National Poetry Month for Adults
Carving space : the Indigenous Voices Awards anthology
2023
Established in 2017, the Indigenous Voices Awards have nurtured the work of Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada. For the first time, a selection of standout works over the past five years of the Indigenous Voices Award will be collected in an anthology that will highlight some of the most groundbreaking Indigenous writing across poetry, prose, and theatre in English, French, and in an Indigenous language.
Cut to fortress : poems
Bige, Tawahum, author
2022
A stunning debut poetry collection confronting colonialism, relationships, grief and intergenerational wounds. Cut to Fortress considers the possibility of decolonization through a personal lens, urging for a resistance that is tied using cord and old-growth tree roots; a resistance that tethers us all together in this contemporary existence. With an upbringing in Surrey, fraught familial conflicts, the passing of his older brother and its influence on his world view, Bige slices through the forts built overtop occupied Turtle Island to examine their origin and his own. His journey climbs into the mountains while he reconnects with his Dene and Cree cultures like a gripping hand on jagged rock. His path draws into the concrete urban streets that Wetako-medicine lurks through, especially for his people. The labour of these travels brings him to the springs where healing passed-down traumas becomes possible by drawing water through vulnerability.
Essential ingredients : a poetry collection
GoldenEagle, Carol Rose, 1963- author.
2022
"There are times in a parent's life when they ask, "Why am I doing this? It's so hard..." That is, until those occasions of magic happen, and they always do. Parenthood is a journey with no road map. And it is the children who most often steer the ship. In her new collection of poetry, Essential Ingredients, Carol Rose GoldenEagle recalls when Creator's blessings have truly been bestowed in a parent's shared life with their children. Poems examine hardship and struggle, triumph of spirit and joy, and serve as a reminder to all parents that childhood is fleeting. This beautiful volume is a celebration of parenthood, in the form of love letters to the poet's children. It is ultimately a tribute to the memories of those many magic moments which define love, purpose, and pride."-- Provided by publisher.
Falling back in love with being human : letters to lost souls
Thom, Kai Cheng.
2023
A transformative collection of intimate and lyrical love letters that offer a path toward compassion, forgiveness, and self-acceptance.
Nomenclature : new and collected poems
Brand, Dionne, 1953- author
2022
An immense achievement, comprising a decades-long career--new and collected poetry from one of Canada's most honoured and significant poets. Spanning almost four decades, Dionne Brand's poetry has given rise to whole new grammars and vocabularies. With a profound alertness that is attuned to this world and open to some other, possibly future, time and place, Brand's ongoing labours of witness and imagination speak directly to where and how we live and reach beyond those worlds, their enclosures, and their violences. Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems begins with a new long poem, the titular "Nomenclature for the Time Being," in which Dionne Brand's diaspora consciousness dismantles our quotidian disasters. In addition to this searing new work, Nomenclature collects eight volumes of Brand's poetry published between 1982 and 2010 and includes a critical introduction by the literary scholar and theorist Christina Sharpe. Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems, features the searching and centering cantos of Primitive Offensive ; the sharp musical conversations of Winter Epigrams and Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defense of Claudia ; the documentary losses of revolutions in Chronicles of the Hostile Sun, in which "The street was empty/with all of us standing there." No Language Is Neutral reads language, coloniality, and sexuality as a nexus. Land to Light On writes intimacies and disaffections with nation, while in thirsty a cold-eyed fl'neur surveys the workings of the city. In Inventory, written during the Gulf Wars, the poet is "the wars' last and late night witness," her job not to soothe but to "revise and revise this bristling list/hourly." Ossuaries' futurist speaker rounds out the collection, and threads multiple temporal worlds--past, present, and future. This masterwork displays Dionne Brand's ongoing body of thought--trenchant, lyrical, absonant, discordant, and meaning-making. Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems is classic and living, a record of one of the great writers of our age.
Scars & stars
Thistle, Jesse, author
2022
In his second moving collection, Jesse Thistle digs deeper into the poetic form, which is especially close to his heart. Charting his own history, the stories of people from his past, the burning intensity of new and unexpected love, the complex legacies of family and community, and the beauty of parenthood, this collection is a profound mediation that expands his engagement with the ideas and experiences that have shaped his body of work thus far.
Spells, wishes, and the talking dead = ᒪᒪᐦᑖᐃᐧᓯᐃᐧᐣ ᐸᑯᓭᔨᒧᐤ ᓂᑭᐦᒋ ᐋᓂᐢᑯᑖᐹᐣ = Mamahtâwisiwin, pakosêyimow, nikihci-âniskotâpân : poems
John-Kehewin, Wanda, 1971-, author
2023
"Spells, Wishes, and the Talking Dead: ᒪᒪᐦᑖᐃᐧᓯᐃᐧᐣ ᐸᑯᓭᔨᒧᐤ ᓂᑭᐦᒋ ᐋᓂᐢᑯᑖᐹᐣ mamahtâwisiwin, pakosêyimow, nikihci-âniskotâpân is a wonder. It plays with form, space, and language, comparing meanings in English and nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree). The reader's attention is drawn to the restrictive and imposed constructs of English grammar, the way it boxes in interpretation and cadence. With inspiring defiance, Wanda John-Kehewin demonstrates which magics cannot be suppressed. Broken into three sections, Spells, Wishes, and the Talking Dead looks at the sickening grip of colonialism: its ongoing detriment to the mental health of Indigenous people, its theft of language, and the scope of its intergenerational harms. The author places herself, her work, and her family's personal experiences in the context of a historical timeline running from the so-called doctrine of discovery to the present day. Recounting the two in tandem reveals the unrelenting nature of violence and, in turn, resistance. There is great power in truth; John-Kehewin "stands in her truth" so that other survivors may stand in theirs."-- Provided by publisher
Xanax cowboy : poems
Green, Hannah (Author of Xanax cowboy), author
2023
Hannah Green's edgy, often darkly comedic debut, Xanax Cowboy, is a long poem that considers the romanticization of addiction and mental illness (particularly in relation to the notion of the artist) via the romanticization of the Wild West. Cowboys are supposed to be messed up, a bit raw around the edges. The speaker wants to be loved for this too, and doesn't care if she is the only one laughing. The long poem is known for its resistance to form and expectation. Xanax Cowboy is as obsessed with itself as other long poems. It is vain. It is ridiculous.
A year of last things : poems
Ondaatje, Michael, 1943- author
2024
Following several of his internationally acclaimed, beloved novels, this is Michael Ondaatje's long-awaited return to poetry. Moving from a Sri Lankan boarding school to Moliere's chair during his last stage performance, to Bulgarian churches and their icons, to a California coast, and his beloved Canadian rivers, Ondaatje casts a brilliant eye that merges his past and present, in the way memory and the distant shores of art and lost friends continue to influence all that surrounds him.