Wellwater

(Paperback)

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'Karen Solie should be read wherever English is spoken' - Michael Hoffmann, LRB Wellwater demonstrates a poet writing at the height of her powers. In poems that are supple, philosophical, bracingly honest and ribbed with erudition, Wellwater conducts a self-interrogative conversation with a culture in crisis and a natural world on the brink. Thresholds abound, 'doors between dimensions' where past selves or lost loved ones speak to us again: 'death is not Saskatchewan' shrugs one encountered soul, 'we don't all know each other in this place'. Solie excels as a laureate of the transitory, of 'baffling flats... tiny museums of illegalities', motel rooms exuding a 'low hum of menace'. Her roving, syntactically elegant poems will often resolve in disarming directness, a precise admission of the emotional stakes. Karen Solie is increasingly recognised as one of the essential voices in world poetry. Wellwater will delight those already in the know, while new readers of her work will be astonished. 'Powerful, philosophical, intelligent . . . [Solie is] adept at pulling great wisdom from the ordinary' - Griffin Prize judges Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie and Carl Phillips

Reviews

Her expansive, talkative lines unpack tight domestic spaces jam-packed with childhood memories as well as the awesome vistas of vast, dust-filled Canadian landscapes. Sometimes didactic and anecdotal, always matter-of-fact, Solie is a philosophical conversationalist . . . This is a well-timed book addressing our moment of climatic turbulence -- Kit Fan * Observer *
Karen Solie should be read wherever English is spoken -- Michael Hofmann * London Review of Books *
Powerful, philosophical, intelligent . . . [Solie is] especially adept at pulling great wisdom from the ordinary -- Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie, and Carl Phillips * Griffin Poetry Prize Judges' Citation *
A poet of the modern, cross-country journey * Guardian *
Solie takes her place among our best contemporary poets . . . The Caiplie Caves is Solies best work yet, full of true, beautiful, menacing things. * Harvard Review *
Karen Solie is a star of Canadian poetry. -- Ange Mlinko * New York Review of Books *

Author Bio

Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. She is the author of four previous collections of poems, including Pigeon, which won the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, and the Trillium Award for Poetry. She was International Writer-in-Residence at the University of St Andrews in 2011, and is an Associate Director for the Banff Centre's Writing Studio programme. Her poems have been published in the US, the UK, Australia, and Europe, and have been translated into French, German, Korean, Hebrew, and Dutch. Her first UK collection, The Living Option: Selected Poems, was published in 2013. She lives in Toronto. Wellwater is her fifth poetry collection.