Viaticum: provisions or an official allowance of money for a journey. Viaticum: Nova Scotian poet Heather Pyrcz’s latest collection of poetry, in which she investigates the journeys we take and the things that sustain us along the way.

Pyrcz journeys outward to new forms, new technologies and new continents, and inward to dreams and interior spaces, defamiliarizing and rediscovering the things we often take for granted. This is a collection in which “each poem is its own leaving and arriving. Each poem is its own journey, but speaks to a larger one” (Sandra Barry in Atlantic Books Today). Putting a new spin on the perennial archetype of the journey, Pyrcz connects cultural discoveries with innate sensibilities in verses that take us abroad and bring us back home again.

Heather Pyrcz has published three collections of poetry, Town Limits (1997), Nights on Prospect Street (1999) and Viaticum (2002). In 2001, CBC Radio commissioned her to write two poems for its classical music program "Take Five." Pyrcz lives in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where she teaches part-time in the Department of English at Acadia University.

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“One of the strengths of Viaticum is its overall form: clearly and thoughtfully constructed, filled with attunement to what has come before and what follows.” Sandra Barry, Atlantic Books Today

“The imaginative world of Heather Pyrcz is worth visiting, creating connections from the domains of art, music, psychology, astronomy and beyond. . . Pyrcz’s explorations take her far and wide, from her own street to exotic destinations, not least of which is the journey inward: ‘we dive into ourselves,/high diving off Mazatlan cliffs/plunging into a chthonic pool.’ All in all, it is a fine ride.” Barbara Myers, Arc