Recommended Reading List
A Shelf of Small Press Books (by Theresa Kishkan)
By 49thShelf3 ratings
Given the economics of contemporary publishing, it strikes me as something of a miracle that so many small presses continue to publish such interesting and beautiful books. Often they are books that would not be picked up by the larger houses yet they find loyal readers and contribute significantly to literary culture. Sometimes it’s hard to find them. Most small presses can’t afford full-page ads in the nation’s newspapers or publicists. But word travels by mouth, by the passing of these volumes from one hand to another. They’re worth the search.*** Theresa Kishkan came to national attention with her first novel, Sisters of Grass. A true "writer's writer," she has been steadfastly championed by her peers as a writer against whom others measure their own work. She is an enthusiastic organizer and participant in regional literary events. Kishkan's poetry and essays have appeared in many periodicals and journals and in five book-length collections. Today, she lives on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia with her husband, the poet John Pass. Her latest book is Mnemonic: A Book of Trees.

Why it's on the list ...
close this panel
This brief novel is an account of the period during the Trojan War when Agamemnon asks the crafty Odysseus to come up with something ingenious to bring the bloody conflict to a conclusion. The reader is taken into the heat and sweat of the Greek camp outside the gates of Troy, and into the claustrophobic interior of that iconic horse as the warriors wait for their moment. Superbly written and designed.

Why it's on the list ...
close this panel
An elegant weaving of fairy-tale elements and contemporary narrative, this novel is a perfect combination of style and substance. Think of nettles and birds, a camp of rough and competitive tree-planters, deep water, a baby born in a forest hut, a hungry bear scratching at the door, and you will have some idea of the magical setting of this marvellous book.

Why it's on the list ...
close this panel
The cover of this book features a photograph of a worn cabin in a golden field, huge sky overhead. In the far distance, a blue hill. The language of the book is as open and filled with the specific details of places unknown to many of us, the homesteads and fencelines of the vast grasslands of the B.C. Interior. Schreiber goes in search of William Wycott, an early settler on the west side of the Fraser River, and returns with stories. The reader is taken back to Churn Creek and the Native gatherings to dig spring beauties in the Potato Mountains, the air alive with sand-hill cranes and coyotes.

Why it's on the list ...
close this panel
A gorgeous object in itself, with deep blue cover blind-printed with phrases of text, this is small press production at its finest. Patton has offered versions of three poems from the Exeter Book, the 10th c. codex: “The Earthwalker” (often translated as “The Wanderer”), “The Seafarer”, and “The Ruin”. Going deeply into the heart of these magnificent texts, Patton provides us with durable poems for our own troubled times. Interested readers should also seek out the glorious Anhaga, the late Jon Furberg’s own retelling of “The Wanderer”, recently reissued by Arsenal Pulp Press as part of Vancouver’s 125 celebrations.

Why it's on the list ...
close this panel
This picture book follows a child’s journey from home in the pre-dawn darkness to meet the school bus a snowy mile away. The text and illustrations are beautifully matched and the language is just poetic enough to make reading aloud a delight. “The cattle block the road ahead. / The bull is munching hay. / I softly sing to calm myself / and plan the safest way.” The child at the heart of this book is resourceful and brave, singing her way through a wooded landscape towards the welcome lights of the bus at the end of the long scary walk.

Why it's on the list ...
close this panel
Coach House Books is an incarnation of the seminal Coach House Press, founded by Stan Bevington in the mid-1960s. Saudade fits neatly within the Coach House tradition of innovative and engaged writing; the book was designed by See herself, a printer and book restorer. Ostensibly meditations on travel and landscapes far and near, the essays seek a balance between what we long for and what we can never return to. See wears her influences – Sebald, Berger, Kapuscinski – with a serious and original elegance.

Why it's on the list ...
close this panel
(There is no language
for what it will mean to live once the final pelagic spawn
sifts down to the depths, dead as stone;
no name for those still living as though there will be and is
nothing for which to atone.)
Windstorm is a long poem addressing climate change and environmental degradation, a father’s love and concern for his young children facing a world without the natural abundance he has known, and why this book isn’t on every shelf is a mystery to me. This is poetry as sinewy and beautiful as anything I’ve read, “...the old song/recycled and rescored/in discord...”
for what it will mean to live once the final pelagic spawn
sifts down to the depths, dead as stone;
no name for those still living as though there will be and is
nothing for which to atone.)
Windstorm is a long poem addressing climate change and environmental degradation, a father’s love and concern for his young children facing a world without the natural abundance he has known, and why this book isn’t on every shelf is a mystery to me. This is poetry as sinewy and beautiful as anything I’ve read, “...the old song/recycled and rescored/in discord...”

Why it's on the list ...
close this panel
Is this a novella or a short novel? I can’t decide. It’s brief –165 pages – but contains a fully-realized community, almost hidden from the larger world. A man makes paper which he bleaches by burying it in snow, a childless couple hovers ominously while a young girl awaits the birth of her baby, and in a fire-tower, another girl watches for forest fires, “electricity zinging around the aluminum eavestroughs”. The book is nicely designed, small enough to put in a pocket.