Books published by Goose Lane Editions

In 1969, M. Travis Lane published her first collection of poems, An Inch or So of Garden, a chapbook which at once proclaimed her as a sure and sophisticated poet. Lane is allusive, intricate, technically ranging, while the abiding impulses of her work remain spirituously generous and affirmative. Through Poems 1968-72 (1973), Homecomings: Narrative Poems (1977) and Divinations and Shorter Poems, 1973-78 (1979) she expressed a powerful religious imagination in which as W.H. New has written, "the processes of revelation are more central to the proems than are any messages about society or self. Understanding, if not order, remains of consequence to her." Few contemporary poets have her command of tone, able to shift from intense intellectual attention to private joy, from the ironical to the lyrical. This is poetry both demanding and magnanimous. Though Divinations won the Pat Lowther prize in 1980, M. Travis Lane's work has been sparingly reviewed and has not reached the audience it deserves. Reviewing Divinations in 1981, Guy Hamel concluded: "I think it is important for the sake of her career and of Canadian letters that she be given a more just recognition than in my judgement she has yet received." with the advent of Reckonings seven years later that recognition may at last be granted.

Set in the colourful, intense, competitive Montreal of the 80's, Harrison's new novel explores the efforts of two couples to reach beyond the boundaries of self. Their tangled relationships hang in precarious balance, with the individuals drifting towards confrontation and an awkward, though dramatic, reckoning. After Six Days is written in taut, contemporary prose, its short, explosive scenes alive with the authentic feeling of urban life now.

Near the end of the 1850s, the lives of three apparently unconnected men ended miserably. The first was Thomas Hill, editor of The Loyalist newspaper, founder of the Orange Lodge in Fredericton, political firebrand, and in one notable instance a playwright. He was to die in friendless poverty and be buried in an unmarked grave. The second was Henry W. Preston, who brought his theatrical troupe into Fredericton in December, 1844, after almost two decades of touring from the Carolinas to Newfoundland, a sad saga of ever dwindling dreams. He ended his drunken days by jumping from a ferry landing in Albany, New York. The last was the wandering English actor Charles Freer, who had known some modest glory across the Atlantic but in 1845 fond himself working the New Brunswick stages for the franctic Preston. At the point of starvation, Freer would commit suicide in a tavern near London Bridge. Three failures, perhaps. But three lives which had a vivid meeting in New Brunswick during the 1840s, when politics, the theatre, and the strange quirks of personal character culminated in slander, scandal, and the wildest riot in the history of the New Brunswick stage.

This fast-paced spy novel features Winston Spenser, the one-legged ex-schoolteacher tricked by circumstances and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service into acting as "keeper" for Igor Malenov, a chess-crazed Russian KGB defector. Set mainly in Fredericton and Saint John, New Brunswick, A SPY IN MY HOUSE is also a drama of another kind of loyalty when Spenser and Malenov compete for the affections of Evey -- dupe or betrayer? -- a competition which does not end with the final action-packed scene at a Bay of Fundy wharf.

CHAMP is a witty and unusual collection of poems, part chronicle, part meditation, dealing with the life and professional career of Tommy Burns, the Canadian who became Heavyweight Champion of the world. Born Noah Brusso in Hanover, Ontario, Burns held the title from 1906 to 1908, when he lost it to Jack Johnson. These brief poems are packed with insight and concise narrative power -- the story of an indisputably authentic Canadian hero. This is Kay Burkman's first published book, though poems gathered in CHAMP have widely appeared in magazines and anthologies.

Behind the Orchestra presents the revelatory nature of Trujillo's English poetry. In the simplicity of these lines unfolds the mood and emotion divined by one who sees this country made-home with the eyes and memory of one from away.

Word, Woman and Place is McCarthy's fourth collection of poetry. Selections from his earlier works are gathered together with recent poems into this powerful new book which demonstrates McCarthy's range and achievement.

A cache of the brooding imagery and strength characteristic of Gotro's poetry.

A tour de force of comic ingenuity, Unsnarling String features the infamous Everett Coogler poem series.

Sparse and elegant poems by the author of Songs and Dances. A subtle rhythmic sense and distaste for redundancies characterize this volume, which will appeal to readers who appreciate lucid effects and metaphorical economy.

A rigorous selection from Candelaria's earlier books -- Dimensions (Morriss, 1967), Liturgies (Sono Nis, 1975), Passages (Intermedia, 1975), and Foraging (Intermedia, 1975) -- in addition to substantial new work, provides the first single-volume edition drawn from the full range of this highly inventive poet's career to date.

This is not a book of illustrated poetry, but an artist and a poet comparing notes -- communicating by their own method and enjoying the coincidences.

The Sickness of Hats is an early collection by a member of the writing ensemble Pain Not Bread.

Inspired in part by classical literature and Scripture, Elizabeth Harper's poems are literate, charged, and demanding in their emotional and intellectual range. Octaves of Narcissus is her first collection of poetry since Games Like Passacaglia.

Welch's book reveals a deep understanding of the Maritime countryside and man's relationship with nature.

Traditions is a collection of poems that combine humour and sensitivity from a feminist perspective.

Gophers and Swans is a trenchant and powerfully feminist collection of poetry by the author of The Ordinary Invisible Woman.

The beauty and evolution of an intriguing art form.The Montréal Botanical Garden's collections of bonsai and penjing are among the best in North America, including more than 350 trees, some dating from the 17th century. For the first time, these stylized horticultural creations have been brought together in a single volume, illuminating the evolution of the aesthetic tradition of this Asian art form.Featuring beautifully rendered photographs of many of the miniature trees in the collection, Bonsai Penjing: The Collections of the Montréal Botanical Garden offers an up-close view of these extraordinary specimens. Miniaturized reflections of their natural environment, these works of horticultural art translate the world views of bonsai and penjing masters from different philosophical traditions. In a few instances, they integrate contemporary North American vision of the ancient Asian traditions.Author Danielle Ouellet interviewed many of the artists who created these works, in some instances travelling to Asia to meet with some of the contemporary masters of this art form. As a result, she brings to life an historical portrait of Bonsai and Penjing, their underlying aesthetic principles, and an understanding of how to view and interpret the captivating living culptures of these traditions.

"Twisting and turning against the soul-sicknesses of late-capitalism, Chris Hutchinson's new collection of poems scrolls through myriad moods and aesthetic guises, by turns hallucinatory, despondent, and serene. Authenticity and artifice collide and collude. Political and personal boundaries blur as do the categorical divisions between content and form. Imagine an architecture of breezeways, a freeway of exit ramps, a literature of repurposed literary conventions, the past "re-presented" in endless waves of arrival. Here we find a nostalgia for modernist disjuncture, there a yearning for symbolist depth, and everywhere a fondness for surfaces which, ironically, coax the reader to peel back the stylish veneer. Haunted by a weird range of historical personages, while traveling from Houston to the moon and several places in between, the lyric "I" bears witness to its own endless destruction and reconstitution. At once escapist and socially engaged, Hutchinson's poems enact the ephemeral and fluid nature of our linguistic experiences, tracing those ecstatically tortuous processes by which we might sometimes find, even in the midst of loss, the value of our lives beyond the spheres of war, toxic rhetoric, and neoliberal commerce."--

"Pootoogook articulates how the here-and-now plays across the eternal, the present moment against geological time. Where traces of the old ways remain, they are frankly juxtaposed with the contemporary: fish drying on a line mounted on the exterior of a prefab house with burgundy siding; the spine of a bowhead whale lying in the snow alongside the ladderlike track of a Ski-Doo." -- Robin Laurence

At a time when photography was still a new and developing technology, the "slow seconds" of George Thomas Taylor's camera offered arresting images of the New Brunswick wilderness. Today, Taylor's photographs illuminate landscapes, people, and the seismic changes that were transforming nineteenth-century New Brunswick.

"In Tanja Bartel's riveting poetry debut, the bucolic Vancouver suburbs clash with the interpersonal. The reader dips into the lives of individuals whose day-to-day is anything but peaceful, altered by luck and choice, fear and failure. In poems that light upon themes such as regret, guilt, and human empathy, Bartel highlights the arbitrary nature of life and the demons that persist within. Unsentimental and blunt, but ultimately forgiving, Everyone at This Party scans the suburbs and tries to make sense of our private selves."--

Hidden away in the woods of central New Brunswick lie the remains of Camp B, one of several internment camps that were administered by the Canadian government during the Second World War. A dark chapter in Canada's history, sites like Camp B housed hundreds of individuals deemed to be "dangerous enemy sympathizers," many imprisoned with little or no justification.In the first year of its operation, Camp B incarcerated German and Austrian Jewish refugees dispatched from Britain. Fearful that the refugees were agents of the Nazis they'd fled, the British government sent thousands of men to Canada to be interned. After most of the refugees were released in 1941, Camp B held Canadians who were suspected of opposing the war effort -- including homegrown fascists and men of German and Italian descent -- as well as captured enemy merchant mariners.In this illuminating account, Andrew Theobald examines the conditions of the camp and the lives of those imprisoned. He also scrutinizes the troubling circumstances that led to the internment of both refugees and Canadian nationals, the debates over the ethics of internment inside and outside the camp, and the role of the camps in shaping government policy towards immigration and the post-war powers of the Canadian state."Dangerous Enemy Sympathizers" is volume 26 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

In the backwoods of Nova Scotia, a man has decided to withdraw from the world and live off the land. Meanwhile, news reports begin to trickle in of a global catastrophe. Someone has released a genetically modified strain of bacteria that devours plastic. The world will never again be the same.In this masterfully atmospheric novel, both apocalyptic in scope and intimate in setting, Scott Fotheringham cracks open Pandora's box to let loose a trail of chilling consequences.

Lyrical yet shot through with experimental and political veins, the poems of Soft Power exist in searching exchange with the world, both entering and being entered by it, engaged with the here-and-now of a planet where "generations hence / Inactivists will bathe under a sun made safe / By the collapse of oil-can economics."

Facing the monumental issues of our time.In a 2012 performance piece, Rebecca Belmore transformed an oak tree surrounded by monuments to colonialism in Toronto's Queens Park into a temporary "non-monument" to the Earth.For more than 30 years, she has given voice in her art to social and political issues, making her one of the most important contemporary artists working today. Employing a language that is both poetic and provocative, Belmore's art has tackled subjects such as water and land rights, women's lives and dignity, and state violence against Indigenous people. Writes Wanda Nanibush, "by capturing the universal truths of empathy, hope and transformation, her work positions the viewer as a witness and encourages us all to face what is monumental."Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental presents 28 of her most famous works, including Fountain, her entry to the 2005 Venice Biennale, and At Pelican Falls, her moving tribute to residential school survivors, as well as numerous new and in-progress works. The book also includes an essay by Wanda Nanibush, Curator of Indigenous Art at the AGO, that examines the intersection of art and politics. It will accompany an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario scheduled from 12 July to 21 October 2018.Rebecca Belmore is one of Canada's most distinguished artists. She has won the Hnatyshyn Award (2009), the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts (2013), and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2016). A member of Lac Seul First Nation, she was the first Aboriginal woman to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale. She has also participated in more than 60 one-person and group exhibitions around the world.

In the year after Halifax was devastated by the Explosion, Harold Gilman and Arthur Lismer were working in the city as war artists. Commissioned by the Canadian War Memorials Fund to record the war activity on the home front, the two men struck up a friendship and sketched side-by-side on occasion.With the effects of the Explosion still clearly visible, Gilman and Lismer turned their attention to the busy harbour. Gilman wiped clean the desolation, ignoring the site of a human-made disaster in favour of a serene landscape. His large-scale painting, Halifax Harbour, was his most ambitious canvas and his last undertaking before his early death in 1919. In contrast, Lismer, a founding member of the Group of Seven, recorded the lively activity of the busy naval hub, producing dynamic paintings, prints, and drawings of camouflaged battleships cruising through the Maritime seascape.Halifax Harbour 1918 examines the genesis of Gilman and Lismer's evocative and powerful responses to the First World War.C'est un an après l'explosion qui a provoqué la dévastation d'Halifax qu'Harold Gilman et Arthur Lismer deviennent artistes de guerre dans la ville. Les deux hommes se lient d'amitié en faisant ensemble des esquisses à l'occasion pour le Fonds de souvenirs de guerre canadiens, qui leur a demandé d'immortaliser les activités militaires sur le front intérieur.Les effets de l'explosion encore visibles, l'attention de Gilman et de Lismer se dirige toutefois sur le port animé. Gilman ignore la désolation, car il choisit de représenter ce site dans un paysage lumineux et non comme un lieu marqué par une catastrophe humaine. Sa très grande toile Le port d'Halifax est l'une de ses plus ambitieuses et la dernière réalisée avant sa mort prématurée en 1919. Quant à Lismer, qui figure parmi les fondateurs du Groupe des Sept, il rend compte des activités portuaires florissantes, en réalisant une série dynamique de tableaux, de dessins et d'estampes intégrant les navires en camouflage aux paysages marins des Maritimes.Le port d'Halifax 1918 examine la manière évocatrice et puissante avec laquelle Gilman et Lismer ont dépeint la Première Guerre mondiale et l'origine de cette réponse.