Sherry Simon

Reflections on the art of literary translation.

Translators connect languages and landscapes, sparking conversations that enlarge our imagination. In Canada, where translation has had an especially important role to play, the nature of the connections has changed. These wide-ranging essays, by Canada’s most prominent translators, chart a journey that begins with the sharp divides of English and French in the 1970s and then confronts the much more complex explosion of identities today. Engaging with the politics of meaning but also with the creative role of the translator, these beautifully-written reflections illuminate a practice that is today finally receiving due recognition.

Contributors include Wayne Grady, Rhonda Mullins, Michelle Hartman, Erin Moure, Barbara Godard, Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood, Linda Gaboriau, Sheila Fischman, Kathy Mezei, Philip Stratford, Louise von Flotow, Ray Ellenwood, Betty Bednarski, William Findlay, David Homel, Jane Brierley, Katia Grubisic.

Culture in Transit was originally published in 1995. This edition, with a new introduction by Sherry Simon, has been revised, and expanded to include four new contributors to reflect changes in the translation scene over the last decades.

Christopher DiRaddo

Twenty-eight-year-old Will, a teacher living in Montreal, has spent the last few months recovering from a breakup with his first serious boyfriend, Max. He has resumed his search for companionship, but has he truly moved on? Will’s mother Katherine – one of the few people, perhaps the only one, who loves him unconditionally – is also in recovery, from a bout with colon cancer that haunts her body and mind with the possibility of relapse. Having experienced heartbreak, and fearful of tragedy, Will must come to terms with the rule of impermanence: to see past lost treasures and unwanted returns, to find hope and solace in the absolute certainty of change. In The Geography of Pluto, Christopher DiRaddo perfectly captures the ebb and flow of life through the insightful, exciting, and often playful story of a young man’s day-to-day struggle with uncertainty.

Richard Sanger

“Richard Sanger’s new book begins with father and son depart­ing on the mythic early morning quest and then plunges us into the dirty realism of the rink. There are skittish pucks, ancient Sherwoods, inappropriate mums, elaborate excuses for losers (and Leafs), the rink as blank slate or the genetic showcase kids can’t escape. The key theme is the way we use stories to explain reality—including the games we lose—to ourselves, and our children.” — Linda Hutcheon

“Richard Sanger’s Fathers at Hockey is a brilliant and accurate evocation of the unique world dads and their kids enter when they find ice, outdoors or in. It’s all here, the bad coffee, aching cold, throat-catching moments of desperate hope and prayer.” — Roy Macgregor

“How does he encompass so much—from the numinous mystery of ice to a rink side chat with Umberto Eco—in a clutch of relaxed, mind-stretching, gut-punching poems about taking your kid to his games? I love this collection.” — Rick Salutin

“Fathers at Hockey shows Richard Sanger at the top of his game: formally inventive and various, eloquent, unsentimental, funny, unconventionally beautiful. Everything this reader looks for in poetry.” — Steven Heighton.

A Signal Editions Chapbook.

Jordan Abel

Founded in 2010, the Montreal International Poetry Prize has established itself as a major event in contemporary poetry, both in Canada and around the world. The Montreal Prize Anthology 2020 explodes with talent, combining radiant vision with striking invention in form. The loss of a father finds equivalence in a tornado’s blowing an apartment open to the night sky. Sacred and profane images of a mother pile up in couplets, making a heap of gold. Family memory stirs in the dreamy measures of a sestina. Racial injustice is defied and reversed in the unflinching mirror of a palindromic poem. A doctor confesses her life work to be a striving to right the wrong done her father. These poems, a handful of the thousands submitted to the 2020 competition, were chosen for the lone virtue of their speaking directly to the reader, with conviction and with art.

In 2019, the founder of the Montreal Prize, Asa Boxer, transferred it to the Department of English at McGill University. A team of dedicated faculty and graduate students recruited a distinguished international jury, headed by Pulitzer-prize-winner Yusef Komunyakaa, to judge the entries. This book is the result.