Guest editor Rob Taylor, author of the widely acclaimed collection The News, brings a passionate ear for rhythm, an eye for narrative compression, an appetite for vital subject matter, and an affinity for warmth and wit to his selections for Best Canadian Poetry 2019. The fifty ruggedly independent poems gathered here tackle themes of emergence, defiance, ferocious anger, gratitude, and survival. They are alive with acoustic energy, precise in their language, and moving in their use of the personal to explore fraught political realities. They emit a cloud of invisible energy, a charge. Featuring work by: Colleen Baran * Gary Barwin * Billy-Ray Belcourt * Ali Blythe * Marilyn Bowering * Julie Bruck * Sara Cassidy * Sue Chenette * Chelsea Coupal * Kayla Czaga * Sadiqa de Meijer * Adebe DeRango-Adem * Chris Evans * Beth Follett * Stevie Howell * Danielle Hubbard * Dallas Hunt * Catherine Hunter * Sonnet L'Abbe * Ben Ladouceur * Tess Liem * D.A. Lockhart * Jessie Loyer * Annick MacAskill * Domenica Martinello * Laura Matwichuk * Katie McGarry * Jimmy McInnes * A.F. Moritz * Alexandra Oliver * Alycia Pirmohamed * Marion Quednau * Claudia Coutu Radmore * Shazia Hafiz Ramji * Shaun Robinson * Yusuf Saadi * Rebecca Salazar * Ellie Sawatzky * David Seymour * Kevin Spenst * Mallory Tater * Souvankham Thammavongsa * Russell Thornton * Daniel Scott Tysdal * William Vallieres * Katherena Vermette * Douglas Walbourne-Gough * Cara Waterfall * Gillian Wigmore * Ian Williams

The three sequences of "Groundwork" comprise a sophisticated reworking of European myth on the order of Yeats's "The Tower." The first is situated by an archaeological dig in modern-day Tunisia, the second by the Garden of Eden, the third by the waters and islands of Homer's Odyssey. Together they form a devastating critique of contemporary aesthetics.
Few poets today are versed in the archetypes that inform the European tradition, and even fewer can manipulate them with the grace of Amanda Jernigan. With rivers of exquisite prosody and a panoramic intellectual scope, her "Groundwork" has recharted the poetic landscape - and by doing so, has changed it forever.
PRAISE FOR AMANDA JERNIGAN
"Amanda Jernigan possesses daunting formal skill ... her lines have an emotional intensity that is no less memorable for being understated. And she has a light, perfecting touch." - David Orr, NPR.org
"For years now, Amanda Jernigan's name has been traded between poets like stories of mythical beast sightings; whispers of a poet who could arrive on the scene any day to shame us all with her preternatural craft, heart, and mind. With Groundwork, Jernigan arrives not as a wide-eyed first-timer, but as a wide-eyed master. You hold in your hands a collector's item of the future. Mark my words: you'll say, I was there when." - George Murray
"What a delight to read such superbly crafted poems which at the same time transcend their craft so decisively. They are light and song-like but they are also profound. She has the lovely singing line, though the poems bite too; that strengthens the melody." - Eric Ormsby