Palimpsest Press: 13 books

A book of poems that’s as unpredictable as the seasons that guide it, Weathervane is part eco-tourism, part domestic nocturne, and part tempest. In a shifting world, Mark Sampson resounds like a modern Zeus, advising his readers to “wear galoshes, / even if it doesn’t rain.” Weathervane is an intensely personal, alchemical debut from an accomplished new voice.

Rumi and the Red Handbag follows the lives of Shaya and Ingrid-Simone, working together one winter at a second-hand clothing shop. Theodora’s Fine Consignment Clothing shop becomes a small world where Shaya, an academic who abandoned studying the secrets of women writers, finds in Ingrid-Simone...

There is no history of poetry without love poetry, and there is no history of media without pornography. After his first collection of poems received a starred review from Quill & Quire, Darryl Whetter turned his attention from evolution in the natural world to the co-evolution of love, sex and...

From a student's confrontation with a teenage streaker, to a company man's complete undoing at his summer party, Michelle Brown's Safe Words finds rich darkness in happy partnerships. A maiden name is "handed down / like a sweater", a taxi ride "ends... at someone else's life"....

Blomer takes you into Southeast Asia by bicycle with her husband Rupert, their two companion-like bikes and her experiences cycling over 4000km through 4 countries over three months with the little devil she takes everywhere, her type 1 diabetes. A travel memoir, Sugar Ride explores the love of cycling...

A storyteller above all else, Mark Lavorato's poems are penned in a clear, poignant, and relatable voice. His mostly narrative vignettes choose to hide things in plain sight, and are buoyed by an undercurrent of quiet power. The collection deals with themes that span the breadth of the contemporary...

Everyone has a dog story, from the salesman at Home Depot to the passenger on a plane who confesses about the scar on his face. The poems in Mahoney’s third collection explore the concepts of identity and ownership through rich linguistic textures and voices. From a boy’s fascination with Tom...

Maundering is a both a physical and verbal process. One can walk in a maundering, aimless fashion and one can verbosely maunder on. Claire Kelly’s debut collection, Maunder, contains poems about the physical act of walking and the mental act, what is seen and what is reflected on. These poems allow...

“A lamp and a flower pot in the center. The flower can always be changing.”—Virginia Woolf. From the bestselling author of Rumi and the Red Handbag comes a new collection of brief essays about the intersection of poetry, painting, photography and beauty. Inspired by the words of Virginia Woolf,...

Control Suppress Delete troubles received ideas. Interested in rules and randomness and in finding the randomness in rules, Angela Hibbs writes poetry that questions the human condition and finds social structures provide little support. Swarming with bees and lizards, and inspired by the artwork...

John Nyman’s Players is staged in an urban dreamscape, fusing popular culture with narratives about hand-to-hand combat, how to hustle, and high art. Taking lyrical cues from hip-hop, Nyman’s poetry bends genre expectations, unravelling with a flow that’s both unique and engaging.

Dennis Duckworth - widely considered the least-likeable person on the Chicago music scene – is a philanderer and a misanthrope with a history of inflicting pain and suffering on nearly everyone he meets. When a routine flight from New York mysteriously alters its path mid-flight, he finds himself...

We call it a transfer… It’s important to use the terms, to distance yourself. It’s a dead guy in the back of a van, really, but the words can be something else. Dead bodies, Rum-runners, Murdered mothers. Small-town Alberta is home to Ian, a transfer agent who removes dead bodies all day and...