Small Mechanics: Poems

A radiant collection of new poems from one of Canada's most renowned and well-read poets.

The poems in Lorna Crozier's rich and wide-ranging new collection, a modern bestiary and a book of mourning, are both shadowed and illuminated by the passing of time, the small mechanics of the body as it ages, the fine-tuning of what a life becomes when parents and old friends are gone. Brilliantly poised between the mythic and the everyday, the anecdotal and the delicately lyrical, these poems contain the wit, irreverence, and startling imagery for which Crozier is justly celebrated. You'll find Bach and Dostoevsky, a poem that turns into a dog, a religion founded by cats, and wood rats that dance on shingles. These poems turn over the stones of words and find what lies beneath, reminding us why Lorna Crozier is one of Canada's most well-read and commanding voices.

LORNA CROZIER is the award-winning author of fifteen previous books of poetry, including Inventing the Hawk, A SavingGrace, and, most recently, The Blue Hour of the Day: Selected Poems. She is also the author of a memoir, Small Beneath the Sky, winner of the Hubert Evans Non-fiction Prize, and the editor of several anthologies, including Best Canadian Poetry 2010 and Desire in Seven Voices, and, with Patrick Lane, Addicted: Notes from the Belly of the Beast, Breathing Fire: Canada’s New Poets, and Breathing Fire 2. Born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, she now lives in British Columbia, where she teaches at the University of Victoria.