Step aside, Rupi Kaur: these 12 daring books of poetry are here to stay. With reflections on everything from dinosaur bones to female sexuality, each of these memorable volumes is beautifully written and packaged — a splendid gift to impress the poetry lover in your life or to entice someone into the lyrical world.
In her debut collection Slinky Naive (Anvil Press), Caroline Szpak manipulates words and voices in strange and fantastical ways, moving the reader from laughter to dismay to awe and back again. Visceral and surprising, these poems are sure to delight the adventurous reader on your list.
Two powerful new works by old masters, George Bowering and George Stanley, come together—literally back to back—in Some End / West Broadway (New Star Books). Bowering’s Some End tracks the poet’s recovery from a near-fatal cardiac arrest, while Stanley’s West Broadway offers a new view of Vancouver, traced along the iconic Broadway corridor. A memorable gift for city locals and visitors alike.
For something a little different, try Nanaimo Poet Laureate Tina Biello‘s Playing Into Silence (Caitlin Press / Dagger Editions). A voice from the Prairies, Biello’s third full-length poetry collection looks back at a dry time in lesbian identity. As she searches for queer rights, acceptance, and love, she unearths just about everything from beneath the Alberta ground: dinosaur bones, a family’s firstborn, missing cows, and more.
Spoil the poetry aficionado in your life with a copy of Flow (Talonbooks), the latest from Governor General’s Award–winning poet Roy Miki. Beautifully illustrated with full-colour photographs and photocollages throughout, the collection brings together five of Miki’s books of poetry with one substantial, previously unpublished work. It also features a foreword by poet and critic Louis Cabri, an interview by the collection’s editor, Michael Barnholden, and an extensive bibliography.
When it first appeared in 1986, Chinatown Ghosts (Arsenal Pulp Press) was the first Chinese Canadian poetry book ever published. Out of print for some 25 years, this new edition includes late author Jim Wong-Chu‘s striking photographs of Vancouver’s Chinatown. Revealing the soul of a place and a community threatened by gentrification, this gorgeous collection makes for a nostalgic and stimulating holiday gift.
For a gift that soothes and transforms, pick up Seven Sacred Truths (Talonbooks)—a powerful exploration of an Indigenous woman’s healing journey. Seeing the world through “brown” eyes, poet Wanda John-Kehewin makes new meaning of the past, present, and future through a consideration of the seven sacred truths: Love, Wisdom, Truth, Honesty, Respect, Humility, and Courage.
For the more environmentally minded, John Donlan‘s Out All Day (Ronsdale Press) confronts our sense of loss and mourning as we live through the sixth extinction of the natural world. But it also shows us the comfort and courage through lovingly observing the processes of life. Nature, Donlan reveals, is a part of us, and we are a part of nature.
In 2012, poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner precipitously lost feeling in, and use of, her left side. In Trauma Head (Anvil Press), she tracks her experiences with un/wellness in the wake of the mini-stroke—using disturbing and disordering language to reconcile appearance with experience. The resulting collection is unique in both style and content, a treat for wordsmiths of all stripes.
Shatter the Glass, Shards of Flame (Now Or Never Publishing) contains a wide array of narrative and confession-lyric poems written over the last 15 years. Poet Gerald Arthur Moore examines a range of personal experiences: his time in the Canadian military, on humanitarian work projects in Haiti, and working with young offenders on the hardscrabble streets of Moncton. This holiday season, take someone you love on a journey around the world with Moore’s colourful and quirky collection.
Chief Dan George was an accomplished performer, poet, philosopher, champion of Indigenous peoples, and loving patriarch of a large family. The Best of Chief Dan George (Hancock House) combines his two bestsellers, My Heart Soars and My Spirit Soars, in one volume, eloquently illustrated throughout by Helmut Hirnschall. A must-have for the amateur philosopher on your list—or really anyone seeking wisdom in their life.
Fred Wah and Rita Wong’s beholden: a poem as long as the river (Talonbooks) will appeal to the art-obsessed or the environmentally engaged. Comprised of two lines of text flowing along a 114-foot-long map of the Columbia River, this image-poem yearns to understand the consequences of our hydroelectric manipulation of one of North America’s largest river systems. Stemming from an interdisciplinary artistic research project about the Columbia River, beholden is also a visual installation exhibited at various galleries.
Packed with irony and a healthy dose of sass, the poems in Jenna Lyn Albert’s Bec and Call (Nightwood Editions) delve into the explicit, the audacious, the boldly personal. Ideally suited for someone fearless and playful, this collection subverts the notion of female sexuality as male appeasement, offering some refreshing—and entertaining—new perspectives.