A moving collection of poetry about navigating mid-life, full of humour and wit, from acclaimed novelist Farzana Doctor

This debut poetry collection from acclaimed novelist Farzana Doctor is both an intimate deep dive and a humorous glance at the tumultuous decade of her forties. Through crisp and vivid language, Doctor explores mid-life breakups and dating, female genital cutting, imprints of racism and misogyny, and the oddness of sex and love, and urges us to take a second look at the ways in which human relationships are never what we expect them to be.

Farzana Doctor is the author of Stealing Nasreen and Six Metres of Pavement, which won the 2012 Lambda Literary Award and was short-listed for the Toronto Book Award. Farzana is one of CBC Books' "Ten Canadian Women Writers You Need to Read Now" and the recipient of the Writers' Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Grant. She co-curates the Brockton Writers Series and lives in Toronto.

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"These poems are clean, tight, wry, luscious, kvetchy and up-close-to-brown-skin." - Sonnet L'Abbe, author of Sonnet's Shakespeare

"In this collection, love, disappointment and possibility collide, at home and unhomed in spare, precise language." - Larissa Lai, author of Iron Goddess of Mercy

"These poems travel across a range of experiences, but what pulls them together is the essential yearning for connection - in defiance of pain and grief, in spite of anger, fear, exclusion and sheer human blundering. The voices here are vulnerable, imperfect, but they are bolstered by their wry wit and an irrepressible desire to embrace life and love with all its complications." - Adam Sol, author of How a Poem Moves

"Farzana Doctor's You Still Look The Same unfolds in filmic moments which cluster with insight, itches like the discomfort of a hard news story, yet reads with all the intimacy of confessional memoir. This is a book of observation from a keen eye for what it means to be human in the 21st century. Here is a book that invites us to see with fresh perspective what we might yet be." - Michael V. Smith, author of Bad Ideas

"This book is a tender tour of the love, loss, and lament that comes with the messiness of living." - Dena Igusti, author of Cut Woman

"You Still Look the Same is an elegant and mighty achievement. It is irresistibly relatable, juxtaposing everyday experiences against remarkable and painful moments. Reading this book, one feels that despite what the years have wrought on the body and soul, we can still strive to hold on to the relationships that have built us, while re-examining their impact and redefining their meaning to us as we age." - Natalie Hanna in Canthius