The first collection of new poems in more than a decade from one of Canada's most vibrant and original writers.

With her first major collection in ten years, Susan Musgrave displays a range of form and expression that may surprise even her most faithful readers. The quiet, lapidary elegies of “Obituary of Light” are set against the furious mischief of “Random Acts of Poetry,” where the lines move with the inventive energy of a natural storyteller, while “Heroines” wrests a harsh and haunting poetry from the language of the street.
 
Her alertness to the absurdity in even the most heartbreaking personal crises leavens the sorrow that speaks through so many of the poems. Sadness and levity interweave. The wilderness and the penitentiary reflect one another. There’s an underlying tenderness, though, whether she is writing about family, the dispossessed, her life on Haida Gwaii, or the vagaries of love. This is Susan Musgrave in full control of her powers, writing poetry that cuts right to the bone. A Globe and Mail Best Book
“[Musgrave’s] poems flow with the almost invisible artistry of a master poet at peak power caught in the talons of something much bigger than herself able only to sing as she is transported.”
—Pacific Rim Review of Books
 
“Musgrave’s work draws the reader gratifyingly closer to the human essence, an exploration sometimes nightmarish, sometimes wondrous. . . . Her poems resonate within both heart and mind.”
—Edmonton Journal