True Concessions

Winner, Archibald Lampman Poetry Award
Winner, Ottawa Book Award

These poems chart moments where the beauty of life is glimpsed like a carnival through a crack in a fence. The verse is full of living toys, dressing up, and daylight ghosts. His world is peopled with gods and heroes and inventories the luminous, devastating details of everyday lives. Poile discerns that love is an odd mix of a fairy princess and the monster under the bed. Tracing a firm entry into middle age, Poile favours the...