Alberta Books for the Poetry Reader

Give the gift of beautiful and thoughtfully crafted prose this holiday season! Below we’ve curated a list of six books for the poetry lovers in your life.

the book of sentences by rob mclennan

Fantastically rooted in the local and in the family, the book of sentences captures small, quiet, and intimate domestic moments with snippets of grammar lightly held to themselves by lineation and punctuation. These poems move quickly, processing the wonder of the everyday with careful observation, speculation, memory, citation, and play. Radically and everywhere metalingual, the book of sentences builds on mclennan’s previous meditation on domestic joys, the book of smaller and the work of other poets while naming its own writing in the vocabulary of linguistics. It proceeds in a family tuned series of adjustments, amendings, resistances, and acceptances, reflecting on parenthood, childhood, family far and near, the past, the present, and the future.

the book of sentences

rob mclennan

Published: Oct 15, 2025 by University of Calgary Press
ISBN: 9781773856483

Abode by Jun-long Lee

Abode is a debut collection of interconnected poems that delve with vertiginous momentum into homes—both material and interior—lost and rediscovered from the inside looking in: they are excavations of nested domestic spheres furnished with the bricolage of ruin and decay. Lee takes readers through hallucinatory geographies, plant-haunted spaces, and dreamlike corridors flooded with water and light, accompanied by an ever-changing subject that cannot make itself feel at home in its body, its country, or its language.

Abode

Jun-long Lee

Published: Sep 16, 2025 by Athabasca University Press
ISBN: 9781771994460

If I Know Anything About a Knife by Carley Mayson

Mental illness is like hollow bones. It makes you fragile, yet gives you the ability to fly. In this raw, honest book, the truth of instability shows how a young woman survives the death of her father, unstable lovers, tranquility in nature that allows her to arc towards health, peace, and even true love. There’s no turning away from this collection without being changed and challenged. Carley Mayson’s debut collection glints with both danger and life.

If I Know Anything About a Knife

Carley Mayson

Published: Oct 13, 2025 by Frontenac House
ISBN: 9781997580003

The Beauty of Vultures by Wendy McGrath

This innovative collection takes readers into the surprisingly chatty world of birds, whose avian artistry and poignant plumage mimics the formally and structurally inventive tones found in each poem. The language wings its way between funny and serious, poignant and morbid, while always drawing parallels between the poets thoughts and the cameras eye. From peahens telling off their elaborately festooned romantic partners, robins empty eggs recalling air raid tests after WWII, to seagulls serving as harbingers of humanity’s ongoing crimes against nature, each unit of photography melds seamlessly with its poetic doppelgänger.

Beauty of Vultures, The

Wendy McGrath

Published: Apr 01, 2025 by NeWest Press
ISBN: 9781774391129

Beneath the Surface: Poems & Their Stories by Chief R. Stacy Laforme

Chief Stacey Laforme, an esteemed Indigenous leader and storyteller, breathes life into every poem and story, drawing upon his deep cultural roots. Rich with the essence of his soul, the poems in Beneath the Surface capture the moments and emotions that have shaped him, offering a poignant exploration of identity, resilience, and hope. Through humour and pain, Laforme invites readers to not just read, but to truly feel the weight and wisdom carried within each verse.

This collection goes beyond poetry, providing rich backstories and leadership insights that contextualize the verses. As in his earlier collections, Living in the Tall Grass and Love, Life and Loss, Laforme once again extends an invitation to readers, encouraging them to see the world through Indigenous eyes. Themes of peace, humanity, grief, and trauma are woven throughout the book, creating a tapestry of reflection, healing, and ultimately, hope.

Beneath the Surface: Poems & Their Stories

Chief R. Stacey Laforme

Published: Oct 01, 2025 by Durvile & UpRoute
ISBN: 9781990735875

Python Love by Shannon Arntfield

Python Love weaves together experiences of childhood abuse, birth trauma, and recovery from the perspective of a medical doctor who is also a mother. In her debut collection, Shannon Arntfield delves into the many ways in which the body recalls what has been done to it. Long, breathtaking sequences set within medical facilities during labour and delivery are juxtaposed with spare, lyrical reflections on ideas of memory, natural spaces, implicit love, and the relationships between parents and children. Full of precise observations, careful renderings, and visceral originality, Python Love is focused on how the body and mind are inextricably linked, how the past can overwhelm and inform the present, and how recovery is tied to love and connection.

Python Love

Alberta Books for the Poetry Reader