Circle Tour, Eva Tihanyi's ninth poetry collection, seeks and celebrates beauty in the face of despondency. Its three sections—Outer Circle, Inner Circle, Centre—draw us in as we move from the "outside" world of politics, culture, and art to the "inside" world of relationships with family, friends, and lovers, to the "core" world of the self.

The book begins with a stark announcement of hope: "If you?re reading this, / you?re still here." It then moves to engagement with (among other things) the pandemic, feminism, and artists such as Marina Abramovic while reinforcing the healing power of Nature throughout our experiences with external, beyond-our-control circumstances. In the more personal second section, Tihanyi writes about loss through death; the continuing influence of her grandmother; the end of one love moving into a new, more profound love; the importance of friends, reminding us that "each day we must be / lucid with mutiny against despair." The final section focuses on the self—not just the poet's own but the universal human Self. It confronts the process of aging and its attendant contemplations, and once again reminds us of how Nature and art can help us in our "continuous becoming."

The poems in Circle Tour invite a sequential reading as the book gathers force as it spirals upward. It takes us on a powerful journey that ends with the ultimate affirmation that leads us full circle to our present moment: "Enough on this day / to be enormously alive."

Eva Tihanyi was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1956 and came to Canada when she was six. She teaches at Niagara College in Welland, Ontario, and has lived in the Niagara Peninsula since 1989, currently in St. Catharines. She is the author of seven books of poetry and a collection of short stories, Truth and Other Fictions (Inanna 2009). She was the literary editor of Niagara Current magazine from 2002 to 2004; freelance fiction reviewer for the National Post (2002 to 2009) and Toronto Star (2000 to 2006); and first novels columnist for Books in Canada (1995 to 1999) (responsible for selecting short list for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award). Flying Under Water: Poems New and Selected is her eighth book. See her website .

Eva Tihanyi's profile page

"In Circle Tour Eva Tihanyi not only poses the question, what does it mean to make art and meaning in an uncertain world? she pulls us into this question and the act of questioning. "The artist is more than present" in these poems, but—more than that—we are invited to be present too. A journey through the concentric circles of Tihanyi's carefully structured book is a coming-to-presence. Circle Tour is a powerful collection that challenges us to rethink the nature and potential of lyric poetry as a mode of human contact and imaginative response."
—Johanna Skibsrud, author of The Description of the World, The Poetic Imperative: A Speculative Aesthetics, and the novel The Sentimentalists (winner of the Giller Prize).

"A lyrical, big-hearted celebration of what it takes to remain whole and hopeful, come what may."
—Rona Maynard, author of My Mother's Daughter and former Editor of Chatelaine

"Eva Tihanyi has done for stalwart love what Sylvia Plath did for despair. She examines it from every angle. She chronicles pain she has suffered in the past, and then does a stellar job of recounting how she left it behind. Circle Tour is erudite, uplifting, and completely honest."
—Catherine Gildiner, author of Good Morning, Monster and the three-volume memoir Too Close to the Falls, After the Falls, and Coming Ashore