Books published by Invisible Publishing

Minimalist poetry for maximalist times.Sheets: Typewriter Works extends the minimalist explorations of Cameron Anstees first collection, Book of Annotations. Prompted by receiving the Olivetti Lettera 30 typewriter that belonged to poet William Hawkins after his death in 2016, the works in this book explore how small poems operate through the freedoms and constraints of the typewriter as both a decaying machine and a mode of composition. Through engagement with writers and artists like Jiri Valoch, Barbara Caruso, Leroy Gorman, Cia Rinne, William Hawkins, Dani Spinosa, Kate Siklosi, and Norman McLaren, Sheets: Typewriter Works re-embeds the minimalist poem in the typewritten page.

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2022A reclamation of female rage and a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman.Frances is quiet and reclusive, so much so that her upstairs roommates sometimes forget she exists. Isolated in the basement, and on the brink of graduating from university, Frances herself starts to question the realities of her own existence. She cant remember there being a lock on the door at the top of the basement stairsand yet, when she turns the knob, the door wont open. She cant tell the difference between her childhood memories, which bloom like flowers in the dark basement, and herdreams. Worse still, she cant ignore the very real tapping sound nowcominginsistently, violentlythreatening to break through her bedroom wall.With the thematic considerations of Mary Shelley and Shirley Jacksons work, and in the style of Herta Mller and Daisy Johnson, Tearis both a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman and a bristling reclamation of female rage. Blurring the real and the imagined, this lyric debut novel unflinchingly engages with contemporary feminist issues and explores the detrimental effects of false narratives, gaslighting, and manipulation on young women.

The perfect marriage of literary and speculative fiction for readers of Kazuo Ishiguro and NK Jemisin.When Freya Tanangco was ten, she dreamed of her mother's death right before it happened. That's when she realized she was a veker, someone with enhanced mental abilities and who is scorned as a result. Freya's adult life has been spent in hiding: from the troubled literary legacy created by her author father, and from the scrutiny of a society in which vekers often meet with violence.When her prophetic dreams take a dangerous turn, Freya finds herself increasingly forced to sacrifice her own anonymity-and the fragile safety that comes with it-in order to protect those around her.Interwoven with themes of Filipino Canadian and mixed-race identity, fantastical elements from Norse and Filipino mythology, and tarot card symbolism, The Quiet Is Loud is an intergenerational tale of familial love and betrayal, and what happens when we refuse to let others tell our stories for us.

Flower and flour. Coral and choral. Lashes and luscious.Frost & Pollen is a poetry collection in two acts: "e;Bloom & Martyr"e; is a sensuous walk through a menacing garden of flowers and desire, while "e;Foliage"e; retells the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the point of view of the Green Knight, the mysterious figure who teases and torments Gawain. By turns earthy and lush, and punctuated by dark and unsettling undercurrents, these poems converge into an engaging yet evasive feminine exploration of nature and sexuality.

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2022For readers who love Mark Haddon, Miriam Toews, and Sally RooneyPaisley Ratchford is trying to keep it together, but in eight weeks, the Toronto apartment building she lives in will be demolished. A last-ditch effort to reclaim her abandoned childhood home on Amherst Island plunges Paisley into memories of growing up in the tight-knit community, and into the obsessive compulsive disorder that has only ever offered a semblance of control. Her compulsion to count in sets of eight had little effect on thwarting bullies, her fathers bad luck, and her mothers mental illnessall of which return to haunt her.When help arrives in the form of Paisleys old classmate and tormentor Garnet Mulligan, her predicament only worsens. For a shot at a future, Paisley needs to stare down her past, including all the habits that have stopped her from thriving. At Last Countis a wise and often laugh-out-loud funny tale that proves we dont always need to believe everything our brain tells us.

A howl into the void, a ghost story, and a bit of a metaphysical hellride.A misanthropic ghostwriter roams an island off the Kenyan coast. An Arizona teenager awaits the next stage in a secretive covenant. A renowned poet retraces her past amid a baffling netherworld. An international arms dealer's son drifts through time, atoning for the death of the man he loved.For readers who take their contemporary fiction with a tinge of the otherworldly, Bleeding Light is about mystical experiences, the symbolic fabric connecting us all, and desperate people seeking affirmationthrough religious, cosmic, chemical and other meansof a world beyond their own. It's a grimly funny and often trippy take on transcendence in a hypercommodified age."e;A darkly gleaming marvel. Searing, creepy and mysticalas if Don DeLillo had set out to steal Paulo Coelho's flock."e;Sean Michaels, Scotiabank Giller Prize winner and author of The Wagers

For fans of Chuck Palahniuk, Joyce Carol Oates, and Karen Russell, the stories in Francine Cunninghams debut collection God Isnt Here Today ricochet between form and genre, taking readers on a dark, irreverent, yet poignant journey led by a unique and powerful new voice.Driven by desperation into moments of transformation, Cunninghams characters are presented with moments of choicesome for the better and some for the worse. A young man goes to Gods office downtown for advice; a woman discovers she is the last human on Earth; an ice cream vendor is driven insane by his trucks song; an ageing stripper uses undergarments to enact her escape plan; an incubus tires of his professional grind; and a young woman inherits a power that has survived genocide, but comes with a burden of its own.Even as they flirt with the fantastic, Cunninghams stories unfold with the innate elegance of a spring fern, reminding us of the inherent dualities in human natureand that redemption can arise where we least expect it.

A visually and lyrically beautiful debut that celebrates the landscapes we take for granted. Harbour Grids is a long poem in four parts that investigates ideas of community and belonging. Beginning as a meditation on the surface of New York Harbor, the poem radiates outward through issues of labour, location, history, belonging, and subjectivity. How do we experience our complex relations to the world we live in? Harbour Grids seeks to answer this question by combining Stephen Ratcliffes attention to daily observation and formal repetition, Lyn Hejinians investigations of the linguistic structures, Larry Eigners textural sense of language and compositional space of the page, and Juliana Spahrs ethical attention to the ways we inhabit the world.

A grossly inaccurate "e;memoir"e; about Canadian folk legends.Henry Adam Svec has been pushing boundaries in Canadian folklore since he unearthed songs by CFL players in Library and Archives Canada, thereby thrusting himself into the scene-and the media spotlight. Those spartan poems are finally included in this anthology, in addition to the fruits of his subsequent expeditions, but there is much more besides, including honest accounts of the folklorist's myriad trials and tribulations. This experimental and genre-defying book mixes the adventurous energies of Alan Lomax and Stompin' Tom, the intertextual conceptualism of Vladimir Nabokov and Mark Z. Danielewski, and the searing intensity of Elizabeth Smart and Chris Kraus."e;Comically entertaining, presented with 'performative verve', as novelist Jacob Wren puts it."e;-Atlantic Books Today"e;This book is cracking me up-and I don't even like football-but it is just so well written."e;-Robert Dayton, author of The Canadian Romantic