Jennifer Zilm. Waiting Room. (BookThug 2016).

For a first book, Waiting Room demonstrates Jennifer Zilm’s already strong talent & insight. She joins a large number of fine young poets emerging in 21^st century Canada (far too many for any single reader to keep up with them all). It’s a bit sneaky, in that its first two sections, ‘Sugar Discipline: Dental Poems’ & ‘Academy of Fragments’ are rather playful & even light. Having read them I was highly entertained but also wondering a bit if her work might be directed at a rather small audience (how many poetry readers really get the ins & outs of working on a dissertation? wait: maybe more than I at first thought). But as she takes us further into ‘Singular Room Occupancy: Canto from Main & Hastings’ & ‘This Holy Room: the great listeners,’ & the dark nights of homelessness & mental illness…