Diagnosing Minor Illness in Children is a striking third collection by one of Canada’s most essential poets. Kerry Ryan stares without flinching at everything in her path: family, grief, dog obituaries, fine-toothed lice combs, quotidian gore, a water slide that is “not a slide, it’s a throat closing in,” and herself as mother. The collection is replete with self-doubt and thorny humour, as when the speaker struggles to suckle a wolf pup while admiring the softness of her daughter’s cheek. The poet, while staying close to home, sees herself (and us) in birds blown thousands of kilometres off course, and in reindeer defending their young. Ryan’s vision of motherhood and midlife is fierce, edgy, and tender.

Kerry Ryan lives and writes in Winnipeg. her first collection of poetry, The Sleeping Life, was published by The Muse's Company in 2008 and nominated for the Aqua Landsdowne Prize for Poetry in 2009. She has had poetry published in a number of journals, including Prairie Fire, Grain, and Carousel. Poems from the manuscript Vs. are forthcoming in Room and CV2.

Kerry Ryan's profile page