A sequence exploring the bittersweet corners of motherhood.

Finalist for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize

The English translation of new work from a celebrated Danish poet.

Frayed Opus for Strings & Wind Instruments is a collection of poems that zooms in and out of places and states of mind, from a lit bicycle shed in the back yard to a root canal in November, from a typhoon in Hong Kong to instincts astray in various Copenhagen neigborhoods. Elegantly translated by Canadian collaborators Per Brask and Patrick Friesen, these dreamlike poems attempt, with honesty and humour, to fathom what it is to inhabit a specifically unspecific point in life—not to mention in the Universe.

                                                 …In my pocket I have
the photo of the house, I have to stop continually, put
the suitcases down, take the photo from my pocket
and compare the house in the photo with the houses
we pass. In this way seventeen years go by.

Praise for the work of Ulrikka S. Gernes

“…airy and abstract, like pinching smoke… risky and intriguing.” —The Antigonish Review

Comme autant de mémoires surgissant de chaque instant, les mots se fragmentent et forment le kaléidoscope de la Vie. Un regard, une émotion, un souvenir ravivent l'impression forte nichée au fond de l'âme attendant l'heure d'imbiber le papier.Derrière moi, les souffrances et les joies, s'entassant dans un coffre sans fond, bouillonnant d'effluves à raconter. Devant moi, la Vie. Nécessité de dire. Urgence d'écrire. Besoin viscéral de redonner vie à tout ce qui m'habite. Regard incessant, capteur de sentiments. Je n'y peux rien. Accepter, une fois pour toutes. Mes yeux en éveil et ces mots naissant sont comme le prolongement instinctif et inévitable de tous mes sens qui se nourrissent de tout. Ils trépignent à la porte de mon âme jusqu'à ce que vie s'en suive.Encre des mots comme un ancrage à l'existence, ils traduisent les chagrins, les douleurs, les joies et les doutes qui sur la route habitent le quotidien pour tenter d'en palper l'essence.

Arranged as a mother’s survival guide to her daughter, For Tamara is a touching and inventive long poem about surviving and thriving from the author of The Work of Days. It seems simple: a long letter, from a mother to a daughter, relaying the information needed to survive on this earth. But as Sarah Lang’s second book, For Tamara, unfolds, it becomes a roughly-hewn, genre-bending, post-apocalyptic survival guide. The world with which we are familiar has ended, and in its wake are the countless dead and survivors who are little more than scavengers. The poem’s unforgettable narrator, mother to a young girl named Tamara, has decided to leave her daughter with a document that will not only express her love for her, but that will also teach her how to live. The result is a hauntingly complex artifact and monologue, heartbreakingly consistent yet wildly unexpected, a story of survival and hope that, through the force of its profound form, brings its ideas, insights, and characters blindingly to life. Against this bleak setting, we fear for Tamara's future as we ponder our own. What results is a work of unflinching tenacity and tenderness. This is a poem of abiding power.

Originally performed at the Kennedy Center for the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and later as a tribute to Walter Dean Myers, this stirring and inspirational poem is New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds's rallying cry to the dreamers of the world. For Every One is just that: for every one. For every one person. For every one dream. But especially for every one kid. The kids who dream of being better than they are. Kids who dream of doing more than they almost dare to dream. Kids who are like Jason Reynolds, a self-professed dreamer. Jason does not claim to know how to make dreams come true; he has, in fact, been fighting on the front line of his own battle to make his own dreams a reality. He expected to make it when he was sixteen. Then eighteen. Then twenty-five. Now, some of those expectations have been realized. But others, the most important ones, lay ahead, and a lot of them involve kids, how to inspire them. All the kids who are scared to dream, or don't know how to dream, or don't dare to dream because they've NEVER seen a dream come true. Jason wants kids to know that dreams take time. They involve countless struggles. But no matter how many times a dreamer gets beat down, the drive and the passion and the hope never fully extinguish--because just having the dream is the start you need, or you won't get anywhere anyway, and that is when you have to take a leap of faith. A pitch perfect graduation, baby, or love my kid gift.

In Footsteps on the Ceiling, Baila Ellenbogen explores the overlapping planes of existence her experience and intellectual curiosity have led her to inhabit, reliving childhood memories while questions of faith and domestic responsibilities collide. With a combination of personal, lyrical, and mystical images, the poet examines our ability to love and be loved, our longing to be heard, and the integrity of one voice rising among the many. Baila Ellenbogen holds a Master's Degree in Child and School Clinical Psychology from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Footsteps on the Ceiling is her first book.

Winner of the 2019 Costa Poetry Award Winner Flèche (the French word for 'arrow') is an offensive technique commonly used in fencing, a sport of Mary Jean Chan's young adult years, when she competed locally and internationally for her home city, Hong Kong. This cross-linguistic pun presents the queer, non-white body as both vulnerable ('flesh') and weaponised ('flèche'), and evokes the difficulties of reconciling one's need for safety alongside the desire to shed one's protective armour in order to fully embrace the world. Central to the collection is the figure of the poet's mother, whose fragmented memories of political turmoil in twentieth-century China are sensitively threaded through the book in an eight-part poetic sequence, combined with recollections from Chan's childhood. "Sparkling and vulnerable . . . the arrival of an essential new voice." SARAH HOWE

From the vast expanse of the boreal forest, Vivian Demuth shows both an exquisite eye for detail and a profound concern for the larger environmental picture. Her lively poems show that, to an engaged observer with an accomplished literary imagination, the mountain forest is a complex, animated bio-community.

"A travel writer with a cult following."-The New York Times "There are very few westerners who could successfully cover so much territory in China, but Porter pulls it off. Finding Them Gone uniquely draws upon his parallel careers as a translator and a travel writer in ways that his previous books have not. A lifetime devoted to understanding Chinese culture and spirituality blossoms within its pages to create something truly rare."-The Los Angeles Book Review To pay homage to China's greatest poets, renowned translator Bill Porter-who is also known by his Chinese name "Red Pine"-traveled throughout China visiting dozens of poets' graves and performing idiosyncratic rituals that featured Kentucky bourbon and reading poems aloud to the spirits. Combining travelogue, translations, history, and personal stories, this intimate and fast-paced tour of modern China celebrates inspirational landscapes and presents translations of classical poems, many of which have never before been translated into English. Porter is a former radio commentator based in Hong Kong who specialized in travelogues. As such, he is an entertaining storyteller who is deeply knowledgeable about Chinese culture, both ancient and modern, who brings readers into the journey-from standing at the edge of the trash pit that used to be Tu Mu's grave to sitting in Han Shan's cave where the Buddhist hermit "Butterfly Woman" serves him tea. Illustrated with over one hundred photographs and two hundred poems, Finding Them Gone combines the love of travel with an irrepressible exuberance for poetry. As Porter writes: "The graves of the poets I'd been visiting were so different. Some were simple, some palatial, some had been plowed under by farmers, and others had been reduced to trash pits. Their poems, though, had survived...'oetry is transcendent. We carry it in our hearts and find it there when we have forgotten everything else." In praise of Bill Porter/Red Pine: "In the travel writing that has made him so popular in China, Porter's tone is not reverential but explanatory, and filled with luminous asides...'is goal is to tell interested foreigners about revealing byways of Chinese culture."-New York Review of Books "Porter is an amiable and knowledgeable guide. The daily entries themselves fit squarely in the travelogue genre, seamlessly combining the details of his routes and encounters with the poets' biographies, Chinese histories, and a generous helping of the poetry itself. Porter's knowledge of the subject and his curation of the poems make this book well worth reading for travelers and poetry readers alike. It's like a survey course in Chinese poetry-but one in which the readings are excellent, the professor doesn't take himself too seriously, and the field trips involve sharing Stagg bourbon with the deceased."-Publishers Weekly "Red Pine's out-of-the-mainstream work is canny and clearheaded, and it has immeasurably enhanced Zen/Taoist literature and practice."-Kyoto Journal "Bill Porter has been one of the most prolific translators of Chinese texts, while also developing into a travel writer with a cult following."-The New York Times "Red Pine's succinct and informative notes for each poem are core samples of the cultural, political, and literary history of China."-Asian Reporter Poets' graves visited (partial list): Li Pai, Tu Fu, Wang Wei, Su Tung-p'o, Hsueh T'ao, Chia Tao, Wei Ying-wu, Shih-wu (Stonehouse), Han-shan (Cold Mountain). Bill Porter (a.k.a. "Red Pine") is widely recognized as one of the world's finest translators of Chinese religious and poetic texts. His best-selling books include Lao-tzu's Taoteching and The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain. He lives near Seattle.