Literary Review of Canada, Queen’s Quarterly, dANDelion, Harpweaver, Precipice, Jones Avenue, and Ascent Aspirations.

Praise for The Stone Skippers:

“… a voice you don’t want to miss.” —Di Brandt

“ … concision, leanness and directness …”—A.F. Moritz

“rare and remarkable … the work of one who has the ear for the possibilities of language …”—Alexander McCall Smith

Ian’s poetry has also been integrated into jewelery by artist Jeanine Payer. View the beautiful creations on Jeanine’s website: www.jeaninepayer.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-926639-09-3
ISBN-10: 1-926639-09-X
Price: $16.95

Poems that reflect the individual’s experience in the urban jungle, combining observation and insight that every city dweller will recognize.

The city, at once benevolent and indifferent to its residents, is the inspiration for this debut collection of poetry by Suzanne Bowness. In the first poem, a young woman arrives in the big city, where “in the beginning, anonymity is everywhere,” and wonders what her life there will bring. Using this new arrival as her starting point, Bowness moves on to develop urban themes of anonymity and collectivity alongside individualist themes of freedom, loneliness, and growing self identity. Part private reflection, part love letter to the metropolis, The Days You’ve Spent pulls back the curtain on city life, finding beauty in neon signs and profundity in laundromats. In these poems, the individual and the city interweave, and urban immersion becomes an essential element in personal growth.

Suzanne (Sue) Bowness is a writer and editor whose poems have appeared in the Literary Review of Canada and Pagitica. Her play The Reading Circle won first place in the 2006 Ottawa Little-Theatre One-Act Playwriting Competition. She is pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Ottawa with a focus on nineteenth-century Canadian magazines.

ISBN-13: 978-1-926639-10-9
ISBN-10: 1-926639-10-3
$14.95

Sex is casual, but conversation is a serious matter in the outrageous adventures of this contemporary cougar.

In Myna Wallin’s second book, a reluctant cougar tells all. She feasts on young men of all kinds, in a world where sex isn’t dirty but love is coated in grime. In these raucous short stories, she runs the gauntlet of men, including a Harley-riding bikini salesman, a semiotics professor, a foot fetishist, a jaded brand consultant, a homeless man, and a bisexual mime. Written with Wallin’s signature wit, this semiotics of dating is given a postmodern twist.

Myna Wallin is an author and editor born and living in Toronto. She is also an organizer and host of the Art Bar Reading Series. Myna’s first full-length poetry collection, A Thousand Profane Pieces, was published in 2006 by Tightrope Books. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The Algonquin Square Table Anthology, Contemporary Verse 2, Existere, Eye Weekly, Kiss Machine, In the Dark: Stories from the Supernatural, the Literary Review of Canada, Matrix, Nod, and Rampike. She recently received an Honourable Mention from Contemporary Verse 2 for their 2009 2-Day Poem Contest. Myna also hosts “In Other Words” on CKLN, where she has been interviewing authors since 2004. After receiving her MA in English Literature from the University of Toronto, Myna taught Effective Writing at George Brown College for several years. For Tightrope she has edited Sandra Kasturi’s The Animal Bridegroom, Phoebe Tsang’s Contents of a Mermaid’s Purse, and co-edited I.V. Lounge Nights with Alex Boyd.

Praise for A Thousand Profane Pieces:

“Wallin’s book is exhilarating: a dollop of sugar-coated acid. Its subtitle should be, Love and the Older, Single Woman: The persona has been hurt, has snapped back, but vows her vulnerability … The tone? Ms. Sylvia Plath Atwood: Satire and Cynicism for the Discriminating Reader. Wallin’s wit exudes wisdom and wrath. Perfect.”
—George Elliott Clarke

ISBN-13: 978-1-926639-11-6
ISBN-10: 1-926639-11-1
$18.95

Handy with a paintbrush and a gun, Viktor Mitic’s provocative art has people all over the world talking about his take on war, religion, and politics.

Artist Viktor Mitic is making headlines in Canada and the UK with his controversial gunshot paintings, which feature portraits of celebrities (Quentin Tarantino, John Lennon), iconic religious figures (Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary), and famous works or art (The Last Supper, Guernica) outlined in bullet holes. Shocked by recent occasions when places of worship were attacked and destroyed; for example, the defacement of Christian frescoes by soldiers and villagers in Kosovo, Mitic explains that his goal is to use weapons in his art to create rather than to destroy. Guns are naturally perceived with uneasiness, and the image of an artist shooting a painting of an iconic figure carries an intense psychological impact; however, the juxtaposition of beauty constructed out of violence in Mitic’s paintings generates an unexpected feeling of tranquility. In his own words, “Although the process is very loud, there is a sense of peace after the smoke is gone.” The fifty works of art presented in this book will be accompanied by writing by ten distinguished Canadian authors, including Lynn Crosbie and Gary Michael Dault.

Viktor Mitic was born in Belgrade, Serbia. A University of Toronto graduate artist, classically trained in art schools in Europe, Mitic has produced a major body of work that spans a career of over two decades. For a number of years, he was painting non-representational paintings using natural elements such as rain and hail to render surfaces of the paintings in oils on canvas. Mitic has successfully integrated various materials into his recent body of work: charcoal, graphite, oil, acrylic, watercolour, pen and ink, and japanese traditional natural pigment. Viktor’s first book, Dealers: 36 Portraits of Toronto’s Art Dealers, was published by Tightrope in 2009.  He has had many successful solo and group shows of his paintings in Europe, the United States, Canada, and, most recently, Japan. Viktor Mitic lives in Toronto.

Ewan Whyte is a writer and translator. He has written for the Globe and Mail and the Literary Review of Canada. His short stories, poetry, translations, and reviews have been published in literary journals and magazines, and he has read his translations of Catullus on public radio in the US. His translation of the poetry of Catullus was published in 2004. He is currently finishing a novel and translating the complete poetry of Horace.

Praise for the paintings of Viktor Mitic:

“Sometimes he’s right on and sometimes he’s not . . . Some of it is smartass, some of it is mischievous, but that’s art too.”
—Charles Pachter, Globe and Mail, USA Today

“Provocative art with religious connotations.”
—Peter Goddard, Toronto Star

“Serious painting, but it’s fun . . . there is levity to it.”
—Terry Graff, Telegraph Journal

[He's] taken . . . an iconic religious image and used a gun on it . . . What next?
—Mark Coles, BBC

ISBN-13: 978-1-926639-15-4
ISBN-10: 1-926639-15-4
$21.95

Bookstore owner Otherwise meets the beautiful Etcetera one afternoon when she comes into his store. They begin a fantastical erotic road trip that will last twenty-eight days. While travelling they meet characters such as The Marketer, a man who markets the most remarkable goods, and the waitress that falls into the fat fryer and is eaten by the Fat Friar. As Otherwise falls deeply in love, the mystery of Etcetera grows, until at the end of twenty-eight days, his questions are answered, including the most important of all, do you love me?

Sean Stanley grew up in the woods of Northern Ontario.

Kristi-Ly Green (Illustrator) lives in Christie-Ossington. Her book of short stories, Nits (Exile, 2000), was short-listed for the 2001 ReLit Awards. Her work has appeared in Exile, the Scrivener, Fireweed, the New Quarterly, and Room of One

ISBN – 10:0978335163
ISBN – 13:9780978335168

$18.95 CAD

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 doesnt always trump poetry and thus the ultimate tug of war isin the most captivating sensea real yawnyarn between word and image. We like images and we like words. With epigonic respect to Dada and concrete poetryand with of-the-moment admiration for the graphic novelwed 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.

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 (traveling exhibit Toronto-London, 2003; Budapest-Albania-Montenegro & Serbia, 2004), and Robot Landscapes (exhibit Toronto, 2004). She is senior director of programs at Design Exchange, Canadas national center 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.

ISBN – 10:0978335155
ISBN – 13:9780978335151

21.95 CAD

DOWN WITH ARBOREAL THOUGHT! // A Steel Bananas Project

“…the reliability of GULCH is the space it provides for new visions, new styles and new writers.”
- Rabble Magazine

“Refreshing, bursting with energy, and well worth a look”
- Stephen Cain

“Gulch plays with the idea of collaboration and does it well, with a buffet of new and exciting work from today’s up and coming talent.”
- Broken Pencil Magazine

Inspired by the contemporary theories of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, GULCH: An Assemblage of Poetry and Prose is a rhizomatic exploration of the modern Canadian literary community. Drawing on the postmodern themes of detachment and disjuncture, GULCH seeks to create an optimistic snapshot of the pluralities and complexities that constitute the post-pomo literary landscape. Focusing on the theme of fragmentation, Steel Bananas members Sarah Beaudin, Karen Correia Da Silva and Curran Folkers have collected pieces from community artists, Professors, lit students, burgeoning young talent as well as established writers in order to compile a collection that resists the notion of wholeness, privileging instead the multiplicity and diversity found in contemporary globalized culture. This assemblage of poetry and prose bares the innovation and cultural critique of post-millennium Canadian writers, and seeks to expose the beauty of discontinuity.

Steel Bananas is a collective of artists and writers documenting and exploring the arts and contemporary theory from critical Canadian perspectives. Established in 2008, the online arts and culture zine is dedicated to publishing young, creative, diverse, sincere and analytical perspectives on contemporary art and Canadian urban culture, as well as showcasing the work of bourgeoning young members of the Canadian artistic and academic communities.

http://www.steelbananas.com

ISBN – 10:1926639073
ISBN – 13:9781926639079

18.95 CAD

Carla Drysdale’s poems in Little Venus challenge the reader, tackling the hard subjects of child abuse, sexual exploitation and the failure of some families. The character of Little Venus runs through the poems burning with rage and want in an incendiary chant that the reader can’t ignore. Little Venus is a haunting collection that will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.

Carla Drysdale was born in London, Ontario and was educated at Ryerson university in Toronto as well as Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Her poems have appeared in Canadian and US journals, including the Literary Review of Canada, Canadian Literature, the Fiddlehead, Global City Review, Confrontation and LIT. She lives in Geneva, Switzerland with her husband and two sons.

ISBN – 10:1926639049
ISBN – 13:9781926639048

14.95 CAD