Robert Boschman
Environmental Images and Stories
From many stories and communities in this amazing collection, comes a universal truth: water is sacred and we separate ourselves from it at our peril. Protecting watersheds and the rights of local communities and Indigenous people who dwell on them will lead us to a water-secure future and a more equitable and just society. A wonderful book, ultimately filled with hope, as it weaves together the strands of the path ahead.
—Maude Barlow, author and activist
Signs of Water offers an exploration of how we collectively engage
with and rely on water while presenting a crucial argument for practically
implementing cultural change in order to move toward a more sustainable future. The breadth of the authors in this book, along with its focus on changing
environmental narratives, allows this text to contribute to the burgeoning body of
knowledge on water-human interactions, indigenous storytelling, and growing
understandings of agency and materialism. --Victoria Machado, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture
"A masterpiece of creative nonfiction." —SaskBooks
"A beautifully written memoir that tells the century-spanning story of a family and of a place the rest of Canadians don’t know much about." —Toronto Star
"White Coal City paints a deep picture of existence in a complicated town. Through the smoke of forest fires, Sweet Caps, Number 7s and winter car exhaust, Boschman masterfully describes the juxtaposition of both the freedom and constraints of living in a community fraught with colonialism, poverty and sheer exposure to the elements."—Winnipeg Free Press
“This is a beautiful, harrowing book. It deals with dark matters on intimate, familial, and global scales, as its author reckons with environmental cataclysm, toxic masculinity, and colonial complicity. Yet the story is shared with such generosity and gentleness that it sings in the reader’s mind long after the final page is turned.” —Sam McKegney, author of Masculindians and Magic Weapons
“The stories in the latter half of the book are alone worth the price of admission, almost elegiac in the way they are retold and have been handed down piecemeal over generations ... there are indelible, lived-in moments and haunting images in White Coal City.” —Quill & Quire
“Robert Boschman’s White Coal City is more than just another memoir. The images are vivid and the commentary insightful. The town and its citizens come fully to life in this narrative that is dark, unflinching and intriguing as the author illuminates the past lives of singular hard-edged characters living in a city most Canadians know nothing about.” — Lesley Choyce, author of Broken Man on a Halifax Pier
"I love the writing in this book. Prince Albert -- the place and the life force Boschman captures in White Coal City -- are familiar and true: I know its people and they are the essence of Saskatchewan." — Maria Campbell, author of Halfbreed
"The story is an inward reflective journey that spans many years. It examines the human spirit, its hurts, its survival, its hopes and its faith that life will improve as each generation accepts its follies and moves beyond them toward universal healing.” —Louise Bernice Halfe, author of Burning in this Midnight Dream
"For all that Boschman writes of a world that is bleak with accumulating losses, the writing . . . is beautiful. The style is associative, moving freely, like memory, among time periods . . . . Boschman possesses heightened skills of observation and of responsiveness to people and place . . . ." --Grace Kehler, McMaster University, Journal of Mennonite Studies
“Robert Boschman provides a strong ecocritical framework as well as a fresh approach to American literary history…. The result is a rich intertextual interplay that opens up the poems and makes them accessible to an important critical conversation…excellent”—University of Toronto Quarterly
"[Boschman] provides meaningful context and scholarship as he addresses both theme and structure for each poem. Though these meticulous close readings will be valuable in and of themselves, Boschman’s study also stands out as timely and relevant…useful, comprehensive overview…recommended”—Choice
“[A]n insightful study of animals in Bishop’s poetry”—Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia
“Boschman’s work is fascinating and presents many insightful and well-articulated ideas”—The Goose: A Journal of Literature, Environment and Culture in Canada
“Robert Boschman boldly voyages across three centuries of American poetry, using metaphors of travel, geography, and cartography to analyze the poets in his book…. His investigation reminds us that poetry has a critical role in the ecological discussions of the day, even if that intervention reiterates the complexities of the natural world that no amount of travel can capture.”—ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment.)
"[Boschman's] readings of Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth Bishop and Amy Clampitt bring together three major American writers that have not been compared so far, ecocritically or otherwise, while also contributing to ecocriticism’s growing engagement with poetry in fresh and productive ways."--Christine Gerhardt, Anglia
"On Active Grounds: Agency and Time in the Environmental Humanities" is a timely, thought-provoking, and seminal work of scholarship that is unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library collections.
- Michael J. Carson, Midwest Book Review
One of the collection's most valuable elements . .. is that it refuses to reduce Alberta's relationship with the Anthropocene to oil and gas extraction. ... Collectively, Found in Alberta's essays . .. offer an arguably more holistic overview that includes industrial and hunting food cultures, shifting concepts of wilderness, trans-Canadian narratives of nationhood, and the legal protection extended to certain economies, values, and aesthetics.