Ca Magazine

A much-anticipated debut collection from one of Canada’s most promising emerging poets Pebble Swing earns its title from the image of stones skipping their way across a body of water, or, in the author’s case, syllables and traces of her mother tongue bouncing back at her from the water’s reflective surface. This collection is about language and family histories. It is the author’s attempt to piece together the resonant aftermath of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which stole the life of her paternal grandmother. As an immigrant whose grasp of Mandarin is fading, Wang explores absences in her caesuras and fragmentation—that which is unspoken, but endures. The poems in this collection also trace the experiences of a young poet who left home at seventeen to pursue writing; the result is a series of city poetry infused with memory, the small joys of Vancouver’s everyday, environmental politics, grief and notions of home. While the poetics of response are abundant in the collection—with poems written to Natalie Lim and Ashley Hynd—the last section of the book, "Thirteen Ghazals and Anti-Ghazals after Phyllis Webb," forges a continued response to Phyllis Webb on Salt Spring Island, and innovates within the possibilities of the experimental ghazal form.

The book brings flexible creative thinking through the analysis of the elements of the font, the grid, etc, including a more detailed design method through the interviews with famous designers. Magazine Design will bring a spark of inspiration through the display of more than 100 successful cases.

Since the first trade deal with the US in 1987, Canada has insisted on a "cultural exemption" to ensure that governments were free to protect Canadian culture and to restrict foreign ownership and limit foreign content in the media. Negotiators and government ministers considered the cultural exemption key to reassuring Canadians that the deal did not undermine our cultural sovereignty. In every trade deal since, culture has been a contentious issue. Media giants and foreign governments have pushed for unlimited access to Canada. Ottawa has worked with cultural industries to maintain the cultural exemption. Garry Neil has been close to every one of these negotiations, and has been a key advisor to cultural groups on trade deals. He has been part of the international initiative to assert the importance of cultural diversity in the world, and to create effective measures to guarantee it. This book reflects his experience trying to ensure that the reality matches the rhetoric when it comes to culture. As he sees it, in spite of the claims, Canadian cultural policies and programs have been steadily restricted by successive trade deals. He explains how this has happened, and what needs to be done for Canada to maintain our cultural sovereignty and creative life in the face of multinational corporations and their government supporters who are promoting a world monoculture.