26. Moving Meditation, edited by Lynne Jambor (2021) is an elegant little book graphically, with a layout that suits the content of haiku and senryu about tai chi and chi gong. (Contributor copy.)
27. Liberated Minds: A Close looks at Rastafari beliefs and customs (A Kirk Cornelius Book, 2017) was something I picked up at an Ottawa Small press fair years ago and its 81/2 x 11 size meant it didn’t fit shelves. It is disappointing that is an offshoot of Christianity. I had hoped it was something new. How women are to behave being a few pages look straight out of Mormonism.
28. The Orville #3: Heroes (Part 1 of 2) by David A. Goodman, David Cabeza, Michael Atiyeh (Dark Horse, Dec 2020). I was going to hold out longer but I couldn’t. Nice to see a female protagonist take the lead. Classic hero story of i nvaders enslaving locals.
29. The Orville #3: Heroes (Part 2 of 2) by David A. Goodman, David Cabeza, Michael Atiyeh(Dark Horse, Feb 2021). Spoiler: Xelayan for the win.
30. Line by Line: An anthology of Canadian Poetry, edited and with drawings by Heather Spears (Ekstasis, 2002). I’ve had this book for years. It’s a sweet cross-section of CanLit poets twenty years ago. Partly a game of ooh, look how young Y looks. Nice to see the poems back when too.
31. Life Sentence, by rob mclennan (spuytenduyvil, 2019) is organized by time and each chapter is a departure from the last. As ever, there are hair-raising phrases, “All words lack permanence. So does the stone.” (p. 37) There’s less stammering longer fragments than some of his collections. Still phrases are set near each other to illuminate each other from other angles in a way that prose can’t. The title section has that impressionistic collection of nouns. “First moment, tarmac. Hudson’s Bay, such stripes./Would plant a seed. Sets temperature, a daily. Who are you./Watched pot, boils” but the most interesting part are the last two pages on the provenance of the poems.
32. Marcus Mosiah Garvey: The Black Renaissance 1887-1940 (A Kirk Cornelius Book, 2014). An interesting read. It isn’t as detailed as a wiki entry would be. Big writing. Lots of photos.
33. Quill of the Dove by Ian Thomas Shaw (Miroland, 2019). The genre is political thriller. I don’t know if I’d read that genre before. It wasn’t fast paced. It invokes cultural misogyny but takes a journalists reporting stance. It casts a wide net over politics through decades of Lebanon, Gaza, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Spain and the U.S. with two converging timelines. It was a steep learning curve for me but became handy as the news picked up a Maronite presenting himself as other identities to do sexual assault locally.
34. Nurse Sing Home by Kemeny Babineau (above/ground, 2020). I’m a fan of most of what Kemeny does. This one really sang and goes to the keeper shelf.
35. I Hope we Choose Love: A trans girl’s notes from the end of the world by Kai Cheng Thom (Arsenal Pulp, 2019). I’ve flipped through this at the bookstore a few times when it came out, but it was really rewarding to sit with the book at length. Recommended.