• Shortlisted for the Lansdowne Prize for Poetry

The horizon is a type of boundary phenomenon. This book embraces the horizon literally understood, as the apparent boundary between earth and sky. It also draws on various metaphorical horizons, tracing the limits of human perception, knowledge and experience. It is especially attentive to the horizons of the Anthropocene, reflecting on their significance for us as a species and as cultural and historical beings, bound to human and other-than-human communities of various sorts. The “Adagio” poems explore changes that are pending, as well as already underway, in the wake of global warming and sea level rise. Tracing the arc of human perception, they pause in places that are – like our shadow or skin – part us and part of the world that surrounds us.

from TAILINGS

Nearly 2,000 birds die every year from exposure to the ponds. – Kevin Timoney, ecologist

Slurry of crushed rock and
effluents. Toxic pools fool

caribou, beaver, moose
who bow their heads

to drink. Great undulating

flocks of waterfowl circle
settle

then panic disoriented

falling under the blasts
of air cannons

the benediction of
floating scarecrows.

They say the bufflehead,
mired, just dove and

never came up.

The wings of others
keep beating

adagissimo
as they try to rise.

We close our eyes.

Still see them.