Seraphim Editions From a Place Called War: Letters 1939–1945 Journeys to the Heart of Catholicism Lifting the Stone The Cabbage of Paradise: The Merzbook and Other Poems Fall 2007 Catalogue Seraphim Editions 2007 Frontlist From a Place Called War: Letters 1939–1945 Laura Abbott History 0-9735487-6-2 / 9780973548761 $26.95 Cdn / $25.95 US, Paper 6 x 9, 304p. Includes 55 b&w Photographs September After uncovering 10,000 letters and diaries from renowned archives and libraries in North America and Europe and from attics, shoeboxes, and closets for the making of the four-part documentary From a Place Called War: 1939-1945, researcher Laura Abbott was not satisfied – too many of the very best were left on the cutting room floor. Now she has assembled an extraordinary collection of the best in From a Place Called War: Letters 1939-1945, which tells the story of the Second World War in the words of combatants, eyewitnesses, and loved ones on the home front from over a dozen different nationalities. This extraordinary collection presents an all-encompassing world view of a truly “world war.” A spotlight is shone on the vast number of places the war was fought: Western and Central Europe, the Eastern Front, the Pacific, Africa, and Asia. The book features intimate voices of Polish children as German troops seize their homeland; the stoic resolution of the British people as they stand alone; the final words penned by Jews just before their demise; the passionate skepticism and fear voiced by a daughter of India; dramatic accounts of Allied and Axis troops on the Western and Eastern Fronts; philosophical reflections on death by Japanese combatants; and the rhetoric of political and military leaders. Laura Abbott is a researcher and writer of twentieth century history. Laura developed a passion for the dying art of letter writing and has lectured and written at length on the subject. Her screen credits include Deep Wreck Mysteries; Black Watch Massacre; Bloody Italy; The Secret Liberators; King and Country; From a Place Called War: 1939-1945; Canada’s War in Colour; and Unlucky Lady: Life and Death of HMCS Athabaskan. She lives in Toronto. Frontlist From a Place Called War: Letters 1939–1945 During the summer of 1939, George Edwin “Ned” Black, a nineteen-year-old American, was traveling with a college friend throughout Britain. Black wrote his parents in Fargo, North Dakota. On Board R.M.S. Queen Mary August 30, 1939 Dear Family, I need hardly to tell you that the continent and Britain are on the threshold of another war. I knew little of the crisis until my first day in London. I was astonished and astounded that, during these weeks of apparent apathy, the crisis had taken on such grave nature again. Preparation for defense was being advanced in every quarter of the city. Sandbags were being placed in important buildings to absorb shock. Troops are constantly being called up. Streets lights are being dimmed, changed, removed, or screened. Tubes are being prepared to carry women and children to remoter quarters immediately upon the declaration of war. Museums are being closed, art treasures are fast disappearing into safe caverns or cellars. Naturally, all citizens hold gas masks, have allotted shelters to give them sanctuary, if there is a sanctuary from a posse of shrapnel and bombs. Yet there is no panic, no riot, no confusion. All moves on at its usual pace – calm and quiet confidence and strength is everywhere, on every lip, in every eye… And in the churches the faithful gather in a silent prayer for peace. But peace is lost. As I stepped aboard the ship this morning from the pier, a man called to his friend from his bicycle, passing by, “I think we shall be over there again,” and the friend replied, “Yes, I think I shall.” And, lacking the intervention of something greater than we, they will. They will die, these men. They will believe to the last that they know why they die. But I do not believe they do. I think no one does… Toyofumi Ogura, a university professor, wrote to his wife, who died from radiation sickness several weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima. August 1945 Fumiyo, It was a fine morning, windless and sultry, typical for the area around Hiroshima, as you know. The midsummer morning sunlight filled the sky to the point of overflowing. The brilliance of the light glinting off the mist in the blue sky was almost painful. I glanced at my watch. It was just past 8:15 am. Just then there was a dull but tremendous roar as a crushing blast of air pressure assailed me. I kept still, stretched out flat on the ground. At the moment of the roar and the blast, I had heard tremendous ripping, slamming and crashing sounds as houses and buildings were torn apart… I saw people rushing from their houses out into the street… I learned later that almost everyone in the city who survived the blast thought the bomb had gone off right next to them… If I had been just a little closer to [the center] of Hiroshima, I wouldn’t have escaped being burned myself. At the time though, I was completely unaware of this… They say that the flash and the pageant of clouds were visible even from a distance of one hundred kilometers, that the thunderous roar could be heard at eighty kilometers and the force of the blast felt at sixty. War Letters, ed. Andrew Carroll (Washington Square Press, 2001) Letters from the End of the World: A Firsthand Account of the Bombing of Hiroshima, by Toyofumi Ogura, (published in Japanese in 1948; English translation in 1997) Seraphim Editions 2007 Seraphim Editions 2007 Frontlist Journeys to the Heart of Catholicism Ted Schmidt Religion 0-9735487-9-7 / 9780973548792 $19.95 Cdn / $18.95 US, Paper 6 x 9, 200p. September Journeys to the Heart of Catholicism is a series of provocative probes into contemporary Catholicism. Veteran Catholic journalist Ted Schmidt, the former editor and longtime columnist of the Catholic New Times, takes a critical look at the “ice age” of the modern Catholic Church. “Every revolution spawns a counter-revolution which inevitably fails,” Schmidt writes, as he surveys the pontificates of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. A committed Catholic, he laments the failure to follow through on the issues of peace and justice in the post-Vatican II Church of the 60s and 70s. He examines “the Church’s greatest failure” – its unwillingness to renounce war irrevocably. As well, he analyzes its stubborn clinging to feudal governing structures and its demand for clerical celibacy, which, in his words, “has never worked.” A pioneer in Holocaust education, Schmidt speaks with authority on the Christian attitude toward Israel. Readers will warm to his portraits of friends like the late Anglican Archbishop Ted Scott and American peace activist Philip Berrigan. Also included in this volume are Schmidt’s “Christmas poems,” socio-political prose poems on the birth of Christ, previously published only in Great Britain. Ted Schmidt is a well-known social activist. In 1991 he received the Ontario English Teachers’ Award of Merit, and in 2002 the Social Justice Award from the Toronto Secondary Catholic Teachers Association. For 30 years Schmidt has taught courses on scripture and social ethics. He is a regular commentator on Vision TV and has written for several newspapers, including the Globe, the Toronto Star and NOW Magazine. He lives in Toronto. Frontlist The Cabbage of Paradise: The Merzbook and Other Poems Colin Morton Poetry 0-9735487-7-0 / 9780973548778 $16.95 Cdn / $15.95 US, Paper 6 x 9, 95p. September Colin Morton’s The Cabbage of Paradise: The Merzbook and Other Poems consists of a recasting of material from his notable, long out-of-print 1987 collection The Merzbook: Kurt Schwitters Poems, which dramatizes the great German artist’s life and aesthetics, now interspersed with the author’s own concrete poems and Dadaist-influenced texts and collages. A lively dialogue is thus generated with the art and poetics of a watershed era whose impact continues to be felt (e.g., in the bp Nichol tradition in Canada). Schwitters proclaimed that his art was apolitical, but eventually had to flee from the Nazis, who destroyed his “decadent” work. Morton’s inventive treatment vividly illuminates the situation of art and the artist in both the last century and our own. Colin Morton was born in Toronto, grew up in Calgary, and currently resides in Ottawa, where he is a freelance writer and editor. He has long been involved with multimedia performance of poetry and related artistic innovation such as sound poetry and experimental film. Morton received the Archibald Lampman Award in 1986 and 2001 and was shortlisted in 2004 for his previous Seraphim book, Dance, Misery. Lifting the Stone Susan McCaslin Poetry 0-9735487-8-9 / 9780973548785 $16.95 Cdn / $15.95 US, Paper 6 x 9, 80p. September Lifting the Stone is the finest collection yet by a prize-winning poet with a growing reputation for writing with passionate candor and exquisite finesse on matters of faith and spirituality in the tradition of Herbert, Hopkins, and Avison. A series of courageously forthright treatments of the problematics of 21st Century belief is complemented by a set of affectionately witty accounts of family, students and mentors, electronic technology, and a veritable bestiary of creatures; and the book concludes with a luminous meditation on water “in her myriad transformations.” Susan McCaslin is a poet and retired professor of English at Douglas College in New Westminster, British Columbia who has authored ten volumes of poetry, including A Plot of Light and At the Mercy Seat. Susan is the editor of the anthologies A Matter of Spirit: Recovery of the Sacred in Contemporary Canadian Poetry and Poetry and Spiritual Practice: Selections from Contemporary Canadian Poets. She is currently on the editorial boards of Event literary magazine out of New Westminster, B.C. and The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (Harvard Divinity School). She has been widely published in literary journals across Canada. Her poem “Radiant Body” won first place in the Federation of B.C. Writers’ 2006 poetry contest, Literary Writes. Seraphim Editions 2007 Seraphim Editions 2007 Recently Released The Angel Notebook Luciano Iacobelli Poetry ISBN 0-9735487-5-4 / 9780973548754 $16.95 Cdn / $14.95 US, Paper 6 x 9, 96p. Increasingly well-known as a writer who boldly left the beaten track of realism for Expressionist depths, Luciano Iacobelli already has a large following in Toronto and is overdue for national exposure. This book is really four in one: giving virtuoso treatment to the phenomena of angels, the dynamics of stuttering, the psychology of the mystic St. Theresa, and the author’s own turbulent life in the Little Italy where he grew up. “Iacobelli has summoned up some wonderful angels and angelic stutterers. These messengers do not whisk out of this world but bear witness and ask us to pay attention to “the kind of music the earth makes.” – Ricardo Sternberg “The world of Luciano Iacobelli’s Angel Notebook is a place of loss, dreams, ghosts, and darkness, countered by angels of “human resiliency” that mitigate human suffering. Iacobelli’s lyric, frequently surreal meditations move us through encounters with family, philosophers, friends, lovers, and childhood neighbourhoods, reminding us of the ephemeral and unstable nature of memory. Iacobelli is a poet who is an astute observer with a compassionate voice. Deeply intimate and personal, yet universal, this is an eloquent and long awaited first book.” – Rishma Dunlop The Carless Cartoon Collection Not Bad for an Old Bastard Roy Carless & Kerry J. Schooley Art ISBN 0-9735487-4-6 / 9780973548747 $24.95 Cdn / $22.95 US, Paper 8.5 x 8.5, 192p. Includes 150 b&w Cartoons “This book is long overdue. A great collection of work by a truly unsung working-class hero. Labour publications have depended on Roy Carless’ art and humour for decades. He is one of Canada’s funniest and most creative champions of workers’ rights.” – Wayne Samuelson, President, Ontario Federation of Labour “Roy Carless’ cartoons hit their mark every time. Bosses, politicians, or anybody who thought they were ‘high and mighty’ felt the sting of his pencil. Justice is his issue, and laughter is his weapon. A collection of the work of Roy Carless is a major event. Working people across Canada are in his debt.” – Bob Mackenzie, MPP for Hamilton East, 1975–1995, Ontario Minister of Labour, 1990–1994 Backlist Poetry The Afterlife The Angel Notebook Blue Angels Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls Catch the Sweet Dance, Misery The Fires of Naming Frames of Silence Holding Ground In Search of the Emerald City Learning Curves Passionate Intensity Surviving the Censor Taking Root Travelling Light A Tunisian Notebook The Tyranny of Love Under Old Stars Wyatt Earp in Dallas: 1963 Robert Boates Luciano Iacobelli Stephen Humphrey Andréa Jarmai Susan L. Helwig Colin Morton Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes Allan Brown Tanis MacDonald Stan Rogal Paul Sanderson Linda Stitt Rafi Aaron Liz Zetlin Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes Russell Thornton Nik Beat Chris Pannell Steve McCabe 0-9699639-4-7 / 9780969963943 0-9735487-5-4 / 9780973548754 0-9735487-0-3 / 9780973548709 0-9734588-1-X / 9780973458817 0-9699639-9-8 / 9780969963998 0-9689723-8-1 / 9780968972380 0-9699639-8-X / 9780969963981 0-9734588-3-6 / 9780973458831 0-9699639-6-3 / 9780969963967 0-9735487-1-1 / 9780973458831 0-9689723-4-9 / 9780968972342 0-9689723-7-3 / 9780968972373 0-9734588-7-9 / 9780973458879 0-9689723-0-6 / 9780968972304 0-9734588-8-7 / 9780973458886 0-9689723-1-4 / 9780968972311 0-9689723-6-5 / 9780968972366 0-9689723-2-2 / 9780968972328 0-9699639-0-4 / 9780969963905 $10.00 $16.95 $16.95 $16.95 $14.95 $16.95 $14.95 $16.95 $10.95 $16.95 $16.95 $16.95 $16.95 $14.95 $16.95 $16.95 $14.95 $16.95 $14.95 Anthologies The Edges of Time: A Celebration of Canadian Poetry My Spirit Wonders: Words from Inside – English & French Understatement: An Anthology of Twelve Poets 0-9699639-5-5 / 9780969963950 0-9689723-3-0 / 9780968972335 0-9699639-3-9 / 9780969963936 $19.95 $18.95 $12.95 Art Arctic Transformations: Carvers at Fenbrook – English & Inuktitut The Carless Cartoon Collection Roy Carless & Kerry J. Schooley 0-9689723-9-X / 9780968972397 0-9735487-4-6 / 9780973548747 $16.95 $24.95 Fiction Orphans of Winter The Shanghai Noodle Killing – Stories A Twist of Malice Rob Ritchie Ted Plantos Jean Rae Baxter 0-9734588-9-5 / 9780973458893 0-9699639-7-1 / 9780969963974 0-9734588-4-4 / 9780973458848 $18.95 $14.95 $19.95 Non-Fiction Letters Home: 1944–1946 A Safe House Torture in the Age of Fear King Whyte Maria Jacobs Ezat Mossallanejed 0-9734588-2-8 / 9780973458824 0-9734588-5-2 / 9780973458855 0-9734588-6-0 / 9780973458862 $19.95 $18.95 $25.95 Photography Erase Me Leslie Thompson & Len Gasparini 0-9734588-0-1 / 9780973458800 $26.95 Religion Jesus and the Quest for Secular Justice Pierre L’Abbé 0-9735487-2-X / 9780973548723 $16.95 For Children A Christmas for Carol Len Gasparini & Aino Anto 0-9689723-5-7 / 9780968972359 $11.95 Seraphim Editions 2007 Seraphim Editions 2007 Sales Representation The Literary Press Group of Canada Distributed by The University of Toronto Press 5201 Dufferin Street North York ON M3H 5T8 Ph: 416.667.7791 Toll Free: 1 800.565.9523 Margaret Bryant Sales and Marketing Manager 501-192 Spadina Avenue Toronto ON M5T 2C2 Ph: 416.483.1321 x3 Fax: 416.483.2510 Email: mbryant@lpg.ca Jacques Filippi Sales Representative Eastern Canada 117, rue Dumouchel Châteauguay QC J6J 3E8 Ph/Fax: 450.716.1321 Email: jfilippi@lpg.ca Judith Duthie Sales Representative Prairies and the Lakehead 7-324 4th Ave NE Calgary AB T2E 0J3 Telephone: 403 230.1558 Fax: 403 230.1551 Email: jduthie@lpg.ca Nadine Boyd Sales Representative British Columbia and the Territories 274 East 5th Street (basement) North Vancouver BC V7L 1L7 Ph: 778.338.4745 Fax: 778.338.4746 nboyd@lpg.ca Susan Wallace Sales Representative Toronto, Southwestern and Northern Ontario 501-192 Spadina Avenue Toronto ON M5T 2C2 Ph: 416.483.1321 x4 Fax: 416.483.2510 Email: swallace@lpg.ca Cover photo: Pamela Williams Design: McNeill Design Arts, www.mcneilldesign.com Public Relations and Event Planning by The Book Band info@thebookband.com Terms Discount: 40% Returns Policy: Returns will not be accepted at UTP prior to three months from the invoice date or after twelve months. 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