News & Reviews
The book’s introduction explains why “lives” in the title is plural, and why the subtitle is “A Memoir of Sorts.” The explanation is confusing, but in an intriguing way. You might think at first that “lives” is plural to account for all the lives intertwined with Atwood’s: parents, children, lovers, associates, other writers…
In the Foreword to The Answer to Everything, editor Rob Budde says he hopes that his selection of the poems of Ken Belford, “is chosen by future scholars as a representative introduction to his work.” Those future scholars might so choose, but not readers familiar with Belford’s work. This is because Budde and his co-editor…
Anger be now your song, immortal one, Achilles’ anger, doomed and ruinous, That caused the Greeks loss on bitter loss. Those lines from the Iliad refer to a difficult time for the Greek forces in the final year of their decade-long siege of Troy. Their hero Achilles, blessed by the gods with invincibility, was…
I understand that Paul Strickland’s recent review of the northern arts magazine Thimbleberry has raised some controversy in Prince George’s arts scene concerning not just how much a reviewer can quote from the original texts, but also whether reviewers can quote at all from this magazine. I think the sane responses to such attempts at resisting scrutiny are a)…
The latest (Spring 2021) issue of ThimbleBerry, Art and Culture in Northern B.C., provides a cross-section of literary accomplishment, artistic creation, and aesthetic thinking in the region. For the magazine’s editors, Rob Budde and Kara-lee MacDonald, these accomplishments are vital to “societal well-being.” Their introductory “Letter from the Editors,” which starts in first-person plural but…
According to Robyn Curtis (11 May 2021) the problems of Exploration Place go back to its origins. Like all museums, it was started by “elite men.” These men were racists. Saying that men were the creators of museums doesn’t tell us much. Most civic institutions, through all time and across all cultures, were started…
In his article “Speaking Out” (The Walrus, June 2019), John Semley tells the story of the Wilfred Laurier University (WLU) teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd, who made international headlines when she was censured by a University examining committee for creating an unsafe learning environment for transgender students. The committee consisted of her thesis supervisor, Nathan Rambukkana,…
Writer’s Block sessions, led by Marcus Sinclairus and Andrew Burton, have (since Covid) drawn good participation through Zoom technology. Sinclairus is a College of New Caledonia sociology instructor. Andrew Burton is the author of Daymares and other poetry collections, and a freelance creative writing instructor. Burton organizes the local Word Play literary reading events and is founder…
We are, for good or bad — people with a past. There is no escaping this fact, erasing it from living memory, or rewriting our history books. It’s not that simple. No morality police squad, cancel culture club or “me too” tag team can change the fact that many men in history, who we now…
What follows is an attempt to understand what organized groups were represented at the January 6 riot at the Capitol building, and what these groups stand for. I’ve tried to be as objective as possible, and make no personal comment, though words are connotative as well as denotative, and are read by individuals who have…
Organizers of, and participants in, Word Play literary events used Zoom technology to overcome restrictions on the size of public gatherings and hold a poetry reading Sept. 24. From his home in the Hart, Marcus Sinclairus of the College of New Caledonia was moderator inviting participation from poets across a wide region and from…