His body, like yours, would lie
mute as a plum
until a vigilant limb came
to a decision. As you might have guessed
I've come to one myself.

Moving from the absurdity of the First World War to the chaos of today’s cities, where men share beds, bottles of ouzo and shade from willow trees, these poems ask questions: If your lover speaks in his sleep, how do you know 'you' is you? What good is it to decorate a headstone? What if you think of the perfect comeback to a six-year-­old argument? Otter fails, with style, to find answers.

'Ladouceur writes with an awareness of queer history, documenting it faithfully, but with his own twist … This is poetry motivated by an honest wit.'
-- John Barton, Arc Poetry Magazine

BEN LADOUCEUR is the author of Otter, winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize, finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and a National Post best book of the year, and Mad Long Emotion, winner of the Archibald Lampman Award. He is a recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers and the National Magazine Award for Poetry. His short fiction has been featured in the Journey Prize Stories anthology and awarded the Thomas Morton Prize. He lives in Ottawa.

Ben Ladouceur's profile page

• Short-listed, Lambda Literary Award - Gay Poetry
• Short-listed, Gerald Lampert Memorial Award

In a recent review of Ben Ladouceur 's Otter , Emma Healey of The Globe and Mail writes that the young poet's debut collection "could just as easily be his 10th [collection]." Healey notes that the power of Otter comes from the fact that "every image, moment and person in these poems is given equal weight, and the way he works them together is both seamless and skillful."

In a review in The Puritan , Stewart Cole writes that Ben Ladouceur 's debut poetry book, Otter , in granting 'vivid access to spheres of intimacy between men,' also manages to '[root] his speakers' journeys in unabashed carnality ... with such consistenteloquence and in such consistently compelling contexts that the overall effect is not to shock, but ultimately, to challenge the ludicrousness of the heteronormative mindset from which all opposition to LGBTQAI lifestyles stems.'

In a short review of Ben Ladouceur 's debut poetry book, Otter , in the Winnipeg Free Press , Jonathan Ballwrites that Ladouceur's lyrical volume 'joins a handful of excellent and explicity books that bring a gay male perspective to the poetry world.' Ball concludes that ' Otter is a startling debut and a dense, rewarding read.'

' Otter has more weight per line than any book I've read since I started this blog.' - Michael Dennis

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