ISBN-10: 1-55192-777-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-551927-77-0
Price: $29.95
Pub Date: March 2005

Now being distributed by Tightrope Books

With this groundbreaking anthology, poets and teachers Kate Braid and Sandy Shreve set out to explore Canadian form poetry. The result is a thrilling collection of 175 poems, over 140 poets from the 18th century to the present day, and 20 distinct poetic forms (sonnets and ghazals, triolets and ballads, epigrams, pallindromes, blues and more) that will appeal to every poetry-lover as well as teachers and students of poetry.

Poets include Bliss Carman, Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, Dennis Lee, George Elliott Clarke, Alden Nowlan, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Molly Peacock, Lorna Crozier, Anne Simpson, Emile Nelligan, Adam Sol, Barbara Nickel, Christian Bok and over 100 more. “No verse is free for the poet who wants to do a good job.” -T. S. Eliot

About The Editors

Kate Braid (Vancouver) is the author of three acclaimed books of poetry. Her books have won the Pat Lowther and VanCity Book Prizes and been shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize. She teaches at Malaspina University-College.

Sandy Shreve (Vancouver) is also the author of three books of poetry. She has received the Earle Birney Prize for Poetry and been shortlisted for the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award and a National Magazine Award for Poetry. She founded Poetry in Transit in BC.

The poetry in Iron-on Constellations defiantly explores the beauty and complexity of the everyday.

Emily Pohl-Weary sifts through the surface dirt, grime and debris of the city to reveal the isolation, illness, love and sexuality lurking beneath. Through short,confident bursts that act like graffiti on an alley wall, her poems reveal hidden layers of emotion and political motivation.

Click for an excerpt from Iron-on Constellations.

Emily Pohl-Weary‘s most recent novel is Strange Times at Western High (Annick Press), a young adult mystery featuring misfit Natalie Fuentes, who solves a crime in her high school. Like the character Natalie, Pohl-Weary’s first publications were in self-published zines titled things like We Have Lives, This City of Faces and Throat Flower.

She went to become a co-editor of Broken Pencil, the guide to zines and independent arts, and eventually to publish her own magazine, Kiss Machine. During Kiss Machine‘s eight-and-a-half year run, it also published an award-winning line of comics by Canadian women writers and artists.

Her first book was the life story of gender-bending science fiction author Judith Merril, Better to Have Loved (Between the Lines). Merril was Pohl-Weary’s grandmother, and she had started the book prior to her death. Pohl-Weary completed it posthumously in the same voice. It won a Hugo Award and was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award.

Selections from her critically acclaimed anthology of writing about female superheroes Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Mutants, Slayers and Freaks (Sumach Press) was an opportunity for 34 writers to analyse and redefine the notion of powerful women. The year it launched, contributors toured 17 cities across North America, doing readings from the book and running superhero makeovers on the audience.

Her novel A Girl Like Sugar (McGilligan Books) is the coming-of-age tale of a girl who’s haunted by her dead rock star boyfriend. Her poetry collection, Iron-on Constellations (Tightrope Books), explores the illness, love and isolation hidden beneath busy urban life. Video artists and stop-motion animators have adapted several of the poems.

Pohl-Weary lives in Toronto with her husband, technology and media analyst Jesse Hirsh. She’s currently working on a new novel, a film script, and is completing a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia.

Featuring twenty-eight works by Canadian authors that encompass everything from madmen and ghosts to poltergeists and spooks, In the Dark offers something for everyone.

Beginning with the introduction right through to the very last piece, the contributors grapple with ghosts and all the other denizens of the unknown in unexpected ways, pinning them to the page with words.

With In the Dark, editors Myna Wallin and Halli Villegas bring together a collection of stories that are by turns witty, eerie and frightening. Every story is as unique as the dark shadows of each writer s imagination, the place where all supernatural stories begin.

Featuring work from Sandra Kasturi, Catherine Graham, JYT Kennedy, JH Korda, Denise E Bolen, Priscila Uppal, Pelayo Mutate, Katharine King, Brett Alexander Savory, Michael Kelly, Suzanne Bowness, John Barlow, Stephen Humphrey, Andrew Leith Macrae, Heather Wood, PG Tarr, Gemma Files, Halli Villegas, Barb Rebelo, Colin Martin, Ewan Whyte, Christopher Caniff, Joanna Sword, Bruce Meyer, Myna Wallin, I Colalillo-Katz, EP Leeson, Ursula Pflug, and Elana Wolff.

Click to read an excerpt from In The Dark.

Halli Villegas has published two books of poetry, Red Promises (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2001) and In the Silence Absence Makes (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2004). Her chapbook, The Human Cannonball, appeared in fall 2005 with Believe Your Own Press. She contributed the piece, “Bond, Jane Bond” to the anthology Girls Who Bite Back, (Sumach Press, 2004) edited by Emily Pohl-Weary. She received 2006 OAC funding for a collection of stories that includes Hair Wreath.

Myna Wallin is an author and editor in Toronto. She is also an organizer and host of the Art Bar Poetry Series. Her first poetry collection was A Thousand Profane Pieces (Tightrope Books, 2006), and 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, Literary Review of Canada, Matrix, Misunderstandings Magazine, Nod, Surface and Symbol, Taddle Creek, and Word: Canada’s Magazine for Readers and Writers.

www.mynawallin.com

The best of the past five years of readers from across Canada at the renowned IV Lounge Reading Series in Toronto.

Grab your martini, the I.V. Lounge is Toronto’s coziest place to kick back and listen to fiction or poetry. For ten years, every other Friday night, thats exactly what has happened at the I.V. Lounge reading series, as fiction writers read alongside poets, emerging talent next to established talent, and local writers with those passing through town.

I.V. Lounge Nights gathers twenty-nine talented writers together to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the series, and relaxing with literature on a Friday night.

Click to read an excerpt from I.V. Lounge Nights.

Featuring work from Steve McOrmond, Alexandra Leggat, Carmine Starnino, Shaun Smith, Evie Christie, Michael Bryson, Rob Winger, Matthew J Trafford, David Livingstone Clink, Alayna Munce, Leigh Kotsilidis, Heather J Wood, Matthew Tierney, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Michael V Smith, Andrew Daley, Sharon McCartney, Goran Simic, Emily Shultz, Catherine Graham, Moez Surani, Molly Peacock, Jessica Westhead, Sue Sinclair, Ray Hsu, James Grainger, Dani Couture, Stacey May Fowles, and Karen Solie.

Myna Wallin is an author and editor in Toronto. She is also an organizer and host of the Art Bar Poetry Series. Her first poetry collection was A Thousand Profane Pieces (Tightrope Books, 2006), and 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, Literary Review of Canada, Matrix, Misunderstandings Magazine, Nod, Surface and Symbol, Taddle Creek, and Word: Canada’s Magazine for Readers and Writers.

Alex Boyd was born in Toronto. He writes poems, fiction, reviews and essays, and has had work published in magazines and newspapers such as Taddle Creek, dig, Books in Canada, The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire and on various websites such as The Danforth Review. His personal site is alexboyd.com. He is co-editor of Northern Poetry Review, a site for poetry reviews, essays, and articles. His first full-length book of poems, Making Bones Walk, is new from Luna Publications.