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.
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.
Ordering can take place now.