Bill Howell

Bill Howell, a poet who faces mysteries with clarity, and experience with freshness, and who I've been honored to present in The Best Canadian Poetry Series, now gives us The Way Things Are at the Moment, a splendid consideration of things and relationships-at once ephemeral and enduring.-Molly Peacock, author of The Widow's Crayon BoxThe Way Things Are at the Moment conjures a world of words where the connections and relationships between things, moreso than the things themselves, matter most. Where walking a Nova Scotia beach leads into rooms packed with memories. Where an operation exposes Miles Davis' trumpet. And where being alone never happens in isolation. Independent of linear time, each poem offers a fractal view of what one cannot really discern until the book's end - how much our conventions of time, space and memory fail to suppress not so much what we want to say but what we want to feel.-James Carson, editor, Queen's QuarterlyI'd recognize a Bill Howell poem at any time in any place. Controlled, powerful, playful-quite special to have his own distinct voice when it sings so well. Reading his description of the natural world-sky, clouds, sea, trees, sun, moon, animals of all sorts-I wondered how many zillion poets have described these same phenomena. Yet his are so fresh, so surprising, so tightly written, they seem unique and new and delight every time. Lots to enjoy here, and provoke thought. These poems have a lifetime of living in them. -James W. Nichol, author of Midnight CabBill Howell has had a literary career spanning five decades. With six poetry collections to his credit, his work appears regularly in literary journals and anthologies across Canada, in the UK, Australia, Sweden, Japan, and the U.S. Born in Liverpool, England, he grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and has lived in Toronto for more than half his life. Bill was a network producer-director at CBC Radio Drama for thirty years. Ranging from the lyrical to the ironic, his poetry deploys colloquial language, deliberate narrative, and a sharp sense of the focused moment.

IN 1932, A JAMAICAN MAN NAMED LEONARD PERCIVAL HOWELL began leading nonviolent protests in Kingston, Jamaica, against British colonial rule. While history books rightly credit Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. with popularizing nonviolent protest strategies in later years, little is known about Leonard Howell and his vision of self-reliance--poor people working together to build a society of their own. When Howell first started preaching on street corners in Kingston, he was immediately perceived as "seditious," and he became a target for police harassment. Howell soon founded an organization called the Ethiopian Salvation Society. His idea was to add a religious element to Marcus Garvey's message of African independence. Although Christian values were part of his belief system, he decided to make a break from the Christian interpretation of the Bible and extend the idea of divinity to a living man, Emperor Haile Selassie I, who had been crowned king of Ethiopia in 1930. Jamaican journalists coined a name for the group: the "Ras Tafarites," or "Rastas." Howell was arrested several times and was eventually found guilty of sedition and sentenced to prison for two years of hard labor. In 1940, Howell and his growing group of followers moved to an old estate in the parish of St. Catherine. They named their land Pinnacle, and for the next sixteen years built a self-reliant community that would ultimately give birth to the Rastafari movement.In 1942, Leonard Howell's wife Tenneth gave birth to their second child, who they named Bill. In Pinnacle: The Lost Paradise of Rasta, Bill "Blade" Howell offers his firsthand account of this utopian community that suffered near-constant persecution from Jamaican authorities. Howell also dispels many misguided notions about the origins of Rastafari culture, including allegations of sexism and homophobia. Pinnacle was built on egalitarian principles, and steered clear of all religious dogma. Pinnacle: The Lost Paradise of Rasta provides a crucial and highly informed new perspective on the Rastafari subculture that Bob Marley would later help to spread across the globe. The volume includes photographs and original documents related to Pinnacle.

Alaska's fermented legacy retains the fiercely independent spirit that propelled the state's beer drinkers through the gold rush and sustained them through Prohibition. Today, craft brewers produce outstanding suds in some of the harshest and most remote locations on the planet. And while the beer scene in Alaska has roots that trace back to days when spirits had to have "medicinal, mechanical, and scientific purposes," the contemporary crop of breweries can thank industry pioneers like the Alaskan Brewing Company for staying on the cutting edge of beer-making technology. Join beer columnist and historian Bill Howell on an exploration through this hop-filled history of the Last Frontier.

Exit Planning: The Guide for Business Owners addresses the strategic, financial and personnel issues of planning a successful exit from your business. If you are an owner or an advisor to owners, this book will guide your thinking about the major challenges faced when exiting a business in an increasingly challenging business environment.