Kerry-Lee Powell's Inheritance shortlisted for 2015 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award

We're thrilled to announce that Inheritance by Kerry-Lee Powell has been shortlisted for the 2015 Gerald Lampert Award for Best First Book of Poetry! Congratulations to all the other authors: Kayla Czaga, Sylvia D. Hamilton, Stevie Howell, Suzannah Showler, Anne-Marie Turza.

"Powell actually cuts into you, leaves a mark": Michael Dennis Loves Inheritance

Michael Dennis, one of Canada's most ardent and prolific poetry bloggers, is head-over-heels with Kerry-Lee Powell's Inheritance, which he says "could be the best book of poems I've read since my own father died." He calls the book "a scourging, searing swat of emotional intensity" and expresses great admiration for the way Kerry-Lee  "mines the internal conflict" of her family legacy and "makes it public". 

Kerry-Lee Powell uses her personal history like a spring board. Watch as she jack-knives into your thoughts. These poems stay with you. The jack-knife in this case isn't the dive. Powell actually cuts into you, leaves a mark.

Inheritance was also chosen by Carmine Starnino as one of his "Top 10 Canadian Poetry Books of the Year" on the Vehicule Blog, a list which also includes fellow Biblioasis poet Catherine Chandler's excellent Glad and Sorry Seasons, which we released last spring. Sina Queyras also included Inheritance as one of her three favourite debuts in her 2014 poetry round-up over at Lemon Hound.

And if all that doesn't convince you to pick up a copy, head over to Verse Daily where today's featured poem is Kerry-Lee's "The Girls Who Work at the Makeup Counter," excerpted from Inheritance.

Writing Spaces: Kerry-Lee Powell and Kathy Page

Ever wondered about the writing habits of your favourite Canadian authors?

For those of us that do, The New Quarterly's online Writing Space feature  helps satisfy some of that curiosity by providing an insider's glimpse into the working spaces of various authors.

Pictured below is Kerry-Lee Powell's tasteful yet functional office set-up whose beautiful matching desk and chair overlook some lovely verdant trees. Kerry-Lee says she keeps the "curtains open on that side of the room at night so that I can see their silhouettes against the sky."

And who wouldn't want to toil daily in Kathy Page's awe-inspiring rugged cabin/office in Salt Spring, situated by a "wooded valley visited by pileated woodpeckers, ravens, and many other birds, as well as rabbits and black-tailed deer."  

Writers as diverse and distinct as their natural habitats. Anyone else feel a smidgen of envy? Time to start organizing that office...

Thursday Poetry Round-Up

Since the weather has started to cool down in the past couple days, and the leaves are beginning to turn colour and loosen from their branches, and there's an undercurrent of wood smoke in the breeze, I'd be lying if I said it didn't all put me in a contemplative mood. So, with the spirit of contemplation in mind, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to bring a few recent poetry notices to your attention. 

A couple weeks ago, Catherine Owen's The Marrow Review did a nice roundup of two of our poetry books chosen completely at random: Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway by Alexandra Oliver and Meniscus by Shane Neilson. Oliver's 2013 Pat Lowther Award-Winning Canadian debut gets a favourable nod for its "sing-songy, Philip Larkinesque, rhyming, mannered, smart, continental and often quite droll" lyrics while Shane Neilson's "sophisticate and slant" musicality  in Meniscus is praised for its "bleeps & grinds & mellifluous witnessings to loss." Owen is especially fond of Meniscus for its controlled yet intense exploration of "elegy, insanity, injury and adoration."

Susan Gillis has been doing some great work on her newish blog Concrete & River of late, and this past week saw the posting of a short but fascinating exchange between her and Amanda Jernigan. Jernigan describes the various ways in which localized speech, a magical house of books in Virginia, and the life-altering experience of motherhood have informed her work and vision over the years. You can read the full exchange here. Jernigan's Groundwork was a 2011 Best Poetry Book, and her 2013 Cormorant follow-up, All the Daylight Hours, was a National Post Canadian Poetry Book of the Year for 2013.



Catherine Chandler's sonnet "Coming to Terms" received a Laureate's Choice Award earlier this month in the Great River Shakespeare Festival, Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest (Winona, Minnesota). It was singled-out among over 400 submissions by poets from thirty-six U.S. states and seven countries. The poem, which also won the 2010 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, appears in Chandler's Glad and Sorry Seasons. See why Eric Ormsby says there is "no form of which Catherine Chandler is not a master, from quatrains and Sapphics to ballads and pantoums. She is an especially brilliant sonneteer." 

And finally, Kerry-Lee Powell's Inheritance, which is our lead fall poetry title and which is making its way through the printers at Coach House as we speak, is a 49th Shelf Most Anticipated Fall Poetry Book. Kerry-Lee's fiction has won her a two book deal with Harper Collins as well as accolades from the likes of Nathan Englander and Junot Diaz, and her poetic debut is a fierce and moving one. It should definitely be on the radar of all lovers of Canadian Poetry.

And now back to my coffee and weltschmerz.