For National Poetry Month, Caversham Booksellers presents Christina Shah, Rob Colman and Ronna Bloom.
Christina Shah: if prey, then huntress
From a poet working in heavy industry comes an eclectic collection of observations and experiences as a woman on the road and out in the field in traditionally male-dominated environments.
Christina Shah lives in New Westminster and works in heavy industry, where she drinks from the firehose of knowledge. Her poetry has appeared in numerous Canadian literary journals. Her work has been shortlisted for the Fiddlehead’s 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2023. She is one-fifth of the Harbour Centre 5 poetry collective, whose chapbook, Brine, was released in 2022. Her first video poem, “rig veda” (in collaboration with videographer Mark Mushet), was translated into Spanish and screened internationally. rig veda, her first solo chapbook (Anstruther Press), received an honourable mention for the bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2024. if: prey, then: huntress (Nightwood Editions) is her first full-length poetry collection.
Rob Colman: Ghost Work
How do we redefine the self when memory begins to deteriorate? This question is at the heart of Ghost Work, a suite of poems that explores a son’s gradual loss of his father from dementia. In compassionate, well-crafted pantoums, triolets, ghazals, and sonnets, Rob Colman probes family connection, digging into the liminal space memory preserves between our natural and built environments.
Robert Colman is a poet, essayist and critic based in Newmarket, Ont. His fourth and most recent book of poems is Ghost Work (Palimpsest Press 2024).
Ronna Bloom: In A Riptide
The characters in Ronna Bloom's new collection In A Riptide are tired, sick, old, fragile, baffled, worried, dying, dead, uncertain, snacking, happy, generous, preoccupied, horny, astonished, and sometimes free. Emily Dickinson and Bukowski show up in the same poem. The Buddha has a shower. And Sisyphus is released from his burdens. It's the hospital meets the circus. Here, humour, darkness, and ecstasy mingle, and the chaos doesn't stop. But there's breath in these poems. There’s life.
Ronna Bloom is the author of eight books of poetry. Her work has been broadcast on CBC, recorded by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, and translated into Bangla and Chinese. She has led initiatives to bring poetry into health care settings, specifically developing the Poet-in-Residence program at Sinai Health and her poems have been used by filmmakers, choreographers, and architects. Her most recent book is In a Riptide (Brick Books, 2025.)
Free. Reserve a spot here.