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Poetic Nonfiction

Lyric essays, prose poetry, hybrid memoirs…these books live in the grey zone between nonfiction and poetry. A list from Capital City Press Featured Writer Jennifer Bowering Delisle.

Edmonton Public Library

8 items

  • Buffam recounts how a famous editor once asked her if she had children, telling her “you’ll be finished as a writer if you do.” Buffam’s book doesn’t just contradict this toxic but often-repeated idea—it turns it on its head. This is a book that…
    Book, 2016[Toronto] : Anansi, 2016. — 819.116 BUF
  • Gay’s daily practice of noticing and writing about delight is not an exercise in toxic positivity, but rather offers an inspiring model for redirecting and reframing my attention. Gay says that writing this book helped him develop a kind of “delight…
    Book, 2019Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2019. — 814.6 GAY
  • As Knight vividly reconstructs the various apartments of her difficult childhood, she builds the perfect structure for a moving memoir. This book is a master class in lyric nonfiction. [Also available as a book and eBook]
    Downloadable Audiobook, 2018BookThug, 2018
  • A stunning collection of essays and poems about new motherhood, language, and culture.
    Book, 2022Toronto, Ontario : ECW Press, [2022] — 819.116 SZE
  • Threading Light

    Explorations in Loss and Poetry

    Glenn, Lorri Neilsen
    These essays and poems traverse a lifetime of grief, and in doing so create a lyrical and loving account of community, motherhood, and artistic practice.
    Book, 2011Regina, Sask. : Hagios Press, [2011] — 819.146 GLE
  • Framed as a meditation on the colour blue and addressed to an ex-lover, these numbered paragraphs/stanzas explore art, sex, philosophy, depression, beauty, and a range of other topics, creating meaning through fragmentation and juxtaposition.
    Book, 2009Seattle : Wave Books, [2009] — 155.91145 NEL
  • Revery

    A Year of Bees

    Butler, Jenna
    A book that tenderly explores one of the most urgent questions of our time—offering connection to the land on which we live as vital to facing climate change. [Also available as a book]
    eBook, 2020Wolsak and Wynn, 2020
  • The first book I read that showed me that the boundaries of genre could be not walls, but playgrounds. [Also available as a book]
    eBook, 2011Knopf Canada, 2011