Carey Toane's much-anticipated first collection of poetry starts at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London. Through this early world's fair, Toane examines our current relationship to our man-made and natural environments. This eclectic, adventurous work, blurring the lines of two centuries of human folly and achievement, is filled with curious animals, anachronisms, and anxieties galore.

Carey Toane is a journalist and poet. Her poems and translations have appeared in Canadian journals, chapbooks, and anthologies. She is the co-founder of the mechanical journal Toronto Poetry Vendors and the original host of Toronto reading series Pivot at the Press Club. Originally from Alberta, she has also lived in Finland, the Middle East and New York City. She is currently studying library science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. The Crystal Palace is her first book.

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This remarkable debut teems with Carey Toane's piquant wit and perspicacious gaze. Both wisecracking and wise, these poems explore how we shape the cultural and natural environments around us, and wonder at the very human experiences of contradiction, beauty, technology, happiness, and invention. Yes, there's no time like the present (whenever that was or will be), and we could use a guide like The Crystal Palace to help us with our hopes and our hungers.Ó (Gary Barwin, author of The Porcupinity of the Stars)