M. Travis Lane’s poetry has always been diverse: variously serious, silly, melancholy, cheerful, meditative, witty, philosophical, enigmatic, colloquial, intimate, simple, complex. Asked “What kind of poetry do you write? What do you write about?”, she has replied, accurately, “all kinds” and “anything” — calling her collections “eclectic miscellanies” and refusing to be nailed down by the critics’ need for tidiness. She shifts easily from lyric to monologue to epigram to song to riddle, drawing inspiration equally from the natural world and the world of art and imagination. Though her concerns are often feminist, environmental, civic, and political, her poems transcend such labels. And no matter what form an individual poem takes, there is something in the voice that makes it instantly recognizable as hers: a distinctive musical cadence, a groundedness in nature (nature not just appreciated but intimately observed, known, named), an immediacy of thought and emotion, a compassionate humanity, a questioning spirit. Crossover, Lane’s fifteenth collection, is a continuation of one poet’s exploration of the world and of her inner world, shared with us in the conviction that the spaces we inhabit overlap and connect.

As a child, an "army brat," M TRAVIS LANE traveled almost yearly, and had no home town. Educated at Vassar and Cornell, she came with her family to Fredericton in 1960, where they became Canadian citizens. She is Honorary Research Associate with the English department at the University of New Brunswick, a member of Voice of Women for Peace and the Raging Grannies, and has been writing reviews for The Fiddlehead for half a century. Long recognized in Atlantic Canada, M. Travis Lane is finally being acknowledged nationally as one of the country's finest living poets. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Alden Nowlan Award, the Atlantic Poetry Prize, the Bliss Carman Award, and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Crossover is her fifteenth poetry title.

M. Travis Lane's profile page

• Winner, Westminster Books Award for Poetry
• Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry

“M. Travis Lane is powerful and confident with the lyric voice.”

The Town Crier

“Simultaneously patient, surprising, joyful and mournful … Lane’s is a precise craft that opens up and lets out, that breathes.”

Arc Poetry