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Pigeon: poems
By Karen Solie. 2009
The Caiplie Caves /
By Karen Solie. 2019
In the seventh century, on the coast of Fife, Scotland, an Irish missionary named Ethernan withdrew to a cave in…
order to decide whether to establish a priory on May Island, directly opposite, in the Firth of Forth, or pursue a hermit's solitude. His decision would have been informed by the realities of war, religious colonization, and ideas of progress, power, and corruption, and complicated by personal interest, grief, confusion, and a faith (religious and secular) under extreme duress. His choice between life as an "active" or a "contemplative" was one between public and private action. Along with the question of what constitutes action, it remains a choice central to political and private life. Karen Solie's fifth book of poetry, The Caiplie Caves, attends to transition in times of crisis. Around passages informed by Ethernan's story are poems that orbit the geographical location of the caves but that range through the ages, addressing violence, power, work, economies, self-delusion, and belief. Indecision and necessity are inseparable companions. As are the prospect of error and regret. 2019.
Wellwater: Poems
By Karen Solie. 2025
The poems in Wellwater, Karen Solie's sixth collection, explore the intersection of cultural, economic, and personal ideas of "value," addressing…
housing, economic and environmental crisis, and aging and its incumbent losses. In an era of accelerating inequality, places many of us thought of as home have become unaffordable. In "Basement Suite," the faux-utopian economy of Airbnb suggests people with property "share" it with us and, presumably, we should be grateful. In "Parables of the Rat" the speaker feels affinity with scavengers while also wanting the rats gone. Having grown up in Saskatchewan on a small family farm, Solie sees the economic and environmental crises as inseparable. Climate change has made small farming increasingly untenable, allowing overbearing corporate control of food production. But hope, Solie argues, is as necessary to addressing the crises of our time as bearing witness, in poems that celebrate wonder and persistence in the non-human world. Tamarack forests in Newfoundland that grow inches over hundreds of years, the suddenly thriving pronghorn antelope, or a new, unidentified and ineradicable climbing vine, all hint at renewal, and a way to move forward
Pigeon: Poems
By Karen Solie. 2009
Karen Solie launched to prominence with her first collection of poems, Short Haul Engine (2001), finalist for the Griffin Poetry…
Prize and winner of many other awards and citations. She continued her upward trajectory with Modern and Normal (2005), and is now considered one of Canada's best poets. Pigeon is yet another leap forward for this singer of existential bewilderment. These poems are X-rays of our delusions and mistaken perceptions, explorations of violence, bad luck, fate, creeping catastrophe, love, and the eros of danger. Once again, Solie shows that her ear is impeccable, her poetic intelligence rare and razor-sharp.
Short Haul Engine
By Karen Solie. 2001
Winner of the 2002 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry (BC Book Prizes), shortlisted for the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize, the…
2002 Gerald Lampert Award for first book and longlisted for the 2002 ReLit Awards. Karen Solie takes risks with perception and language, risks that pay off in such startling ways that it’s hard to believe this is a first book. Short Haul Engine is one great twist of fate and fury after another. The writing is clear, striking and open to all sorts of possibilities. Even at their most playful, these poems dive much deeper than initially expected. There’s a remarkably dark sense of humour at work here, but tempered with a haunting vulnerability that makes even the sharpest lines tremble.
Modern and Normal
By Karen Solie. 2015
Shortlisted for the 2006 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and longlisted for the 2006 ReLit Awards. A Globe 100 title…
in 2005. In Modern and Normal, Karen Solie takes her on-the-road fascination with being between places to a new level, exploring conceptual and perceptual states of in-betweenness --for example, between what is perceived and what is actually there, or between and among the patterns the world repeats from the cell to the structure of the universe – to find points of intersection. Solie finds a middle ground between the discourses of the hard sciences and the intuitive, a realm of weird overlap wherein lie questions of probability, fate, determinism, chance, luck, and faith. She writes about fractals and physics, but also about bar bands, broken hearts, and the trappings of desire. Some splendid landscape poems celebrate nature while mourning the way in which it’s often exploited and used. Once again Karen Solie offers readers her lovely dexterity and skill in poems which entertain as they move.
Short Haul Engine
By Karen Solie. 2001
Winner of the 2002 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry (BC Book Prizes), shortlisted for the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize, the…
2002 Gerald Lampert Award for first book and longlisted for the 2002 ReLit Awards. Karen Solie takes risks with perception and language, risks that pay off in such startling ways that it’s hard to believe this is a first book. Short Haul Engine is one great twist of fate and fury after another. The writing is clear, striking and open to all sorts of possibilities. Even at their most playful, these poems dive much deeper than initially expected. There’s a remarkably dark sense of humour at work here, but tempered with a haunting vulnerability that makes even the sharpest lines tremble.
Modern and Normal
By Karen Solie. 2015
Shortlisted for the 2006 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and longlisted for the 2006 ReLit Awards. A Globe 100 title…
in 2005. In Modern and Normal, Karen Solie takes her on-the-road fascination with being between places to a new level, exploring conceptual and perceptual states of in-betweenness --for example, between what is perceived and what is actually there, or between and among the patterns the world repeats from the cell to the structure of the universe – to find points of intersection. Solie finds a middle ground between the discourses of the hard sciences and the intuitive, a realm of weird overlap wherein lie questions of probability, fate, determinism, chance, luck, and faith. She writes about fractals and physics, but also about bar bands, broken hearts, and the trappings of desire. Some splendid landscape poems celebrate nature while mourning the way in which it’s often exploited and used. Once again Karen Solie offers readers her lovely dexterity and skill in poems which entertain as they move.
Wellwater: Poems
By Karen Solie. 2025
The poems in Wellwater, Karen Solie’s sixth collection, explore the intersection of cultural, economic, and personal ideas of “value,” addressing…
housing, economic and environmental crisis, and aging and its incumbent losses. In an era of accelerating inequality, places many of us thought of as home have become unaffordable. In “Basement Suite,” the faux-utopian economy of Airbnb suggests people with property “share” it with us and, presumably, we should be grateful. In “Parables of the Rat” the speaker feels affinity with scavengers while also wanting the rats gone. Having grown up in Saskatchewan on a small family farm, Solie sees the economic and environmental crises as inseparable. Climate change has made small farming increasingly untenable, allowing overbearing corporate control of food production. But hope, Solie argues, is as necessary to addressing the crises of our time as bearing witness, in poems that celebrate wonder and persistence in the non-human world. Tamarack forests in Newfoundland that grow inches over hundreds of years, the suddenly thriving pronghorn antelope, or a new, unidentified and ineradicable climbing vine, all hint at renewal, and a way to move forward.