Received - Dodging Traffic by J Bradley

Dodging Traffic by J Bradley - Ampersand Books

"J Bradley is the Veruca Salt of the literary chocolate factory, writing with a satirical brazenness that leaves cavities among the reader's eyes. There is a sugary darkness to his work and lackadaisical charm; that of a black-market dental hygienist. J delivers new audacity, important romance, and certainty. He acknowledges the sensational ugly without apprehension. His ideas are of an entirely different species and his wit laughs at postmodern... stunned today, laughing tomorrow. Dodging Traffic is the classic, the sequel will forever envy. - Sarah Morgan

"Reading J Bradley's Dodging Traffic is a lot like actually dodging traffic - both are unpredictable, thrilling, surprising. Prepare yourself because these are poems that hit hard." - Jason Jordan

"J Bradley has a pen attached to his heart. His heart has its own brain. His brain has its own heart as well, but we are unsure if there's a pen hooked up to that." Robbie Q Telfer

J Bradley is the slammaster of Broken Speech, Florida's longest running poetry slam. His work has appeared in over 40 journals in 2009 alone, earning him credit as one of the most prolific and creative talents at work today. This is his first collection.

Received - You Know Who You Are by Ian Williams

"Ian Williams writes challenging poetry. His poems address the crisis of young, black masculinity in cities, paint starkly urban portraits of life and break open stereotypes the way a student taught him to snap the back of a ramen noodle packet. Sly humour laces through this collection, and Williams is adept at playing with language to change meanings in unexpected ways. For him it's easy to turn the word go into gone."

"Ian Williams' You Know Who You Are x-rays our social masks, our deceitful, greeting-card and billboard and video slogans, to show us up as who we really are - still human despite all the technology that makes us sound like idiots and prods us to feel nothing. Williams don't care about bout e-mail poses or cellphone attitude; he tears away at out language of bleeps and downloads and broadcasts to show us vulnerable, full of hurt and desire. What's he like? Think Atwood, Coupland's Generation X, and Bök: avant-garde cool, intelligent saying. Pick it up, get hooked up, see you seeing you clearer." - George Elliot Clarke

"Reading Ian Williams' poems I am both shattered and revived. They conjure a dazzling concoction of loneliness and hope, a wild display of the endless sparks and twists that become our lives. You Know Who You Are is an electric addition to Canadian poetry. What a debut!" - Carolyn Smart

Ian Williams received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is currently a professor at Fitchburg State College. He has held multiple fellowships and residencies and his writing has been in many journal across Canada and the US. Williams has a collection of short stories forthcoming from Freehand Books in 2011. He divides his time between Ontario and Massachusetts.

Received - Reticent Bodies by Moez Surani

Reticent Bodies by Moez Surani - Wolsak and Wynn Publishers


"Here's a debut that roams wildly and richly in its tones and topics, from... erotica... to poems with punchlines and lyrics of quiet elation." Steven Heighton

"Reticent Bodies is a bountiful volume. Exquisite in language, and outrageously excellent in style, these lyrics echo the vivid pictorialism of Michael Ondaatje and the painstaking truth-telling of Nazim Hikmet. Surani's lines are as incisive as scripture and as persuasive as song." - George Elliot Clarke

"Moez Surani's Reticent Bodies may be what the future of poetry in Canada will look like. His poetry rings with the linguistic rhythms of the Urdi, Swahili, Gujarti and Kutchi that he was exposed to around the kitchen table of his childhood, and his vibrant, of colour-saturated imagery captures startling fragments of Canada."

Moez Surani's writing has been included in numerous anthologies and literary journals including Carousel, Prairie Fire, Vallum, and Arc Poetry Magazine. He has served as writer-in-residence for the Toronto Catholic District School Board and curator for the Strong Words Reading Series in Toronto. HE was the recipient of a 2008 Chalmers Arts Fellowship which supported a trip through India and East Africa.

Received - Farang by Peter Blair

Farang poems by Peter Blair - Autumn House Press

"Peter Blair's Farang utilizes the best elements of the travelogue, memoir, and documentary. These poems are panoramic and introspective, foreign and intimate. Crossing genres and cultures, Blair writes lucidly from the crossroads where memory and empathy intersect." - Terrance Hayes



"Lyrics poetry knows little of the East beyond Pound's "River Merchant's Wife" or Yeat's "Asiatic vague immensities." Now we have the moody, fragrant, and luminous poems of Peter Blair's Farang. Like a path between broken temples, Farang shows us a Thailand losing its past in sex bars, the fractured dreams of women, the lonely, predatory men. Can the heart's affections reach across space and nation? Blair lived and taught in Thailand, was marked as the white and fleshy farang until he nearly forgot himself. Only death brings him back to the U.S., the foreign imperium. The songs of Farang move like dark clouds and flash lightning." - David Gewanter



"The raw and ethereal beauty of Thailand is laced through these lush, narrative poms where the speaker, a foreigner teaching there, lives both inside and outside the "dream of culture..." In the full circle of this book what Blair's world traveler brings home is an aching heart and travel's one true gift - memory..." - Lisa Zimmerman


Peter Blair's most recent book is The Divine Salt published by Autumn House Press. His earlier book, Last Heat won the Washington Prize in 1999. Born in Pittsburgh, he has worked in a psychiatric ward, a steel mill, and served three years in the Peace Corps in Thailand. Currently he teaches at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.