Understories explores the meeting of the natural, suburban and inner-city experiences of Prince George. These poems look beneath the daily observations of a place jostled between stripmalls and pubs, the university and the mill, and a landscape that presses in at every corner, revealing a sometimes gritty underside. Al Rempel's poetry kicks the snow off alleyways, tramps around a fallen-in trapper's cabin, or sneaks onto the neighbour's front lawn - all with a wink and a nod.

Al Rempel’s books of poetry are Undiscovered Country, This Isn't the Apocalypse We Hoped For, and Understories, along with four chapbooks: Behind the Bladed Green, Deerness, Four Neat Holes, and The Picket Fence Diaries. His poems have also appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, most recently, the Cascadia Field Guide and Sweetwater: Poems for the Watersheds. Rempel has collaborated in the creation of a number of video poems with other artists; We Have Become Children and I’ve In the Rain were screened at film festivals in North America, and Sky Canoe was screened in North America as well as internationally at festivals in Dublin and Bristol. Some of Rempel's poems have been translated into Italian and Spanish. Rempel was awarded the Prince George Regional Arts and Culture Award for poetry in 2012 and shortlisted for the Fred Cogswell award for excellence in Poetry in 2013. His poems have been included twice in the Poetry in Transit project in Vancouver and shortlisted in 2015 for Arc’s Poem of the Year. In conjunction with the Federation of British Columbia Writers, he has led a series of online poetry workshops under the banner of Interior Dialogues. More information can be found at his website: www.alrempel.com.

Al Rempel's profile page

• Winner, Prince George Regional Arts and Culture Award for Poetry