Bookshop

Graveyard Poems

The premise behind the chapbook is simple. It was 2015 when Sabrina, a writer friend of mine, suggested that, instead of wiping poem drafts clean when I wasn’t happy with them, I move them to a folder to pile up forgotten.

Sometime in late 2019, I remembered and began executing the following process from the 270-or-so-page document: pick 3-5 passages at random, running the cursor randomly up and down after each selection, and make a new poem out of them. Nineteen of them now reside in your hands.

What we’re dealing with here aren’t 19 ideas exactly, but fragments from 100 or more, frankensteined into vibes I feel worth sharing, unlike their previous incarnations.

Together, they form a portrait of someone I can recognize – a more anxious, idealistic and less experienced version of myself, still struggling to recognize life’s awkward and unsatisfying moments as sources of comfortable resignation, instead of blemishes to avoid like some Hollywood ideal – and I hope my gentle reckoning with him has something to offer you.

You can grab a hard copy on Amazon or a PDF from me.

E-transfer $10 (ten) CDN to trevorstevenabes @ gmail dot com along with your preferred email address to receive your PDF copy. If your bank charges you for an e-transfer, please subtract the cost from the price of your copy.

Your copy is complimentary if you’re committed to reviewing the book for your website or any other publication. Let me know if you’re interested using the same email above.

The Breakup Suite (poems)

The Breakup Suite is a breakup album in book-of-poetry form.

From the intro,

“There is only one way to describe this tiny but mighty book of poems: the messy reassembling of a broken heart. If you’re reeling from grief after losing your beloved, and are looking for a little help unleashing pent up emotions, this one’s for you.

Does that mean the poems are merely weepy therapy and therefore free of artistic merit? That’s not for me to decide. All I know is that the vast majority of these lines are about a psyche-crushing breakup, the painfully sudden occurrence and aftermath of which I am better able to live with simply because I have written it all down. My hope is that this reaction from extreme distress to moving on without being haunted by a partner’s memory is somehow transferrable through the poems here contained.

Listen, I know this might sound overly sentimental to anyone who isn’t currently consumed by post-separation emptiness, which is why I’m happy to say that this book isn’t for you. And I hope the time never comes when you need it to help you let the ugly feelings out and let a partner go. What follows is the saddest, angriest, achiest, all-up-in-my-feelingsest set of poems I have ever put together, every one of them dedicated to the romantic who mistook someone for their person only to watch that person leave all of a sudden after years without a chance for negotiation having come to the decision slowly and deliberately on their own weeks or months ago.”

E-transfer $10 (ten) CDN to trevorstevenabes @ gmail dot com along with your preferred email address if you’d like your PDF copy. If your bank charges you for an e-transfer, please subtract the cost from the price of your copy.

Find your print and Kindle copies through Amazon.

Read some sample poems:

Your copy is complimentary if you’re committed to reviewing the book for your website or any other publication. Let me know if you’re interested using the same email above.

The New Frontiers Of Conceptual Art (short fiction)

My book of fictional ekphrases, The New Frontiers Of Conceptual Art, is out now. The book is inspired by the community centred on the gift shop in Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital where I worked for two-and-a-half-years.

In case the term is unfamiliar, a piece of writing is ekphrastic if it involves a literary description of or commentary on a work of art. In the case of NFCA, the artists and artworks are fictional but based on 30 of my former colleagues and customers to whom I apply the following equation,

imagine what kind of artist they’d be + write out their creative process during the composition of one work of art = artwork.

You can read sample pieces in paperplates magazine (p. 39), long con magazine, and Minetta Review (p. 64). You can also read a more detailed treatment of the book in the Town Crier.

The book is also available on Amazon and Kobo in more e-reader-friendly formats. The print version is available on Amazon only.

If we worked together at the shop, your copy is complimentary. The same goes if you’re committed to reviewing the book for your website or any other publication. Let me know if you’re interested using the same email above.

Nine Steps to Successful Investing: A Guide for Young Canadians (personal finance)

My new no-nonsense, step-by-step guide to investing for young Canadians is now available in digital form. If you’ve been meaning to get started, but have had trouble finding a short and simple source to show you the way, look not further. Follow the book’s intuitive journey from debt and emergency funds, to risk and financial goals, to opening your account and buying your stock and bond funds, all the way to achieving the financially independent life you deserve.

You can also read a sample and grab your copy through Amazon.