New Poetry Books

To celebrate poetry month we wanted to showcase some of our newest poetry collections for adults, teens, and children.

Adult Poetry Collections

• 100 Poems to Break Your Heart / Collected by Edward Hirsch. 100 of the most moving and inspiring poems of the last 200 years from around the world, a collection that will comfort and enthrall anyone trapped by grief or loneliness, selected by the award-winning, best-selling, and beloved author of How to Read a Poem
• Anatomy / Karina Vigil. Original poems by Canadian author Karina Vigil exploring the relationship between time and love.
• Approaching Fire / Michelle Porter. In Approaching Fire, Michelle Porter embarks on a quest to find her great-grandfather, the Métis fiddler and performer Léon Robert Goulet. Through musicology, jigs and reels, poetry, photographs, and the ecology of fire, Porter invests biography with the power of reflective ingenuity, creating a portrait which expands beyond documentation into a private realm where truth meets metaphor.
• Because we love, we cry / Sheree Fitch. This poem is Fitch’s response to the news of the shootings in Portapique, NS on April 20 2020. It was read aloud in Canadian Parliament and during a provincial news conference about COVID-19, and by Fitch herself during a nationally broadcast vigil held for the twenty-two victims of the Portapique tragedy.
• Burning Sugar / Cicely Belle Blain. (eBook) “The latest from Vivek Shraya’s VS. Books: a poetic exploration of Black identity, history, and lived experience influenced by the constant search for liberation. In this incendiary debut collection, activist and poet Cicely Belle Blain intimately revisits familiar spaces in geography, in the arts, and in personal history to expose the legacy of colonization and its impact on Black bodies.”
• Dearly : poems / Margaret Atwood. (available as book or audiobook on cd narrated by the author) “This collection of poems addresses themes such as love, loss, the passage of time, the nature of nature, and, zombies.”
• Home body / Rupi Kaur. “As a 21-year-old university student Rupi Kaur wrote, illustrated, and self-published her first poetry collection, milk and honey . Next came its artistic sibling, the sun and her flowers . These collections have sold over 8 million copies and have been translated into over 40 languages. Her most recent book, home body , debuted #1 on bestseller lists across the world. Rupi’s work touches on love, loss, trauma, healing, femininity, and migration.”
• Humanimus / David Huebert. Halifax author David Huebert’s Humanimus presents a world of soiled nature, of compromised ecology, of toxic transcendence.

• I place you into the fire / Rebecca Thomas. The incisive and vital first poetry collection from Mi’kmaw spoken-word poet and former poet laureate of Kjipuktuk (Halifax)
• Living nations, living words : an anthology of first peoples poetry / collected by Joy Harjo. A powerful, moving anthology that celebrates the breadth of Native poets writing today. Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present.
• Poems to make the soul sing / Alan Jacobs. “A beautiful collection of moving and thought-provoking poems from mystics of all traditions which will encourage you to listen to your own heart, marvel at the wonder of nature and explore profound truths of life, death, eternity and the Divine.”
• The poetry pharmacy returns : more prescriptions for courage, healing and hope / William Sieghart. “The Poetry Pharmacy is one of the best-selling poetry anthologies of recent decades. Now, after huge demand for more prescriptions from readers and ‘patients’ alike, William Sieghart is back. “
• Sulphurtongue / Rebecca Salazar An urgent, powerful examination of place and the ways in which all kinds of identities exist and collide.
• A touch of elegance / Charlotte Musial. “A Touch of Elegance is a lavish collection of heart-warming, witty, sometimes mystical tales of love and loss, betrayal and redemption…and other angst-ridden issues of the human condition”
• The Trouble with everything / Lesley Choyce and Doug Barron. (audiobook) The Trouble With Everything is a highly eclectic mix of Choyce’s published poetry and Barron’s studio wizardry that will help to shake off the bad vibes of the COVID-19 year and inspire listeners with some heartfelt words.
• Waiting for the small ship of desire / poems by Allan Cooper. “This latest collection of Allan Cooper’s poetry includes some of his most personal poems, including revelations to him after the death of his mother and sharply etched emotional memories of childhood and grandparents.”
• While Crossing the Field / by Deborah Banks. While Crossing the Field is the debut book of poetry by Deborah Banks. Her poems take us out onto the land where experiences in the natural world are filtered through the internal landscape of longing, presence, gratitude, and attentiveness.

Teen & Young Adult Poetry

• Ain’t burned all the bright / Jason Reynolds ; illustrated by Jason Griffin. “A smash up of art and text that viscerally captures what it means to not be able to breathe, and how the people and things you love most are actually the oxygen you most need”
• Say Her Name /Zetta Elliott. (downloadable audiobook) Inspired by the #SayHerName campaign launched by the African American Policy Forum, these poems pay tribute to victims of police brutality as well as the activists insisting that Black Lives Matter.
• Up from the Sea / Leza Lowitz. A novel in verse about the March 2011 tsunami that sent Japan into chaos, told from the point-of-view of Kai, a biracial teenaged boy.
• You don’t have to be everything : poems for girls becoming themselves / edited by Diana Whitney ; illustrations by Cristina González, Kate Mockford, Stephanie Singleton. A contemporary poetry anthology that offers girls and young women wisdom and compassion for a vital, formative time in their lives.

Children’s Poetry

• Can I Touch your Hair? / Irene Latham and Charles Waters. (Digital Audiobook) Two poets, one white and one black, explore race and childhood in this must-have collection tailored to provoke thought and conversation. How can Irene and Charles work together on their fifth grade poetry project? They don’t know each other . . . and they’re not sure they want to. Irene Latham, who is white, and Charles Waters, who is black, use this fictional setup to delve into different experiences of race in a relatable way, exploring such topics as hair, hobbies, and family dinners.
• Catch the Sky / Robert Heidbreder ; illustrations by Emily Dove. (picture book) In the vein of Jack Prelutsky and Dennis Lee comes a celebration of the sky with thirty zippy poems that will lift your spirits and let your imagination soar.
• Legacy / Nikki Grimes. (eBook) From Children’s Literature Legacy Award-winning author Nikki Grimes comes a feminist-forward new collection of poetry celebrating the little-known women poets of the Harlem Renaissance—paired with full-color, original art from today’s most talented female African-American illustrators.
• So imagine me / words by Lynn Davies ; art by Chrissie Park-MacNeil (picture book). From award-winning poet Lynn Davies comes her first collection for children. And there’s a twist: each of the poems in So Imagine Me has a secret. The lyrical and playful text describes something from nature–flora or fauna or another phenomenon–that’s also hiding in the illustrations.
• Whispers of mermaids and wonderful things: Atlantic Canadian poetry and verse for children / edited by Sheree Fitch and Anne Hunt ; illustrated by Lloyd Fitzgerald. Spanning centuries, from Milton Acorn, Bliss Carman, and Rita Joe to Budge Wilson, Shauntay Grant, and Kathleen Winter.