National Network for Equitable Library Service

The Four-Doored House evokes two key women in Pierre Nepveu's life. First, his granddaughter Lily, who he imagines maturing into a complex world, haunted by her memory of him as he is haunted now by her projected self, navigating an era awash in uncertainty and unease. Imbued with both wonder and disquiet, it is an aging poet's celebration of childhood, as well as a meditation on his own "future absence." There follows his celebration of C, the woman with whom Nepveu shares his nights and days.

Shannon Webb-Campbell's Still No Word seeks the appearance of the self in others and the recognition of others within the self. Patient, searching, questioning, and at times heartbreaking--these poems reveal the deeppast within the present tense and the interrelations that make our lives somehow both whole and unfinished. And though Webb-Campbell is political at times, this is not politics for the sake of politics: here, it's a matter of the human heart.

Bebakhshid revolves around intimate identity intersections of being Iranian, an immigrant, and a woman. Mosall touches everyday banalities as well as challenges, exploring familial relationships, as well as chosen social environments. Her work is social commentary on the treatment and experience of Middle Easterners, as well as a focussed view of realities of its youth not just challenges, but the romantic and mundane experiences of the everyday.

'What truths would you utter from your mouthIf you could tell us your story'- The Possible Lives of W.H., SailorIn this powerful and deeply moving poetic narrative, author/artist Bushra Junaid gives presence to W.H., a mysterious nineteenth-century sailor whose remains were discovered in Labrador in the late 1980s. What little can be deduced about W.H. archaeologically is that he was of African heritage, and buried alone on the coast of a forbidding landscape.

In this final installation of the Overhead Series, Lucy Hemphill once again transports the reader with intimate revelations on identity by exploring both her personal and ancestral relationship to the forest and the quiet sentinels that root together everything. Hemphill's prose is extraordinary in its combination of self awareness yet unselfconscious honesty and skillful restraint, creating a sense of connection under the tangle of foliage and limb that ever-reach skyward.

aFebruary 2021 to March 2022 was a period of great reflection for two of Canada's most celebrated poets. Ariel Gordon and Brenda Schmidt wrote collaborative poetry, formatted like a call and response. Ariel intended to write about urban Manitoba, the city and its trees, and Brenda was to write about rural Saskatchewan and birds. Over the course of the year, the matter of place took over and the intentions branched and flew apart. The poets wrote about the natural world and people making their way through it all.

Following her critically acclaimed first collection of poetry, What Fox Knew, poet Mary Barnes' sophomore collection, Moving Upstream reveals a tempered grace. Barnes brings her Ojibwe roots to the fore and elegantly coaxes out the seemingly quiet world we often take for granted. In this masterful new collection, we are transported to place and time, to the heart and soul of the poet's love for the natural world.

Poet Sareh Farmand was born in Tehran at the start of the Islamic Revolution. In this brave first collection of poems and prose a narrative arc details her family's escape from Iran, detailing their time as immigrants in limbo, and finally, as Landed Immigrants in Canada. Using family anecdotes, memory, public documents, and images to outline her family's story, Pistachios in my Pocket moves from the personal to the universal by exploring the influences of migration, political strife, and cultural identity on humanity.

This evocative new poetry collection speaks with a fierce tenderness of many aspects of the poet's life: a childhood spent on the banks of the Churchill River, the death of a beloved one, the struggle to try to find forgiveness for wrongs done and the weariness of trying to redress those wrongs. And, most poignantly, a beautiful rebellion reaches one hand back to Louis Riel and one hand forward to future Metis generations.

Finalist for The Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize at the New Brunswick Book Awards!Shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry at the 2019 Alberta Book Publishing Awards!That Light Feeling Under Your Feet plunges headfirst into the surreal and slogging world of cruise ship workers. These masterfully crafted poems challenge perpetuating colonial and class relations, as well as the hedonistic lifestyle attributed to the employees of these floating resorts.