Book picks similar to
I Can Still Draw by Heather Spears


poetry
books-i-ve-reviewed
canada
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Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass


Lana Del Rey - 2020
    Lana’s music and lyrics evoke images of a saturated Kodachrome photograph, so it would stand to reason that she’d now add “poet” to her artist’s kit. Even without music, her words work their way around you, pulling you into a world that’s not unlike a David Lynch movie.[from barnesandnoble.com]

Selected Poems


Stevie Smith - 1978
    Bizarre, witty, sad, sometimes caustic, her poems impart a zest for life, and reveal her unique eye for the marvels of the ordinary and her deep sensibility to the paradoxical nature of all human emotions.

Granta 141: Canada


Catherine Leroux - 2017
    Guest Edited by Catherine Leroux and Madeleine Thien.2017 marks the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation, when the British colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were united.In this special issue of Granta, we celebrate the diversity of social, political and literary life in Canada, the largest country in the western hemisphere, and one of the few where the experiment of multiculturalism appears to have workedBringing you the best new fiction, reportage, photography, poetry and memoir from Canada, this issue showcases the best of both the English and French literary communities, throwing a spotlight on an enigmatic nation with a rich literary heritage.

Counting Backwards From Gone


Kat Savage - 2019
    Her little sister, Angela, was brutally murdered and Savage has been searching for the strength to write her grief down ever since. Finally, just shy of six years later, and one year after justice finally rained down upon the man to blame, Savage found the courage to try. This collection is an 18-poem narrative of the very real and raw emotions felt by the author over the years since the tragedy. Here, she pays homage to her baby sister and bleeds her own pain onto paper for anyone who might need help finding their own strength.

Black Book of Poems II


Vincent K. Hunanyan - 2018
    Hunanyan, the #1 bestselling author of Black Book of Poems, comes his highly-anticipated second collection of poetry.

The Shape of a Girl / Jewel


Joan Macleod - 2002
    MacLeod’s young protagonist enters all the bright open avenues of peer-group play and the dark blind alleys of individual and collective terror, as she discovers within herself both the capacity for and the conflict between impulses of good and evil. In thinking back on the history of her own tight-knit group of friends, she begins to see how in the excitement of belonging to a ritualized, secret collective, the self is created by the increasing dehumanization of the other—of both the bully and the victim. The Shape of a Girl goes far beyond a simple dramatization of the seemingly inexplicable code of silence and tacit complicity which surrounded the sensationalized Reena Virk murder in 1997 on which the play is based. It speaks eloquently and compassionately to a world increasingly dominated by all forms of collectivised and ritualized tribalist hatred, and offers the embrace of trust as the only way out of this circle of violence.Jewel is also based on a real-life catastrophe—the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, an oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland, on Valentine’s Day, 1982. Three years later, a widow, Marjorie Clifford, at home in her trailer in Fort St. John, British Columbia, begins to take the first step in understanding that the humanity of love, in all of its tentative frailty, uncertainty and promise, can free a life paralyzed and dominated by loss.

Morning in the Burned House


Margaret Atwood - 1995
    Others, more personal, concern themselves with love, with the fragility of the natural world, and with death, especially in the elegiac series of meditations on the death of a parent. But they also inhabit a contemporary landscape haunted by images of the past. Generous, searing, compassionate, and disturbing, this poetry rises out of human experience to seek a level between luminous memory and the realities of the everyday, between the capacity to inflict and the strength to forgive.

Hiraeth: home that never was


Mansi narula kashyap - 2020
    ‘Hiraeth - A home that never was’ by Mansi Narula Kashyap is a collection of poetry and prose about a home that the author believes does not exist in the real world but still cast a shadow or instil a sense of belongingness towards the same. Each poem will enhance the reader’s imagination, coaxing them to understand the depth of a home that never was.“For just a moment, my heart believes.The home that never was,Still makes me homesick.I do not even remember when we started building it brick by brick?The thieves have come and robbed us of all that we had,Trust, loyalty and love are now just in twisted weaves.”

The Life and Works of Vincent Van Gogh


Janice Anderson - 1994
    The quick brushstrokes of the Impressionists suited his temperament, as did his heavy use of impasto. This helpful volume shows many of van Gogh's best loved works, including the famous self-portrait with a Bandaged Ear, painted after he had cut off part of his ear in a fit of madness, Sunflowers, which were to him a symbol of power and beneficence, and The Starry Night, a painting which clearly expresses intensity and mental turbulence.

A Doctor Second Chance for the Rancher


Dobi Daniels - 2020
    So when the one man who broke her heart many decades ago lands on her doorstep, she’s not willing to give him a chance again.Widowed Peter Taylor has reached the pinnacle of his career as an award-winning general surgeon and raised two accomplished children. But something seems to be missing in his life. So when he takes a road trip to see a friend and ends up meeting his long-lost love, he’s determined to find out why she left him many years ago.When they get trapped together in a barn, will they resolve their issues and give love a second chance, or will old secrets keep them apart forever?This story was previously published in the Love Under Lockdown Limited Edition Box Set.

The Wrong Letter for the Suitable Bride: A Western Historical Romance Book


Lydia Olson - 2021
    

Awakened by his Highland Fire


Ava McArthur - 2020
    When her father, who was the local Laird's groundskeeper, dies, Elspeth learns that the Laird has already made arrangements for her marriage!Unwilling to marry a man she does not know, Elspeth only accepts because this was her father's dying wish. To her great surprise, her future husband is not only the Laird's nephew but a Laird himself too. Yet, for some reason, Laird Finlay MacCowan, has spent the last six years unwed despite his family's encouragement.As soon as they meet, Elspeth sees in his eyes a brute who cares little for romance, sentiment, or frivolous things. However, Laird Finlay feels like a different man when he first touches her… Elspeth's heart fills with desire and feelings she's never felt before, and she soon realizes that Finlay's arduous character is but a fortress he built to keep his dark secrets concealed.The couple seems to think that marriage won't be as bad as they initially thought, but as soon as Finlay lays down his guard a bit, unseen forces seize the opportunity to destroy the clan.Elspeth felt a reviving fire close to Finlay that reminded her that there is more to life than suffering, but maybe she has gotten too close to the engulfing flames surrounding him and will soon be consumed by them…

It Never Rains


Roger McGough - 2014
    Moved on to Caius Became the baius knaius. 'Oxford Blues' is one of the many new poems in this expanded and revised edition of The State of Poetry, Roger McGough's book of short humorous verse which was published in 2005 as part of Penguin's 70s series celebrating its 70th anniversary. From a poem commissioned to commemorate Dylan Thomas in just 140 characters, which unfortunately comes to an end mid-word, to a pre-emptive erratum notice, these poems show McGough at his inventive, hilarious best - and there are also new line drawings by the author offered at no extra cost.

fluid.


Renaada Williams - 2018
    I believe everyone should understand that we all go through things in life, it's all about how we react and recover from them. If you've felt as though you didn't have a voice in a situation, or you weren't sure if you'd get through it "fluid." may be the book for you.

How Insensitive


Russell Smith - 2002
    Searching for work, sex and big-city life is Ted Owen, who quickly finds himself swept into the complicated lives of the young and the jaded, people who thrive in a strange world of hip fashion and surreal night-clubs.