Contemporary Canadian Literature with a Distinctly Urban Twist

Anvil Press

Motel of the Opposable Thumbs

By Stuart Ross

Mr. Ross unapologetically leaps from howls of grief and despair to zany incursions into surrealism and the absurd. He embraces this panoply of approaches to respond to our cantankerous existential dilemma. All that, and it’s structured after Bela Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4! Get a room and enjoy.

  • canada orders $18
  • us $18
  • world (outside Canada/US) orders US $18

Mouthfuls of Space

By Tom Prime

The poems in Mouthfuls of Space offer a dissociative journey through the life of a once homeless recovering drug addict and victim of childhood sexual, emotional, and physical abuse.

  • canada orders $16
  • us $14
  • world (outside Canada/US) orders US $14

Mysterious Dreams of the Dead

By Terry Watada

Mysterious Dreams of the Dead is an imaginative examination of the effects of exile, internment, and dispersal on the third-generation of Japanese Canadians (the “Sansei”).
  • canada orders $20
  • us $20
  • world (outside Canada/US) orders US $20

A Mysterious Humming Noise

By Howard White


Howard White says, “Some poets try to capture rare butterflies in their writing. The things I go after are more like houseflies.” The comparison does him no favours but it is true inasmuch as his writing is notably unpretentious and concerned with common and everyday realities.

  • canada orders $18
  • us $18
  • world (outside Canada/US) orders US $18

Naked in a Pyramid

By Yosef Wosk

Naked in a Pyramid is an unconventional book by an original thinker, a former rabbi who owns ancient Torah scrolls, a yellow star from the concentration camps, and Pee-Wee Herman’s yellow bike. There is quite simply nobody like him. Yosef Wosk is a reclusive Lone Ranger who frequently helps others but remains a stranger. Here, for the first time, he has gathered a medley of observations to reveal his private world.

  • canada orders $22
  • us $18
  • world (outside Canada/US) orders US $18

Night Moves: The Street Photography of Rodney DeCroo

By Rodney DeCroo

Rodney DeCroo’s street photography project, Night Moves, is a gritty, touching, poignant, and truthful portrayal of contemporary urban life. With his poet’s eye for detail, he faithfully captures the living character of East Vancouver, especially the life and pulse of the Commercial Drive area that he has called home for the past thirty years.

  • canada orders $40.00
  • us $30.00
  • world (outside Canada/US) orders US $30.00
Winner! -- Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Prizes)

No Shelter

By Henry Doyle

Infused with the spirit of Charles Bukowski, these down to earth poems take readers on a hard-scrabble journey, starting from Doyle’s early years as a runaway from foster homes, an incarcerated youth, a boxer, and a homeless wage-earner living in shelters and on the streets of Ottawa and Toronto.

  • canada orders $18
  • us $15
  • world (outside Canada/US) orders US $15

Nothing But Time: Conversations with Peter Mettler on Life and Cinema

By José Teodoro

The product of eleven years of conversations with playwright and author José Teodoro, undertaken in various locations in Mettler’s two home countries of Canada and Switzerland, Nothing But Time explores this extraordinary artist’s life and practice, which brims with tales of uncanny coincidence, dynamic collaborations with fellow artists such as Atom Egoyan, Jennifer Baichwal, and Jim O’Rourke, and countless encounters with visionaries from the worlds of science and spirituality. In Mettler’s story, the yearning for knowledge is balanced with the surrender to boundless mystery, until the tenets that guide his art and life dissolve and cohere in an uncommon commitment to cultivating our collective sense of wonder.

  • canada orders $27.95
  • us $20
  • world (outside Canada/US) orders US $20

On the Count of None

By Allison Chisholm

On the Count of None is the first full-length poetry collection by Kingston poet Allison Chisholm. These are poems whose language looks both ways before licking the envelope.

  • canada orders $18
  • us $18
  • world (outside Canada/US) orders US $18

Outlasting the Weather: Selected & New Poems 1994-2020

By Patrick Friesen

Spanning a quarter century of Friesen’s work, the poems in Outlasting the Weather speak to what is meant by “a life lived in poetry.” The poems in this Selected are inseparable from the poet. To read them is to enter his thinking and ride his breath: to experience the art of making in as immediate a way as is humanly possible.

  • canada orders $20
  • us $17
  • world (outside Canada/US) orders US $17