National Network for Equitable Library Service

Invisible Lives chronicles cycles of dysfunction and domestic violence. Using experimental hybrid poetry, Cristalle Smith breaks generational silence in lyric resonance, reflecting on a childhood rife with upheaval and poverty, the invisibility of single motherhood, and the silence of domestic violence. These poems sing memory across divides of time and space, breaking the patterns of absence and denial and challenging what is kept unseen. Associative leaps chronicle the daughter of a family always on the move. Family secrets thaw in spring mud.

At the close of the twenty-first century, a prison population awaits transport to a world where their memories will be Cleaned, and where they will be Harmonized into the language of New English, made up of only 850 words. One person, knowing of this inevitability, secretly translates poetry into this limited tongue, a gift to a self who will no longer be able to understand the literature they love. In the years beyond this time, two scholars make a remarkable discovery: a book of poems, a work of translation, and a record of a desperate experiment.

Finalist, 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry Marked by rhythmic drive, humour, and surprise, Undi's poems consider what is left out from the history and ongoing realities of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Firmly grounded in the local, the arresting poems in Chimwemwe Undi's debut collection, Scientific Marvel, are preoccupied with Winnipeg in the way a Winnipegger is preoccupied with Winnipeg, the way a poet might be preoccupied with herself: through history and immigration; race and gender; anxieties and observation.

Crushed Wild Mint is a collection of poems embodying land love and ancestral wisdom, deeply rooted to the poet's motherland and their experience as a parent, herbalist and careful observer of the patterns and power of their territory. Jess Housty grapples with the natural and the supernatural, transformation and the hard work of living that our bodies are doing-held by mountains, by oceans, by ancestors and by the grief and love that come with communing.

Poems for and about the incarcerated. Moving from riots to mall parkades to church, the poems in Bradley Peters' debut Sonnets from a Cell mix inmate speech, prison psychology, skateboard slang and contemporary lyricism in a way that is tough and tender, that is accountable both to Peters' own days caught between the past and nothing and to the structures that sentence so many to lose. Written behind doors our culture too often keeps closed, this is poetry reaching out for moments of longing, wild joy and grace.

The highly anticipated debut poetry collection of Mi'kmaq poems by Prince Edward Island's Poet Laureate, Julie Pellisier-Lush. This collection will enthral poetry lovers. Skilled at taking words from hearts and minds to paper, Julie's poems will connect with the reader deeply. Some poems were created with teachings from our Elders and some were created to learn more about the art of words. At times heart wrenching and other times a call to action for Mother Earth, each poignant poem is paired with vivid artwork crafted by the poet herself.

From award-winning poet Catherine Owen, a collection of poems about one woman's journey from BC to a new life in Alberta, where she buys an old house and creates a new meaning of home.In search of stability and rootedness, in 2018 Catherine Owen moved from coastal Vancouver to prairie Edmonton. There, she purchased a house built more than one hundred years earlier: a home named Delilah.Beginning from a space of grief that led to Owen's relocation, the poems in this collection inhabit the home, its present and its past.

Fresh, funny, and imbued with infectious energy, Northerny tells a much-needed and compelling story of growing up and living in the North. Here are no tidy tales of aurora borealis and adventures in snow. For Dawn Macdonald, the North is not an escape, a pathway to enlightenment, or a lifestyle choice. It's a messy, beautiful, and painful point of origin. People from the North see the North differently and want to tell their own stories in their own way, including about their experiences growing up on the land, getting an education, and struggling to find jobs and opportunities.

That Audible Slippage invokes a poetics of active listening and environmental sound to investigate the ways in which we interact with the world, balancing perception and embodiment alongside a hypnagogic terrain of grief and mortality. Audibility is a primary theme of this collection-what can be heard, what is obstacled, and what remains unheard.