Lorna Crozier & M.A.C. Farrant

Lorna Crozier’s After That is a book written from the dark hollow we fall into when we lose those we love. Lorna’s sure poetry engages with the grief that comes from the death of her partner, the writer Patrick Lane, with whom she’d lived for forty years, many of them tumultuous. With grace and precision, she illuminates sorrow. The light the poems cast travels far enough to reach anyone who has experienced loss. These pages engage us with many familiar yet magical things—not only paper wasps, but their libraries; not only herons, but their role as aging monks. Crozier takes us through the domestic and natural worlds into the cagey and metaphysical place we call the beyond. Without offering false comfort, the poems turn over our own grief so that we can catch a glimpse of the new life inside us again.

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M.A.C Farrant’s Jigsaw comprises ninety-three literary puzzle pieces that mimic the actual practice of assembling a jigsaw puzzle. By turns whimsical, insightful, meditative, funny, and factual, the “pieces” of Jigsaw touch on several themes readers of Farrant have encountered before: existence, love, joy, science, history, aging, roads, and Buddhism – as well as our universal love of jigsaw puzzles.

Farrant writes against the prevailing zeitgeist of doom by attempting to provide its aesthetic flip side – using humour and curiosity. Jigsaw acts as a much-needed mental aid and offers potential, playful, rejuvenating answers to the dreaded question: How in the world are we going to get through these fearful times?