This collection offers five answers to the question its title implies: within us, in wild things, in change over time, in teething, and in being left behind. Beginning in the prairies and moving both in time and direction, the poems navigate the terrors in the territories of love, faith, birth and death. The poet embraces folktales and children’s stories, the Bible and the weather, humanity’s murky past and its murkier future. Chantel Lavoie voices the fears we cherish, as well as the pain we seek, in mythologies near and far from home.

Chantel Lavoie’s work has appeared in such journals asBooks in Canada, Arc, and Contemporary Verse 2. She grew up on a grain farm in Saskatchewan, and has since lived in Guatemala (briefly), Ottawa, Toronto, and now Kingston, Ontario, where she lives with her two sons. She is an assistant professor in the English department at the Royal Military College of Canada.

Chantel Lavoie's profile page