• Winner of the 2020 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry
• Finalist for the Governor General Literary Award for Poetry
• Shortlisted for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year
• Finalist for the 2020 High Plains Poetry Book Award

In four sections, St. Boniface Elegies traces a poet's relationships with her family and her community through poems about travel, love, illness, work, and the writing life.

The first section, "Submission," focuses on the importance of place: the Cape Cod poems describe a holiday taken in the midst of a period of grieving, while the Irish poems delve into the poet's relationship to her ancestors, the Banff poems look at the irony of an injury to the writer's hand while away at a writing retreat, and the poem "Oodena," set at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, describes a magical place where birth, marriage, death, and the imagination converge.

"Winter Archive" questions the role of the poet in the contemporary urban environment and shifting cityscape of poverty, broken families, and broken promises in the state of emergency that is Winnipeg.

"The News" is a suite of poems about the effect of a devastating medical diagnosis on a marriage, and the final illness of Hunter's partner.

The final section, "The Reader," includes a rhythmic Twitter-generated description of Canada's "poetry wars"; a humorous but loving homage to Al Purdy; and three glosas that respond to work by the writers Adrienne Rich, Richard Wilbur and Rainer Maria Rilke.

Poetry Wars

Uptown vs downtown. Borrowers vs thieves.
Metaphysical poets vs poets who don't believe.

20th-century poets vs those from the 21st.
Poets who are drinking, vs those with the terrible thirst.

Poets funded by oil vs poets funded by wheat.
Fish vs lumber. Limestone vs peat.

Slam vs dub vs found vs tone.
Bird vs moon. Skin vs bone.

The left-handed poets vs the right.
Day vs day. Night vs night.

Poets who type vs those who erase.
Capitals vs the lower case.

X vs Y. Brain vs heart.
Academia vs art.

Deep as the ocean, old as the stars,
mysterious, furious poetry wars.

After Rain

Years ago, I took my little daughter
out for walks, believing she belonged
to me, and showed her all the things
I knew the names for: dragonflies and blue jays,
chickadees and the red-winged blackbirds
swooping low across the reeds.

When she was four, she turned in her stroller
and looked up at me to ask, how
did we get here? It was summer,
the Earth turned slowly then.
I had plenty of time to answer.

Tonight, no moon, no sound.
All down the street the windows hum
with light and heat, and I'm alone
in the garden after rain. The time has come

to tell her how we got here,
but she's grown up, left home.

Who am I and what do I own?
A house and bones, a glimpse
of the blackbird's wing, the wind's dark rush,
and after the last breath, wilderness.