{"title":"Poetry Bash 2026","description":"\u003cp\u003eCheck out the five poetry collections we'll be celebrating at Poetry Bash 2026. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRSVP \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/moca.ca\/events\/partner-events\/poetry-bash-house-of-anansi\/\"\u003ehere\u003c\/a\u003e for Poetry Bash 2026, hosted by House of Anansi Press and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)!\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"nightmare-jones","title":"Nightmare Jones","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA collection of jaunty and mischievously unsettling poems for middle-grade readers from award-winning poet Shannon Bramer and artist Cindy Derby, who brought us \u003cem\u003eClimbing Shadows\u003c\/em\u003e (NCTE Notable Poetry Book and Verse Novel, shortlisted for the Rocky Mountain Book Award).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShannon’s twenty-eight poems in \u003cem\u003eNightmare Jones\u003c\/em\u003e send delightful shivers down the spine. Written in a variety of styles and forms, they encompass magic realism and influences from fairy tales, folklore and ghost stories, alongside more contemporary explorations of unusual creatures, misunderstood monsters and commonplace human fears (both ridiculous and sublime!). Cindy Derby’s evocative line and watercolor illustrations inhabit these weird and wonderful works with her characteristic flair for the strange and witchy wonders of the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn these poems what makes a person scared might also make them sad, or even make them laugh, as Bramer writes from a place of wonder, empathy, curiosity and reverence for the deep dark woods we all have inside us. If you’ve ever wanted to spend some time in a witch’s garden or wondered what spiders do with our worries, this is the poetry book for you!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKey Text Features\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003edialogue\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eepigraph\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eillustrations\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003epoems\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003erecipes\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003etable of contents\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003evignettes\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCorrelates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.2\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDetermine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.4\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDetermine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of a specific word choice on meaning and tone\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Groundwood Books Ltd","offers":[{"title":"hardcover","offer_id":42015738298427,"sku":"9781773069463","price":16.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true},{"title":"EPUB, fixed","offer_id":42015739019323,"sku":"9781773069470","price":14.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0264\/3374\/9051\/files\/BNCImageAPI_6ae97917-c067-438c-a650-66cde5189e0a.jpg?v=1739550075"},{"product_id":"procession","title":"Procession","description":"\u003cp\u003eyou are only here\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e    to learn from those who came before\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eand make space\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e    for those who come after\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProcession: a line of people moving in the same direction; a formal ceremony or celebration, as in a wedding, a funeral, a religious parade. Bestseller and Governor General’s Award–winner Katherena Vermette’s third collection presents a series of poems reaching into what it means to be at once a descendant and a future ancestor, exploring the connections we have with one another and ourselves, amongst friends, and within families and Nations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn frank, heartfelt poems that move through body sovereignty and ancestral dreams, and from ’80s childhood nostalgia to welcoming one’s own babies, Vermette unreels the story of a child, a parent, and soon, an elder, living in a prairie place that has always existed, though looks much different to her now. This book is about being one small part of a large genealogy. 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The title was chosen partly to speak to Moritz’s \u003cem\u003eThe Sparrow: Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e (2018), but also because, among the many short poems of this collection, one of them asked to be central: a poem about a small bird that hops from within a thicket of stems to peer out at the poet for a second and then disappears back inside. This tiny story of a tiny fellow creature is the narrative, the “novel,” of this book: a little story that is nonetheless one of the great and ever-retold stories.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"House of Anansi Press Inc","offers":[{"title":"trade paperback","offer_id":42334333698107,"sku":"9781487014049","price":22.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true},{"title":"epub","offer_id":42334333829179,"sku":"9781487014056","price":18.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0264\/3374\/9051\/files\/BNCImageAPI_4c841530-c2b3-4ecd-a27a-02d25350bbf5.jpg?v=1753118822"},{"product_id":"ultra-blue","title":"Ultra Blue","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGraeme Bezanson’s debut collection, \u003cem\u003eUltra Blue\u003c\/em\u003e, is a book-length sequence of poems about the emotional lives of boys and the challenges of growing up within contemporary constructions of masculinity.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The truth no one wants to name,” writes bell hooks, “is that all boys are being raised to be killers even if they learn to hide the killer within.” These intense, insistently strange poems developed from Bezanson's struggles with guiding his young son through a culture of toxic masculinity and violence. This is work in dialogue with existing texts of boyhood and masculinity, in particular Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s \u003cem\u003eEmile\u003c\/em\u003e. The book’s three main sections make up a kind of fractured reader’s diary, broken up by two interludes of “divinations” – sparser erasure poems made using the changing positions of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites to pick words from the transcript of an interview between self-proclaimed proponents of toxic masculinity Tucker Carlson and Andrew Tate. By processing existing texts and recasting them into a present, personal moment, \u003cem\u003eUltra Blue\u003c\/em\u003e navigates the joy, despair, vivid arcana, and routine violence of boyhood under Western patriarchy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"House of Anansi Press Inc","offers":[{"title":"trade paperback","offer_id":42334341562427,"sku":"9781487014063","price":22.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true},{"title":"epub","offer_id":42334341726267,"sku":"9781487014070","price":18.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0264\/3374\/9051\/files\/BNCImageAPI_01f52395-74bc-4d10-b4d4-29f298ab6534.jpg?v=1763407541"},{"product_id":"pitiful","title":"Pitiful","description":"\u003cp\u003e“This poem begins where Bulimia ends\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eor maybe, just maybe, when it started. Where\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ethe differential diagnosis is confused\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eby decades of self-made violence. Poverty,\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ecolonialism, god, all prisms that will shatter\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eone day, if not now…”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart self-interrogation, part confession, part hospital diary, the intense, heartbreakingly frank poems in Brandi Bird’s second collection detail the author’s ongoing struggles with eating disorders and depression, conditions that disproportionately afflict Indigenous girls, women, and two-spirited persons. These challenging poems investigate the relationship between sexuality and eating disorders as well as how the voyeurism of religion (the idea of being eternally watched) intersects with both of those spheres. They also raise questions about body shaming and body sovereignty—a failed sovereignty in this case, as \"sovereignty\" itself is a communal concept. In the tradition of poets like Amy Berkowitz (\u003cem\u003eTender Points\u003c\/em\u003e) and Hannah Green (\u003cem\u003eXanax Cowboy\u003c\/em\u003e), the poems in \u003cem\u003ePitiful\u003c\/em\u003e also lay bare the way patriarchy, medical sexism, and bigotry have not only sabotaged the treatment of such conditions but often make them worse.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"House of Anansi Press Inc","offers":[{"title":"trade paperback","offer_id":42334341791803,"sku":"9781487014087","price":22.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true},{"title":"epub","offer_id":42334341955643,"sku":"9781487014094","price":18.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0264\/3374\/9051\/files\/BNCImageAPI_e5e17a6e-1c87-49d8-84d7-9916e0f36b02.jpg?v=1758896868"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0264\/3374\/9051\/collections\/PoetryBash2026.jpg?v=1776192977","url":"https:\/\/houseofanansi.pro\/collections\/poetry-bash-2026.oembed","provider":"House of Anansi Press","version":"1.0","type":"link"}