Feature of the Day: Palimpsest Press

donor to the AngelHousePress 2023 Caring Imagination Crowd Funding Campaign

I am grateful that Palimpsest Press has donated books to the campaign. If you support the campaign, you can choose from a variety of perks, including books from Palimpsest.

“Palimpsest Press publishes poetry, literary fiction, and non-fiction titles that deal with poetics, cultural criticism, and literary biography. We look for poetry that displays technical mastery, precise language, and an authentic voice, and fiction that is rich in imagery, well crafted, and focused on character development. Our non-fiction titles are essays or memoirs written by poets, and books that examine Canadian poetry and the Canadian cultural landscape. Palimpsest Press’ mission is to publish high quality work in beautifully designed and collectible volumes. Our belief is that a book should be an object of beauty and inspiration. Our objectives are to seek out the best new and established voices in Canadian literature and we have committed at least 20% of our titles to authors living with disability. We are committed to maintaining high editorial and production standards, ensuring our trade books are well distributed, kept in print, and promoted through readings, events and advertising. 

Our imprint, Anstruther Books, is named after a lake in the North Kawarthas and curated by Jim Johnstone. Anstruther Books publishes poetry from a diverse cross-section of the Canadian literary community. This imprint specializes in poetry that is tapped into the speed and spirit of the 21st century, and includes political, socially-minded, and transgressive poetry, as well as conceptual books that maintain a lyric bent.

Small presses help build and strengthen literary communities. Please help support the continuation of small presses by buying their books. You can purchase our books at national retail chains and independents or through our online bookstore.

Palimpsest Press sits on the traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations, comprised of the Ojibway, the Odawa, and the Potawatomie. (source: University of Windsor)”

Palimpsest Press is donating the following books to the campaign:

David Barrick’s Nightlight

Patterned on a series of dream states, David Barrick’s Nightlight delves into the surreal nature of the human imagination, even at its most unconscious. Whether Barrick’s poems explore the sensory world of a classic horror film, an Alex Colville painting, or an after hours jazz gig, his inquisitiveness leads to invention, and invention to discovery. Where else could an amateur fossil hunt become a primeval experience, or a lawnmower, a cow, and newlyweds float together midair? Nightlight taps into the emotional undercurrents of these moments, unfolding like a “long elastic maze of song.”

Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang’s Grappling Hook

Taking its title from Tomas Tranströmer, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang’s Grappling Hook sifts the debris of the twenty-first century for insights into identity, desire, and the everyday struggles inherent to motherhood. In doing so, she presents vivid portraits of the joys and perils of marriage, the evolving fight for social justice in a world divided by inequity, and the uncertain future that’s left for children of the digital age. Grappling Hook is an impressive display of Sarah Yi –Mei Tsiang’s considerable poetic gifts, and a love letter to those who are making meaningful change in unprecedented times.

Molly Peacock’s A Friend Sails in on a Poem.

For the last forty-five years, the distinguished poets Molly Peacock and Phillis Levin have read and discussed nearly every poem they’ve written—an unparalleled friendship in poetry. Here Peacock collects her most important essays on poetic form and traces the development of her formalist aesthetic across their lifelong back-and-forth. A Friend Sails in on a Poem offers a charming, psychologically wise, and metaphorically piquant look at navigating craft and creativity. This is a book both for serious poets as well as for anyone who wants a deep dive into the impact of friendship on art itself.

You can choose the above books or other perks and help us pay our contributors by supporting the campaign!