news from the feminist caucus, by anne...

News from the Feminist Caucus, by Anne Burke A postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University is currently researching the LCP Feminist Caucus Living Archives Series in the context of a larger project on Canadian feminist literary collectives! And this month, news from Sharon Singer on ISIS AND OSIRIS, an opera and Katerina Fretwell on Class Acts; Rusti Lehay, Ronald Kurt, Barbara Mitchell, Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck, Ky Perraun and Danielle Zyp on The Book of women's Mysteries and One Man's Confusion; reviews of poetry books children of air india, by Renée Larojini Saklikar, Light Light, by Julie Joosten; The sea with no one in it, (from proofs) by Niki Koulouris; another new series on "Mothering" forthcoming from Demeter Press. Dear Anne Burke, I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University. I am currently researching the LCP Feminist Caucus Living Archives Series in the context of a larger project on Canadian feminist literary collectives. Lesley at the League of Canadian Poets suggested that I might contact you to ask about locating archival material related to the Living Archives series. I have been accessing all of the chapbooks via inter-library loans and the Feminist Caucus newsletters available on-line have also been helpful. But I'm wondering about additional material. The 2008 Inspiratrices chapbook mentions a potential collaboration with the National Archives: did that actually work out? Are there materials housed anywhere else? I'm thinking particularly of extra information about the founding of the Feminist Caucus, recordings of panel proceedings, photos, information about editing the Living Archives, older newsletters... anything, really! I look forward to hearing from you! Sincerely, Andrea Beverley Dr. Andrea Beverley 2013-2015 FQRSC postdoctoral fellow with the Centre for Canadian Studies. Dr. Beverley holds a PhD in Etudes anglaises from the Université de Montréal. Her area of research is Canadian women's writing and transnational feminism. Her postdoctoral project focuses on feminist literary collectives in Quebec and English Canada.

Quoting "A. Burke" <[email protected]>: Thank you for your interest in the Feminist Caucus. We collect archival materials on all the chapbook titles and panels. The League deposit is at the National Archives in Ottawa (with National Library). We also have made deposits for the Feminist Caucus. They contain the materials you mention. I'm not sure if they produced a finding aid or not. I am attaching some of the correspondence which initiated this interesting project. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to assist you in your research. You don't say when you began the work but my reports are archived annually and I have access to most of them. Dear Anne, Thank you very much for your prompt and helpful reply! I will certainly contact the National Archives; (truth be told, I actually had sent them an inquiry but when I didn't hear back, I became impatient and contacted the League directly.) I am just beginning this particular part of the research project and am really enjoying reading through the chapbooks chronologically. I am interested in the founding and self-definition of the Feminist Caucus and in the concept behind the Living Archives series. I am also interested in how the chapbooks remember the panels they grew out of, and the trajectory of these conversations over the past 30+ years. Fascinating! Anyhow, thanks again for the information. Andrea Review of children of air india: UN/Authorized Exhibits And Interjections, by Renée

Larojini Saklikar (Gibons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2013) 128 pp. paper. The “Introduction” to this collection about the tragic airline bombing of Air India Flight 182 establishes poetry as “weaving fact with the fiction”, the poet-persona, “N”, an elegiac essayist, embracing both lies and truth. The elegy is a formal and sustained lament for the death of an individual, usually ending in consolation. This dirge or threnody for the world is an expression

of grief on the occasion of an individual’s death but is short, less formal, and may be a text to be sung. It also ranks as a monody, because the “I” of the author represents the merging of subject-voice with object-voice. The opening poem “Elegy for Courtroom 20, Vancouver Law Courts” sets the scene. “N’s eyewitness account” reflects the perspective of someone who lost “her” aunt and uncle. Another source is the Court Services, 2003 record (at least what has not been “redacted”).

In Part One “N” is seen to be imposing meaning on fragments, “Dissonance. Time and its dimensions–”, among them. The inventory of passengers, much like the weather conditions, and daily life events overwritten by criminal contexts are blended by a conscious choice of words and phrases. This new historicism constructs, rather than discovering, ready-made, the textual meanings the poet describes, in addition to the literary and cultural events she narrates. Hence, “There is no history”, without revealing discontinuities, breaks, and ruptures, between the past and present. This (mis)appropriation of texts reflects both the near incoherence and the subjectivities shaped by circumstances, discoveries, and discourses. “Until the world ends, end us.” Using interjections and interruptions, (“un/authorized”) exhibits, “Status: Mother’s body found. Child missing.” Some of the situational contexts are “on the cusp, become centre/a gyre.” Part Two delves into and devolves from autopsy records, clichés about grief and crimes, the archival weight of time, individuated experiences, of mother, sister, daughter, still so much “Status unknown.” A boy’s recovered body, post-detonation, from a coroner’s report. Testimony about dozens of dead sharks. A lesson in anatomy based on “attire”, “list”, “verbs”, “objects”, and “song”. Part Three offers a continuance for various interveners, a state of “flying-remembering-forgetting”; agencies and roadblocks resemble so much “flotsam and jetsam”. Murdered women and their (eighty-two) children are nearly innumerable and nameless. One of the invocations to the muse is on the basis of “women of Prince George, women of Vancouver, women of Ciudad Juarez”, and “women of North America”. Their spirits and messages about atrocities possess a common language. Dimensions of past and present, “in the after-time, always, there is the before—”. The censor is multi-lingual. “What kind of daughter refuses all songs?” Yes, “I get older. I am her only child.” The poet creates a hymnal from acronyms, the text resembling wall paper patterns, more indecorous decor. “Voir Dire” is a courtroom term referring to the presentation of evidence. In this instance, “to see and to speak” refers to a singing tale, “the future unheard.” The saga called “Air India” contains a binary of tricksters, not limited to government, journalism, Hollywood, the legal profession. For each informant, about the Air India Inquiry, the poet repeatedly remarks, “Another version of this moment exits.” Part Four transcripts, terms of reference, the British Empire, subaltern-sutra, and Dominion Day ultimately mean “nothing”. “I was one of the few women hired”. A woman sits in a vehicle hired to do surveillance on a man, “about his explosives”. Pilgrimage involves perjury, errata, a morning raga, a catechism, and the man who lied nineteen times. All of them are signifiers, totemic, emblematic. For Part Five even this page is transformed as a site of research. Memory-muscle blesses us, after (in)direct testimony by mother-father-daughter-daughter, son, and husband. “Status: mother and daughter deceased”: dissonance, unheard melody, against explosion, disintegration. In “Mother and Daughter”, second-person narration commands our attention. Indecision or inaccuracy, and, perhaps, second-thoughts, are indicated (a crossing-out of “alive”, closely followed by uppercase “Alive”). Now the “after-time”

state revisits each singular event, involving notifications about “unreal people”. For certain “It wasn’t/just brown people, you know”. There are concrete elements about place (for example “Quebec” is crossed out.), as well as a possible, “one true Book of Records”. However, the evidence is certainly unreliable. For instance, “any / information I share is subject to whatever mistakes you will make” (irrelevant). “in my court there is (no) room for error” (irony). “no ocean like time, no ocean like time.” The prescient collection ends with an incomplete conclusion, spiralling backwards, “For an Afterword That Might Be Read as a Preface”, with recollections, “Days later: and his

words stay with me.” The poet asserts the primacy of craft: Write the names all the way through. Write them down. In writing there is redaction, redact. That is the burning that is the body. The book contains a list of “Sources Consulted”, dossiers, newspaper clippings (1985-2011), and translations, respecting the imprimatur of the Commission of Inquiry, while upending the entire process, with email correspondence and conversations. The “Acknowledgements” are wide-ranging; an early version of this manuscript “Part One” appeared in Ryga: a journal of provocations, No. 5, 2012. The dedication is most poignant, including “for my mother and for my sister, with “we never speak of it” crossed out, followed by “for Irfan–”. This is a debut collection, in part, based on a lifelong poem chronicle about her life from India to Canada (thecandaproject.wordpress.com). Long poems and fiction from the chronicle have been shortlisted for national awards. She presented an excerpt from the elegiac sequence about Canada/Air India at the Association of Cultural Studies conference in Paris, July 2012. She contributed “fragments from the canadaproject–Air India/Stanley Parks, Exhibit: June 23, 1985” to Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British

Columbia, edited by Susan Musgrave (Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2013), p. 322. Anne Burke

Hello my friend, As you are no doubt aware, for the past few years I have been writing the text for ISIS AND OSIRIS, an opera set in ancient Egypt. My composer Peter-Anthony Togni is currently at work on the musical score. You can read all about it at www.ariaworks.ca In order to fund the composer, I am having a fundraiser on December 2 at Heliconian Hall. Ticket information and more details will be emailed and posted shortly. In the meantime SAVE THE DATE until you hear more about the concert and the fabulous giveaways at that event. Thanks for your interest. All best, Sharon Singer. 416-461-0750 sharonsinger.com ariaworks.ca

facebook.com/isis.osiris.opera http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sharon-singer/1a/128/188 SAVE THE DATE Come celebrate the birthday of ISIS AND OSIRIS A New Canadian Opera

Composer Peter-Anthony Togni Librettist Sharon Singer and the Toronto launch of Peter-Anthony Togni’s

CD “PIANO ALONE” CONCERT and FUNDRAISER Monday December 2, 2013 7:30 PM HELICONIAN HALL 35

Hazelton Avenue

LIVE OPERA, LIVE JAZZ and LOTS OF SURPRISES You are invited to our

FIRST EVER FUNDRAISER FOR ISIS AND OSIRIS

Cocktail reception with birthday cake

opera and jazz performances

silent auctions, giveaways and more!

FIRST TORONTO LAUNCH of

Peter-Anthony Togni’s new CD PIANO ALONE

Guest artists to be announced.

TICKET INFORMATION AND MORE DETAILS WILL BE EMAILED AND

POSTED SHORTLY

www.ariaworks.ca

www.operainconcert.com

For more information email [email protected]

Review of Light Light, by Julie Joosten (Toronto: Book Thug, 2013) 120 pp. paper In this collection there are feminist renderings, of Anna Atkins (1799-1871), a first female photographer, combined with the healing power of touch, breath/wind/air as invisible, indivisible spirit. Indeed, the cyanotypes of various Latin genus ferns are culled from Atkins’

Photographs of British algae: cyanotype impressions (1843-1853). The poet dares to entitle four poems alike. The first references Zhuangzi (circa 370-286 BCE) about purification rituals, incremental repetitions, a diurnal round of withdrawal which paradoxically passes for openness, a classic stance for poets. This Old Woman is, not surprisingly, a shape shifter. (p. 18) The second “Wind Scene” alludes to the anorectic feminist poet Simone Weil (see: Sara Klassen’s homage collection) in a bold gesture, At times the very first words tear my thoughts from my body and transport it to a place outside space where there is neither perspective nor point of view (p. 26) This collection, at some level, is very Romantic (Keats’s negative capability), based on a letter to his artist friend Joshua Reynolds (the third “Wind Scene”), beauty dissolves identity down to its components of feeling, especially “an idea of the Morning” and “‘a sense of idleness’” (p. 71)

The fourth and final “Wind Scene” begins with Agnes Martin’s comment on her painting, “Morning” to the effect that each of her works possesses a difference in meaning, much as the poet has accomplished. The poetry, much like the artist’s grid work, is about feeling, but does so beyond daily efforts, because “It moves in the realm of the physical and concrete without being /encumbered by their limits.” (p. 94) In “Ghost Species”, the poet references Henry David Thoreau’s naturalist or pseudo-scientific experiments in collecting plant data about temperature, that is, of plant species, some lapsing into “ghosts”, (hence the term), allowing for possible persistence of a few “place-faithful”. Further, the poet explores some other eclectic, observational habits, such as Darwinian survival of the fittest, (adaptations) in evolutionary lore, each poem another exemplar of the feeling plant, evolving according to its own internal principles into a final organic form, with indications of Percy Bysshe Shelly’s and contemporary Wicca’s. The title poem arises from “If light stabilizing / If to receive a bee,” from Plants and

Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, by Londa Schiebinger. There is a persona of the archer poet, a solitary hunter, she hunts, lures, inviting devotion, enticing, eliciting males, in a pollen-dispersal, a blinding dispensation of grace. (p. 27) An accomplished poem, in six diffused and distinctive phrases, is conjoined by the subjunctive “If” (“Storm Front Then”). Another, in six double-spaced stanzas, displays the interlinking collective “We”: “at home”, “plant bulbs”, “follow”, “trace”, “follow”, “draft”, “read”, “paint”, and “point”. The alternate point of reference is the signifier “it”: “It rains. It snows. It dissolves. It evaporates. / It, electric, extends invisibility.” (“I Sing the Body Electric”, Walt Whitman). The poet seems deluded by “its refusals” and “How to make it glad.” (p. 73) (“Sky Georgic”) The Georgian poems were mainly rural in subject matter, deft, and delicate; with traditional, romantic elements of objects charged with significance beyond their physical qualities (e.g. Shelley, Keats, William and Dorothy Wordsworth). This obsessive collection dovetails with “Light Fragments”, prolonging meditation upon the Biblical division of darkness and divine creation, embodied in a command for “Let Their Be Light”. (very William Blakean). There are many moods, “the light with night

coming on”, “the light enskyed”, “light-embroidered”, “the light shapes the quiet as

morning”, “light laments”, “A filament of Light”, “the light burning in my hand”, “blind

spot”, “embryo light”, “to light out”, “the refrangible light of the sun”, “the light losing

our words”, “the light gentles the daffodil upward”, “the optic nerve the light excites”, “the light uninterpretable”, “one hill at a time, the light moves in strides, covering”, and “strike a light”.

This section concludes with a prose poem, “the lighthouse revolving” glimmering with To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf novelistic tour de force, in atmospheric awareness, “To become what is glimpsed from the corner / of an eye.” (p. 112) Julie Joosten has a Masters of Fine Arts from Cornell University and this is her first book, which is dedicated to her family. She lives in Toronto. Her poems and reviews can be read in Jacket 2, Tarpaulin Sky, The Malahat Review, and The Fiddlehead. Anne Burke

Book Launch The Book of women's Mysteries and One Man's Confusion. Join authors Rusti Lehay, Ronald Kurt, Barbara Mitchell, Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck, Ky Perraun and Danielle Zyp on Sunday October 27th, Chapters on Whyte Avenue, Edmonton AB Noon-4 for the launch of their new book. www.edmontonpoetryfestival.com.

Class Acts was launched in Toronto on Sept. 26 and will be launched in Parry Sound Nov 9 and Kingston, ON on Nov 14. thanks for your feminist caucus support! Launch of Katerina Fretwell's Class Acts, a "most anticipated book of fall 2013", says Kerry Clare, with Tara Kainer, Elizabeth Greene Book Launch Katerina Fretwell’s CLASS ACTS Thursday, Nov. 14, 7:15 p.m. Novel Idea, 156 Princess St. Kingston 0N.With Tara Kainer and Elizabeth Greene Class Acts

Katerina Fretwell Class Acts, Katerina Fretwell’s seventh poetry (and art) collection, establishes a

posthumous relationship with Mary Wollstonecraft, the first suffragette, whose works have carved a

path for feminists for hundreds of years. In the first section of the collection, “Our Mirroring

Centuries,” Fretwell uses Wollstonecraft’s life and writings as a springboard for an imagined

dialogue with her, or a monologue inspired by her. In the second and third sections, the poems are

responses… (more information)

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• Publisher: Inanna Publications

• ISBN: 9781771330725

• Price: $18.95 CAD

• Publication Date: Sep 2013

• Rights: World

• Pages: 120

Class Acts

Katerina Fretwell Class Acts, Katerina Fretwell’s seventh poetry (and

art) collection, establishes a posthumous relationship with Mary Wollstonecraft, the first suffragette,

whose works have carved a path for feminists for hundreds of years. In the first section of the

collection, “Our Mirroring Centuries,” Fretwell uses Wollstonecraft’s life and writings as a

springboard for an imagined dialogue with her, or a monologue inspired by her. In the second and

third sections, the poems are responses to Wollstonecraft that explore “brokenness” as a broad

theme—in the world in general, and in the poet’s own world. In the final section, “The Other Half,”

Fretwell goes back to the first part of her life, the fifties, and focuses on how it was different—in

some ways better and yet still flawed. Fretwell is well versed in the circumstances of Wollstonecraft’s

life: her husband, acquaintances, social circle and key events. It is on these that she bases many of the

dialogues and monologues, along with her own life story, courageously referring to elements of her

own life, some of which are highly personal. This knowledge and reflection are assets to the

collection, combining the layers the author brings to the work with a call to the reader for an

awareness of her own role within the poetry.

Poetic forms mirror themes: repetitive pantoums underscore female restraints in Wollstonecraft’s time; prose poems vocalize middle class fear; sestinas reflect alcoholic, cloistered socialites; blank, staggered verse mimics desperate penury.

About the Author

Katerina (Vaughan) Fretwell, poet, artist, journalist, reviewer, and former registered social worker, is in the League of Poet’s Feminist Caucus, Canada pen, and the Writers Union of Canada. Her poems have been published in numerous North American journals and anthologies, including Prism International,

Descant, Mix Six, Dry Wells in India, Rampike, and The Pittsburgh Quarterly. Her “Quartzite Dialogues” poems were set to music by Michael Horwood and mounted twice at the Festival of the Sound in 1999 and at 25th Anniversary, 2004, and at the Takefu Music Centre in Japan, 1999. Her sixth volume of poetry, Angelic Scintillations, a dialogue with her ancestor, the 17th century Welsh mystic poet, Henry Vaughan, was published by Inanna in 2011. She sang choral tenor in operatic productions, studied piano and voice, and lives near Parry Sound, Ontario, with her calico cat.

Women in a Globalizing World

Equality, Development, Peace and Diversity

Edited by Angela Miles

An exciting interdisciplinary Canadian collection of ground-breaking work brings together almost seventy articles by formative feminist writers, researchers, activists and visionaries to illuminate the profound globalizing processes of our time. Critical analyses of current globalization and possible alternatives are presented in the context of global feminist dialogue and activism since the 1980s. Together, the

articles provide a comprehensive overview of the agenda and processes of neo-liberal…

• Publisher: Demeter Press

• ISBN: 9781927335017


• Publication Date: Jan 2013

• Rights: World

• Pages: 192

(more information)

South Asian Mothering

Negotiating Culture, Family and Selfhood

Edited by Tahira Gonsalves, Jasjit K. Sangha

This edited collection seeks to initiate a dialogue on South Asian Mothering and how embedded cultural practices inform, shape and influence South Asian mothers’ perceptions and practices of mothering. Drawing from a diverse collection of articles, this work will explore how social constructions such as gender, race, class, sexuality and ability intersect with migration and tradition both in South Asia and in the South Asian diaspora. This book will appeal to multiple audiences as contributors… (more information)


• ISBN: 9781927335017



• Rights: World

• Pages: 192

Forthcoming

Muslim Mothering

Local and Global Histories, Theories, and Practices

Edited by Dana M. Olwan

Motherhood is global experience with specific particularities and local manifestations. What does mothering mean for Muslim men, women, and children? How do Muslims participate in or challenge the institution of motherhood? What obligations, practices,

and resistances does mothering engender? And how do Muslim mothers engage in different forms of mothering practices? Muslim Mothering is a collection of multidisciplinary and scholarly articles that address these questions from various dimensions.…


• ISBN: 9781927335154



• Rights: World

• Pages: 250

unavailable until Jan 2014 currently unavailable for sale

In the Academic Jungle

A Single Mother’s Adventure

Aysan Sev’er

In this book, Sev’er explores the exhilarating as well as frustrating experiences of higher education, from the eyes of an adult female student called Ruby. Ruby is a single-mother who returns to higher learning only as a means-to-an- end rationality of getting a job. The book follows Ruby’s journey from being a frightened woman who feels out of place, to an insightful scholar in a social field. Sev’er critically focuses on the hidden as well as blatant gender-based inequalities… (more information)


• ISBN: 9781927335222



• Rights: World

• Pages: 300


Counting on Marilyn Waring

New Advances in Feminist Economics

Edited by Margunn Bjørnholt , Ailsa McKay

This edited volume maps new advances in theories and practices in feminist economics and the valuation of women, care and nature since Marilyn Waring’s groundbreaking critique of the system of national accounts, Counting For Nothing/If Women Counted 1988/1989. It features theoretical, practical and policy oriented contributions, empirical studies, and new conceptualizations, theorizations and problematizations of defining and accounting for the value of nature and unpaid household work… (more information)

work… (more information)

Black Motherhoods

Contexts, Contours and Considerations

Edited by Karen Craddock

This book considers Black Motherhood through multiple and global lenses to engage the reader in an expanded reflection and to prompt further discourse on the intersection of race and gender within the construct of motherhood among black women. With an aim to extend traditional treatments of black motherhood that are often centered on a subordinated and struggling perspective, these essays address some of the hegemonic reality while also exploring nuance in experiences, less explored areas of subjugation…


• ISBN: 9781927335253



• Rights: World

• Pages: 250


Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism

Edited by Melinda Vandenbeld-Giles

The term “neoliberal” has come to define our current global age, yet definitive understandings of what “neoliberal” means remains a contested terrain. In the past three decades, neoliberal economic/political/social ideology has created a world governed by free-market principles. The authors of this edited collection explore the meanings… (more information)


• ISBN: 9781927335284


• Publication Date: Feb 2014

• Rights: World

• Pages: 250

unavailable until Feb 2014 currently unavailable for sale

Mothering with Disabilities

Edited by Gloria Filax, Dena Taylor

This collection of 20 scholarly works and personal accounts from Canada, the U.S., and Australia explores and analyzes issues of parenting by mothers with a variety of physical and mental disabilities. The book also delves into pregnancy, birth, adoption, child custody, discrimination, and disability politics. Noticing dominant ideas, meanings, and narratives about mothering and disability, as the contributors of this book do, exposes how the actual lives and experiences of mothers with disabilities… (more information)


• ISBN: 9781927335291


• Publication Date: Feb 2014

• Rights: World

• Pages: 250

unavailable until Feb 2014 currently unavailable for sale

East Asian Mothering

Politics and Practices

Edited by Patti Duncan, Gina Wong

With her motherhood memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua ignited a controversy about East Asian mothering practices. Claiming that East Asian children succeed because a “tough love” Asian parenting approach is superior, Chua and others argued for an essentialist view of motherhood. Critics suggest that such ideas only contribute to stereotypes about our communities, including the myth of the model minority. What became imminently clear is that many people are interested… (more information)


• ISBN: 9781927335260


• Publication Date: Mar 2014

• Rights: World

• Pages: 250

unavailable until Mar 2014 currently unavailable for sale

Mothering and Psychoanalysis

Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives

Edited by Petra Bueskens

This book brings together the different disciplinary strands of psychoanalysis, sociology and feminism to consider motherhood and mothering. The psychoanalytic focus includes both theoretical and clinical applications ranging from textual analysis of films, books, art, theory and popular culture through to qualitative research on mothers, clinical case studies and analyses of therapeutic technique. The sociological focus includes a critique of “therapy culture” and its gendered implications… (more information)


• ISBN: 9781927335246


• Publication Date: Mar 2014

• Rights: World

• Pages: 250

unavailable until Mar 2014 currently unavailable for sale

This collection is not only a contribution to psychoanalytic feminism but also, and importantly, a contribution to the feminist and sociological critique of the institution of therapy and the role of the therapist. Examining the “maternal turn” in psychoanalytic theory and practice and the rise of women therapists, this book seeks to shed light on the “feminisation of therapy”. Taking shape around five core themes: the therapist as mother, the mother in therapy, mothers in art and culture, psychoanalytic theory of mothers and mothering, and sociological interventions in “therapy culture”, this book endeavours to

generate dialogue across disciplinary borders while placing mothers, mothering and motherhood at the centre of analysis.

About the Author Petra Bueskens lectured in Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Melbourne and Deakin University between 2002-2009. Since 2009 she has been working as a psychotherapist in private practice. She is the editor of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia and the founder of PPMD Therapy (http://ppmdtherapy.com). She lives in Daylesford, Australia with her partner and three children.

Brunswick Books, formerly Fernwood Publishing, is an independent Canadian publisher that publishes non-fiction books dealing with social justice and issues of social, political and economic importance.

Fernwood was founded in 1991 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, publishing its first books in the spring of 1992. The Halifax office was moved to Black Point, Nova Scotia and, in 1994, a second office was opened in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In eighteen seasons, Fernwood has published over 300 titles. In 2006, Fernwood acquired Roseway Publishing, which is now their fiction imprint.

Fernwood offers an alternative Canadian perspective on issues that many major book publishers do not. Founder and co-publisher Errol Sharpe has been quoted as saying, "In an era when the restructuring of capitalism seems to be threatening to erase many of the gains that have been made by the oppressed in society, we think that our books have a part to play in bucking the trend.

web: http: //porcupinesquill.ca

Review of The sea with no one in it, (from proofs) by Niki Koulouris (Erin Village, Wellington County, Ontario: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2013) paper 80 pp.

This first book is replete with neoclassical nuances, comparative spatial imagery, and some topical applications. The sustained metaphor is the expanse of the sea, paradoxically emptied, even in her immensity. The

poet makes visits to land and shore but always parenthetically and with a somewhat jaundiced eye. In Part One: “There are so many waves/it’s hard to know where to begin”. Further, the sea, “it has no number, no colour”; however, targets are, ironically four colours, yellow, red, blue, and white. The sea can be a she devil, “for her waves/will never be your waves.” The commercial frigates, such as Siemens, IKEA, RusselMetals, with contraband, and merchant marine, await “a new born Onassis.” The poems rely on the contexts of myth, an embattled Theseus crossing the Aegean sea, Icarus, Hades, Nero’s ocean, but only “rams that go to war”. The poet evaluates the errors made and train wrecks watched. Failure is always an option. The sense of vastness is indicative of “waves/as wide as trains/from the next frontier even “these shores have ribs”. Optically, the sea only appears empty, due to its vastness, while the shore is inhabited by miscreants, barbarians, and other riffraff.

More than a few poems are geographically situated, with allusions to an Australian surrealist painter, an Australian performance artist, and the “broken comma of New Zealand”, but what are we to make of “the steak of Africa”? Just as spatially the sea looms, she also maintains a powerful and temporally presence (“its past, your present”), using incremental repetition, of “when this was”, “you can’t miss”, and “what has become”, in a ghazal formula. (p. 30) Part Two “I’ve come to expect Guernica” depicts a city without buildings; a horse strikes oil, and brings a typewriter “on its knees”. In “Arrows For Stone Fruit”, about the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the poet muses about the interrelationship of art versus nature, tanned and cartooned Klansmen, still life “all jetsam”. In one particular detail, a kidney bean reads Memoirs of the

Damned. There is even a self-portrait of the artist in bed, devouring his surroundings. In an ode for Jackson Pollock, the nocturnal is expressed about the artist as a night hawk, part of “a dark parade”. Then, there is a nod to aboriginal art, when she compares a bear and an eagle carving by the same man, with an unfinished mask of kings. In an homage for Maurice Sendak, author of Where The Wild Things Are. she compares the parable to writing for the beast, a book, this book? Her passage for Cézanne is about recreating his restless fruit, some “still bloodied, spared.” Other poems at situated at Ishtar Gates in Berlin, with freed Berliners; the Acropolis Museum, with Cleopatra’s bier, souvenirs and sphinxes; O’Hare airport, to Chicago, Illinois, with former Mayor Daley. For the poet, all is doomed, a matter of perspective, and what matters to a cosmonaut. She explores foreign movies with foreign subtitles, associated with currencies, such as centimes, drachmas, drams, shillings (shaped as geometric holes, diameters, radii, and axes), while “flowers have scepters”. In Rome, she eyes Michelangelo’s David? “an undressed skin diver”. As a born Australian, she peppers an Australian Cracker Jack confection, with Pegasus and Broadway, again plumbing the ghazal form. The poet acutely views the Mediterranean, origami writes convent graffiti, the rivers Seine and Nile, but closes with : It’s always midnight in the river between two poems The book design features the albatross, a signifier at sea, (see: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, by Coleridge).

Although Koulouris was born in Melbourne, Australia and graduated from the University of Melbourne and RMIT University, she is of Greek descent. Her poetry and prose appeared in The Cortland Review, Space, Subtext Magazine, and The Age. The poems "When night spiked and "in a pact with an owl" were published in The Cortland Review. Anne Burke

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