Honourable Mention - Alcuin Society Award for Excellence in Book Design - Poetry

A blind boy comforts himself with a telephone's dial tone and later becomes an international prankster. The discovery of a fox crucified in a toolshed prefigures the breakdown of a close relationship. McMillan's poems render both the public and the intimate with uncanny precision. They show us how these two worlds influence and invade one another. The flux and flicker of private memories are captured and projected brightly onto a shared, communal space. This is an adroit poetry that moves beyond confession; rather, it first stands witness, and then records, and then transmits its experiences to us like a gift.

Amber McMillan's profile page

Amber McMillan's poems have appeared in The Puritan, CV2, Forget Magazine and subTerrain among others. She currently lives on Protection Island, BC. We Can't Ever Do This Again is her first book.

"Few debuts are as considered as Amber McMillan's We Can?t Ever Do This Again. The new collection from Buckrider Books walks a calculated line, navigating family and history, tenderness and indifference, without a false step to either side. McMillan's landscape is washed up pilot whales and lamed cows, broken dishware and dial tones, sprawling Canada and specific Zutphen, Second World War. The collection is a precipice book, a welcome jolt of adrenaline as McMillan peers into the human condition and does not fall." - Arc Poetry Magazine

"McMillan can move masterfully between Larkin-y lines — and joyfully tragic linguistic lollopings." - Marrow Reviews