Lists are what we're big into at 49thShelf all year around, but we're getting to that time of year when making lists and checking them twice becomes particularly important, and so we're pleased to bring you Lit Wish List. A Lit Wish List is a mutable thing, comprising either all the books you want to receive this holiday season, or the books you want to give, or the books that you're convinced that everybody ought to be reading. Our host/producer Julie Wilson will be talking Lit Wish Lists with Canadian authors for the next few weeks—see last week's conversation with Christine Pountney. And every Monday I'll be posting a new themed Lit Wish List to our site in hopes of collaborating with you. The posted list will be a "starter list", and we encourage you to post your own suggestions in an effort to help us all #giveCDN this holiday season. 

We begin with Poetry Gateways, a Lit Wish List for readers who don't know they like poetry (yet). What are the best books to introduce a novice reader to the wonders of poetry? What books have been your gateways to poetry love? We're starting with a list of five, and encourage you to add your own suggestions, along with a short explanation as to why your suggested book belongs on the list.

1) Impact: The Titantic Poems by Billeh Nickerson: Everybody knows the story of the Titantic, but Billeh Nickerson has made it new again with poetry that focuses on the small, on the specific detail, instead of the cinematic grandiosity, the titanticism that has overwhelmed this legend's basis in reality. This is a poetry collection that is a page-turner, providing fascinating detail behind the real-life story (the Titanic had 40,000 eggs in her provisions, 800 bundles of asparagus, that the ship’s iconic fourth smokestack functioned solely as ventilation from the First Class smoking room). As accessible to a history buff as to a poetry buff.

You can read an excerpt from the collection here.

2) The Book of Marvels by Lorna Crozier: Crozier is one of Canada's most distinguished poets, and her latest book has the intention of illuminating the extraordinary inner-lives of ordinary objects. While The Book of Marvels is not quite poetry, or at least not poetry enough to frighten readers away, or perhaps what I really mean is that there are no line breaks, her words are poetry all the same, with symbolism, metaphor, beautiful and surprising language. From "Fork": “It’s the only kitchen noun, turned adjective, attached to lightning.” Crozier shows, as poetry often does, that the world around us is more luminous than we usually take the time to notice.

You can read an excerpt from The Book of Marvels here.

3) The Execution Poems by George Elliott Clarke: Here we have a different kind of book: a suite of poems that revolves around a tragic family history and that reveals the power of poetry for storytelling and as a mirror for the world and for ourselves. George Elliott Clarke won the Governor General's Award for this bestselling collection and this new edition from the crafty printers at Gaspereau Press is as beautiful to touch as it is to read.

4) Desperately Seeking Susans by Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang (Editor): A collection of poetry by Canadian female poets called Susan, this book describes itself as luxuriating "in the ridiculous surfeit of talent we can find in not only Canadian poets, not only female Canadian poets, but female Canadian poets named Susan." Its premise is 100% fun, and yet Desperately Seeking Susans also succeeds in delivering excellent poetry with diverse approaches and subject matter, and provides a great introduction to Canadian poets including Sue Goyette, Susan Gillis, Susan Elmslie, Susan Telfer, Susan McMaster, Susan Andrews Grace, Susan Holbrook, Sue Stewart, Susan Glickman, Sue Chenette, Susan Musgrave, Susan Briscoe, Sue Macleod, Sioux Browning, Sue Sinclair, Susan Olding, Susan Ioannou and Sue Wheeler.

A great gift for any Susan, or for anyone who loves one.

5) Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy: Even if you have never found yourself in a tent beside BC's Tulameen River, Al Purdy can put you there with just a couple of lines: "—say the names say the names/and listen to yourself/an echo in the mountains/Tulameen Tulameen/say them like your soul was listening and overhearing/and you dreamed you dreamed/you were a river..."

This is the collected works of one of Canada's most celebrated poets, of whom the American writer Charles Bukowski once said, "If you want to read some decent strong human stuff without fakery, I'd say Al Purdy the Canadian." There is strong human stuff to be found here for sure, and fakery free, but there is also a writer so fully in command of his craft that he can evoke the country and its people like few others before or since.

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And this is just the start, the gateway to our Poetry Gateways Lit Wish List. What other books belong here? Be sure to let us know on Twitter (#giveCDN) or on our Facebook page.