The Debt

(Paperback)

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Finalist for the 2022 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry

Set against the backdrop of a post-moratorium St. Johns, Newfoundland,The Debtexplores tensions between tradition and innovation, and between past and present in a province unmoored by loss and grief.The Debtis about development and change, idleness and activism, ecological stewardship, feminism, motherhood, the personal and the political. It is also about resistanceagainst the encroaching forces of greed and capitalism, even against the accumulated notions of the self. The poems are an argument for community and connection in an age increasingly associated with isolation of the individual.The Debtexplores the dues we all owe: to nature, to those who came before us, and to one another.

Reviews

Praise for The Debt

"Place, in all its bounty and limitation, forms the backdrop of Andreae Callanan's collection, The Debt (Biblioasis). Some of these impeccably crafted poems illuminate a Newfoundland childhood/adolescence of both deprivation and abundance; others paint exquisite miniatures of family life with husband and children. Lit throughout with tenderness and humour, Callanan's precision as a poet is virtually flawless; she renders the ordinary extraordinary in this impressive debut."
Evelyn Lau, 2022 Cogswell Award Judge

Andreae Callanans appealing debut collection is an exploration of what is owed: an individuals debt to family, community and place in forming identity and the presents debt to the past. In the opening poem, the St. Johns writer offers a lyrical portrait of the island she calls home ... In a sardonic suite of poems called Crown, she looks at the history of settlement and colonialism, and the effect of being outpost, not empire. Callanans phrasing is crisp, forthright and imbued with the music in commonplace language.
Toronto Star

Few books being published by authors in Newfoundland and Labrador have a more of the moment title than The Debt Callanans own urgent action is primarily introspective in her new collection, exploring debt from public, political, and personal directions.
CBC Books

Callanan writes of the distances between rural and urban Newfoundlanders, and of accents, the loss of the fish and of what colonialism looks like, from the contemporary ground. She writes, lovingly, of Newfoundland, and all its wild and weedy things This collection is an articulation of that complicated relationship between home and away, writing her familiar and immediate, as well as what might be possible beyond the horizon.
Rob McLennans Blog

Author Bio

Andreae Callanan's poetry, essays, and reviews have been read in The Walrus, Canadian Notes and Queries, Canadian Verse 2, Riddle Fence, CBC.ca, and The Newfoundland Quarterly. She is a recent recipient of the Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing Award at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and she holds a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship for her doctoral work in English literature. Her chapbook, Crown, was published by Anstruther Press in 2019. Andreae lives in St. John's with her husband and their four children.