CBC Books Spring 2016 Books Preview Selection

49th Shelf Most Anticipated Spring 2016 Poetry Selection

Shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry

April 2016
8×6 inches | 104 pages
ISBN 9781771662147
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Reviews:
“The collection is bound together by a concern with critical and therapeutic interventions, but its strength is in the way Zilm makes use of the familiar contours of these interventions, their normalcy, to create engaging poetic moments. The familiarity of these moments allows the reader access to the anxiety and uncertainty…that these therapeutic spaces carry with them. Even Zilm’s use of pre-existing texts to generate some of the poems serves this function, allowing for introspection through excavation. Waiting Room is compelling, gripping, and familiar. It is a valuable contribution to the documentary tradition in Canadian poetry because it works to reveal the subject waiting to be uncovered in the document.”
-Ryan Cox, Canadian Literature

“Zilm’s focus is the assemblage of sources and new language — poetry at the site of the book. She plots a course through the fragments, building layers of image and metaphor,  The poems don’t avoid the lyric, but shrug it off when it starts to feel too safe. The personal rears its head when least expected… Zilm encourages readers to engage a bit more than normal in the activity of reading. She dares readers to find beauty in the leftover and the unfinished, in the margins.”
-Geoffrey Nilson, CV2

“Make no mistake, this poem is as intricately and painstakingly constructed as a ship in a bottle, and the fact that it comes equipped with moveable parts that allow you to choose your own adventure speaks to Zilm’s acumen and virtuosity as a poet.”
-Philip Crymble, HA&L: Hamilton Arts and Letters

“Zilm’s is a sharp, searching intelligence that draws mystery from her strange mixtures. A layered, complex, unique debut. “
-Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press