What Is Already Known

Louise E. Allin, a poet and short-story writer, is also an English instructor at Cambrian College.

In its two decades of serving Canadian literature, Thistledown Press has
achieved a reputation for quality. This anthology provides a varied and
satisfying collection of poetry and short stories. The authors juggle an
endless variety of themes, all with consummate skill. Many are
recognized figures, such as Lorna Crozier, Patrick Lane, and Gertrude
Story, while others are beginning promising careers. No matter where the
book is opened, the material delights without a false step. The voices
are real and strong, page after page of characters taking centre stage:
“It’s a strain waking up in a strange man’s bed to the sound of
church bells ringing,” a tired young woman confesses. “ ‘You are
shrinking,’ my daughter says / but it is only the trees growing /
large in my garden,” says a defiant elder. The helpless and the
hopeless add their rhythms: “So Cindy comes for a visit, eh? ...
She’s all crumpled up, got this wrecked plaid coat on looks like she
slept in it. Turns out she did. In the Goodwill Box at Safeway.” The
editor of this collection rolls the camera on a travelogue with a
thousand guides, walking from the mountain ranges of La Paz to the ice
floes of the Arctic to the London Underground, from Edmonton in 1948
back to Ionia in 700 B.C.