BOOKS
POETRY & FICTION
GLORIOUS BIRDS
(cultural criticism), Anvil Press, 2021
This book celebrates the beloved cult film, Harold and Maude, released fifty years ago in 1971. Greco explores what that era was like, its innocence as well as some of its dark episodes. Offering insights gleaned from substantial research, she speculates on what might have inspired screenwriter Colin Higgins and director Hal Ashby. In addition, she discusses Cat Stevens’ music and how that soundtrack is so integral to the film. She also shares personal thoughts on the experience of viewing it–how it has affected her over the years.
PRACTICAL ANXIETY
(poetry), Inanna Publications, 2018
The world of the 21st century gives us many reasons to be anxious. Many of these poems consider some of those – climate change, the desecration of habitat, societal inequities. Grounded in a setting often viewed as merely domestic, these poems look beyond an arena once considered the realm of women, and take on broader matters, including the spiritual, even as they turn a wry eye on religion. Ageing, illness, death – it’s all here, often with a practical spin on learning acceptance.
FLIGHTPATHS: The Lost Journals of Amelia Earhart
(poetry), Caitlin Press, 2017
In 1937, while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared during a flight over the Pacific Ocean. The poems in this collection, presented as if written by Earhart herself, consider some of the many theories that attempt to explain her disappearance. Presented through logbook entries, recollections and letters, the work explores some of the various flightpaths she may have taken.
SHRINKING VIOLETS
(novella), Quattro Books, 2011
Aside from the fact that she was born with bright orange hair, Reggie has always felt pretty ordinary. She works as a supermarket cashier, and her life as a single mother isn’t exactly what she’d wanted. But just when things start going the way she thinks they’re supposed to, she discovers that even that road isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
A: The Amelia Poems
(chapbook), Lipstick Press, 2009
The poems offer a speculative spin on the life of aviator Amelia Earhart, and consider what might have happened after her disappearance in 1937. They begin with a tender Christmas orange. The skin too acid to digest must be peeled to reveal a globe of sweet fruit. A perfect image of the sweet/sour resolution that comes with a determination to soar above the ordinary, to fly in the face of danger and to hold that “spicy globe” in the palm of a hand and say yes.
RATTLESNAKE PLANTAIN
(poetry), Anvil Press, 2002
Whether considering the simplicity of a butterfly in flight or the terror of a cancer diagnosis, Heidi Greco confronts the world head-on, yet always with the fresh eyes of the stranger in our midst. The issues she addresses belong to the world; the settings she employs are international. At times funny and irreverent, these are pieces that dissect relationships, poems that delve as easily into the mysteries of nature as they do into the intricacies of daily living—encounters we immediately recognize.
SIREN TATTOO: A Poetry Triptych
Anvil Press, 1994
An often challenging, sometimes harsh book of disparate poetic images, this triptych travels the full arc through desire, lust, loss, memory, anger, discovery, and celebration. From the distinctly urban to the emotionally uncompromising, these three women express, each in her own voice, a cry, a laugh, a scream—the hybrid of which culminates in the call for imprint: A Siren Tattoo.
SELECTED ANTHOLOGIES
FROM THE HEART OF IT ALL: Ten Years of Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside
(editor/compiler), Otter Press, 2018
Thursdays Writing Collective (TWC) was a free drop-in writing class that ran for a decade. Based in the Carnegie Community Centre in the heart of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, it met for its final class on April 5, 2018. In honour of the program drawing to a close, this anthology, a selection of past and current work was published by Otter Press, with a celebratory launch event that took place in spring. Fortunately, a follow-up group has formed to carry on the tradition of writing in the neighbourhood.
REFUGIUM: Poems for the Pacific
Yvonne Blomer, ed., Caitlin Press, 2018
While in the world of politics there are still climate change deniers, the poets have a different take as they observe the warming seas, the dying birds slicked in oil, the whales, the jellies, the sea otters and the octopus. They stand, as close to the shore as possible and watch the slowly turning tide. These poems, gathered from writers on the coast of BC, California, Washington state and further afield, from Alaska and even Auckland, New Zealand, explore our connections to the Pacific – what we know and what we don’t know, how we’ve already changed the shore and the sea, and what we are in fear of losing.
REVOLVING CITY: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them
Wayde Compton and Renee Sarojini Saklikar, eds., Anvil Press, 2015
The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them is a vibrant and diverse collection from a who’s who of the west coast poetry scene. The poems assembled here range from the lyric to the experimental and address the theme of disconnection in an urban environment from a variety of positions, concerns, and cultural perspectives. The collection also includes short reflections on the poems, written by the poets themselves, providing readers with an intimate insight into the inspiration and meaning behind the poems.
FORCE FIELD: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia
Susan Musgrave, ed., MotherTongue Publishing, 2013
Force Field is the first anthology of BC women poets in 34 years. It gathers the poetry of seventy-seven emerging, mid-career and established poets who currently live and write in British Columbia. Now readers can more easily share, study and take pleasure in the range and vitality of women’s poetry today
A VERSE MAP OF VANCOUVER
George McWhirter, ed., Anvil Press, 2009
In Vancouver the avenues are numbered and the streets named. That’s a feature of Vancouver. Vancouver’s Poet Laureate, George McWhirter, has taken on the task of creating an anthology on those features that give the face of Vancouver its identity.
radiant danse uv being: a poetic portrait of bill bissett
Jeff Pew and Steven Roxborough, eds., Nightwood Editions, 2006
Many of Canada’s most renowned poets salute a national treasure in this poetic tribute to bill bissett. bissett has been a landmark on the Canadian literary scene since the 1960s, renowned as much for his fascinating life as for his poetics.