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Blueshifting, a poetry chapbook by Heather Kamins
Blueshifting is a physics phenomenon – the Doppler effect applied to light: if the source of the light is approaching, the light waves get scrunched together so they have a shorter wavelength (higher frequency) which shifts them to the blue end of the colour spectrum. Redshifting is the opposite; it happens when the source of [...]
Continue reading...Did Julian Barnes Invent Google?
18. January 2012
Futurist is not the first word that comes to mind when describing Julian Barnes. However, after reading Staring at the Sun, published in 1987, one wonders if he might not have enjoyed a fertile alternate career as a science fiction writer. The novel starts as a straight-up realistic account of a woman named Jean Serjeant [...]
Continue reading...10 Reasons to Like Li’l Bastard by David McGimpsey
10. January 2012
and by “Like” I mean “Like” as in feel great affection or affinity for, as opposed to “Like” as in click an up-turned thumb on a Facebook page. 1. The titles. Many of McGimpsey’s “chubby sonnets” should not be read without first pausing to savour the title. For example: “Song for Cardigans and Assholes.” Or [...]
Continue reading...Murder in the Cathedral
2. November 2011
No, this post is not about the T.S. Eliot play, but about an episode I’m writing as my excuse to participate in NaNoWriMo – the discovery of a body in a church and subsequent revelation that the priest had been having sex with the victim (when she was still alive). My aim is to take [...]
Continue reading...Hogtown – my gift to the Occupy Movement
14. October 2011
Toronto had a dry run for the Occupy Movement. It was called the G20 Summit. There’s the same feel to things now as last year. Frustration. Disbelief. Anger. Overwhelm. A confrontational rhetoric that threatens to explode. A painfully disengaged middle class more inclined to sidle up to power than trouble itself with issues or long-term [...]
Continue reading...Thanksgiving: a turkey of a holiday
8. October 2011
I took this photo at the petting zoo in Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park. This is one ugly creature. Personally, I don’t see the appeal of slaughtering, plucking and skinning one them, letting it simmer in its own juices for five hours, then serving it up on a platter of bread crumbs and whatnot that have [...]
Continue reading...Graffiti in Victoria
7. October 2011
When people go on holidays, they like to see the sights, or shop, or lie on a beach, or dine in nice restaurants. Me? I like to hunt for graffiti. While I was in Victoria, I did a lot of walking and found graffiti everywhere. Tags. Bombs. Walls. Stencils. Even dust on bus shelters. Some [...]
Continue reading...Vancouver Is A Strange Place
5. October 2011
After a month of driving to from in and around western Canada, I’m wondering what to do next. While on the road, I did as I intended, writing poems as I went. Maybe not as many poems as I would have liked, but enough that I have the raw material for a chapbook. Maybe that’s [...]
Continue reading...The Canada Poetry Challenge
1. September 2011
When I was nine, my brother and I climbed into the back seat of our parents’ Ford LTD station Wagon, the model with the fake wood paneling on the doors, and we spent the summer driving across Canada and back. We planned to camp and my dad built a wooden clap-trap roof rack to hold [...]
Continue reading...Review: We Make Mud, by Peter Markus
16. August 2011
There is a book I read at the beginning of the summer that I can’t remember having read. I must have read it because it says so in the notes I’m in the habit of scribbling to myself. It mustn’t have been a bad book. I remember when I have read a bad book because, [...]
Continue reading...Prufrock’s Trousers
9. August 2011
In my grade 12 English class, I had to read T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‘. I took nothing from the class except the line: “Do I dare to eat a peach?” which I repeated over and over when we went down to the cafeteria. Sitting in my jeans, I paid no [...]
Continue reading...The Tyranny of Love, by Nik Beat
3. August 2011
Nik Beat’s collection of poetry, The Tyranny of Love (Seraphim Editions), is the first of a stash I’ll be sampling over the next few weeks. As mentioned in my previous post, I found this book at The Book Band booth at the Mill Race Folk Festival. Nik Beat is a Toronto area poet who, among [...]
Continue reading...Indie Publishers at the Mill Race Folk Festival
2. August 2011
On Saturday, my wife and I went to the Mill Race Folk Festival in Cambridge, Ontario. I’ve never been to Cambridge before. It’s a horrid town. If you’re getting there via Hwy 401, you exit at Hwy 24 and drive south through a wasteland of big box stores. Every brand conceivable. I’d rather tie a [...]
Continue reading...Review: Sub Rosa, by Amber Dawn
20. July 2011
I don’t know what to make of the novel, Sub Rosa, by Amber Dawn. I suspect my difficulty with this novel has as much to do with my personal expectations as with the novel itself. Those expectations come from a couple sources. First, there’s the author profile on the Arsenal Pulp Press web site which [...]
Continue reading...10 Things I Love About Canada (and 10 that I don’t)
1. July 2011
Time to kick off some Pride-themed posts, and for two reasons: 1) this is the middle of Pride Week which will culminate in Toronto’s annual Pride parade on Sunday; 2) today is Canada Day which is cause for pride of a different sort. Today marks the 144th anniversary of Canada’s confederation, a time to celebrate [...]
Continue reading...New eFiction from David Allan Barker
Hogtown is my gift to the Occupy Movement. Download from Smashwords for free.
Sex With Dead People is an ebook collection of short stories. Download from Smashwords for free.
The Land is an enovel. Preview here or buy for your favourite ereader. Also available as an audiobook.
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31. January 2012
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