Roy Kiyooka Book order

Exploring themes of love and loss, this collection features delicate poems reflecting on a sturdy pear tree as a symbol of enduring nature amid fading romance. The work, informed by the author's artistic background, intertwines elements of nature study and ekphrasis, creating a poignant eulogy for a past relationship. Accompanied by abstract illustrations from David Bolduc, the poems showcase a unique blend of literary and visual art. This reissue includes new archival material, inviting readers to rediscover this celebrated collaboration, previously nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award.

Pacific Rim Letters is a never-before-seen collection of letters Roy Kiyooka wrote between 1975 and 1985. It presents a fascinating and highly valuable picture of the artistic and literary communities Kiyooka was actively involved with, as well as Kiyooka as a man with an extraordinary intellect and passion for life and the arts. Kiyooka takes the epistolary form into new and radical directions. At once tenderly estranged and confessional, attentive as much to the minutiae of daily life as to the complexities of artistic and literary creation, and embedded in the politics of culture-making and those of racialized identities, these letters are a literary achievement in their own right.

In 1993 Mary Kiyooka sat with her son Roy Kiyooka, one of Canada’s most important avant-garde painters, and a tape recorder and in her native Japanese shared her memories with him—her childhood in Japan, her arrival as a married woman in Canada, and her family’s experience in Alberta during the Japanese internment period.