Realignment is an extended meditation on the human condition, shifting perspective from poem to poem to embody a variety of cultural milieus. A disruption in morning ritual realigns one's day. A painter switching brushes realigns his style. A break in syntax corresponds with an abrupt change of pattern in an Afghan carpet. Like “a gentle winding down,” the poems in Realignment address the self-understanding brought on by changing memories of the past and, ultimately, the realignment of removal, vanishing, and farewell consume the heart of the book.

Ruth Roach Pierson has taught women's history, feminist, European and post-colonial studies at the University of Toronto and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Since retiring in 1980, she has published three poetry collections: Where No Window Was, 2002, Aide-Mémoire, which was a Governor General Literary Award for Poetry finalist in 2008, and CONTRARY, 2011. In spring 2014, Guernica Editions published an anthology of film poems she edited entitled I Found It at the Movies. Aperture, her chapbook of poems written in response to the photography of Josef Sudek, was launched in July 2014. Realignment is her fourth poetry collection.

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