My Review of National Animal, by Derek Webster, for Canadian Writers Abroad

 

I've done another review for the lovely and eclectic Canadian Writers Abroad magazine, this time of Derek Webster's new poetry collection, National Animal. This is a wise and warm book of verse, and I'm not surprised that it's also gotten some recent love from the Quebec Writers Federation Awards. 

Here's an excerpt from my review:

The nation in National Animal is, for the most part, Canada, with riffs on everything from Joni Mitchell to the surprisingly evocative line “palm tree in a Lotto Max sky” in the piece "The Writing on the Wall.” But Webster, despite his book’s title, does not limit these poems to our nation’s boundaries or the project of nationalism, as CanLit has defined it in the past. His reliquary is more inclusive than that. This is verse that travels widely and blurs borders wherever it likes. 

Anyway, check it out!