National Animal, Derek Webster’s second book of poetry, inhabits a wider public space than his acclaimed debut Mockingbird. In poems that extend beyond the biographical toward the political, Webster’s quiet, sharp-eyed narrator—a man “tripping / my way forward, trying to lead my own life”—watches history being erased in favour of more socially palatable ideas and comforting self-portraits. Uncompromising and substantial, National Animal explores our “civic moment...

In poetry that strikes a delicate balance between candour and lament., Mockingbird tracks the aftershocks of a failed marriage through a variety of self-portraits. Derek Webster’s speakers itemize their regrets and fears while keeping sentimentality in check and the result is a first book of exceptional emotional power. Indeed, the distinctive and nuanced shapes of Webster’s exquisitely controlled lyrics highlight the great achievement of his debut: a clipped, often aphoristic lin...

Edited by the magazine’s poetry editor, Kevin Young, a celebratory selection from one hundred years of influential, entertaining, and taste-making verse in The New YorkerSeamus Heaney, Dorothy Parker, Louise Bogan, Louise Glück, Randall Jarrell, Langston Hughes, Derek Walcott, Sylvia Plath, W. S. Merwin, Czesław Miłosz, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Strand, E. E. Cummings, Sharon Olds, Franz Wright, John Ashbery, Sandra Cisneros, Amanda Gorman, Maggie Smith, Kaveh ...

How do we reckon our past without being ravaged by it? How do we use people, and their bodies, to express ourselves?

Mercurial and modern, The Next Wave is an output-based anthology of 21st century Canadian poetry. Curated by Jim Johnstone, it features 40 early-to-mid-career Canadian writers selected from a diverse range of national and international presses. While The Next Wave surveys poets from across Canada, its contributors are the product of a global mindset—a distinct generation of writers characterized by the variety of their formal and aesthetic choices. Gathered into an anthology that’s pertine...

this collection of poems is residue from my encounters during the 20 years from (1964-1985). ok, 21.people, places, events seen sometimes wryly, sometimes metaphorically, sometimes playfully and sometimes darkly.

Paul Vermeersch’s new poems give a present-day voice to primitive song, and restore to us a dawn-time severity that cuts through modern evasions. They go beyond sophistication to reveal the passionate and suffering animal within. The Reinvention of the Human Hand is a poetry of the human body’s experience, of a primal being that struggles to assert itself, or perhaps just survive, in a world of metals, plastics, electronics. Here is the most far-reaching work yet by the ac...

“As accomplished as Jonathan Bennett is at using language hes never fussy or precious about it. With his exacting contemporary voice part colourful reporter part reluctant witness his lines gain their effect by serving experience in the most necessary way possible via clear-eyed attention and vivid diction. The result is an immediacy often lacking in other poetry. Civil and Civic s nimble narratives will crackle in your ear.” — David OMeara author of Noble Gas Penny Black The poems of Jona...

If we had the chance to do things again differently, would we?Hard to say when the snow began falling. In the 2020s, there were rumors of global warming, of severe weather changes and it was not all rumor. Many of us could feel the changes. Warm and then cold. Rain and then the sunniest of days. Then all went bad, warmer and warmer each day.

From Governor General's Award-winning poet Tim Lilburn comes a collection of poetry of great scope and ambition.The Names is personal and familial archaeology, an extemporal dig giving spectres back to their bodies. With its lines sped up and dazzlingly associative, Tim Lilburn’s cocktail of obsessions—confession, ontology, mystical theology, humour and extreme, fleet, apt weirdness—marches through on full display. He pulls in an even broader cast of chara...

The least important man was a boy in the 1970s. He remembers clubhouses, plastic soldiers, swimming lessons, rocket launches, a grandfather’s letters from World War I. Those days are long gone, however: now the least important man is grown up. He lives in the city. He suffers endless rush hours, he dreams of other places, he drinks cheap coffee and crosses streets and sees explosions on the TV news. But through it all he’s still thinking about that old life, and wondering what it meant, an...

This groundbreaking anthology offers a broad and representative introduction to some of the most exciting, fresh voices on the contemporary poetry landscape by gathering together generous selections from the work of 85 younger American poets.The poets selected were born after 1960, published their first book within the last 10 years, and have no more than three books published. Some are the recipients of numerous awards, while others, who are making their first appearance, are quic...