4:16 am – A Poetry Collection by Ava Nori – UPDATED 2023

Publisher’s Note

Independent book publisher’s life has its own peculiar joys and sorrows – but there is simply nothing better than working with smart, talented, and committed creative people. Ava Nori fits this bill beautifully – and Tagona Press is very proud to be publishing Ava’s first poetry collection, ‘4:16 AM’.

A rising star, we think … Ava’s work is at once precocious, introspective, sad, bitter, lively – and simply terrific. My obvious biases aside, the well-respected Miramachi Reader, Canadian new literature review devotees (through its Associate Editor Alison Manley), gave ‘4:16 AM’ warm praise. Everyone who has read Ava’s work has invariably commented on its raw emotional power and flat-out great wordsmithing.

Ava will doubtless continue to harness, hone, and polish her craft – we are thrilled to be part of Ava’s creative career journey.

And ‘4:16 AM’? This fine chapbook will be available online at www.tagonapress commencing January 15, 2023. A physical Book Launch is being arranged for later February – Ava will be reading then from the ‘4:16 AM’ collection (and no pressure from the always avuncular publisher 😂) … some new Ava works will be featured, too.

The usual Tagona Press cast of suspects have their fingerprints somewhere on ‘4:16 AM’ – our uber- skilled designer and artist Aaron Alessandrini, Helen Dow’s keen eye, and the ubiquitous Gary McGuffin … great teams are everything.

… and big ups to Sault ace Brian Tremblay for the supporting photos. His Sault photography retrospective is on the 2023 Tagona slate.

The ‘Free Nottawa’ T sported here by yours truly? An affectionate shout out to the grand Canadian landscape artistic talents featured in our newly released ‘Algoma – Solemn Land’, all backed by brilliant McGuffin photography … hmmm… maybe the Tagona joys and sorrows equation favours the former? You bet!
#arthubatspring #borderlineradioshow #garymcguffin #coventrygallery #tagonapress #saultstemarietourism

Like many Canadian high school students educated in the mid-1970s, my poetry knowledge reflected how the subject was usually taught in those far off days – an English course afterthought. At our all-boys school, Shakespeare’s sonnets and ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ were as far as any teacher dared to use poems to stir our imaginations.

These many years later, it has been exciting to appreciate poetry in ways that I would have never considered possible in my teens.  Ava Nori had been quietly working on her craft for several years when we initially discussed the possibility of publishing her first poetry  collection. It was not only the well-crafted phrases and clever references made to an often grim, disjointed world that give Ava’s work its resonance and relevance. Ava’s work combines powerful images and often raw, unfiltered emotion that allows her readers to remember and reassess their own lives and loves.

I have learned through our work together that praises frequently directed at other young literary talents also fit Ava and 4:16 am like a glove – ‘precocious’, ‘gifted’, an ‘emerging Canadian poet’, someone ‘poised to achieve literary success’, or ‘an exciting new voice’. But to my eye, there is something deeper here. Ava is fearless in her determination to make sense of tumbling thoughts that play their own games, defying all efforts to impose order. For our Tagona Press team, it is a privilege to bring Ava’s wonderful poetry collection to the world.

Bryan Davies, Publisher
January 2023