SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 OTTAWA BOOK AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 RELIT AWARD
Conflict interweaves ghosts, bad communication, the uncanny and the archival, to create a collection of poems that break down remembrance into abandoned historic markers, jet fuel, keening, or teeth. What you are given (this is a gift) is an insistent refusal to silence or shift. In exchange, the reader must face the impossibility of erasure, a gritty resistance to mourn a fight. Conflict is a collection of red balloons that intersplices and interweaves through various forms of conflict that occur in language, motion, architecture, emotions; between individuals, systems, and mechanical silences.

Christine McNair was born on June 6, 1978, (the sixth day of the sixth month at six-fifty-six.) She completed a BA (Hons) from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, with a major in English Literature and a minor in Art History. She also completed a Master’s degree in Conservation Studies (Books and Library Materials) at West Dean College in the UK. Besides being a writer, McNair works full time at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa, in a special agency of the Department of Heritage, as a book “doctor” or Conservator. Conflict is her first book.

Christine McNair's profile page

• Short-listed, ReLit Award for Poetry
• Short-listed, City of Ottawa Book Award
• Short-listed, Archibald Lampman Award

“There are so many striking moments of self-reflection and they are all so interesting that my readings prompt me to make an evidentiary list of some of them. It is particularly fruitful to hold these reflective moments up against the other primary modality of this book: which is an intense, intimate-driven, chaotic, incarcerating, phrasal composition by sonic vivacity. McNair has got a near ear. Her textural play is fantastic… This is a terrifically loaded book.” —Margaret Christakos, Arc Poetry Magazine