Book Description

Winner of RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers
Winner of CBC Poetry Prize

Re-Origin of Species is a lyric contemplation of our relationship to the environment.

Weaving personal narratives with a poetic study of the insect kingdom, this book looks at the interdependence of all species, drawing parallels between human illness, climate change and the state of peril of the natural world.

Diving into the poet's ancestry, these poems trace the inheritance of poverty, addiction and trauma against the backdrop of Southern Italy and Northern Ontario, to tell a story of grief, loss, adaptation and evolution.

Praise for Alessandra Naccarato:

"Ranging from the sting of personal loss to navigating landscapes full of promise, Naccarato's poetry interrogates the place where the personal meets the wild." —2015 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award Jury

"The women in Postcards for my Sister face challenges, loss and sorrow, but they respond with dignity and resilience," "In beautiful and arresting language, the poem introduces us to matriarchs, 'big-mouthed women, fat/as trees,' and the patterns which join grandmothers, mothers, sisters and their children to the sometimes difficult realities of birth and death, but also to nature and each other." —2017 CBC Poetry Prize Jury

About the Author

Alessandra Naccarato is a writer based between Salt Spring Island, BC, and Toronto, Ontario. She was the recipient of the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2015 Bronwen Wallace Award in Poetry from the Writers' Trust of Canada, runner-up for Event Magazine's Creative Non-Fiction Prize, and two-time finalist for the Edna Steabler Personal Essay Prize and Arc Magazine?s Poem of Year Contest, as well as the Constance Rooke Creative Non-Fiction Prize, among other recognitions. Alessandra holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in literary magazines across Canada, including Room Magazine, EVENT, The New Quarterly, CV2, ARC Poetry Magazine, Poetry Is Dead, and elsewhere. She is the Managing Editor of Write Bloody North Publications, a newly released imprint of Write Bloody Publications (Los Angeles). Re-Origin of Species is her debut poetry collection.