if: prey, then: huntress: poems

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In her much-anticipated debut collection, Christina Shah captures the landscape of heavy industry in Canada through the perceptive eyes of a poet.

From a poet working in heavy industry comes an eclectic collection of observations and experiences as a woman on the road and out in the field in traditionally male-dominated environments. if: prey, then: huntress is an exploration of vulnerability, agency and existential homelessness, replete with portraits of beer drinkers and hellraisers and urban landscapes. These poems illuminate the beauty and truth amid the concrete, twisted metal and scraped knuckles.

At a time when Western Canada is reimagining its resource-based economy, Shah's poems position her as a wandering eulogist for old industrial ways of knowing-and for their greying practitioners in the mines, paper mills, shipyards and scrapyards that undergird modern life. The reader is invited into a world that, like the breath, is both dying and being born every minute.

Author Bio

Christina Shah lives in New Westminster and works in heavy industry, where she drinks from the firehose of knowledge. Her poetry has appeared in numerous Canadian literary journals. Her work has been shortlisted for the Fiddlehead's 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2023. She is one-fifth of the Harbour Centre 5 poetry collective, whose chapbook, Brine, was released in 2022. Her first video poem, "rig veda" (in collaboration with videographer Mark Mushet), was translated into Spanish and screened internationally. rig veda, her first solo chapbook (Anstruther Press), received an honourable mention for the bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2024. if: prey, then: huntress is her first full-length poetry collection.