National Network for Equitable Library Service

What does it mean to be a man now? These poems' answers are bold and deeply moving.

Poems about commitment and catastrophe, from a voice of intense lyrical skepticism and wonderful tonal mobility.

The Ritualites is Michael Nardone's book-length poem-the first in a series of planned works-on the sonic topography of North America. Composed at sites all across the continent-from Far Rockaway to the Olympic Peninsula, Great Bear Lake to the Gulf of California-the book documents the poet's listening amid our public exchanges, mediated ambiances, and itinerant intimacies.

Ledi, the second book by Vancouver poet Kim Trainor, describes the excavation of an Iron Age Pazyryk woman from her ice-bound grave in the steppes of Siberia. Along with the woman's carefully preserved body, with its blue tattoos of leopards and griffins, grave goods were also discovered-rosehips and wild garlic, translucent vessels carved from horn, snow-white felt stockings and coriander seeds for burning at death.

It Begins With The Body by Hana Shafi explores the milestones and hurdles of a brown girl coming into her own. Shafi's poems display a raw and frank intimacy and address anxiety, unemployment, heartbreak, relationships, identity, and faith. Accompanied by Shafi's candid illustrations that share the same delightful mixture of grotesque and humour found in her poems, It Begins With The Body navigates the highs and lows of youth. It is about feeling like an outsider, and reconciling with pain and awkwardness.

Compulsively confessional and cracking-wise, The Nonnets is an utterly unique alchemy of poetry and comedy. Aaron Giovanonne's latest collection is a book-length sequence of 'nonnets'-nine-line poems that Giovannone handles with ruthless dexterity. Capturing transformations from first dates to goodbye texts, from mama's boy to unrepentant shoplifter, from post-industrial downtown to eleventh-century Italian monastery, these poems present a kaleidoscopic world that careens wildly between despair and ecstasy.

Where, the Mile End, Irish poet Julie Morrissy's debut collection, embodies an energetic lyricism that whips through Europe and North America with humour, curiosity and a distinct edginess. Morrissy's lines track emotional, physical, and geographical change, as she intimately links the vitality of two continents: the snow, the streets, the sensual memories. Where, the Mile End reimagines the places we inhabit, the moments we remember, the things we long for.

Delphine Almquist and her husband Hugo are living the hobby farm life of her dreams on the Canadian Prairies, far from the world of climate change concerns and global conflict. The only thing missing is a spectacular new kitchen, a tiny bistro to call their own. When she accidentally orders one online, her attempts to remedy the situation threaten her marriage to Hugo. The pressure explodes when her brother Paul arrives with end-of-the-world paranoia and plans to save the whole family on his hidden rustic homestead.

While much of small-town living remains the same: farming is always reliant on the weather regardless of new technology, after all, there is a sense of urgency and a need to escape in Chelsea’s poetry; her stories of growing up on the prairies include references to cell phones and modern farmers who are more like businessmen.

What begins as a look back at a different time in history quickly takes a dark turn in Bob Currie’s latest collection. Embodying a variety of characters, often in different voices – both those of well-known classic poets as well as the voices of Saskatchewan poets past and present – Currie ponders the collective human experience. With razor-sharp precision and telltale imagery, these poems explore domestic and public life: bad marriages, infidelity, poverty, gun violence, and in a final section, death – and how these experiences change (or don’t) between one generation and the next.