National Network for Equitable Library Service

Shortlisted, 2025 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Shortlisted, 2025 Forward Prize for Best Collection of Poetry. The poems in Wellwater, Karen Solie's sixth collection, explore the intersection of cultural, economic, and personal ideas of "value," addressing housing, economic and environmental crisis, and aging and its incumbent losses. In an era of accelerating inequality, places many of us thought of as home have become unaffordable. In "Basement Suite," the faux-utopian economy of Airbnb suggests people with property "share" it with us and, presumably, we should be grateful.

Longlisted, 2025 Toronto Book Awards. Borrowing its title from a finance term—"the estimated price of a good or service for which no market price exists"—Shadow Price is a stunning debut that examines the idea of value in a world that burns under our capitalist lens. What gives life value? How do we serve existing societal structures that determine its cost? Employing both surreal and documentary imagery, Farah Ghafoor's arresting collection articulates how narrative is used to revise the past and manipulate the future, ultimately forming our present-day climate crisis.

Winner of the Prix des libraires, the Indigenous Voices award, the Prix littéraire des enseignant.e.s de Français, and the Coup de Cœur Renaud-Bray, and finalist for the Prix Alain-Grandbois Dual-language edition The poems in Uiesh / Somewhere are rooted in Innu Elder Joséphine Bacon's experiences of moving between the nomadic ways of her Ancestors in the northern wilderness of Nitassinan and the clamour of the city.

Fifty-five Ways to Survive offers a bilingual collection of graphic poetry tracing a journey from despair to resilience and spiritual connection. Queer artist Laurier Tiernan blends ethereal insights with human experiences, creating a deeply personal exploration of resilience. Cinquante-cinq voies de survie est un recueil bilingue de poèmes graphiques retraçant un parcours du désespoir à la résilience et à la connexion spirituelle. L'artiste queer Laurier Tiernan mêle ses visions éthérées avec ses expériences humaines, en tant que médium héréditaire.

Beneath the Surface serves as both a deeply personal reflection and a call for greater understanding and connection, illuminating the complexities of life through the lens of Indigenous wisdom and storytelling. This collection goes beyond poetry, providing rich backstories and leadership insights that contextualize the verses. As in his earlier collections, Living in the Tall Grass and Love, Life, Loss and a little bit of hope, Laforme once again extends an invitation to readers, encouraging them to see the world through Indigenous eyes.

In this new and masterful collection, Griffin Poetry Prize winner Jane Munro balances her signature themes—dream life, the visual arts, the mysteries of the natural world—with an urgent, more directly political voice. False Creek, Munro's eighth collection of poetry, responds to the discovery of sodded-over graves around residential schools and the elimination of Sən̓aʔqʷ, home to fifteen thousand Sḵwx̱wú7mesh before the genocide caused by European diseases. Poems ask What counts as violence? and address erasure.

eat salt | gaze at the ocean explores the themes of Black sovereignty, Haitian sovereignty, and Black lives, using the Haitian (original) zombie as a metaphor for the condition and treatment of Black bodies. Interspersed with information about zombies, Haiti, and policies is the author's personal narrative of growing up Black and Haitian of immigrant parents on stolen land. The collection is divided into two sections: the first half focusses on zombies, while the second focusses on the ocean/water and the violent crossing experienced by enslaved folks.

Crowd Source parallels the daily migration of crows who, aside from fledgling season, journey across metro Vancouver every day at dawn and dusk. Continuing Nicholson's attention to contemporary climate crisis, social movements, and Black diasporic relations, this is a text for all concerned with practising ecological futurities befitting corvid sensibilities.

Investigating whose safety really matters in the most expensive city in the nation, cop city swagger conducts a threat assessment of Vancouver's police. Holding close lived and living connections to the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown neighbourhoods, Eng juxtaposes the police's and the city's institutional rhetoric with their acts of violence against marginalized people, presenting a panoramic media montage of structural harm and community care.

Allostatic load navigates the racialized interplay of chronic wear and tear during tumultuous years marked by global racial tensions, the commodification of care, and the burden of systemic injustice.