Spending the year with new(ish) books by friends, locals, and other Canadian poets old and new. Follow along daily on BlueSky and Instagram.

For the first week back after two weeks off (Puerto Vallarta and surrounding area was tons of fun and as safe as I’ve ever felt anywhere, safer even than many places in the States we’ve been) I pulled Jennifer Bowering Delisle’s book off my very short TBR pile. I am totally going to brag here but given her previous work, and hearing her read a selection at her launch, I strongly suspected “Stock” would end up on the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize short list which was announced this week. Was I right? See for yourself and if you’re in town, you should go: https://www.edmontonarts.ca/event/2026-edmonton-arts-prize-presentation. I will be reading the other book of poetry on the short list, Jason Purcell’s “Crohnic” next week, provided Audrey’s still has some in stock this afternoon. Jason’s first book, “Swollening” was really, really good so I’m expecting the same from this one.

Getting back to “Stock,” as you’ve probably figured out, this book is about stock photography which, when you stop to think about it, is a kind of crazy feature of our visual culture. Stock images are so ubiquitous that we don’t even notice them anymore. As Jennifer points out in an Author’s Note at the back of the book: “…stock imagery shapes, if only subconsciously, how we as a society interact and even define ourselves and each other.” It is hugely important in how our societies and cultures are shaped and it is generally overlooked by everyone except those of us who either provide the images or use them.

My daily life falls into the latter category. My entire professional life has been on the corporate side of this equation. The poems in this collection that deal with office culture hit home (work?) with force. I feel so seen in so many of these poems.

The other aspect of this book I want to draw your attention to is the wordplay. What is poetry if it isn’t playing with words. really? I love love love it when poets take advantage of double-meaning and homophones and near-rhyme and the thousand other ways to cut the broken air we use to communicate. Jennifer is really good at this and it gives her poems added dimensions that bear multiple readings. Plus, they’re a lot of fun. I know I say this every week, but I really do mean it, you should go but this book.

This is what has been driving my creativity this week. I was reminded of these: