In French, Tombeau de Lou. At its origin, the death of the childhood friend, the chosen sister, swept away by a sudden cancer. She was fifty-three. Like the poet. The one who remains, the survivor, the inconsolable woman. That's the anecdote. Afterwards -- if an afterwards is possible, the urgency presses, the need to find words for the pain and questions that death raises, strewn at random in revolt, in violence, in memory, in mourning and in dread. To translate the hasty metamorphosis of the ever-so-living into the ever-so-dead. To give meaning, albeit fragile, albeit mortal, to the meaningless. To relate this little story of intimate suffering -- all in all, banal -- to the great history of international proportions. In this literary tomb of eleven songs, the need to attempt a utopian reconciliation: embrace all at once the immensity of the emptiness, the chaos, our fragile humanity, and our ardent desire for resistance.

An elegiac and incisive debut that blends poems of social justice
with poems of ordinary life

In her first collection, Thin Air of the Knowable, the physical landscapes of Wendy Donawa’s life—West Coast, Caribbean, prairies—ground many of her poems and often reflect the inner geography of her preoccupations. A road-trip poem moves from prairie winter, “an icy scatter of gravel / the moving centre of this unpeopled world,” past a cattle liner on its way to the slaughter house, but it also passes beneath the sky’s “blazing scroll of light,” and magpies “flashing black and teal in the sun.” Landscape also functions metaphorically to suggest how historical settings play out in the exigencies of individual lives.

Other preoccupations include poems that reflect on poesis itself—the strange poem-making compulsion to capture that which is largely inexpressible (hence “the thin air of the knowable”), and the role of dreams, memory, and intuition in shaping a poem’s knowledge.

Donawa is, in many ways, a political poet, yet manages to put flesh and blood into everything she writes. In the end,

Perhaps there is only the demonic journey.
Small beauties by the roadside, and
such love as we can muster.
(from “Pu Ru Paints Zhong Kui the Demon Queller on a Mule”)

“Wendy Donawa’s poetry rests at the very edge of beauty where a wild delicacy resides.” —Patrick Lane

“Like the watchmakers of old, Wendy Donawa puts a spyglass to her eye and fixes her vision to the minute, to all that carries on beneath our imperfect sight—worlds upon worlds brought into the sharpest focus.” —Pamela Porter

"Poetry is leading us," writes Alice Walker in The World Will Follow Joy. In this dazzling collection, the beloved writer offers over sixty new poems to incite and nurture contemporary activists. Hailed as a "lavishly gifted writer" (The New York Times), Walker imbues her poetry with evocative images, fresh language, anger, forgiveness, and profound wisdom. Casting her poetic eye toward history, politics, and nature, as well as to world figures such as Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, and the Dalai Lama, she is indeed a "muse for our times" (Amy Goodman). By attentively chronicling the conditions of human life today, Walker shows, as ever, her deep compassion, profound spirituality, and necessary political commitments. The poems in The World Will Follow Joy remind us of our human capacity to come together and take action, even in our troubled political times. Above all, the gems in this collection illuminate what it means to live in our world today.

Winner of the 1994 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry (QSPELL, now the Quebec Writers' Federation)

In The Woman Downstairs, eloquence joins intimately with an attentive and hungry eye. Julie Bruck explores the accidents and acquaintances of life, its small coincidences and occurrences, its unexpected meetings. With a passionate distance, Bruck blends the outside observer's cool embrace with a desire to know intensely life’s eccentric smallnesses, to gentle the beautiful out of the mundane. By turns witty and thoughtful, Bruck's writing is always graceful, always a delight.

2016 Goodreads Choice Award-winning poet Amanda Lovelace returns in the witch doesn't burn in this one - the bold second book in her "women are some kind of magic" series. The witch: supernaturally powerful, inscrutably independent, and now-indestructible. These moving, relatable poems encourage resilience and embolden women to take control of their own stories. Enemies try to judge, oppress, and marginalize her, but the witch doesn't burn in this one.

The Way We Hold On is Abena Beloved Green's debut book of poetry. Her poems address cultural, social, and environmental issues, relationships, and reflect on everyday life as a small-town raised, semi-nomadic, first-generation Canadian. Here are poems about holding on and letting go-of ideas, opinions, beliefs, people, places, and things.

Famous for juxtaposing Eastern cultures with Western literary references, The Waste Land has been celebrated for its eloquence, depth of meaning, and numerous subtleties. Rich with allusions to the religious texts of Hinduism and Buddhism, ancient literature, and Eliot's own life, the poem continues to be admired and studied in higher education English literature courses. Quickly ascending to the status of literary classic, The Waste Land is widely considered to be Eliot's finest work, representing maturity in his style and confidence in both expression and research. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

These poems peel back the layers of suburban life and the American Dream. Vivian Maier was a self-taught street photographer who worked as a nanny for wealthy employers in New York and Chicago. The poet imagines her as a documentarian who is compassionate, abrasive, and meditative, while her subjects provide their own narrative. More than anything, the poems are a response to her work, which is all we have that comes directly from her. It is a deliberate challenge to the "mystery nanny" she is reduced to in much of the constructed narrative of her life.

Winner of the 2004 Archibald Lampman Award (National Capital Region – Ottawa) and shortlisted for the 2004 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the 2004 ReLit Awards

In The Vicinity David O’Meara gives us a new kind of cityscape, one that brings its unseen, and usually unsung, materials to the foreground. Brick, concrete (that “not-so-silver screen / our walk-on parts are posed upon”), glass, steel, wire: they step boldly from anonymity into fresh focus, backdrops goaded into stardom. Full of casually-worn wit and humour, often using intricate forms that deftly reflect their subjects, these poems probe our conventional attitudes while walking us down present or remembered streets – “Some-such Avenue / Rue Saint Whatever.”

A red brick wall, framed
in timber beams and mortar,
collects the last gold of November warmth
on this lit morning.
It hasn’t rested, though idle all these years.
A brick wall is stoic toil.
Compare one to your mother.

from “Brickwork”

“‘Let / how I loved to be here / not change,’ David O’Meara says, almost under his breath, in one of the stirring, subtle cadences he is perpetually discovering. The Vicinity wanders and wonders, seeking a possible home, and along the road it notices, savours, questions and praises every sight and sound, from a steel vertex to an old poster for a long-gone ska concert. Paradoxically, in his ‘fog of love, homelessness’ O’Meara’s innovative mastery of form and rhythm creates perfect, if fleeting, homes for the spirit at every step on these restless streets.” – A. F. Moritz

Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry

The 19th Archibald Lampman award goes this year to David O’Meara for his book of poetry, The Vicinity (published by Brick Books). The award is given annually by Arc, Canada’s National Poetry Magazine, for the best book of poetry written in English during the preceding calendar year by a writer living in Ottawa. Jury members Brian Bartlett of Halifax, Stephanie Bolster of Montreal, and Aislinn Hunter of Vancouver, had this to say about O’Meara’s book: “Though meticulously crafted, his lines never show off, always deferring not so much to their subjects as to the singular mind that moves through them.” “This book … looks hard at the common object and the day to day — how the ordinary can harbour its own kind of revelation.” “The poems show a rare balance of care and spontaneity, intelligence and intuition. This is an outstanding collection not just for the Nation’s Capital but for the nation, period.” The Vicinity is O’Meara’s second book of poetry. It has been short-listed for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and also for the Ottawa Book Award.