The Names: Poems

From Governor General’s Award-winning poet Tim Lilburn comes a new collection of poetry of great scope and ambition.

The Names is personal and familial archeology, an extemporal dig giving spectres back to their bodies. With its lines sped up and dazzingly associative, Tim Lilburn’s cocktail of obsessions-confession, ontology, mystical theology, humour and extreme, fleet, apt weirdness-marches through on full display. He pulls in an even wilder cast of characters than his previous collections managed- Jan Ruusbroec and Marguerite Porete brush past aunts, uncles, and unidentified creatures steering the boats of language past fog-draped trees. In Lilburn’s latest collection, we are immersed in a realism of remarkable proportions, as though haunted memory comprised both texture and text, and combined formed the elemental fibres of a perilous present.

Series Overview- The McClelland & Stewart poetry program, supported by its active Board, is committed to publishing Canadian poets whose work engages and excites, and who stand out because of the distinctiveness of their voices, their rigorous dedication to craft, and the scope of their imaginations.