A wonderful moment happened last week – my box containing Beautiful Unknown Future arrived in the mail! It was a hefty box, one that felt so good to see. Thank you to Talonbooks for everything they did to get these poems into the world.
Unboxing video
With the books here, that means this book is available to order now and it will show up at your home ready-to-read promptly.
Check out these links or get in touch with your favourite bookstore to order a copy today:
Talonbooks Spring 2026 Launch Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall 1955 McLean Drive Vancouver, BC May 1, 2026 Doors open at 7:00 p.m.; readings begin at 7:30 p.m.
Beautiful Unknown Future by Taryn Hubbard is a fresh collection of ecopoetry that reflects with candour and wit on the precarious moment we share with the nonhuman world. Haunted by the looming shadows of our compounding crises, Beautiful Unknown Future layers the chaos of domestic life with the detachment of the corporate environment to examine the joys and complexities of these competing spaces, looking critically to a future centred around tenderness, resilience, and love. Order your copy here.
My latest book, Beautiful Unknown Future, came from an interest to document parts of my everyday life and thinking while I was in the early days of raising my children. While these poems aren’t completely autobiographical in a traditional sense, they bring together aspects of my daily life from 2021 to 2025.
As a global pandemic and record-breaking heat and rain not only made the headlines but were experienced on an individual and personal level day after day, the unprecedented began to slowly feel familiar and I wanted to explore those early feelings.
The book came together quickly, but quietly.
A poems here and there, and then I realized I was working on something that could be book length. When Talonbooks editor Catriona Strang emailed me to check in one day, I mentioned the work in progress and we set a deadline when I’d send her a draft. This deadline helped me start to develop the poems further and to start shaping them into a collection. I was lucky to get that email.
After I published Desire Path, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever write a poetry book again. That book took so many years to write and took on many different phases of my life and craft, that I didn’t think I could do it again.
The first page in Desire Path, 2020.
What a surprise when the pieces in Beautiful Unknown Future just started to be. I enjoyed writing it and the process flowed really well, through all parts of editing. The first notes from Catriona that shaped a better first draft, and then substantive edits with Stephen Collis and then copyedits and final tinkering with ryan fitzpatrick.
The book is now available for pre-order and is one of the many lovely books in the spring line-up. While it has been a journey to get to this point, it also feels like it has come fast.
Over the past month or so, I’ve been working with Talonbooks editor ryan fitzpatrick on the copyedits for my second poetry collection, Beautiful Unknown Future.
I’m very excited about this collection. I started writing it a couple of years ago when Aaron and I were doing an artist residency in Maple Ridge. It started off slowly, with a poem here and a poem there, and then suddenly I had something I could shape and work with. I was surprised I got to this point because I wasn’t sure if I’d ever write again. My first book took me many years to write and everything felt complicated, but with this collection, it came together in a much more natural feeling way. Perhaps it was the experience of the first one that made writing this book a little more…fun?
I started writing the poems when I was on maternity leave and I wanted to keep some memories of that time. What’s funny about that is the poems ended up not being autobiographical at all. While they started based in my real life, they soon moved into a speculative space that balanced between my life with my family and some thoughts about the future amidst the climate crisis.
I’ll have more on this collection soon, such as a cover! In the meantime, it is available for pre-order now.
Pre-order
Beautiful Unknown Future is available for pre-order now on most book websites, including:
