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

This week I read, as promised, the second of two books of poetry on the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize: https://www.edmontonarts.ca/event/2026-edmonton-arts-prize-presentation. I was actually lucky to lay my hands on a copy Jason Purcell’s “Crohnic.” The local independent book store I frequent, Audrey’s, had only one copy left in stock. Jason’s first book, “Swollening” was really, really good so I’m expecting the same from this one.

As you have already guessed from the title, “Crohnic” is a book about having Crohn’s disease, starting with an extended hospital stay post-diagnosis (finally) to drug the symptoms down to something “manageable” to the ongoing infusion-drip management of those symptoms. Set beside excerpts from his actual diagnostic reports and scientific papers about the disease and its treatment, Jason sets descriptions and meditations on the urban landscape of and around Edmonton’s river valley. This leads to some truly stunning poetry:

A few centimetres further there is another lengthy segment
(approximately 10 centimetres) of mural thickening with dilation of the
immediately upstream segment.”

As it is freezing, the river scales over. Flakes of ice with lifted
edges form along its epidermis. In the dry cold it itches.

This is what has been driving my creativity this week, imagining our insides as the outside.