Capitalistic Affection!     Frank Davey
Poetry     88 pp     5 3/4 x 8 3/4     0 88910 244 9 pb
    In Capitalistic Affection! Frank Davey re-writes the Sunday comics of the 1940s and 1950s into a poem about growing up, about men meeting women, about Canada, about CF-100s, Colt .45s, Spitfires and cold-war warriors. Here you can watch old friends - The Lone Ranger, Fearless Fosdick, Johnny Hazard, Steve Canyon - get ambushed in the halls of Canadian literature, watch Canadian poets and critics in cameo appearances, watch the PM fall under Narda's spell. This is a poem which both recreates something American into a new, refreshing and often irreverent Canadian text and moves beyond the national to essential human issues and essential delights of language.
    Frank Davey lives in Toronto where he teaches at York University and edits the influential journal of criticism and theory Open Letter.

A Color of Her Speech     Lola Lemire Tostevin
Poetry     72 pp     5 1/2 x 8 3/4     0 88910 255 4 pb
    In Lola Lemire Tostevin's Color of Her Speech, two of the central issues of contemporary Canadian discourse, bilingualism and feminism, are used as metaphors for the struggle we all must make to recover our own personal speech, a way of reaching each other.
    Born into a French-Canadian family in Timmins, Ontario, Lola studied comparative literature at the University of Alberta. Her poems were included in the recent anthology of women's poetry Writing Right. Color of Her Speech is her first published book.

Famous Players     Greg Hollingshead
Fiction     148 pp     5 1/2 x 8 1/4     0 88910 231 7 pb
    From slapstick to dark comedy, these twelve unforgettable stories chart the strange worlds inhabited by ambition and the fear of power. The characters are sometimes eccentric, but they never leave the country of the heart. The writing is crafted, contemporary and unique.
    Even when the stories are sad or menacing, they are comic, in a way that seems distinctively Canadian, but with a twist. If Canadian humour is based on a distaste for pretension - we laugh at the gap between a person's illusions and the reality - then these stories are meticulous evocations of the world from inside the minds of those so deluded, the assumption being that the desire to be other than what one is prevents a person from knowing the difference between what is real and what is not.
    Greg Hollingshead was born in Toronto in l947. He completed graduate studies in England and is now Associate Professor at the University of Alberta. Over the past several years his stories have been published in many of Canada's leading literary magazines, including Canadian Fiction Magazine, Descant, and Best Canadian Stories.

Incognito     David Young. Jim Lang, Photographer
Fiction     280 pp     6 x 8 3/4     0 88910 204 x pb
    'It would be hard to exaggerate the virtues of this funny, moving and exquisitely produced book.' - Paul Roberts, Quill & Quire
    'One of the strongest narrative experiments to be published lately in Canada.' - Richard Truhlar, Toronto Arts News
    'Incognito is unquestionably an impressive, innovative exploration of a man's memories of himself, as well as a dazzling example of how far a literary genre can be stretched.' - Norman Sigurdson, Winnipeg Free Press
    'And dammit, he's funny. At one point, lost in a history of stained corduroy trousers and 10-second trips to Mars, I was laughing so hard that someone in the same room told me to get out.' - Ken McGoogan, Calgary Herald
    'The moment of truth, the realization that maybe Young made it all up - will vary from reader to reader, but it is a stunner. Not content with undermining the other characters, Young then proceeds to destroy his hitherto sympathetic narrator by having him brutally attack Mickey Mouse at Disneyland - or was it just a fantasy? The endings hang suspended in a void, secured only by that omnipotent and hugely entertaining narrative voice.' - Mark Czarnecki, Maclean's
    'Definitely for those who like off-the-wall stuff.' - Keith Garebian, Toronto Star
    'This may be an unorthodox form of literature, but Young fits into a very traditional category - that of the master storyteller.' - Tom Mills, Sault Ste. Marie Star
    'Incognito is experimental, realistic, ironic, sentimental and exceptionally intelligent. At $9.95, it's also an incredible bargain.' - Will Wigle, Vancouver Province

Lost Language     Maxine Gadd
Poetry     184 pp     5 1/2 x 8 1/2     0 88910 230 9 pb
    Long overdue, Lost Language is the first major gathering of over two decades of writing by the radical West Coast poet Maxine Gadd.
    A writer with a marvellous density of voice, her poems move through the physical and emotional geographies of Western Canada, charting subjective and objective histories to create a unique and challenging body of work.
    Maxine Gadd was born in England in I940. She has lived in and around Vancouver since early childhood.

The Martyrology, Book V     bpNichol
Poetry     174 pp     5 1/2 x 8 3/4     0 88910 251 1 pb
    'The greatest masterpiece is no more than an alphabet in disorder.' - Jean Cocteau
    Since 1967, bpNichol has been at work on his major poetic work, the open-ended epic sequence The Martyrology. It is the poem into which all his other experiments and discoveries lead, and in which they are unified and absorbed.
    bpNichol is the author of ten books of poetry, four novels, and one collection of short fictions, as well as numerous pamphlets, prints, multiples, records and tapes both by himself and with the sound collaboration ensemble, The Four Horsemen. He won the Governor General's Award for poetry in 1970, was the subject of Michael Ondaatje's film, Sons of Captain Poetry and, as part of The Four Horsemen, was included in Ron Mann's recent movie, Poetry in Motion.

Open Squares     John Nold
Poetry     120 pp     5 3/4 x 8 3/4     0 88910 214 7 pb
    Both Nold's writing and painting show the strong influence of the landscape of London, Ontario's eastern shore, and his imagery - striking and evocative - is drawn from his hiking and canoeing trips into and through the Georgian Bay area.
    Open Squares is derived from, and in homage to, Joseph Albers. It is a work exciting in its formal qualities, striking in its images and emotional nuances, and stimulating in the intellectual horizons it opens. Nold is already pushing against the boundaries while strengthening and deepening the given possibilities of language and the poem.
    Nold, both a writer and painter, describes Open Squares as a cubist work in which long and short poems are interwoven with prose.

Voices, Noises     Rafael Barreto-Rivera
Poetry     126 pp     5 1/2 x 8 3/4     0 88910 252 x pb
    'Rafael Barreto-Rivera is best known as a member of the sound poetry performance group, The Four Horsemen; Voices, Noises is his first major collection of poetry.... The voice is rich, lyrical, and rhythmically subtle, ranging from sardonic commentaries on the poet's Puerto Rican heritage to witty linguistic conceits, to poems of beautiful clarity celebrating the birth of children. Clearly, Barreto-Rivera can do a lot more than hyperventilate on stage.' - S.S.
    'Voices, Noises is not a butterfly that can be pinned neatly by a collector to a flat board ... Fluency is the most striking characteristic of Voices, Noises. Poetic, emotional and geographic fluency dominates and transfixes these poems, which are suffused with internal light-play, beauty and ratiocination. Having learned to manipulate perception effectively, Barreto-Rivera is free to roam like some kind of intergalactic horseman.' - Daniel Jalowica, Windsor Star

Wheels     Roy Kiyooka
Poetry     58 pp     8 1/2 x 11     stapled
Series: CHP Manuscript Editions

The Work: Conversations with English Canadian Playwrights
Robert Wallace and Cynthia Zimmerman, Editors
Criticism     384 pp     5 3/4 x 8 3/4     0 88910 246 5 pb
    The Work: Conversations with English-Canadian Playwrights takes a personal and comprehensive look at plays written and produced by a wide range of Canadian playwrights over the last fifteen years.
    Robert Wallace and Cynthia Zimmerman, both of Glendon College, York University, investigate the themes, styles and preoccupations of contemporary Canadian drama. They have produced a valuable contribution to theatre itself; not only a useful compendium of first-person insights into plays and playwrights but an oral history of Canada's latest and most overlooked art.
    The Work includes discussions with Hrant Alianak, Carol Bolt, Tom Cone, Michael Cook, Rex Deverell, David Fennario, Larry Fineberg, David French, Ken Gass, John Gray, Herschel Hardin, Tom Hendry, Margaret Hollingsworth, Michael Hollingsworth, Martin Kinch, Ken Mitchell, John Palmer, Sharon Pollock, Erika Ritter, Sheldon Rosen, Lawrence Russell, Rick Salutin, Paul Thompson, Bryan Wade, George F. Walker and Tom Walmsley.
    Each conversation is followed by a brief autobiographical note, a bibliography of selected criticism and commentary and a comprehensive checklist of each playwright's work for the stage.
    Also included are a preface, introduction, photographs of the playwrights and an index.
    'A fascinating source book.' - Chris Johnson, CBC Stereo Morning