Name: Here Is Where We Disembark
SKU: 9781551118512
Availability: InStock

With her remarkable debut collection, Yukon poet Clea Roberts proffers a perceptive & ecological reading of the Canadian North’s past & present.

Roberts deftly draws out the moments that comprise a cycle of seasons, paying as much attention to the natural—the winter moon’s second-hand light that pools in the tracks of tree squirrels & loose threads of migrating birds—as she does to the manufactured—the peripheral percussion of J-brakes & half-melted ice lanterns. She also casts her gaze back to the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1898, raising the voices of those marked by a frenetic race for fortune: a seductive, edgy wolf, a disillusioned photographer, and a pragmatic prostitute, among others.

Here Is Where We Disembark is a beautifully crafted book that ignites the senses, and its presence lingers, like woodsmoke, long after the final page has been turned.

“There is a northerly edge to Clea Roberts’ poems, and it extends past the obvious content. It has to do with exquisite frostbitten brevities; it has to do with imagining northern space with scrupulous musically-tuned attention; and—not least—it has to do with an awareness of snow’s ‘convincing logic,’ capable of pulling you ‘softly/into a ditch’ and sending explanations of ‘eider and light.’ These are poems whose delight lies in seeing, and listening, afresh.” DON MCKAY

Gerald Lampert Award, 2011 (short-listed)
ReLit Award for Poetry, 2011 (long-listed)
Alberta Readers’ Choice Award, 2011 (long-listed)