Books published by Vocamus Press

Anne Sutherland Brooks has long been one of Canada's lost poets. Though her work was at one time internationally recognized with the likes of fellow Canadians William Henry Drummond, Bliss Carmen, and John McCrae, she has now largely been forgotten. This volume offers readers a selection of the work that made her a poet of note in her day, with the hope that it will introduce her to a new generation of readers and re-establish her place in Canadian literature.

RHAPSODY is an annual collection of poetry presented by Friends of Vocamus Press, a non-profit community organization that supports literary culture in Guelph, Ontario. The anthology is a celebration of Guelph, Ontario writing that includes both authors who are well established in their craft and those who are published here for the first time, reflecting the writers and writing that formed the literary communities of Guelph during the year 2016 / 2017.

SPEAKING OF WRITING is a collection of interviews conducted by Ann Clayton with Canadian novelists, including Janice Kulyk Keefer, Alice Boissonneau, Joy Kogawa, Aritha van Herk, Stephen Henighan, Jane Urquhart, and Barbara Gowdy.

POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES explores South African fiction written under apartheid, including works by Peter Abrahams, Nadine Gordimer, Alex La Guma, Lauretta Ngcobo, Alan Paton, Sol Plaatje, Olive Schreiner, Sydney Sepamla, Mongane Wally Serote, and Pauline Smith. It is written by ANN CLAYTON, the author of several works of literary criticism, including Olive Schreiner: A Casebook (McGraw-Hill), Women and Writing in South Africa: A Critical Anthology (Heinemann), Olive Schreiner (Twayne), and Speaking of Writing: Conversations with Canadian Novelists (Vocamus Community Publications).

Thousands of Guelph Mercury readers looked on with shock and regret when the 149-year-old newspaper produced its final edition on January 29, 2016.The development ended a journalistic tradition that was as old as Canada and one that had produced national and provincial honours for its coverage.Now Phil Andrews, former Managing Editor at the Guelph Mercury, has gathered short fiction from nineteen journalists who worked in the Mercury newsroom over the years, to celebrate the paper's legacy.Former readers of the newspaper and fans of vivid, original fiction should delight in this volume of stories from the journalists who served the Guelph community over the Mercury's long history.

Candace de Taeye's debut full-length collection of poetry, Small Planes and the Dead Fathers of Lovers, explores with wit and sincerity ideas of family, relationship, and home. Beginning with poems of movement and travel, the book develops diverse and wide-ranging meditations on what it means to be at home in a place, to grow into it, and then also eventually to leave it. The poetry itself makes full use of the physical page, occupying each corner and making itself comfortable there, visually paralleling the process of being at home that it describes. The imagery moves by pairing seemingly disconnected ideas, strangers to one another, and then coaxing their more subtle connections into visibility, mirroring the way that the collection represents human relationships.The result is a book that provokes reflection on our uncertain contemporary experience of home and relationship in ways that readers will find both emotionally and intellectually compelling.

The RHAPSODY anthology is an annual collection of poetry and very short prose by writers who live in and around the city of Guelph, Ontario. It is a celebration of local writing that includes both authors who are well established in their craft and those who are published here for the first time, reflecting the variety of writers and writing that formed the literary communities of Guelph during 2015 / 2016.

JAMES CLARKE has authored many volumes of poetry that explore his role as a judge, as a father, as a husband, and as a man of conscience in the world. These books have earned him a reputation for insight into the nature of human judgment and mercy, forgiveness and responsibility.THE QUALITY OF MERCY is the second of Clarke's more intimate and revealing collections, following WINTER WITH FLOWERS, that responds to questions of family and spirituality and legacy. Its poetry is deft and mature, sensitive and rich, the gift of a father to his family.

ETCH 2016 is a collection of stories written for the Guelph Public Library's 2016 Teen Writing Contest. There's a story about a man who looks over the edge of the world, about a woman who is bound to a man who does not love her, and about a girl who keeps a book of titles for everyone she meets. There's a story here for everyone, so have a look and discover the one that's waiting for you.

Andrea PerryÕs RISE is poetry that maintains a fierce and unflinching hope in the midst of the worldÕs fracture and dislocation. It looks fixedly at social, political, and environmental violence, but never falters in its insistence that other ways of being are possible, that moments of true relation and wholeness might be found, even if only in unexpected ways. It moves frequently by drawing connections between apparently disjointed images and opposed ideas, provoking a surprising sense of unity among what appears to be scattered and disparate elements. In this way it speaks intimately to the complexities of living with both conscience and hope in the world today.

THE CROMABOO MAIL CARRIER is the story of a young working class man and a middle-aged gentlewoman making their separate ways in the world of small town Ontario in the mid-1800s. One of the earliest novels by a Canadian female author, the book explores a unique culture where rough settler habits are rubbing up against the expectations of a growing "proper society." Leslie writes with humour and wit, creating characters who are engaging and accessible even after a century and more.

ETCH 2017 is a collection of stories written for the Guelph Public Library's 2017 Teen Writing Contest. There's a story about a girl meeting her dead father's old friend, a story about two soldiers arguing over fruit, and a story about a couple realising they can invent their own fairy tale ending. There's a story here for everyone, so have a look and discover the one that's waiting for you.

MIGRATION is poetry written between two nations - the nation of South Africa, where Ann Clayton was born and developed into a widely published writer, and the nation of Canada, where she now lives and writes.

When John Galt published The Apostate; Or, Atlantis Destroyed in 1814, its portrayal of First Nations peoples was in many ways a real challenge to the colonial assumptions of the day. His 1833 prose version of the story, The New Atlantis, even furthered these challenges, and the two works were not well received by the public when they appeared. Both are presented here in a new edition that also includes Susanna Moodie's contemporary 1814 poem, "The Captive", which makes similarly challenging social commentary on the evils of slavery and the plight of refugees. As early examples of Canadian activist writing, these works are overdue for reevaluation in a world still struggling with many of the injustices that they address.

THE LOURDES ANTHOLOGY is a collection of writing and art from Our Lady of Lourdes High School in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

BIEKE STENGOS was born in Flanders, Belgium. She emigrated to Canada in her twenties, and now lives in Guelph, Ontario.TRANSMIGRATOR is her first bundle of poetry.

THE RHAPSODY ANTHOLOGY is an annual collection of poetry and very short prose by writers who live in and around the city of Guelph, Ontario. It is a celebration of local writing that includes both authors who are well established in their craft and those who are published here for the first time, reflecting the variety of writers and writing that formed the literary communities of Guelph during 2014 / 2015.

A Poet on the Moon offers a poetry of broad experience, as diverse in form as it is in theme. It moves between reflection, humour, nostalgia and irony, to express the vast breadth of human experience - love, war, family, aging, loss - in profound new ways.

ETCH is a collection of stories written for the Guelph Public Library's 2015 Teen Writing Contest. There's a story about a robot who does not want to be retired, about a detective tracking a wereshrew, about a girl surviving an earthquake, about a boy exploring a mysterious well, about all kinds of things. There 's a story here for everyone, so have a look and discover the one that's waiting for you.

John Galt twice wrote the story of Herman, first as a play and then as a fairytale, first as poetry and then as prose, telling of a scholar who sold his soul in exchange for love. Both versions are available here together for the first time, a unique opportunity to explore a story so captivating that its author couldn't tell it just the once. The edition is edited by David J. Knight, the General Editor of Vocamus Editions, with a foreword by Ian McGhee, Secretary of the John Galt Society, and with John Galt's own preface to "The German's Tale".

EVERY WAY I KNOW HOW is a collection of erotica that is as much about telling stories as it is about being erotic. There's no shortage of sex in it, so don't worry about that, but it always tells a human story too.There's a bridesmaid who helps the mother-of-the-bride find a fashion that suits her. There's a guest speaker at a college whose night is disrupted by a young woman's poetry. There's a landlady who is irresistibly drawn to her guest's bedroom. And many others too, female and male, queer and straight, old and young, all discovering that their sex stories are also life stories.Together they show that sex is never meaningless, that part of being human is finding out exactly what sex means for us.Together they show that sex is never meaningless, that part of beimg human is finding out exactly what sex means for us.

The child of teenage parents, Michelle spent her formative years amid parties, sex and drugs. When her father died and her mother's mental instability made her fear for her life, she spent several years in and out of foster care. She grew up determined to escape her past and created a full life as she began her own family and built a business. Then, at forty, everything began to unravel, forcing her to confront the depths of dysfunction in her past.

Barney and Me is a collection of remembrances from a boyhood spent in the village of Mount Stewart, PEI during the 1940s and 1950s, a time when modern amenities like electricity and indoor plumbing were only beginning to find their way into rural communities.

ETCH is a collection of stories written for the Guelph Public Library's 2014 Teen Writing Contest. They are stories about dandelions and avalanches, journeys and photographs, angels and bookstores. Their heros are bearers of worlds, climbers of mountains, and rescuers of waitresses. There is something in them for everyone, so have a look and find what there is for you.

This is the story of a man who grew up in the 50's and 60's, got married, fathered five children, knowing all the while that he was really a woman. It recounts the physical, emotional, and social struggles that she endured to remain true to herself, to her family, and to her faith as she became the woman she had always known herself to be.

Guelph Versifiers of the 19th Century is a comprehensive introduction to the poets and poetry of the City of Guelph, Ontario before the year 1900. It includes some writers as famous as John Galt and Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, some so obscure that even their names have not survived, and some who are no longer commonly known but who played an important part in the literary and cultural life of the city during their time. Together they comprise an interesting and significant insight into the history and culture of Guelph during its early years, a book that will both entertain the general reader and engage the serious scholar.