"Beneath these sensually charged images lies a complex interrogation of the paradox of nature." (Quill and Quire)

In this stunning new collection, Elizabeth Philips takes us down into the swirling core of planetary energies, the central mystery of life itself. Sexual love, the wilderness, the births and deaths that connect them, the breathing and the not-breathing that connect birth and death, the interior wilderness of desire and the sensual love of wild things, of trees, earth, water — these are Philips's themes and subjects, rendered in a language of tremendous immediateness and authority. These are poems that will take your own breath away, that will give it back to you bigger, deeper than you imagined possible.

Who's to say this life isn't the eternal life?
The no-time, the hover between in-
and exhale — both wellspring
and spur — is the essence of the extra strength
you use to loosen the screw that holds down
everything,
or this morning, the heft I need
to shuttle from boulder to boulder
over the slump of rock meant to keep the riverbank
from moving. …

From "Breath"

"[Philips] has a knack for collapsing time and space, tearing the veil, letting the reader slip through the gap to a place of vivid simultaneity." (The Malahat Reviewon A Blue with Blood in It).

Elizabeth Philips is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently A Blue with Blood in it and Beyond my Keeping. Both collections received the Saskatchewan Poetry Award for their respective years. She has edited numerous poetry collections and has taught creative writing in the Banff Wired Studio, the Banff Writing with Style program, and the Sage Hill Writing Experience. She edited the literary magazine Grain from 1998 to 2003. She lives in Saskatoon.

Elizabeth Philips has been writing professionally for thirty-five years and is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Torch River (Brick Books). She has won a National Magazine Award, an Alberta Magazine Award, and two Saskatchewan Book Awards. She has edited over forty books of poetry and fiction and has been the Director of the Banff Centre's Writing with Style program since 2010. She lives in Saskatoon with her partner and two Cairn Terriers. The Afterlife of Birds is her first novel.

Elizabeth Philips' profile page