BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
If I Were in a Cage I'd Reach Out for You is a collection that travels through both time and place, liminally occupying the chasm between Canadiana and Americana mythologies. These poems dwell in surreal pockets of the everyday warped landscapes of modern cities and flood into the murky basin of the intimate.
Amidst the comings and goings, there's a sincere desire to connect to others, an essential need to reach out, to redraft the narratives that make kinship radical and near. These poems are love letters to the uncomfortable, the unfathomable, and the altered geographies that define our own misshapen understandings of the world.
"With a depth of feeling for places and their connecting joys and aches, these are beautifully written poems, vivid as the morning paper, bracing as moonshine."
-David McGimpsey, author of Sitcom and Asbestos Heights
"Brims with cracking imagery and whip-smart delivery."
--The Winnipeg Free Press
"Adèle Barclay has that rare gift of making something entirely new feel familiar, every door she opens we want to swoon right in."
--Today's Book of Poetry
“These lines—metaphorically rich and balanced with detail and ambiguity—are representative of Adèle Barclay’s assured debut.”
“Brims with cracking imagery and whip-smart delivery.”
“It is a recounting of the utterly mystifying enigma of anything that dares to call itself love. Here is a rich pageant of synesthesia-inducing imagery.”
“In its exploration of intimacy, If I Were in a Cage is at its most reverent and mystical.”