CONTACT INFORMATION

For course adoptions, review copies, or permission to reprint poems from Brick Books’ titles in anthologies, journals, etc., please contact Brick Books directly.

BRICK BOOKS 431 Boler Road, Box 20081London, Ontario N6K 4G6email / brick.books@sympatico.cawebsite / www.brickbooks.ca

EXAMINATION & REVIEW COPIES

SALES REPRESENTATION

CANADA

UNITED STATES

LitDistCo / orders@litdistco.cac/o Fraser Direct, 8300 Lawson Rd., Milton ON, L9T 0A4phone • 1-800-591-6250 / fax • 1-800-591-6251

Most of our titles are available as e-books through our website: www.brickbooks.ca

Small Press Distribution / spd@spdbooks.org1341 Seventh St., Berkeley, CA / 94710-1409phone • 1-510-524-1668 / fax • 1-510-524-0852

Canadian Manda Group664 Annette StreetToronto ON, M6S 2C8phone • 416-516-0911 / 1-855-626-3222fax • 416-516-0917 / info@mandagroup.com

Literary Press Group of Canada401 - 234 Eglinton Avenue East Toronto ON, M4P 1K5phone • 416-483-1321 / fax • 416-483-2510 info@lpg.ca / www.lpg.ca

ORDERS & DISTRIBUTION

E-BOOKS

PUBLISHING NEW AND ESTABLISHED VOICES IN CANADIAN POETRY SINCE 1975

BRICKBOOKSSpring 2019

2 3

APRIL

ISBN 978-1-77131-497-8 6 X 8.75 INCHES / 80 PAGESTRADE PAPERBACK / POETRY / $20

MATTHEW GWATHMEY Poems of serious wordplay—an affirmation and celebration

of the spectacles we make of our lives.

On-stage in Matthew Gwathmey’s debut collection are agitated 19th century horsemen, 80s comic book beetles, plaid-clad suburban grunge enthusiasts, Korean aunts turned traffic cops, Parisian mimes—in short, “a multitude of horns.” Meanwhile, the “understories,” the sub-spectacles of these poems, are the everyday trials and thrills of marriage and family, the search for meaningful love and friendship, and the palpable relief at being able to perform not as a primary character in the cultural narrative, but as a member of an elemental audience, as “water/ at the bottom of the wind.”

Working a hand-mixer in one hand and a spade in the other, Gwathmey writes formally accomplished, linguistically playful poems with deep roots. He couples an implicit understanding of the stories passed down to us as necessary blueprints, with an occasionally nihilistic (in the spirit of the modernists) and occasionally giddy (in the spirit of the New York School) pull toward embellishment and reinvention, making these folktales rhythmic, humorous, and full of unexpected turns.

MATTHEW GWATHMEY was born in Richmond, Virginia and studied creative writing at the University of Virginia. His poems have appeared in Grain, Crazyhorse, Prairie Fire, The Iowa Review, and other literary magazines. He became a Canadian citizen in 2013 and lives with his wife and children in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where he is a PhD student at UNB. He also works at The Learning Bar on Confident Learners, an Indigenous literacy program. Our Latest in Folktales is his first book.

Praise for OUR LATEST IN FOLKTALES “Our latest in poetry, Matthew Gwathmey’s debut is a mishmash in the best sense, smushing superheroes, Mars colonies, psych wards, Radiohead, and a hundred other eclectic subjects into a blender for your poetry protein shake.

Regardless of the reference, Gwathmey clicks words into place like Lego bricks, for precise, fun, colourful poems.” —Jonathan Ball

PROMOTIONAL PLANS• Launch in Fredericton. • Additional readings in St. John’s, Charlottetown, Halifax, Moncton,

Saint John, Toronto, and Charlottesville, Virginia.

Our Latest in Folktales

4 5

APRIL

ISBN 978-1-77131-506-76 X 8.75 INCHES / 88 PAGESTRADE PAPERBACK / POETRY / $20

Poems that stride bravely into the day-to-day,recovering the misdirected intensity at its core.

Brenda Leifso’s Wild Madder is about way-finding—through those moments in which you no longer recognize where you are. It’s about not knowing—who you are anymore, how to be in the world, how to love. It’s about what’s unspoken and about what speaks—conversation with the wild and animate world. It’s about marriage, family, motherhood—the drudgery in them and the quiet beauty.

Family can ask everything of a partner and parent and then turn around and take even more; Wild Madder feels like a note in a bottle washed up on the shores of a rough sea. But Leifso is not one to stand still or cling to darkness; in fact, we end up so far into the darkness that when she breaks through into light, it’s a conflagration of all the things that make us human. These frank, bracingly recognizable poems will be irresistible—and cathartic—for anyone who has ever felt their life chewing them into little pieces.

Wild Madder is BRENDA LEIFSO’S third book of poetry, following Barren the Fury (Pedlar Press, 2015) and Daughters of Men (Brick Books, 2008), which was shortlisted for an Ottawa Book Award. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies across Canada, has won the Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award, and has been short- and long-listed for the CBC Literary prize. She is a freelance editor and occasional academic instructor, and also runs her own yoga business. She lives, gratefully, near the shores of Lake Ontario in Kingston, Ontario.

Praise for WILD MADDER“Brenda Leifso writes fearless poetry. Wild Madder turns the domestic inside

out, revealing the ‘promise of thunder’ in the familiar. Hers is a generous voice, yet at the same time it is a charged one, calling us into the ‘long-

toothed sun’. This is a book of fierce delights.” —Anne Simpson

PROMOTIONAL PLANS• Launch in Kingston. • Additional readings in Vancouver, Victoria, Whitehorse, Calgary, Ottawa,

and St John’s.

BRENDA LEIFSO Wild Madder

6 7

APRIL

ISBN 978-1-77131-503-66 X 8.75 INCHES / 88 PAGESTRADE PAPERBACK / POETRY / $20

JOHN REIBETANZPoems that examine the creative achievements of the human hand,

from cave art to contemporary photography.

John Reibetanz’s twelfth collection, By Hand, begins with an epigraph from Lewis Mumford: “Until modern times, apart from the esoteric knowledge of the priests, philosophers, and astronomers, the greater part of human thought and imagination flowed through the hands.” Reibetanz’s new poems explore the wide-ranging aspects of our humanity—hands used for good and ill—portrayed in the paintings and sculptures, gardens, tapestries, photographs, and carvings he examines. And they explore in particular the relationship in these artifacts between the “givens” of nature and the modifications and contributions of human culture. As Roo Borson says of the collection,

“the poems are shot through with moments in which language’s particular dexterity comes into its own and real objects are remade, as when these lines from ‘The Installation’ celebrate the ‘commonality of clay’ in a relief by della Robbia:

the light-quickened humus

of the eyes that, for hundreds of years, have read the notesinscribed on the banner an angel is unscrolling …”

JOHN REIBETANZ is the author of eleven previous collections of poetry, and his poems have appeared in such magazines as Poetry (Chicago), The Paris Review, The Walrus, and Canadian Literature. A finalist for the National Magazine Awards, the National Poetry Competition, and the ReLit Award, John has given readings in major cities all across Canada. He was elected a Senior Fellow of Massey College in 2010. The Essential John Reibetanz, edited by Jeffery Donaldson, was published by The Porcupine’s Quill in 2017. He lives in Toronto.

PROMOTIONAL PLANS• Launch in Toronto. • Additional readings in Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary, Fredericton, Halifax,

Sackville, and St. John’s.

By Hand

8 9

MAY

ISBN 978-1-77131-500-56 X 8.75 INCHES / 88 PAGESTRADE PAPERBACK / POETRY / $20

BRIAN HENDERSONAstonishingly deft poems that highlight an excess, an emptiness,

and a wilderness on the other side of use.

In Unidentified Poetic Object, his twelfth collection of poetry, Brian Henderson strikes from language an “alphabet of lightning,” an animacy and urgency in which every object is potent with actions, past and present; every action is alive with the potential of what it might move in the world. And since every object is more than we know in our eagerness to turn it to human use, Henderson wants us to dive into that unknown space.

The words in these poems seek to disrupt the order of the discursive, to trouble the elaborate plans humans have for managing and controlling the earth we abuse. They elide and interpenetrate, shout and are silent, and in those material interactions there emerges a resonant attention and a politic of tenderness.

BRIAN HENDERSON has been a Governor General’s Award finalist (Nerve Language, Pedlar Press, 2007) and a finalist for the CAA Chalmers Award for Poetry (Sharawadji, Brick Books, 2011). He is the author of eleven previous volumes of poetry, including The Alphamiricon (a deck of visual poem cards) and [OR] (Talonbooks, 2014). Former director of WLU Press, he is now co-editor of the Laurier Poetry Series and lives with his wife, Charlene Winger, in Grey Highlands, Ontario.

Praise for UNIDENTIFIED POETIC OBJECT“Prismatic, at times apocalyptic, always sharp, Brian Henderson’s poems

range through physics, visual art, philosophy, history, and, of course, poetry, to probe the locales where worlds slip into other worlds. . . . these

rich riffs evoke deconstructed landscapes that expose the ruptures caused by settler colonialism. Laced with wit and a voracious mind, these poems are

‘unsettling’ in the best possible sense.” —Jeanette LynesPROMOTIONAL PLANS

• Launch in Grey Highlands. • Additional readings in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Kitchener-Waterloo,

and Toronto.

Unidentified Poetic Object

10 11

SPRING 2018 TITLES SPRING 2018 TITLES

FALSE SPRING Darren Bifford / $20 / 978-1-77131-476-3

Poems about commitment and catastrophe, from a voice of intense lyrical skepticism and wonderful tonal mobility. False Spring, Bifford’s second collection, is a book largely concerned with various forms of collapse and cultural disintegration. These are poems of considerable weight and great energy at once, so that the impression is of a large-muscled animal that is also nimble.

STANDING IN THE FLOCK OF CONNECTIONSHeather Cadsby / $20 / 978-1-77131-479-4

Poems that skitter between life and death, “sleep and hurry,” at their heart a kind of tender panic. By turns funny, frank, mysterious, and heartbreaking, Heather Cadsby’s fifth collection of poetry is one hundred proof associative thought.

NIGHT WORK: THE SAWCHUK POEMS 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION(with a new introduction by Angie Abdou and a new afterword by Ron Maclean)Randall Maggs / $20 / 978-1-77131-494-7

A new edition of a hockey saga, telling the game’s story through the character of goalie Terry Sawchuk. In compact, conversational poems, Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems follows the tragic trajectory of the life and work of Terry Sawchuk, dark driven genius of a

goalie who survived twenty tough seasons in an era of inadequate upper-body equipment and no player representation. The book is illustrated with photo-graphs mirroring the text, depicting key moments in the career of Sawchuk, his exploits and his agony. The original edition won the 2008 Winterset Award, the 2009 E.J. Pratt Poetry Prize, and the 2010 Kobzar Literary Award, and was named a Globe 100 book in 2008.

With rich reflections on the book by novelist Angie Abdou and Hockey Night in Canada host Ron MacLean, as well as excerpts from scores of reviews by the likes of Gord Downie and Dave Bidini, this new 10th anniversary edition (marking both the 50th anniversary of the last time the Leafs won the Stanley Cup and the 100th anniversary of the Leafs as a team) is a must-have for lovers of hockey and poetry alike.

RECKON Steve McOrmond / $20 / 978-1-77131-482-4

Anxious, urgent, bewildered poems—at once sardonic, self-excoriating, and “chronically wishful.” “Creep-ing dread, bemused wonder, and a species of headlong incredulity inform Steve McOrmond’s processing of the new century’s prodigious cultural jetsam, its ‘wilderness of signs’. Reckon apprehends the strangeness in the commonplace, and the anxiety humming in everyday chatter …” —Kevin Connolly

WHAT KIND OF MAN ARE YOU Degan Davis / $20 / 978-1-77131-473-2

What does it mean to be a man now? The answers in these poems are bold and deeply moving. The poems in this debut collection move between the title’s societal taunt (prove yourself) and its more tender and inquisitive question (how to be a man in this era?), navigating traditional male archetypes and 21st century possibilities through the lenses of music, tribes, war, divorce, sex, and love.

12 13

FALL 2018 TITLES SELECTED / AWARD-WINNING 2017 TITLES

MUSEUM OF KINDNESS Susan Elmslie / $20 / 978-1-77131-467-1

Shortlisted for the 2018 Pat Lowther Award & the A.M. Klein Poetry Prize. A book that bravely examines “genres” familiar and hard to fathom: the school shooting, PTSD, raising a child who has a disability.

“… a masterpiece of loss transformed by love into some of the most greathearted, lyrically daring poems I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.” —Rachel Rose

ALL THE NAMES BETWEEN Julia McCarthy / $20 / 978-1-77131-457-2

Shortlisted for the 2017 Governor General's Award for Poetry & the 2018 Fred Cogswell Award, winner of the 2018 J. M. Abraham Poetry Award (Atlantic Book Awards). A book of eloquent, searching contemplation in which “every elegy has an ode at its centre /every ode has an elegy around its edges.” “… a book of meditations for even those immune to poetry, a poetry with no comfort zones.” —Goran Simić

THIN AIR OF THE KNOWABLE Wendy Donawa / $20 / 978-1-77131-460-2

Shortlisted for the 2018 Gerald Lampert, Raymond Souster, & ReLit Awards. An elegiac and incisive debut that blends poems of social justice with poems of ordinary life. “Like the watchmakers of old, Wendy Donawa puts a spyglass to her eye and fixes her vision to the minute, to all that carries on beneath our imperfect sight …” —Pamela Porter

YELLOW CRANE Susan Gillis / $20 / 978-1-77131-491-6

Inviting, human, capacious poems that grapple with ideas while also lightly grieving our capacity for ruin. Gillis’s fourth collection is a book of many views, many voices. “Susan Gillis is alive to the world.

… She is a noticer, a wonderer-aloud, whether in brief, sonorous lyrics or in multi-section poems that arrive at an unforced coherence. Yellow Crane is a beauty of a book.” —Mary Jo Salter

HOW TO AVOID HUGE SHIPS Julie Bruck / $20 / 978-1-77131-485-5

Both “grave and brave, serious and hilarious”—new poems from a Governor General’s Award–winning poet. Bruck’s fourth collection is a book of arguments and spells against the ambushes of time. The touch here is light, even when the subject is heavy; one has a steady sense of being trusted to catch and feel the intangible muchness housed in these deceptively direct poems.

REUNION Deanna Young / $20 / 978-1-77131-488-6

Poems that unfold like liturgy, confronting old violence with a trembling, dignified restraint.Reunion is a time machine in which poems commune with ghosts in an attempt both to reckon with and subvert their legacy. It is a tale of the impossible quest for the original, unhurt self. A girlhood is re-inhabited and oddly transformed as the adult becomes ally of her younger self.

14 15

SELECTED BOOKS IN PRINT / SELECTED BOOKS IN PRINT /

Brick Books acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit for their support of our publishing program.

FOR A FULL TITLE LISTING AND MORE INFORMATION ON BRICK BOOKS, VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT WWW.BRICKBOOKS.CA.

978-1-894078-24-5 Avison, Margaret Concrete and Wild Carrot / $15.00978-0-88999-619-9 Avison, Margaret Not Yet but Still / $12.95978-1-894078-76-4 Barton, John Hymn / $19.00978-1-77131-476-3 Bifford, Darren False Spring / $20.00978-1-926829-70-8 Bolster, Stephanie A Page from The Wonders of Life on Earth / $19.00978-1-894078-04-7 Bruck, Julie The End of Travel / $14.00978-1-77131-485-5 Bruck, Julie How to Avoid Huge Ships / $20.00978-1-926829-74-6 Bruck, Julie Monkey Ranch / $19.00978-1-77131-479-4 Cadsby, Heather Standing in the Flock of Connections / $20.00978-1-77131-342-1 Carson, Anne Short Talks (BB Classics 1) / $20.00 978-1-77131-454-1 Cayley, Kate Other Houses / $20.00978-1-926829-83-8 Cayley, Kate When This World Comes to an End / $20.00978-1-77131-357-5 Cook, Méira Monologue Dogs / $20.00 978-0-919626-43-0 Crate, Joan Pale as Real Ladies: Poems for Pauline Johnson / $14.00978-1-77131-346-9 Crummey, Michael Hard Light (BB Classics 5) / $20.00978-0-919626-78-2 Curnoe, Greg Deeds/Abstracts / $16.95978-1-77131-473-2 Davis, Degan What Kind of Man Are You / $20.00978-1-894078-42-9 Dempster, Barry The Burning Alphabet / $17.00978-1-77131-433-6 Dempster, Barry Disturbing the Buddha / $20.00978-1-926829-84-5 Dempster, Barry Invisible Dogs / $20.00978-1-894078-70-2 Dempster, Barry Love Outlandish / $19.00978-1-894078-58-0 Domanski, Don All Our Wonder Unavenged / $18.00978-1-926829-86-9 Domanski, Don Bite Down Little Whisper / $20.00978-1-77131-460-2 Donawa, Wendy Thin Air of the Knowable / $20.00978-1-894078-10-8 Dragland, Stan, ed. New Life in Dark Seas / $16.00978-1-77131-345-2 Dumont, Marilyn A Really Good Brown Girl (BB Classics 4) / $20.00978-1-77131-467-1 Elmslie, Susan Musuem of Kindness / $20.00978-1-926829-90-6 Enns, Karen Ordinary Hours / $20.00978-1-894078-80-1 Enns, Karen That Other Beauty / $19.00978-1-77131-376-6 Gernes, Ulrikka S. Frayed Opus for Strings & Wind Instruments /

$20.00 978-1-926829-79-1 Gillis, Susan The Rapids / $19.00978-1-77131-491-6 Gillis, Susan Yellow Crane / $20.00978-1-926829-75-3 Gould, Nora I see my love more clearly from a distance / $19.00978-1-77131-445-9 Gould, Nora Selah / $20.00978-1-926829-68-5 Goyette, Sue outskirts / $19.00978-0-919626-99-7 Goyette, Sue The True Names of Birds / $14.00978-1-894078-33-7 Goyette, Sue Undone / $16.00978-1-77131-497-8 Gwathmey, Matthew Our Latest in Folktales / $20.00978-0-919626-42-3 Hall, Phil Amanuensis / $9.95978-1-894078-44-3 Hall, Phil An Oak Hutch / $17.00978-1-894078-11-5 Hall, Phil Trouble Sleeping / $14.00978-1-77131-500-5 Henderson, Brian Unidentified Poetic Object / $20.00978-1-894078-02-3 Humphreys, Helen Anthem / $14.00978-0-919626-47-8 Humphreys, Helen Nuns Looking Anxious, Listening to Radios / $14.00978-0-919626-11-9 Kroetsch, Robert The Ledger / $10.00978-1-77131-344-5 Lee, Dennis Riffs (BB Classics 3) / $20.00 978-1-77131-506-7 Leifso, Brenda Wild Madder / $20.00 978-1-77131-448-0 Lehr, Genevieve Stomata / $20.00

978-1-77131-470-1 MacIsaac, Dan Cries from the Ark / $20.00978-1-77131-494-7 Maggs, Randall Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems (10th Anniversary

Edition) / $20.00978-1-77131-457-2 McCarthy, Julia All the Names Between / $20.00978-1-894078-83-2 McOrmond, Steve The Good News About Armageddon / $19.00978-1-77131-482-4 McOrmond, Steve Reckon / $20.00978-1-926829-78-4 Moore, Jessica Everything, now / $19.00978-1-926829-88-3 Munro, Jane Blue Sonoma / $20.00978-1-894078-77-1 Neilsen Glenn, Lorri Lost Gospels / $19.00978-1-894078-68-9 O’Meara, David Noble Gas, Penny Black / $18.00978-0-919626-55-3 Ondaatje, Michael Elimination Dance / $10.00978-0-919626-72-0 Page, P.K. Hologram: A Book of Glosas / $14.00978-1-77131-464-0 Paré, Arleen The Girls with Stone Faces / $20.00978-1-926829-87-6 Paré, Arleen Lake of Two Mountains / $20.00978-1-894078-51-1 Price, Steven Anatomy of Keys / $18.00978-1-926829-76-0 Price, Steven Omens in the Year of the Ox / $19.00978-1-894078-43-6 Reaney, James Souwesto Home / $17.00978-1-926829-82-1 Reibetanz, John Afloat/ $20.00978-1-77131-503-6 Reibetanz, John By Hand / $20.00978-1-77131-439-8 Reid, Monty Meditatio Placentae / $20.00978-1-77131-451-0 Roberts, Clea Auguries / $20.00 978-1-77131-442-8 Schellenberg, Angeline Tell Them It Was Mozart / $20.00978-1-894078-45-0 Seymour, David Inter Alia / $17.00978-1-926829-80-7 Shin, Ann The Family China / $20.00978-1-894078-66-5 Sinclair, Sue Breaker / $18.00978-1-77131-430-5 Sinclair, Sue Heaven’s Thieves / $20.00978-1-894078-29-0 Sinclair, Sue Mortal Arguments / $15.00978-1-894078-15-3 Sinclair, Sue Secrets of Weather & Hope / $14.00978-1-77131-382-7 Smart, Carolyn Careen / $20.00 978-1-894078-69-6 Smart, Carolyn Hooked: seven poems / $19.00978-0-919626-56-0 Smart, Carolyn The Way to Come Home / $15.00978-1-894078-47-4 Solie, Karen Modern and Normal / $17.00978-1-894078-17-7 Solie, Karen Short Haul Engine / $14.00978-1-77131-436-7 Steadman, Dean Après Satie – For Two and Four Hands / $20.00978-1-77131-343-8 Steffler, John The Grey Islands (BB Classics 2) / $20.00978-1-926829-66-1 Still, Jennifer Girlwood / $19.00978-1-894078-52-8 Szumigalski, Anne When Earth Leaps Up / $18.00978-1-77131-379-7 Trainor, Kim Karyotype / $20.00 978-1-77131-488-6 Young, Deanna Reunion / $20.00 978-1-894078-37-5 Zwicky, Jan Robinson’s Crossing / $16.00978-1-894078-00-9 Zwicky, Jan Songs for Relinquishing the Earth / $15.00978-1-77131-347-6 Zwicky, Jan Wittgenstein Elegies (BB Classics 6) / $20.00