Museum of Kindness has just been shortlisted for the Quebec Writers’ Federation A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, along with Sina Queyras’ My Ariel and Gillian Sze’s Panicle. It’s an honour to be included in this company. There were so many good poetry books under consideration this year.

Visual Arts Centre Reading Series

I have now finished with final proofs.

I started the book that would become Museum of Kindness in 2006.

“Only embroidery and cancer are slower, / sometimes not even.” (“Poetry,” Museum of Kindness, Brick Books, 2017).

My poetry collection has a new title:

Museum of Kindness is forthcoming with Brick Books in Fall 2017.

I’m happy to report that my second full-length poetry manuscript, tentatively titled The Unnameable Genre, has been accepted for publication by Brick Books, and will be published in Fall 2017.

http://www.brickbooks.ca/bookauthors/susan-elmslie/

On my author page at Brick Books, I respond to the following questions:  When did you start writing?  Why do you write? Has this changed over time?  Who are some of your favourite writers? And what do you draw from their work?  Explain a particular poem of yours from a Brick Books publication.

for Wes, and with thanks to Phoebe (age 3) for the title

Here’s to fresh starts, clearing the decks,
making it new, forgiving debts. Last year
was grim. All bets were off. Needles and pins
and sink or swim. Grist for the mill and misery
loves company, a bitter pill, a monkey-
wrench in the machinery. Tooth and nail and
a leap in the dark. When it rains it pours. Listen,
here’s to fresh starts.