Big Pond Rumours Chapbook Press
Charlottetown, Newfoundland, Canada
Big Pond Rumours offers all of its chapbooks for just $10 including postage. The press is Sharon Berg's pay it forward project as someone who remembers a time when every Canadian author offered support to other Canadian authors with book reviews and the like. After the initial 2026 launch of eight chapbooks, she will continue to offer four chapbooks a year, one in every quarter.
To order your selection, email sharonberg dot author at gmail dot com and tell her your selction. You can send an e-transfer to that address or mail a cheque to 97 Main Street, PO Box 128, Charlottetown, NL, A0C 1L0. Don't forget to provide your mailing address in your email.
The 2026 Line-Up
Wayside: a small boat, one vacant lot, a man
Winter 2026, Kathryn MacDonald
"If lyric be the song of memory, of love and loss, then play on! If metaphor be the poet’s brush, then this poet’s brushwork is pure pleasure. Every poem is a watercolour, lucid and revealing, bleeding, like sunlight bleeds, from the poet’s hand to the reader’s eye."
- Anthony Di Nardo
Dragonflies
Winter 2026, Gail Greenwood
"Gail Greenwood engages in the ancient Japanese tradition of writing haiku, senryu, and tanka... The compressed forms encourage us to remain alert, but also to stop at various points to rest and enjoy the timeless, breath-taking beauty and expanse of nature."
- Yvonne Trainer
The Invisible Mind
Spring 2026, John B Lee
"John B. Lee’s work has expanded like a universe... Above all he is attuned to the music of language; reading his poems aloud will transport you in glory: “… dust shafts shiver in a beam / of golden light / how life surrenders to the beauty / of the disappearing moon …”
- John Tyndall
Augury
Spring 2026, Melissa Thorne
"[Cooper’s Hawk] are hunters, protectors, nurturers and fiercely intelligent. There's something striking in watching an apex predator care for their young. It is that contradiction and the capacity to be both tender and violent, vulnerable and protective which became a through line for how I approach motherhood and womanhood in this collection."
Amphibiography
Summer 2026, Jessica Coles
"As I once waited for the frogs in the pond near my childhood home, how I’ve waited for this book! Become a frog. Hold these poems as you held those first precious and cold and leaping frogs in your child hands. Let the poems jump in your fingers as those first frogs did: the ones who broke your heart when you caught them in the rainy dusk."
- Kimmy Beach
Sailing the Salish Sea
Summer 2026, Ruth Hill
"This vivid, sea-soaked collection brims with wonder. These poems create a living world, where nature is not backdrop but companion, teacher, and force. There is music everywhere ... word-play, rhythm, sound, humour...a fierce delight in language. The voice is deeply alive to the mysteries of place. This is a generous and spirited collection."
- Jude Neale
A Choreography of Centipedes
Autumn 2026, Laurie Smith
Laurie Smith likes to shock a little to keep her readers on their toes, to invite them to ask themselves, ‘Is this really about...?’ But beyond any shock value... she also wants to entertain, to tickle, to shake things up... Laurie offers a reflection regarding her own place within the carbon cycle... But most of all, she... invite[s] the reader to take part in
musings steeped to perfection within an engagingly offbeat perspective.
- Ian Cognitō
Anthems for a Dead Youth
Autumn 2026, Blaine Marchand
“Marchand’s poems are superbly crafted, good as any written about longing, desire, and the emotionally cut down. They are a gift to historians and anyone who has ever had to hide their attraction for someone they desire. These poems take on complex issues of social class, unattainable love, and the violence of war.”
- Jim Nason