The third in a unique series of critical texts by Shane Neilson, Marginal includes material intended for Margin of Interest (PQL, 2019), the author’s book of literary criticism on the English language poetry of the Maritimes. The work collected in Marginal is not secondary or inferior to the earlier PQL text, as Neilson intended the original to be a two-volume project. Marginal is a realization of that vision.

Marginal covers/mentions the following writers and makers: M. Travis Lane, Wayne Clifford, Peter Sanger, Milton Acorn, Alden Nowlan, J.J. Steinfeld, David Helwig, Anne Compton, George Elliott Clarke, EJ Pratt, John Steffler, John Thompson, bp Nichol, Hermenegilde Chiasson, and David Brewer.
Marginal contains:
- Introduction
- How Not to Represent a Region: Coastlines and Overfishing
- The Backwards Sobriquet: A Review of New Brunswick at the Crossroads: Literary Ferment And Social Change in the East
- Regionalisms 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and Beyond: Reading Maritime Poetry Anthologies Backward
- Foosty Boost: The First Two Books of Anne Compton
- Dr. Acorn, or: how I joined the Canadian Liberation Movement and learned to love the stern nurse fusion bomb sun
- We Shall Know You By Your Reviews: The Woke White Male & Alden Nowlan’s Collected Poems
- Heroes & Legends: Finding John Thompson with Peter Sanger
- Visiting Lane
- Visiting Wayne Clifford
- Crossing the Campus: Introduction to M. Travis Lane’s Heart on Fist
- Clifford the Not-Sonneteer
- A shared text is an act of friendship
- Math, Satire, and Sense: David Helwig’s Seawrack
- In Some More Distant Key: An Interview With David Helwig
- Time-Grammar and Second-Order Witnessing: On J. J. Steinfeld’s Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds
- Return to Scoudouc: A Review of Hermenegilde Chiasson’s To Live and Die in Scoudouc. Translated by Jo-Anne Elder
- Rabbittown Press, David Brewer, Prop.
- Obituary
- Angelic Salutation
- Idiosyncratic Notes on the Essays
- Acknowledgements
Endnotes
If you’re interested in purchasing copies (only serious queries), then use the message function on this site. $500 per book, $1250 for all 4 in the series. If you are a Canadian university library, I’m afraid only one university per province will be allocated a copy (with one exception). I hope it was you!