This spring we've made it our mission (even more than usual) to celebrate new releases in the wake of cancelled launch parties, book festivals, and reading series. With 49th Shelf Launchpad, we're holding virtual launch parties here on our platform complete with witty banter, great insight, and short and snappy readings to give you a taste of the books on offer. You can request these books from your local library, get them as e-books or audio books, order them from your local indie bookseller if they're delivering, buy them direct from the publisher or from online retailers.

Today we're launching Disappearing Minglewood Blues, by M.C. Warrior, which—according to Kate Braid—"gives us sharp and fascinating insights into the everyday and sweaty work world—dark, difficult and dangerous—of his three decades logging and commercial fishing in BC."

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The Elevator Pitch. Tell us about your book in a sentence.

It’s a book of poems about living and working at the sharp end of production—logging, fishing—on the B.C. coast and the struggle for social justice that entails.

Describe your ideal reader.

Essentially my ideal reader would be someone who finds themselves intrigued and wanting more after seeing the video and reading my answers to these questions.

What authors/books is your work in conversation with?

The Lesbian poets—Alcaeus & Sappho, Publius Ovidius Naso, Chuang Tzu, Dogen, Federico Garcia Lorca, Arundhati Roy, Jerry Garcia.

What is something interesting you learned about your book/yourself/your subject during the process of creating and publishing your book?

I was struck anew by the importance of reading poetry to an audience, even if it’s imaginary, if one wants to get the music, the rhythm of the words right.

What is “where there’s muck, there’s brass” about?

It’s a poem about emigration, both a lament for a now vanished way of life and for those who found themselves forced to leave it behind. 

An important part of any book launch are the thank you’s. Go ahead, and acknowledge someone whose support has been integral to this project.

I really have to thank Mona Fertig for making it possible after all this time.

What are you reading right now or next?

I’m now rereading Robertson Davies’s Fifth Business and will be reading Tom Wayman’s Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back as soon as it arrives from my local bookshop.

About The Disappearing Minglewood Blues:

Warrior worked for over thirty years at the sharp end of production in B.C. as a logger, commercial fisherman and union activist.

M.C. Warrior’s book is a fine collection of new poetry and poems only previously found in magazines, anthologies and in the chapbook  Quitting Time published by McLeod Books in 1978. They range from poetry about working on the coast—commercial fishing, logging, environmental campaigner—to the political meaning of work, and wry and deft observations on topics ranging from Buddhism to Ovid in the afterlife. Warrior was an IWA logging Camp Chairman, UFAWU Organizer (United Fishermen & Allied Workers Union), Lead Strategic Researcher For LiUNA (Labourers’ International Union of North America) and Executive Director of a Habitat for Humanity affiliate.