It’s an undisputed fact that poets love the moon. Since the days are getting shorter and Earth’s sole satellite is spending more time in the night sky, we thought it would be the perfect time to feature some of our favourite poetry collections from the season to read under moonlight. BC has a longstanding reputation as a hotspot for great, contemplative poetry, but don’t take our word for it! Check out what BC publishers have on tap for you!
(Arsenal Pulp Press)
Burning Sugar
Poet and activist Cicely Belle Blain explodes onto the literary scene with their debut collection Burning Sugar (Arsenal Pulp Press). A masterful blend of genres — weaving together prose, epistolary, and verse — Blain offers an intimate dissection of Black and Queer life.
Confronting the legacy colonization has wrought on Black bodies, Blain leads readers on a tour of the places they’ve visited, the art that has moved them, and the relationships that have helped shaped them as a human. While Blain’s first collection confronts the difficulties and sinister sides of the human experience, this book is first and foremost an exultation of the beauty of life.
(Anvil Press)
Queen and Carcass
Continuing the trend of whizzbang debuts, Anna van Valkenburg’s Queen and Carcass (Anvil Press) is a strange, mercurial dive into questions of identity. Bursting with the macabre, van Valkenburg words thrum as if creating a living, breathing entity of its own. Along the way, the Pangolin Poetry Award nominee leans on the ekphrastic tradition to inject her poems with figures from Slavic folklore and Boschian entities. A labyrinthine debut that shines a torchlight on the surreal aspects of the human mind.
(Ronsdale Press)
Out of the Dark
Author Lillian Boraks-Nemetz survived the Warsaw, Poland ghetto, carrying with her the haunting echo of the Holocaust her entire life. In her latest book from Ronsdale Press, Out of the Dark, Boraks-Nemetz confronts these memories in a stunning collection of poems, divided into three parts.
The first part deals with the sinister elements of the war: suffering, prejudice, and the destruction that caused the loss of so many loved ones. She then reveals “flickers of light” in the second part, focusing on ways to seize beautiful moments to help build a more joyful life. The book ends with a tribute to the writers and artists who preceded her, wrapping the collection up with tender ode to those who have left their work behind for us to appreciate.
(Talonbooks)
TENDER
“Haunting, political, and defiantly sexy” multi-disciplinary artist Laiwan’s book of poems TENDER (Talonbooks) is a stratified, 30-year exploration, rooted in the author’s activist work and experience building communities across the globe. Focusing on the aspects of tenderness and vulnerability that define humans, Laiwan investigates differences of gender, race, and sexuality to connect the reader back to their animal selves.
While these poems lean heavily on the past, they also look towards the brightness the future promises. Described as “garden at different stages,” Laiwan brings us through the cycle of sowing, growing, decay, and renewal to capture a passionate plea to care for one another.
(Nightwood Editions)
it was never going to be okay
We truly are spoiled with shining debut collections this year. From Nightwood Editions, Oji-Cree writer jaye simpson’s debut book it was never going to be okay is a cutting excavation of “the intimacies of understanding intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness, while addressing urban Indigenous diaspora and breaking down the limitations of sexual understanding as a trans woman.”
A raw portrayal of trans-Indigiqueer lived experience, simpson mixes poetry and prose to underscore the intricacies of Indigenous livelihood and dismantles the notion that healing is inherently bound to a linear progression.
(Arsenal Pulp Press)
Render
Tackling addiction and recovery head-on, Sachiko Murakami’s latest effort, Render (Arsenal Pulp Press), insists that recovery is a jagged line. Dreams, memory, and consciousness collide, as Murakami digs deep into the wake of her own addiction, presenting a candid portrayal of the multiple directions a person is pulled during recovery.
Murakami discards the idea of a fairy tale ending to addiction, instead demonstrating the ways that dependency lurks around every corner and what it means to spill one’s trauma out on to the page. Render is a sanguine beacon of brilliant verse.
Run Riot: Ninety Poems in Ninety Days
(PRE-ORDER NOW!)
A poem for each day spent in rehab, poet Ash Winters’s debut book of poetry, Run Riot (Caitlin Press), is a candid account of one person’s journey of recovery. Following a decade of excess, Winters checked themself into a Vancouver rehab centre. Readers are pulled through moments of success and joy, as well as anger and despondency. Winters’s ability to braid together the past and present, as well as humour and tribulation, presents the reader with an acute portrayal of one person’s attempt to connect with oneself and heal. Forthcoming January 2021.