The first new collection of poetry from Roo Borson since her highly acclaimed collection Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida, winner of three major prizes, including the Griffin Poetry Prize.

Roo Borson's new collection continues the exploration of form, tone, musicality, and content begun in her widely acclaimed previous collection. Here, co-existing peacefully, are the river stone, painted white, that greets the visitor to the grave of the poet James K. Baxter in the far back country of New Zealand's Wanganui River; the Beijing night sky, turned apricot by the smog and full moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival; the crypts of Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery, seen as potential living spaces; an old friend speaking "knowledgeably, reverentially, and at the same time light-heartedly, in this way gradually restoring significance to the world." By turns wry and ecstatic, droll and elegiac, quizzical and contemplative, this is a major new work by one of our most singular and compelling poets.

ROO BORSON is the author of ten books of poetry, including Short Journey Upriver toward Oishida, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She has also been involved in a number of collaborative projects, including Introduction to the Introduction to Wang Wei, by Pain Not Bread (Roo Borson, Kim Maltman, and Andy Patton). Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, such as Twentieth Century Poetry and Poetics, the Harbrace Anthology of Poetry, and the Norton Introduction to Literature. Roo Borson lives in Toronto with poet and collaborator Kim Maltman.

Baziju are currently at work on a new manuscript project called Short Moral Tales.

Roo Borson's profile page

Praise for Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishidia:

"Roo Borson invites us to embark on a meditative, imaginative and spiritual journey. This book has a profound inner life. It is resonant and whole, moving with quiet, apparently easy steps into the depth of human experience." -- Jury citation, Governor General's Award

"This is the work of a poet writing at the height of her powers. It is a poetic journal of mortality, ... of entering middle age, and of journeying through landscape, seasons, plants, pasts, to find it again. The book is a small perfection in its construction, moving deftly through seasons and forms...." -- Jury citation, Griffin Poetry Prize