Synopses & Reviews
Breathing Fire II is Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane's new selection of Canada's finest young poets.
Nine years ago the first volume of Breathing Fire was published to rave reviews, introducing 31 of Canada's finest new poets to a wide and appreciative audience of readers. The anthology has since gone into several printings and become a basic text in schools and universities across the country. And the poets within, including Michael Redhill, Karen Solie, Tim Bowling, Stephanie Bolster, Michael Crummey, Evelyn Lau, Sue Goyette and Carmine Starnino, have gone on to develop and captivate wide readerships of their own.
Today a new and exciting generation of poets has come of age. Some, including Tammy Armstrong, Adam Dickinson, George Murray, Alison Pick, Shane Rhodes, matt robinson, Laisha Rosnau and Nathalie Stephens, have already put out books, and have even won or been shortlisted for major awards. Others with work just as compelling will be introduced for the first time. Breathing Fire 2 collects the best from all 33 of these writers, proudly presenting the next generation of Canada's poets to the world.
Review
Readers of the first edition of
Breathing Fire, published nine years ago, will remember a formidable collection of young voices largely unknown to Canada's poetry scene. In Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane's second introduction to "Canada's New Poets," the results are even more impressive.
--Shannon Cowan, Globe and Mail
Review
Read the Martletreview of
Breathing Fire 2Review
Crozier and Lane write their intro in celebration, excitement, and gratitude for the good poems they found. For that, and for all their time and attention, they deserve praise ... [T]he book can give you hours of intense reading engagement and coax you to search for books you might have taken much longer to discover, or never discovered. A decade or two from now ...
Breathing Fire 2 is likely to be ... a historical time-capsule.
--Brian Bartlett, The Malahat Review
Review
In
Breathing Fire 2 the latest collection of young Canadian poets from Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane, we are given a glimpse of the literary world to come ... There is urgency in their words, a cry to be heard ... If poetry allows us to distill our experiences of the world into small snapshots of meaning and truth, then we will have to turn to these new writers -- inhabitants of this new world -- to translate it for us. We will be in good hands.
--Byrna Hallam, The Martlet List of Contributors - Sample Poems by Alison Pick, Matt Rader, Nathalie Stephens, Shane Rhodes
Review
Readers of the first edition of
Breathing Fire, published nine years ago, will remember a formidable collection of young voices largely unknown to Canada's poetry scene. In Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane's second introduction to "Canada's New Poets,"the results are even more impressive.
--Shannon Cowan, Globe and MailThis writing is driven by an underlying, ineffable vitality, a legitimacy -- a sense that the words are locked inexorably in place and the poet knows it ... There's much to like in Breathing Fire.
--Jon Mooallem, Books in CanadaCrozier and Lane write their intro in celebration, excitement, and gratitude for the good poems they found. For that, and for all their time and attention, they deserve praise ... [T]he book can give you hours of intense reading engagement and coax you to search for books you might have taken much longer to discover, or never discovered. A decade or two from now ... Breathing Fire 2is likely to be ... a historical time-capsule.
--Brian Bartlett, The Malahat Review
Review
This writing is driven by an underlying, ineffable vitality, a legitimacy -- a sense that the words are locked inexorably in place and the poet knows it ... There's much to like in
Breathing Fire.
--Jon Mooallem, Books in Canada
Synopsis
Canada's best new poets, as selected by Patrick Lane and Lorna Crozier.
About the Author
Lorna Crozier and her partner Patrick Lane are among Canada's leading poets. Crozier is the author of ten books of poetry, including The Garden Going on Without Us (1983), the Governor General's Award-winning Inventing the Hawk (1992), Everything Arrives at the Light (1995), A Saving Grace (1996) and What the Living Won't Let Go (2000). In 1995 she co-edited Breathing Fire: Canada's New Poets with Patrick Lane.Patrick Lane, considered by most writers and critics to be one of Canada's finest poets, was born in 1939 in Nelson, BC. He grew up in the in the Kootenay and Okanagan regions of the BC Interior, primarily in Vernon. He came to Vancouver and co-founded a small press, Very Stone House with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne. He then drifted extensively throughout North and South America. He has worked at a variety of jobs from labourer to industrial accountant, but much of his life has been spent as a poet, having produced twenty-four books of poetry to date. He is also the father of five children and grandfather of nine. He has won nearly every literary prize in Canada, from the Governor General's Award to the Canadian Authors Association Award to the Dorothy Livesay Prize. His poetry and fiction have been widely anthologized and have been translated into many languages. Lane now makes his home in Victoria, BC, with his companion, the poet Lorna Crozier.
Table of Contents
Tammy Armstrong
Sheri Benning
Amy Bespflug
Shane Book
Mark Callanan
Brad Cran
Joe Denham
Adam Dickinson
Triny Finlay
Adam Getty
warren heiti
Jason Heroux
Ray Hsu
Chris Hutchinson
Gillian Jerome
Anita Lahey
Amanda Lamarche
Chandra Mayor
Steve McOrmond
Alayna Munce
George Murray
Jada-Gabrielle Pape
Alison Pick
Steven Price
Matt Rader
Shane Rhodes
matt robinson
Laisha Rosnau
David Seymour
Sue Sinclair
Nathalie Stephens
Sheryda Warrener
Zoe Whittall