Featured Books
-
Attenuations of Force
by Lori Cayer
ISBN: 978-1-897181-31-7
Price: $15.95Attenuations of Force is a collection that commands our attention. Unnerving and charming in turns and at all points, linguistically supple, Cayer’s fierce, unflinching poems of selves made and unmade, of postmodern lusts and blind faith, will torque your brain around. Whether Cayer is mapping a weather that “drums your body apart” or riffing off a neo-gothic Jeff Goldblum morphing into a fly, her poetic altered states and stated alterations will dazzle you. No question, Cayer means business.”
—Jeanette Lynes -
Children of Ararat
by Keith Garebian
ISBN: 978-1-897181-32-4
Price: $15.95This is a momentous collection rendered by a poet in his prime. Children of Ararat takes the reader on a harrowing journey beginning with the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and continuing on to the denial that lingers to this day. While the horror is made clear, there is something oddly joyful in the mourning, in the poet’s ability to give voice to the long-dead. Without hyperbole, the poet evokes the gruesome events and articulates how, as the inheritor of his father’s experiences, he finds himself ‘trapped in an abyss’ created nearly a century ago. As with his previous collection, Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems, Garebian once again creates a living elegy that at times reaches almost beyond words.
—Jeff Round, www.jeffreyround.com -
Confessions of an Empty Purse
by S. McDonald
ISBN: 978-1-897181-33-1
Price: $15.95A book of poetry that reads compulsively like a novel – the anguished and ultimately courageous story of an individual caught between genders. The narrator is caught in the funhouse mirror of movies and pop culture, between dreams and self-loathing. These poems must be read in tandem with 1960s/70s sexual liberation classics: Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls (1966), a novel never-old; and Rosemary Daniell’s Sexual Tour of the Deep South (1974), a set of “happening” poems.
—Jury, Dektet 2010 -
ex nihilo
by Adebe D. A.
ISBN: 1-897181-34-8
Price: $15.95Ex Nihilo is a bold, beautiful, and timely collection of poetry. Deeply imbued with a rhythm as deep as Langston’s rivers, Adebe D.A. choreographs her words to dance on and off the page — her canvas. A remarkable remix of language and history, Ex Nihilo moves us to places we have not yet considered. A call to both thought and action, Adebe confronts and celebrates her polychromatism. She is a major voice of a new generation.
—M.K. Asante, Jr. -
Fallacies of Motion
by William Nichols
ISBN: 978-1-897181-35-5
Price: $15.95Here is contemporary wisdom in verse. Imagine ancient Solomon revived and even more cynical, witty, precise, and scathing. These lyrics are delightfully arch and delicately stern. They range from wry takes on technology and white-collar conundrums to introspective riffs on grief, loss and the compensations of travel.
—Jury, Dektet 2010 -
Falling Blues
by Jannie Edwards
ISBN: 978-1-897181-36-2
Price: $15.95Familiar comforts – marital beds, teacups – are balanced on the knife edge of language, scissored into poetic forms from villanelle to blues. The result is attentive and disconcerting. The beautiful success of this superb collection is due to the use of verbs, always freshly precise and colourfully sound.
—Jury, Dektet 2010 -
Learning to Count
by Douglas Burnet Smith
ISBN: 978-1-897181-37-9
Price: $15.95Travel writing used to be a nostalgic adventure-story or anthropological ghetto of non-fiction. This book shows that the experience of crossing borders and negotiating cultures is integral to anyone alive to – and in – the world. The poems are a layered patina, evoking not only the sensual present of France, Rome, Corsica and Halifax, but also their complex pasts, interpreted over and over through art.
—Jury, Dektet 2010 -
[sic]
by Nikki Reimer
ISBN: 978-1-897181-38-6
Price: $15.95Gorilla condoms? Goldilocks’ bent-over cootchie? Gonzo cocaine? Everything’s 4-sale when language is loosed as it is ici (icy) (sic). These poems are a pile-up of pop culture at “the intersection of Art and Commerce”, and the city is caught at the stoplight.
—Jury, Dektet 2010 -
Standoff Terrain
by Jocko Benoit
ISBN: 978-1-897181-39-3
Price: $15.95A guy looks for love in all the wrong places, but comes up with all the right lines. What happens when Sun Tzu’s The Art of War meets the Indian erotic-religious text The Kama Sutra? Well, you get philosophical verse that’s fun, frank, and funky.
—Jury, Dektet 2010 -
White Shirt
by Laurie MacFayden
ISBN: 978-1-897181-40-9
Price: $15.95This is the “classic” hard-drinking, hard-living, gravelly poet’s voice – only it comes from a woman. It’s a bust-out-of-the-closet voice where occasional touchstone rhymes and furious lists score the page. The poems are stripped down, poignant, exact, and as heartily playful as any serious blues. Here is Sappho crossed with the Supremes.
—Jury, Dektet 2010
Frontenac House News
Dec 12, 2008
Frontenac House Is a Proud Sponsor of the Freefall Prose and Poetry Contest
Frontenac House is a proud sponsor of the Freefall Prose and Poetry Contest 2008.
Guest Editor: Austin Clarke, winner of the 2002 Giller Prize
1st Prize (Fiction & Poetry) $300
2nd Prize (Fiction & Poetry) $150
3rd Prize (Fiction & Poetry) $75
Entry fee: $20.00 (includes one year subscription to Freefall)
AWCS Members: $10.00
Maximum 3000 words prose, or 5 poems per entry.
An original paper copy of the entry must be received on or before December 31st, 2008. Entry forms and further information is available at http://www.freefallmagazine.ca.
Nov 7, 2008
Shirlee Smith Matheson on Shaw Cable TV
On November 11, Shirley Matheson will be seen on Shaw Cable TV in Calgary throughout the day, discussing Maverick in the Sky, a fascinating portrait of flying ace Freddie McCall, one of the most successful fighter pilots of World War I.
Oct 10, 2008
Judges for Dektet 2010 Announced
Frontenac House is pleased to announce that poets bill bissett, George Elliott Clarke, and Alice Major will be on the jury for DEKTET 2010. We are delighted with this selection of judges and feel they will fulfil Frontenac’s mandate to publish exceptional poetry from as varied and diverse a group of poets as we can find.
Sep 21, 2008
New Book from Original Quartet Poet: Pavlov’s Elephant by Rosalee van Stelten
Frontenac House is pleased to announce the publication of Pavlov’s Elephant, a new collection of poetry by Rosalee van Stelten. This is Rosalee’s first book since the highly praised Pattern of Genes published with Frontenac House as part of Quartet 2001.
Pavlov’s Elephant continues the themes Rosalee developed so successfully in Pattern of Genes: the lasting lessons of childhood that go on to shape an entire life; the warmth of family; the keen observations of the world around her; the pleasures of travel. And always there is the keen delight in words and the ingenious use of rhyme and rhythm that infuse every page throughout the book. Pavlov’s Elephant is easily accessible and a pleasure to read, but leaves a strong impression not easily forgotten.
Praise for Pattern of Genes
Van Stelten’s verse is both visually driven, concentrating on the observable, and possessed of a solid aural foundation… The better poems in this collection combine these two virtues to paint exquisite miniatures. ~Alexander Rettie, Alberta Views
The virtue and reward of the poems is not in the innovative use of form or novel content, but in the dexterous imagistic strokes, the economy of means. Van Stelten knows how to turn a line and how to use the sonic glue of assonance, alliteration, sibilance, slant and full rhyme … to rein in the syllables or loosen the lope of phrase and image as they uncoil down her page. ~Richard Stevenson, The Danforth Review
Aug 8, 2008
Dektet 2010
In 2010, the 10th anniversary of the Quartet poetry series, Frontenac House will simultaneously publish 10 poetry books – Dektet 2010.
Titles will be chosen by a jury of leading Canadian writers. This will be a blind selection process – jury members will not know the identity of persons submitting manuscripts.
- An advance on royalties of $1,000 will be paid to each writer accepted for Dektet 2010.
- The deadline for submission has been revised to October 31, 2008.
- Guidelines, a comprehensive FAQ, and entry forms are on this website at: Frontenac’s 10th Anniversary Celebration or can be requested from the publisher by writing to:
Submissions Manager
Frontenac House Ltd.
1138 Frontenac Ave. SW
Calgary AB T2T 1B6
We regret that email and phone inquiries regarding Dektet 2010 cannot be answered.
Previous Page Next Page
"The Three Sisters," a concert piece for wind band and narrator, is featured in the Calgary Stampede Showband's new CD, Breaking Boundaries. Composed by Kelly-Marie Murphy, it was inspired by Van Stelten's eponymous poem which forms an integral part of the work, and premiered at the Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts in 2009. The poem also appears in her Frontenac House book Pattern of Genes.
