Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Poetry Canadian

Wellwater

Poems

by (author) Karen Solie

Publisher
House of Anansi Press Inc
Initial publish date
Apr 2025
Category
Canadian, Women Authors, General
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487013417
    Publish Date
    Apr 2025
    List Price
    $11.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487013400
    Publish Date
    Apr 2025
    List Price
    $22.99

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

The poems in Wellwater, Karen Solie’s sixth collection, explore the intersection of cultural, economic, and personal ideas of “value,” addressing housing, economic and environmental crisis, and aging and its incumbent losses. In an era of accelerating inequality, places many of us thought of as home have become unaffordable. In “Basement Suite,” the faux-utopian economy of Airbnb suggests people with property “share” it with us and, presumably, we should be grateful. In “Parables of the Rat” the speaker feels affinity with scavengers while also wanting the rats gone.

Having grown up in Saskatchewan on a small family farm, Solie sees the economic and environmental crises as inseparable. Climate change has made small farming increasingly untenable, allowing overbearing corporate control of food production. But hope, Solie argues, is as necessary to addressing the crises of our time as bearing witness, in poems that celebrate wonder and persistence in the non-human world. Tamarack forests in Newfoundland that grow inches over hundreds of years, the suddenly thriving pronghorn antelope, or a new, unidentified and ineradicable climbing vine, all hint at renewal, and a way to move forward.

About the author

Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw and grew up on the family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. Over the years, she has worked as a farm hand, an espresso jerk, a groundskeeper, a newspaper reporter/photographer, an academic research assistant, and, presently, an English teacher. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in numerous North American journals, including The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Event, Indiana Review, ARC, Other Voices, and The Capilano Review. She has also had her poetry published in the anthologies Breathing Fire (Harbour, 1995), Hammer and Tongs (Smoking Lung, 1999) and Introductions: Poets Present Poets (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2001) where her work is presented by Don McKay. One of her short stories is featured in The Journey Prize Anthology 12. She currently lives in Victoria, BC.

Karen Solie's profile page

Other titles by

The Caiplie Caves

by (author) Karen Solie

The Caiplie Caves special hardcover ed

Special Edition

by (author) Karen Solie

The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out

by (author) Karen Solie

The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out

Special Edition

by (author) Karen Solie

Pigeon

by (author) Karen Solie

The Griffin Poetry Prize 2007 Anthology

by (author) Karen Solie

Writing the Terrain

Travelling Through Alberta with the Poets

contributions by Ian Adam, Robert Stamp, Tammy Armstrong, Margaret Avison, Douglas Barbour, John O. Barton, Doug Beardsley, Bonnie Bishop, E.D. Blodgett, Robert Boates, George Bowering, Tim Bowling, Jan Boydol, Gordon Burles, Murdoch Burnett, Anne Campbell, Weyman Chan, Leonard Cohen, Dennis Cooley, Joan Crate, Michael Cullen, Cyril Dabydeen, Lorne Daniel, Alexa DeWiel, Jason Dewinetz, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Cecelia Frey, Gary Geddes, Gail Ghai, Deborah Godin, Jim Green, Leslie Greentree, Vivian Hansen, Tom Henihan, Michael Henry, Walter Hildebrandt, Gerald Hill, Robert Hilles, Nancy Holmes, Richard Hornsey, Tom Howe, Aislinn Hunter, Bruce Hunter, Laurence Hutchman, Sally Ito, Pauline Johnson, Aleksei Kazuk, Robert Kroetsch, Fiona Lam, William Latta, Tim Lilburn, Alice Major, Kim Maltman, Miriam Mandel, Sid Marty, David McFadden, Barry McKinnon, Erin Michie, Deborah Miller, Anna Mioduchowska, James M. Moir, Colin Morton, Erin Moure, Charles Noble, P.K. Page, Rajinderpal Pal, Ruth Roach Pierson, Joseph Pivato, Roberta Rees, D.C. Reid, Monty Reid, R. rickey, Ken Rivard, Stephen Scobie, Allan Serafino, Joan Shillington, Greg Simison, Carol Ann Sokoloff, Karen Solie, Stephan Stephansson, Peter Stevens, Ivan Sundal, Anne Swannell, Vanna Tessier, Colleen Thibadeau, John O. Thompson, James M. Thurgood, Eva Tihanyi, Yvonne Trainer, Aritha Van Herk, Rosalee van Stelten, Miriam Waddington, James Wreford Watson, Wilfred Watson, Tom Wayman, Phyllis Webb, Jon Whyte, Christine Wiesenthal, Sheri-D Wilson, Christopher Wiseman, Stacie Wolfer, Rita Wong, Richard Woollatt & Jan Zwicky

Modern and Normal

by (author) Karen Solie

Short Haul Engine

by (author) Karen Solie

Short Haul Engine

by (author) Karen Solie