The Seaboard Review of Books: A Thursday Edition
April 9, 2026
In this issue:
The Wrecking Game by Chris Forrest (Fiction)
Liberty Street by Heather Marshall (Fiction)
The Art of Solidarity: Labour arts and heritage in Canada, edited by Rob Kristofferson and Stephanie Ross (Non-Fiction)
Strangely, Friends by Karen Dubinsky (Non-Fiction)
Radiant. White. Light. By Mo Duffy (Poetry, Memoir)
Cannibal Rats by Richard Greene (Poetry)
Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review of Books!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief
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Fiction
The Wrecking Game by Chris Forrest
“The thrust of the story had nowhere to go but exactly where it was being funnelled, a dark ending for the principal characters.” (pg. 228)
Liberty Street by Heather Marshall
Emily Radcliffe is a lowly editorial assistant at Chatelaine magazine in 1961, working out of what she suspects was a janitor’s closet. She has dreamt all her life of making a name for herself as her war journalist father did in the 1940s. When she intercepts a shocking letter outlining horrific conditions at Toronto’s Mercer Women’s Prison, Emily is fa…
Non-Fiction
The Art of Solidarity: Labour arts and heritage in Canada edited by Rob Kristofferson and Stephanie Ross
Labour organizations, activists, artists, and historiographers will find a valuable resource in The Art of Solidarity: Labour arts and heritage in Canada. Editors Rob Kristofferson of Wilfred Laurier University and Stephanie Ross of McMaster University have assembled a compendium of histories with a national scope, perhaps the only place in which a broa…
Strangely, Friends by Karen Dubinsky
Canada, along with Mexico, was one of the few countries in the Northern Hemisphere that did not cut ties with Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, maintaining diplomatic and economic relations. Despite that, as Karen Dubinsky notes in the introduction to
Poetry
Radiant. White. Light. By Mo Duffy
Radiant. White. Light.: A Divorce Memoir is a poetic, post-separation and divorce memoir by Mo Duffy. The speaker invokes the ‘radiant white light’ of the book’s title to riff on the words’ many varied meanings — those that correspond to a painful separation from a spouse, and those that connote the dissolving of identity after 16 years of an otherwise …
Two Poems from Penn Kemp
Dream Song on Easter Sunday For Al Moritz after his reading from The Wren at Little Wren Books, London A glorious song I catch the words to and the tune— From all around, medieval peasants in Spring motley gather in the village, pulled by an unknown power. “From farm and market square they come to celebrate, free for a day, the feast prepared and… the poets are led to insanity.” What kind of celebration would send the poets mad, then held in the old stone asylum at the far edge of town by their wandering river, forever? Are there lambs to be slaughtered, sacrificed on this holy day for the common weal, shanks to be passed around from the communal plate? A poet sings the entire poem to the bookseller at the counter of her bookshop. It is two full pages long, in quatrains that I glance at as he reads. The title is “For Fae and Faeryland” in decorative gothic title font. To his surprise, I join in the first verse and the last, the only ones that are given me. An enchanting poem, as magical as “Kubla Khan”. An apt comparison—this minor nineteenth century English landscape poet, Ming or Mink W, was also under opium’s influence. Might an odd collection be extant? Like many old ballads, this ending is gruesome but the tale and sweet tune enthralling. No interruption by a man from Porlock at the door but on waking I remember no more. If only I could recall the melody, more verses might emerge to tell why, tell all. Instead, mystery claims the rhymes in its vast preverbal maw, with no reference book, no A.I. to explain in layman’s term the dream. Unless I could return to dream, to recover time and thought? But that’s a skill not even Coleridge could maintain. It is enough that in dream, I hold the tune and sing. Q and A Al Moritz remarks that all poetry is good. That is to say, I think, that creative expression is a good in itself, regardless of the inherent quality of the work. He says if poets were in charge, the country would be better off, ruled with more heart, more soul. But if we governed, poets would have no time for poetry and those of us who need to write would go mad, would lose the ability to imagine, to dream without time and private space to wander through in wonder. With no head for numbers nor political intrigue, how would such as I manage affairs of state, that constant barrage? No, leave me to activism through my words. And let those who can better manage, do their best in the realm that fits them. Each to their own ability to celebrate the commonwealth, the common good.
Penn Kemp is a Canadian poet, novelist, playwright, and sound poet who lives in London, Ontario. Kemp has been publishing her writing since 1972 and was London’s first poet laureate, serving from 2010 to 2013. Her most recent collection is Colour Fielding (2026). The League of Canadian Poets honored her with their Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Love this range of books! They look so good. I really enjoyed the poems especially the idea of poets running the world. Very true!