Indian legends of the Northwest. These never-before-published legends were collected by pioneer merchant and attorney Judge Arthur E. Griffin, beginning in 1884. They have been passed down through five generations of the Griffin family, and have now been edited for publication by Trenholme J. Griffin. The great-grandson of the judge, Tren is steepe …

"Jonas has long been my favorite poet writing in English. . . . No one is better than George Jonas at taking the world around us in its populous dimensions and allowing its facets to reveal unknown lights." - J. Michael Yates

Magnificent and haunting, the tall cedar sculptures called totem poles have become a distinctive symbol of the native people of the Northwest Coast. The powerful carvings of the vital and extraordinary beings such as Sea Bear, Thunderbird and Cedar Man are impressive and intriguing.

In clear and lively prose, Hilary Stewart describes the various t …

David French’s brilliant translation of The Seagull, in collaboration with Russian scholar, Donna Orwin, is at one and the same time a revitalization of a Russian theatre classic, and French’s personal tribute to one of the greatest playwrights of all time.

Cast of 5 women and 8 men.

George Bowering and Greg Curnoe became friends in London, Ontario, in 1966. Bowering was a 30-year-old poet and university student and Curnoe was a 29-year-old painter who had dropped out of art school in Toronto to return to his place of birth. Their art was in its youth, their eyes and ears were wide open and their stomachs could withstand pots a …

Steve Marsh is a mystery writer, the protagonist of David French’s gripping thriller, Silver Dagger. Soon after his third novel is published, Marsh’s wife receives a series of phone calls and letters that threaten to destroy their marriage. Adultery, blackmail, murder, a figure lurking in the rain. All these classic elements of Marsh’s fictio …

Witty, prickly and fresh, Playing Bare is a mordant satire on the relation between theatre and life. An accomplished actress is on the verge of a nervous breakdown as she directs Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. In her deranged effort to expose the emptiness of playing fictional characters, she casts the lead roles with a pair of non-actors wh …

Frank, having dedicated his life to the unremarkable, and Walker, paranoid since being struck by lighting at age three, attempt to flee from each other and end up following each other instead. They find themselves in a run-down hotel operated by deaf and misdirected Willy and blind Alice, who has a murderous dislike for visitors. Morris Panych’s …

Tom Wayman has been writing and publishing the poetry of everyday life for over twenty years. This anniversary collection gathers the best of Wayman's published work from eleven previous volumes, along with some provocative new poems, in celebration of his commitment to honest, accessible writing with a sense of humour.

Although Wayman laments the d …

Long known to insiders as one of the most unique personalities in Canadian letters, the celebrated poet Al Purdy begins this story of his life by noting that just as he was about to be born his hometown of Trenton was flattened by a historic explosion as the local munitions factory, "no doubt accounting for any oddity and eccentricity in my charact …

This collection of poems is steeped in the west coast tradition of storytelling and mythmaking, a tradition Howard White has nurtured for two decades. The poems are as real, down-to-earth and funny as White's award-winning prose.

He admits to having a messy yard, describes city street crazies and the late-night "undermind," teaches his boys how to h …

This book represents the culmination of Doris Shadbolt's long fascination with the work of Carr, a painter she views as one of the strongest and most individual of Canadian artists. It reflects more than a decade of meticulous research, and excerpts form Carr's own prolific writings have been skillfully woven into the narrative, combining with exqu …

Bold, inventive indigenous art of the Northwest Coast is distinguished by its sophistication and complexity. It is also composed of basically simple elements which, guided by a rich mythology, create images of striking power.

In Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast, the elements of style are introduced; the myths and legends which shape the …

As a novelist, Jerry Newman has long enjoyed a distinguished reputation for his wide-ranging characterizations of individuals caught in social and political webs. Now in Sudden Proclamations, his first collection of poetry, Newman situates the reader within the shadowy, mind-lit inner world. Daring to show that human savagery knows no bottom line, …

In this rich collection of new poems, Inge Israel draws upon the many voices of her past - Russian, German, Danish, Irish, French and English - to open some of history's unmarked doors. Among her most powerful recreations is that of Nora Joyce, in a dramatic monologue that shows us her famous husband in a wholly new light.

This impressive collection of new poems shows us Skelton stepping out in a new direction. Moving easily between free verse and closed forms (villanelles, sestinas, sonnets, rondeaus, and even arcane Welsh forms), Skelton addresses family, friends and readers everywhere to create a poetry of presence, a communion through language, in the face of a d …

Fred Candelaria is the poet's poet. His language becomes pure music, taking the reader beyond the empirical world of represented objects into the "phenomenal."

Revised and re-released, this ethereal collection of poetry and prose is written in four distinct yet cohesive parts: Our Sacred Spaces, Invasion, Revolution and Return to Our Sacred Spaces. Through haunting and exquisite imagery, poet Beth Cuthand embarks on a lyrical journey heavy with both despair and tender hope. The words linger in your mind, …

In Learning to Breathe, Richard Stevenson wrestles the male muse; he acknowledges rape, emasculation, torture, and attempts to reconcile the lot of the sons of Cain to the roles of prodigal fathers. Each of the lyrics, serial narratives, and dramatic monologues asks the question: How can our children become fathers to the men we are now?

The Toronto Research Group was an eighteen-year collaboration and friendship between the late bpNichol and Steve McCaffery.

In addition to reports on translation; the book-as-machine; and the search for non-narrative prose; this collection includes an informative introduction by McCaffery; a report on performance; ‘Reading and Writing: The Toront …

The Dunsmuirs: A Promise Kept is the second of three plays chronicling the saga of one of Canada’s wealthiest, most ruthless and ill fated families.

While Robbie and Joan’s two sons, Alex and Robert, heirs apparent to the family fortune, are groomed to hold the reins of power, Robbie Dunsmuir cuts a deal with Sir John A. Macdonald to build a rai …

Emily Carr lived in a magical place that she had christened The House of All Sorts. In this House which is open to all that is vital on Earth, Emily Carr, with all her greatness and her imperfections, receives visitors from her planet: Lizzie, her sister, is greeted with war whoops and rebuffs, for Lizzie is the adversary, as is all Victorian socie …

For over 40 years Warren Tallman, reader, critic, mentor, friend, confidant, host and impresario to writers all across North America has remained “in the midst” of the poetic discourse that time and again restores the body of his great goddess, Mother Tongue. He has been almost single handedly responsible for introducing the work of Canadian p …

This first book-length study of Bowering explores the relationship between his work and the arts.

Summerland completes the publication project Talonbooks began in 1990, with the publication of The Athabasca Ryga, a collection of Ryga’s early writings from his Alberta years until 1963. The 1960s, after the Rygas moved to Summerland, British Columbia, were a period of growing artistic strength and commercial success for Ryga, culminating the cr …

The Empress Has No Closure contains, as a centre-piece, the “Alefbet Transfers,” a meditative, spacial explication of the 22 figures of the Hebrew alphabet.

Germaine Lauzon has won a million trading stamps from a department store. Her head swimming with dreams of refurbishing and redecorating her working-class home from top to bottom with catalogue selections ranging from new kitchen appliances to “real Chinese paintings on velvet,” she invites fourteen of her friends and relatives in the neighbou …

Poems by Barbara Munk, George Stanley, Barry McKinnon and Ken Belford try to dispel the cultural myth that the north is a work hard, die young region with no room for poetry. This first ever northern anthology explores the beauty, tradition and life in the North.

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Ths book contains reel storees that have reelee happend th mysteree uv pain has not bin adequatelee xplaind 2 us why memorees can cum crashing down on us robbing us uv our present or why we lifting grasp hold of a suddn laff …

These rollicking ballads and poems come from the great oral tradition of BC woodsmen during the first half of this century - when real men not only read poetry but wrote it and recited it and bought it.

Robert Swanson, once known as the "Bard of the Woods," is one of many men who knows and loves BC coast bunkhouse ballads, but he is one of a very fe …

In her fourth volume of poetry, Inge Israel takes the reader on a journey deep into contemporary Japan. She depicts the conflict between the consumerism of industrial life and the luminosity of age-old ceremonies. In the end, the delicate, lyric qualities of Israel's poems re-establish the patterns of Zen.

'Fragments from the Big Piece' is a non-linear, stylized play inspired by &quote;eastern bloc&quote; film noir. While exploring the dark underbelly of the drug trade, the play simultaneously tells the story of a man and a woman’s crumbling relationship.

This book of prose poems strips down the codes and conventions that make up our society’s “popular narratives.” A revealing and witty, exploded view of our culture.

A rich, emotional, sweeping drama of anger and sorrow spanning three generations. The family house in the country is the setting for the story of Victoire and her descendants through her husband and through her true love—who also happens to be her brother. It is Victoire’s anger at being forced away from the family home and her sorrow at being …

Desperately poor immigrants find refuge with Montreal’s legendary barkeep, Joe Beef. Cast of five women and five men.

Sisters is a tough, uncompromising look at a convent-run Native residential school. While the play chronicles in graphic detail the by now well documented agenda of cultural genocide which motivated the establishment of Native residential schools in Canada, the daring triumph of this play is that it reveals the far less well documented cultural inf …

Paperwork, a provocative sampling of the best new work writing in North America, breaks this taboo. These poems are written by people who build houses and machines, catch fish, take care of children, manage companies, work hard at looking for work, and much more. The writing is funny and tough and sad and angry, and the poems come from insiders - m …

Two fishermen find a whale trapped in their net; neither of them can swim so they must trust the whale to support them while they put away the net and get back to the boat. . . In the wilderness of the Peace River, a man performs delicate surgery on his sick comrade, without anaesthetic, and with only the assistance of a doctor's voice on the radio …

The Hour's Acropolis, John Pass's tenth book of poetry, is a classical meditation rebounding between domesticity and myth. Ben Johnson's Olympic disgrace is counterpoint to poetry's inspirational lightning, Steve Fonyo appears next to Odysseus, Orpheus listens to Lou Reed.

Stylistically, this book is a complex and ingenious construct, a poetic acrop …

The poetic record of the last year in the life of a fictional salmon cannery on the northern coast of British Columbia: a remarkable, multi-voiced document that, in text and photographs, tells the poignant tale, through Turner's anthropological insight, of an industry and a culture under siege.

Harold Enrico's third collection of poetry continues the tone and rhythm of the great European masters while employing the tough, strong imagery of the Pacific Northwest.

The masterworks of Northwest Coast Indians are admired today as among the great achievements of the world's primitive artisans. The painted and carved wooden screens, chests and boxes for storage and cooking, dishes, rattles, crest hats, and other ceremonial paraphernalia reveal a rare artistic virtuosity and document the unique involvement of thes …