Selected by editor Bardia Sinaee, the 2024 edition of Best Canadian Poetry showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in 2022. Featuring: David Barrick • Nina Berkhout • Nicholas Bradley • Alison Braid • Louise Carson • Hilary Clark • Erin Conway-Smith • Nancy Jo Cullen • Kayla Czaga • Rocco de Giacomo • Jean Eng • Joel Robert Ferguson • Susan Gillis • Luke Hathaway • Beatriz Hausner • Robert Hogg • Evan Jones • Meghan Kemp-Gee • Joseph Kidney • Matthew King • Sarah Lachmansingh • T. Liem • Seth MacGregor • Sadie McCarney • Erin McGregor • Anna Moore • Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin • Barbara Nickel • Peter Norman • Tolu Oloruntoba • Michael Ondaatje • Jana Prikryl • Matt Rader • Monty Reid • Lisa Richter • Meaghan Rondeau • Olajide Salawu • Francesca Schulz-Bianco • James Scoles • Allan Serafino • Sue Sinclair • Carolyn Smart • Misha Solomon • John Steffler • John Elizabeth Stintzi • Joanna Streetly • Rob Taylor • Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang • James Warner • Elana Wolff

Selected by editor John Barton, the 2023 edition of Best Canadian Poetry showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in 2021. "My goal," writes guest editor John Barton of his long career as a literary magazine editor, "was always to be jostled awake, and I soon realized that I was being jostled awake for two-myself and the reader ... I came to understand that my job description included an obligation to expose readers to wide varieties of poetry, to challenge their assumptions while expanding their taste." In selecting this year's edition of Best Canadian Poetry, Barton brings the same catholic spirit to his survey of Canadian poems published by magazines and journals in 2021. From new work by Canadian favourites to exciting new talents, this year's anthology offers fifty poems to challenge and enlarge your sense of the power and possibility of Canadian poetry. Featuring: Leslie Joy Ahenda * Billy-Ray Belcourt * Bertrand Bickersteth * Tawahum Bige * Stephanie Bolster * Susan Braley * Moni Brar * Jake Byrne * Helen Cho * Conyer Clayton * Lucas Crawford * Sophie Crocker * Michael Dunwoody * Evelyna Ekoko-Kay * Tyler Engstroem * Triny Finlay * Elee Kraljii Gardiner * Lise Gaston * Susan Gillis * Beth Goobie * Patrick Grace * Laurie D. Graham * River Halen * Eva H.D. * Louise Bernice Halfe-Skydancer * Sarah Hilton * Karl Jirgens * Moboluwajidide D. Joseph * Penn Kemp * Jeremy Loveday * Randy Lundy * Helen Han Wei Luo * Colin Morton * Jordan Mounteer * Samantha Nock * Kathryn Nogue * Michelle Porter * Rebekah Rempel * Armand Garnet Ruffo * Richard Sanger * Nedda Sarshar * K.R. Segriff * Christina Shah * Sandy Shreve * Adrian Southin * J.J. Steinfeld * Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang * Eric Wang * Tom Wayman * Jan Zwicky

Twenty-five years ago and counting, Louisa, my true, essential, always-there-for-everything friend, died. We were 22. When Anita Lahey opens her binder in grade nine French and gasps over an unsigned form, the girl with the burst of red hair in front of her whispers, Forge it! Thus begins an intense, joyful friendship, one of those powerful bonds forged in youth that shapes a person's identity and changes the course of a life. Anita and Louisa navigate the wilds of 1980s suburban adolescence against the backdrop of dramatic world events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. They make carpe diem their manifesto and hatch ambitious plans. But when Louisa's life takes a shocking turn, into hospital wards, medical tests, and treatments, a new possibility confronts them, one that alters, with devastating finality, the prospect of the future for them both. Equal parts humorous and heartbreaking, The Last Goldfish is a poignant memoir of youth, friendship, and the impermanence of life.

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

In his latest collection, Shane Neilson surveys his homeland, mapping the many contours of history-political, social, personal, and spiritual-and considering the ways we shape and are shaped by the land. Formally inventive and linguistically rich, New Brunswick grapples with the weight of legacies both political and familial, charting both the province and the heart.

A hard-knuckled look at the other half, this collection of lively poems mix a girl-about-town cockiness with an all-too-rare emotional honesty about men, love, and relationships. Whether the subject is a one-man chimney demolition, the lifelong fidelity of seahorses, a lover at war in Afghanistan, or a kickboxing match, Lahey confronts the enduring disconnect between the sexes in a language that is slangy and quick, punctuated with jabs. She eyes those moments— in a day, in a life— when the normal clues we rely on disappear, shifting the line between domesticity and danger.