The Little Veggie That Could

Or might.

the pet radish, shrunken is up for the Lampman. Winning book is announced this fall. The three finalists are:
David Groulx, Wabi­goon River Poems (Neyaashi­inig­mi­ing, ON: Kege­donce Press, 2015)

A fero­cious, eru­dite col­lec­tion cen­tred around an unflinch­ing epic poem, breath­tak­ing in its wide-rang­ing look at oppres­sion, rev­o­lu­tion, and sur­vival. Wabi­goon River Poems draws upon Indige­nous knowl­edge and tra­di­tions while push­ing at the bound­aries of what read­ers might expect Indige­nous poetry to be. It is mas­ter­ful, urgent, and dev­as­tat­ingly frank, a nec­es­sary syn­the­sis of hor­ror in an unre­lent­ingly defi­ant and resilient voice.

N.W. Lea, Under­stander (Ottawa: Chaudiere Books, 2015)

In this bril­liant book of com­pact lyrics, themes of alien­ation and fragility meet dark humour and hope. Part Baude­laire, part Bashō, Nicholas Lea’s pre­cisely-focused poems exam­ine the raw edges of being. Ques­tions, equiv­o­ca­tions and mis­di­rec­tions abound, as Under­stander walks with ner­vous aplomb along the edge of the abyss, but never falls in.

Pearl Pirie, the pet radish, shrunken (Toronto: Book­Thug, 2015)

Inven­tive, adven­tur­ous, humor­ous, and a lyric aper­ture onto the strange beauty of the quo­tid­ian, pet radish, shrunken is a delight to read. Uni­fied in their unpre­dictabil­ity, these poems explore a range of forms and voices.   Pirie rubs words until they spark and fume, turn­ing the com­mon into an uncom­mon blaze. Every line is joy­ful in its eccen­tric­i­ties, and emi­nently re-read­able as it tum­bles through lan­guage.

 
Buy the whole set.
More at Arc Poetry Magazine on the Lampman